Night fell like judgment over Gravehollow.
The wind carried no songs, only the soft rustle of red paper being folded, again and again, into lanterns. Each household worked in silence. Children whispered. Elders wept behind shuttered windows. Even the birds dared not sing.
Auren stood at the edge of the village square, watching them.
"Do they always do this?" he asked.
Lyra nodded, her eyes distant. "Once every year. We call it the Red Vigil. Every villager writes a sin—one they've committed, or one they carry for another. It's placed inside a lantern and sent into the sky."
He frowned. "And what? The wind forgives them?"
Lyra looked at him—truly looked.
"No. The wind remembers."
Auren turned away, unsettled. He could feel the weight in the air, something thick and mournful pressing down like invisible ash. His hand gripped the blade fragment at his side. It hadn't spoken again since the ruins, but he felt it… like it was listening.
The villagers gathered in a circle, each holding a glowing red lantern. Soft chants began—low, rhythmic, ancient.
"From guilt to sky,From sky to soul,Let fire carry what we cannot hold…"
One by one, the lanterns rose.
The sky bloomed with flickering crimson orbs, drifting like dying stars. Children cried. A woman fell to her knees, whispering an apology to no one. A man clutched his chest and confessed to burying a brother alive.
Auren watched them, his jaw clenched. Something inside him stirred—an ache that wasn't his.
Then he saw her.
A little girl, barely more than six, struggling to lift her lantern. Her paper was ripped. Her candle kept going out. She looked around, frightened, alone.
Without thinking, Auren stepped forward, knelt beside her, and held the candle steady.
She whispered, "He hurt my sister. I told no one."
Her eyes met his.
"I'm sorry."
Auren's hands trembled. He didn't know why. But in that moment, he felt the burn of his scar again—hotter this time. The lantern caught flame and rose.
She smiled. Auren didn't.
Later that night, Lyra found him sitting on the chapel steps.
"You're different," she said. "But I don't mean just... divine."
"I'm not divine anymore," he muttered.
"But your silence is," she replied softly. "You carry pain like it's sacred."
He didn't answer.
Because in truth, he didn't know whose pain it was.
Above, the lanterns floated until they vanished behind a veil of cloud and starlight. And far beneath the chapel, something ancient opened a single, unseen eye—drawn by sin, and the soul that once judged it.
"A sin released to sky may float,but guilt, like ash, always finds a throat." — Old Karmic Proverb, Red Vigil Chant