Quiet Ends · I · 72°40′ N
Krelløy
A Lovecraftian Horror Novel of Arctic Isolation and Cosmic Annihilation
A remote Arctic island off northern Norway. A fog that moves against the wind, and one mountain peak it will not touch.
When the supply ship unloads at the isolated fishing community of Krelløy, its crew won't say why this run is the last. Forty-seven souls are cut off from the mainland, and from the world they once knew.
What begins as an eerie weather anomaly stops looking like weather the day a sound comes from every direction at once.
Stefan, a Slovak expatriate working at the local fish processing plant, and his wife Linnet, a Kenyan nurse who crossed continents for love, try to hold on to each other as their community fractures and their Arctic home turns alien around them. Neighbors vanish into the fog. Those still here begin to change. The only question left is what it means to remain yourself when the world itself is forgetting how to be.
A literary novel of cosmic and body horror, Krelløy is a love story at the end of the world.
Series
Quiet Ends, Book One. Stands alone.
Editions
Kindle ebook and paperback.
Paperback
314 pages · 5 × 8 in · ISBN 978-82-694333-0-2
Setting
An Arctic island off northern Norway.
Published
13 July 2025
From the opening
Chapter I · The last supply
October mornings on Krelløy possessed a quality of light that existed somewhere between day and dream. The sun's slow retreat toward winter solstice painted our kitchen in shades of pearl and amber. Through our window, Trallhornet's distinctive peak pierced the gathering mist, its crooked summit strange in the half-light.
Linnet measured cardamom and ginger with practiced precision. Each movement carrying the weight of her Sabaot ancestry. Her dark hands performed the ritual with quiet grace, each gesture bridging her homeland and this remote Norwegian outpost we now called home. Steam spiraled from the chai, catching the light and transforming our kitchen into something sacred.
Watching her purposeful movements, I felt a deep gratitude beneath my breastbone. Before Krelløy claimed me, I had been stuck in a routine under office lights. My grandfather's words echoed in me: "A man belongs where his soul can breathe, Stefan." Finding Krelløy felt like coming home. The wild had been waiting for me, the sea whispering in a language my blood understood. And here, at last, with the woman I adored, I could breathe.
"Stefan," she called, her accent adding a musical lilt to my name, a sound that still moved me after three years of marriage. "Come see how the fog's settling in."
I left the weather reports and joined her at the window. Today's mist was different, forming pools rather than layers, moving slowly against the breeze. The approaching polar night often brought ice fog and temperature inversions, but this was unusually dense, obscuring Trallhornet's base while leaving its peak distinct.
"Probably just the season changing," I said, though the air's quality made my words hollow.
"No." Linnet shook her head slowly, her braids catching the reluctant light. "We had fog like this in Kongit once. My grandmother wouldn't let any of us outside for two days." A small shiver ran through her. "Mashetani ya milima."
"Mountain spirits?" My Norwegian was better than my Swahili, but I'd picked up enough. "Yes." Her eyes didn't leave the window. "Not the good kind, either."
“We weren’t being remembered. We were being replaced.”
Krelløy
Readers
“It wasn't what I was expecting, but engaged me from the first page to the last. I fully intend to read this again.”
Peter Wood
“This one shook me.”
Zachary C.
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