The fog rolled in just after midnight—thick and low, like something alive. It lapped at the edge of the dock, swallowing the crooked lamplight and muffling the world into a wet, gray hush. The harbor, usually humming with the low groan of shifting ships and clanking chains, was silent. Too silent.

Eli Morgan stood at the edge of the pier, hands in his coat pockets, collar up against the wind. His boots tapped softly against the warped planks, a slow metronome counting down the seconds past 2:17 a.m.

The ship should have been here by now.

He pulled the slip of paper from his coat—a boarding ticket, yellowed and creased, stamped with a name that had become an obsession: Midnight Descent. The kind of name you'd expect from a half-sunk trawler or a forgotten poem. Beneath the name, a time and dock number were scribbled in smudged ink. It wasn’t official. Nothing about this meeting was.

The informant had been careful. No real names. A burner phone, used only once. A whispered promise of something big—cargo that wasn’t supposed to exist. A collection of stolen paintings. Nazi-era. Lost to history, or so people thought.

Eli lit a cigarette with a cupped hand and tried not to think about the last time he waited like this—for a source who never showed, whose body later surfaced downriver. Back then, he still had a desk, a byline, and a paper willing to print his stories. Now, all he had was a rusted car, a half-dead laptop, and a reputation that hung around his neck like a stone.

The fog thickened.

A gull screeched above, then vanished into the gray.

From behind him, a shuffle of footsteps. Eli turned quickly—nothing but a dragging line, abandoned on the planks. He scanned the harbor: empty moorings, dark water, shadows layered on shadows.

No ship. No voice. No answers.

Then something bumped softly against the pilings below—wood against wood, a gentle knock like a hand rapping on a door. Eli stepped closer and peered down.

A bottle. Glass, old, bobbing in the tide.

He climbed down to the lower platform and fished it out with a rusted pole. Inside: paper, sealed in wax. Old-fashioned. Purposeful.

He smashed the bottle against the dock edge and unfolded the note inside. The ink had bled slightly, but the message was clear:

“You were not supposed to come alone.”
“The ship never left.”
“They know you’re here.”

Eli looked up. The fog swallowed the horizon. Somewhere in the silence, something moved.

The Midnight Descent had vanished. But the story had just begun.