It had been three days since the city folded in on itself and stitched back like nothing happened.
The papers blamed it on magnetic storms, power surges, hallucinations caused by industrial runoff. The same kind of lies that keep the morning calm.
But I knew what I saw.
And I knew he was still out there.
I followed the trail as any detective would — not with sense, but with persistence.
Reports came in of strange light off the harbor, seen only in reflections, never in the air itself. People whispered of tides that moved without wind, water that glowed from below.
By midnight, I was there.
The pier stretched into a fog that didn't belong to the sea. The world felt thinner at the edges, like a photograph left too long in developer fluid.
The old freighter docks were empty, save for one figure at the end — still, unmoving, facing the water.
Him.
Isaiah March.
Or what was left wearing his skin.
I walked slowly, the boards creaking beneath each step. The water below pulsed with a faint rhythm, a heartbeat beneath the surface.
"Isaiah," I called out.
No answer.
He turned slightly, and I saw his eyes — pale, washed-out, reflecting nothing.
When he spoke, the voice didn't come from him. It came from the air, from the water, from somewhere the mind could almost understand but refused to.
"He has seen what the world hides in its breath," the voice murmured through him.
"He looked beyond the written sun and took the first ember of creation."
I gripped my revolver though I knew it was pointless. "Let him go," I said. "Whatever's inside you—just let him go."
The figure smiled faintly, as if remembering something small, something human.
"He begged for purpose," the voice continued, soft as tide foam. "And purpose answered."
Then the pier shuddered. The water below rose in sheets, not waves — columns of liquid glass moving without motion. Beneath them, shapes swam, but not like fish — more like thoughts with direction, sentences that never ended.
I stepped back. The boards groaned. "You don't have to do this," I said.
"Do what, detective?" The voice layered itself — Isaiah's tone and something beneath, deeper than sound. "The cycle breathes in reverse. The light was taken, now it must reflect again."
His hand lifted. The gem — the Solar Tear — gleamed faintly, not bright, but heavy, as though the entire sea hung from its core.
"Put it down."
He looked at it, almost tenderly.
"I can't. It remembers its own place. And it remembers what drowned when man first learned to name the stars."
The wind turned cold. Salt filled my lungs. The harbor lights went out, one by one, until only the reflection of the gem remained, rippling across the black surface.
I fired once.
The bullet hit the gem — not shattering it, not even marking it — but the sound that followed wasn't an echo. It was a breath.
The water rose higher. Shapes within it twisted, almost forming letters, almost speaking.
The figure staggered, the gem pulsing between light and dark.
For a moment, I saw Isaiah again — his face flickering through the storm of reflection.
"Murphy," he whispered. "If it reaches the bottom, everything rises."
Then his voice was swallowed by the surge.
[Third-Person Cutaway]
From the coast, witnesses saw nothing but fog.
The harbor lights failed at once, and a low hum spread across the bay — not thunder, not machinery, but the sound of an idea escaping.
Minutes later, the tide withdrew farther than any chart had recorded. The sea floor shone with faint geometry before darkness folded it closed again.
When I woke, I was lying on the same pier.
The water was calm. The boards were dry. My revolver was gone. So was Isaiah.
Only the gem remained — dull, lifeless, as if the world had exhaled it.
I picked it up. It was cold, lighter than glass. For a second, I thought I saw my reflection in it — but it wasn't me. It was something watching through me.
I dropped it into the sea. It sank fast, without ripple or sound.
The dawn came slow, painted in washed-out gold. The world looked ordinary again.
But the air carried a faint vibration, like a tide waiting for the right moment to return.
I lit a cigarette, my hand still trembling.
Somewhere beneath that calm, I knew Isaiah was gone.
And something else was listening.
That's the thing about old gods.
They never die.
They just wait for someone foolish enough to look long enough to find them again.
And maybe I just did.
End of "The Man Who Stole a Star"
A 1940s Noir Chronicle — by Murphy's Hand