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Welcome to A Bedtime Story. I'm Matthew Mitchell, and tonight's story is titled The Keeper's Command, Part 3 of this week's series: The Legend of the Unblinking Lighthouse.

Leila returned to Stoney Point with the shell locket tucked securely in the pocket of her oilskin coat. The sea was calmer now, the waves sighing rather than roaring, but the silence of the sea felt unnerving, expectant. She ascended the long, spiral staircase for the third time in as many days. The lantern room felt colder than usual, and the Unblinking Light, though still burning, seemed to possess a strained, almost exhausted quality.

Leila knew she couldn't just glue the shard back into the lens. The flaw was an integral part of the original crystal. The repair needed to be structural, not cosmetic. She consulted her mother's logbooks again, searching for anything about the lens’s initial installation or its composition. On the very last page of the oldest book, written in faded, looping script by her great-great-grandfather, a former keeper, she found a single, cryptic entry: The crystal mends itself under the Keeper’s Command, but only when the heart of the stone is placed back within its sight.

The heart of the stone. Leila looked at the tiny splinter in the shell locket. The shard was the part of the lens that was missing, but what was the heart? She looked around the lantern room. There was a small, ornate pedestal beneath the main lens assembly, a spot where the light beam passed over a single, polished piece of granite before exiting the glass. She had always assumed it was just a support piece.

Leila placed the shell locket—the small crystal shard inside—on the granite pedestal. Nothing happened. The light continued to burn with its tired, steady intensity. She picked up the shell locket again, frustrated. The Keeper’s Command. Her mother was the Keeper, but she was hundreds of miles away.

Then, she remembered something her mother had once told her, a whimsical explanation for why the light never blinked. "The light doesn't blink because it doesn't need to. It sees with a different kind of sight. It sees intent, Leila, not just ships."

Leila closed her eyes, clutching the shell. She didn't have to be her mother; she had to be the person who cared the most for the light. She had to give the Command.

"Unblinking Light," Leila said, her voice shaking slightly but gaining strength as she spoke. "You are the guide. You are the eye. You are the constant truth in a world that shifts with the tide. You are wounded, but you are not broken."

She raised the shell locket above her head, holding the fragment of crystal in the direct, blinding beam of the lamp. The light seemed to pause, and a low, musical hum filled the lantern room, vibrating through the metal floor.

"I command you to be whole," she finished, her voice steady and clear. "Mend your sight."

As she brought the locket down, the tiny sliver of crystal, bathed in the concentrated beam, began to glow with a fierce, pure energy. The light from the main lens focused on the shard. Then, with a sound like a harp string snapping, the fragment shot from the shell locket and flew directly toward the scratch on the main lens.

The shard didn’t fill the hole; it dissolved into the larger crystal. The scratch vanished instantly, the surface becoming liquid and then solidifying again into a single, flawless, composite whole. The sound of the hum faded, replaced by the normal, silent integrity of the light. The Unblinking Light was instantly stronger, its beam sharper and more brilliant than before.

Leila sighed, a mixture of relief and exhaustion washing over her. She looked at the shell locket, which was now just an ordinary, hollow piece of iridescent shell. Its purpose was fulfilled. The Legend of the Unblinking Lighthouse would continue, saved by the small actions of a girl who listened to a whisper and spoke with the authority of the keeper she was destined to become. Down on the ocean, miles away, a ship captain would simply note that the Stoney Point Light seemed exceptionally clear tonight.