Finch remembers the lanterns.

That’s how it always begins — with thelanterns drifting above the fields like a slow constellation, light swaying inthe wind. Every year, on the longest day, the children would carry paperlanterns down to the river. They were shaped like birds, or houses, or the longcurling horns of the goddesses’ mounts, and as the sun set, they were setafloat to follow the current toward the lowlands. It was said Brigantia watchedfrom the water’s edge, counting each one before dawn.

He remembers Serai’s hand on hisshoulder, warm and steady. He remembers the scent of crushed mint and smoke. Heremembers laughter — his own, high and thin, carried away by the river. Heremembers whispering a wish into the lantern’s paper belly before setting itfree.

He remembers saying, “For everyone tobe happy.”

He was small enough then to believewishes needed no precision, that belief was enough to steady clumsy words.

The image is bright in him still; theripple of flame reflected in water, the gentle touch of Serai’s fingers when hepushed the lantern into the current, the way the whole river glowed like astring of stars. When he was sick, that’s what he would close his eyes and see:not the fever, not the walls of the Sanctum ward, but the light drifting awayand the world briefly beautiful.

But he dreams it again now, years later,after the fever, after everything — and the river is wider than it should be.The banks are choked with reeds that weren’t there before, blocking him fromreaching the bank. The water moves too fast, too deep. The air smells not ofmint but of vinegar. And Serai isn’t beside him. Someone else stands thereinstead, taller, voice like dry grass: “Light it. Quickly, before the wind.”

When Finch lifts his lantern, it isn’tmade of paper at all. It’s bone — thin ribs wired together, hollow-eyed,glowing from within. The flame inside is wild, eating through the kindling likerot through flesh. He sets it in the water and watches it sink. The currenttakes it under without a trace.

He looks for Serai, calls his name, butthe river answers first — a low rushing that sounds almost like a voice.

When he wakes, there is little light. Hepushes open the door to the Sanctum office. There’s the smell of damp herbs,the clink of glass, the quiet of work beginning. Serai works over driedflowers, grinding them into dust.

“Finch. It’s cold,” Serai says, gettingup and draping something soft across Finch’s shoulders. “You need a shawl.”

“Did we used to send lanterns down theriver?” Finch asks, sitting down. His voice feels too soft for the question.

Serai pauses, pestle quietening. He stayssilent for a long time. “We did,” he says finally. “Not every year, but once.The year before you got sick.”

Finch nods. “I thought it was beautiful.”

“It was.” Serai's smile is audible, butthere’s a shadow behind it. “It was our first vigil. We sent the lanterns forthe ones who’d already died.”

“Oh.”

Finch feels the shape of his memory shift, like a reflection disturbed by a thrown stone.

He still sees the lights — hundreds of them — the names, the prayers, the farewells. He remembers the silence. Serai’s hand trembling when he lit his own lantern. He remembers the smell of smoke from the pyres downriver, masked with mint and lavender. He remembers that when he whispered his wish, Serai closed his eyes as if he couldn’t bear to hear it.

The memory settles back into place.Heavier, but no uglier. Because even then, even surrounded by death, Serai hadhelped him light the lantern and had smiled, as if to say that wishing wasstill a kind of healing. He keeps the image of it: a thousand small flames,carried away by water, their glow trembling in the wake of loss.

Outside, the river keeps flowing. Thelanterns are long gone, but sometimes, when the evening catches right, Finchswears he can still see them.

Not as they were, but as he needs them to be.

Mimi remembers the first time she drewher sword.

She was young, seventeen, or thereabouts,and the day had been bright. The kind of sunlight that made the trees shimmerlike they were already blessed. Brigantia’s warriors began that way: sun attheir backs, conviction in their chests, or so they said. She rememberskneeling in the Sanctum courtyard, the air rich with incense and oil, thevoices clear as bells.

You are the blade that cuts rot fromthe flock. You are the flame that drives out the frost.

She remembers repeating it word for word.
She remembers believing it.

When she tells the story now; when theyounger Herdsmen and women ask about her first mission, she makes it soundclean. A small village struck by fever, its dead unburied, its wells fouled.She tells them of was mercy. Of necessary evil.

That’s how she’s remembered it for years:a single day of righteous fire. A test she passed.

