By the time Mara returned to the ruins, dusk was folding into night. She clutched the old lantern she had discovered days before, its flame somehow still burning with a quiet, unnatural steadiness.
Each night since finding it, Mara had dreamed of the village — but in those dreams, the buildings stood whole, the streets were busy, and voices whispered in a language she couldn’t quite understand.
Tonight, the fog came early, curling around the skeletal remains of cottages and the crumbling well. The lantern’s light didn’t pierce it; instead, the mist seemed drawn to it, dancing like moths to a flame.
Mara paused near the old chapel. The stones there were cracked, but something — a sound? — pulled her closer.
When she held the lantern aloft, shadows shifted across the ground, forming shapes: a child laughing, an old woman stooping over a pot, a blacksmith at his forge.
They were memories. Echoes.
And then, the voice came — soft, almost like a sigh behind her ear:
“You brought it back…”
Mara spun around. No one. Only the thickening mist.
The ground beneath her feet grew colder, the ruins sharper, more alive than before. She realized with a sudden jolt: the lantern wasn’t just a relic. It was a key — a tether to something the village had left behind.
Something that wasn’t ready to be forgotten.
The figure stepped out of the mist, clothed in tattered robes that dragged across the cracked stones.
Its face was hidden by a hood, but from within, two faint lights — like dying stars — burned where eyes should have been.
Mara tightened her grip on the lantern.
The figure paused, as if studying her, then spoke in a voice that sounded like wind scraping through dead branches:
“You carry the flame of memory. You carry us.”
Heart hammering, Mara took a step back.
“Who are you?” she managed to whisper.
“I am the Keeper,” it said. “I guard the soul of this place, bound by the flame you now bear.”
It gestured toward the ruins. As it did, the fog thinned slightly, revealing more phantoms — villagers caught in endless loops: fetching water, laughing, weeping.
Mara realized they weren’t just memories.
They were trapped.
“Why are they still here?” she asked.
The Keeper’s hood tilted slowly.
“Because we were forgotten… but not forgiven.”
A chill raced up Mara’s spine.
Forgotten? Forgiven for what?
The lantern in her hand pulsed once, and a new image flickered into view — a bonfire in the center of the village, people shouting, a woman being dragged in chains.
“The village made a mistake,” the Keeper said. “A mistake that cursed us. Until someone returned to listen. Until someone bore the light willingly.”
Its voice lowered to a rumble. “Will you hear our story, Mara of the Living? Will you carry our truth back to the world that abandoned us?”
Mara hesitated.
The mist thickened again, and from the swirling gray, she thought she saw more figures moving — some reaching for her, some warning her away.
The lantern grew heavier in her hand.
The choice was hers.
A heavy footstep echoed behind her.
The flame of the lantern flared blue.
And from the mist, a figure began to emerge.
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