The village awoke to silence and scorched ice.
Where once the Festival was song and reverence, now only the soot from burnt lanterns marked the lake's surface. The elders blamed the wind. The priests muttered of old sins. But everyone avoided Arjuna's gaze.
He had fought a ghost of himself. And won.
Tellen sat on the temple steps, scribbling in his journal, chewing on a strand of dry grass. "They think you're a death omen now. Could be worse. Last year it was frogs raining from the sky."
Arjuna stood apart, staring at the lake.
"There was something beneath the ice."
Tellen nodded. "There always is. This land is built on graves, friend. The Hollow Lights Festival isn't about remembrance. It's about bargaining."
"For what?"
"For forgetfulness." Tellen shut his book. "Most people don't want to remember their dead. They want peace. The Bone Singer offers that. But sometimes the dead remember you back."
Arjuna's grip tightened on his sword. "My shadow remembered everything. Even the part where I… smiled. I didn't know I could."
The historian studied him. "Maybe the dead know more about you than the living."
Just then, the weeping-masked girl reappeared. She stood barefoot at the edge of the square, holding a cracked lantern. Her flute dangled from her side like a weapon.
"Come," she said. "It's not over."
Tellen groaned. "Why is it always cryptic children?"
The girl didn't wait. She vanished into an alley, and despite the protests of every tired bone in their bodies, they followed.
She led them through forgotten paths—through a graveyard half-swallowed by frost, through a crumbling shrine filled with broken statues of nameless saints. The air grew colder, heavier.
Finally, she stopped at a stone well.
Arjuna peered over the edge.
There was no water. Only bones.
The girl said, "This is where we bury memories we can't carry."
Tellen hissed. "The Hollow Pit. Old folk tale. They say if you toss a name down, it's erased forever."
She offered Arjuna a shard of bone. "Write."
He took it.
"What name?"
"Yours. Or someone else's. If you want them to vanish."
He stared at the bone shard.
A name whispered at the edge of his thoughts.
Nyssara.
He didn't write it.
Instead, he turned the shard over and carved: Thorne.
The girl took it from him and dropped it into the pit.
A long silence followed. Then the wind howled.
From the well, a voice echoed up.
"Do not bury what still burns."
Arjuna reeled back.
The girl only smiled, and her mask cracked slightly—revealing one eye.
Golden.
Not human.
"You are waking," she said.
And vanished.
Tellen muttered, "Either she's a godling or I'm finally losing my mind."
Arjuna stared at the pit. The voice… it hadn't sounded like Thorne.
It sounded like himself.
But twisted.
Like a version that hadn't forgotten.
That refused to.
As they walked back to the village, the sky darkened unnaturally fast. Lanterns flickered as though afraid.
And far above, beyond the clouds, a shadow watched.
Not a god.
Not a demon.
But something older.
Something bound in a Black Vow.