But tonight, the memory just won’t hold.

She sits outside, near the stables,lighting a small fire in the dark of the early morning with her sword besideher. It burns low; the horses stamp in the dark, and an early rising sheepbleats far behind her. She’s been home now for a while, but the smell ofsickness clings to her like a second skin. She sits awake, twirling the bladeon the ground, baptizing herself in fresh smoke.

The village wasn’t small.

Not then.

The smoke wasn’t clean. It never is. But that day­ it was heavy and wet, sticking to her throat. The flames had eaten through everything, thatch, cloth, metal that screamed when it burned. And there had been sounds. She’d told herself they were echoes, the moans of the sick. Herself, sword drawn and shouting. A woman with a child on her hip, shouting words Mimi didn’t understand.

When the orders came—burn every house that smelled of rot—she obeyed. Of course she did. Her faith was obedient. Her goddess was the torch she carried.

But when the smoke cleared, she had toturn a body with her boot to see the face. The woman. The child still clutchedagainst her. The fever spots faint, maybe fading, maybe healing. She’d toldherself it was infection, not innocence, she’d burned. She’d told herself shedidn’t remember the child’s hair catching light like gold.

Mimi stands and feeds another stick tothe fire. The heat presses against her face, familiar. The sword glints in thefirelight. The words of her oath echo again: You are the blade that cuts rotfrom the flock.

She touches the flat of the blade, cooldespite the heat: Then who cuts the rot from me?

No one answers.

But she remembers Serai, hoarse,pleading: “Brigantia tends the flock; she does not count them.”

The fire pops. A spark lands on herglove, burns out.

She sheathes the sword.

The sunlight breaks across the horizon, pale and thin. Mimi watches it rise and thinks, not for the first time, that fire was never Brigantia’s gift at all. It was the river she’d forsaken—the one that washed clean the soot.

Serai used to tell himself the story often, because it was the only one that made him feel worthy.

When he was first taken into the Sanctum—barely twelve, hands still rough from bakers’ work—one of the older healers, Mother Ellas, had brought him to the river. She had been slow-moving, soft-voiced, her skin creased like folded parchment. The day was summer-bright, and the river was clear enough to see the pebbles glinting below the surface.

She had told him, “This is Brigantia’s first altar. The river does not choose where it flows; it goes where it is needed.” Then she’d picked a smooth, white stone from the shallows and pressed it into his palm. “Keep this. When you falter, place it in water. Ask if your hands still serve the flow.”

He had done as she said. For years afterward, the stone had been his tether - tucked into his satchel, warmed by his hand before every act of healing. When the Sanctum hardened and the Herdsmen rose, when faith became ledger and triage, the stone reminded him that once, the goddess had been river and mercy both.

He kept that story like a relic, repeating it to apprentices when the work became too heavy.
He never questioned it. Until tonight.

He sits in the Sanctum office, grinding flowers into dust. Outside, the rain has swept the earth into mud. He hasn’t seen the river in weeks, but he can hear it somewhere beyond the hill, swollen and restless.

He reaches into his satchel and takes out the stone. It’s smaller than he remembers. No smooth white now—gray, veined, edges roughened. He turns it over, thumb catching on a scar across its surface. For the first time, he realizes it’s not river-polished at all.

He remembers it differently now.
The heat. The smell of salt. The cough that Mother Ellas tried to hide behind her hand.

They hadn’t gone to the river.
They’d been standing behind the Sanctum infirmary, beside the ash pit. The water she’d drawn had been from a bucket, stale and warm. She’d scooped the stone from the pile of spent poultices - the lime stones used to purify the burn pits.

She’d said river because she hadn’t wanted to say ashes.

He remembers now: her eyes wet, not from reverence but from smoke. Her voice steady only because it had to be. He’d believed she was teaching him faith. But she’d only been trying to save his hope.

He goes outside. The rain’s turned colder, sleet tapping against his hair. Down the slope, a rivulet runs through the mud—thin, brown, sluggish. He crouches and drops the stone into it.

For a moment, nothing happens. Then the current catches, washing a thin ribbon of clean water through the dirt. Only a thread, but clear. It slides around the stone and keeps going, cutting its own path downhill.

Serai watches it run until his knees ache.

Somewhere in the distance, a fire goes out.