It had been nearly a week since he last heard her voice.
Not the voices of the souls.
Not the soft echoes that clung to places like fog.
He meant hers.
His grandmother's.
Some nights, when the wind crept through the floorboards, he could still feel her presence in the quiet—like a whisper that had almost been said. The shawl she always wore was still draped over the back of her chair. Her tea mug, still faintly stained. The kettle, rusted from neglect, sat cold on the counter.
The boy sat cross-legged on the floor beside her chair, the lantern resting between his knees.
It hadn't glowed since the playground.
He didn't expect it to.
Tonight wasn't about a soul.
It was about her.
He opened the small drawer beneath her altar.
Most of it was familiar: dried herbs wrapped in cloth, a photo of his parents, some coins, and an old rosary. But there, tucked beneath an envelope yellowed with age, was a folded piece of paper he hadn't seen before.
He unfolded it with careful fingers.
It wasn't a letter. Not fully.
It was only the beginning of one.
"If ever I go missing, follow the light, not the road. The lantern will remember."
There was no signature. No ending.
But he recognized the handwriting. Her cursive had always curled a little too high at the end of her letters, like musical notes trying to lift off the page.
His breath caught.
The lantern will remember.
He looked at it now. Quiet. Still.
But no longer just a relic.
It had been hers.
And now it was his.
And somehow, it knew the way.
He placed the note back carefully.
Just as he reached to close the drawer, something inside the lantern stirred.
A flicker.
A gentle, pulsing glow—steady, like a heartbeat.
A new soul.
The boy stood, slipping on his jacket and slinging the lantern over his shoulder. The scarf with the girl's shoes still hung by the door, now empty. Her story was complete. Her voice had returned.
It was time for another.
The lantern guided him to the edge of an old cemetery on the hill.
A place where candles burned low and names were half-swallowed by moss. The grave markers leaned slightly, as though tired from the weight of being remembered.
But this time, there was no ghost standing beneath a streetlamp.
No figure waiting on a bridge.
There was a man.
Alive.
Sitting on the stone steps near the gates, staring at the names he didn't seem to recognize.
He wore an old jacket. His shoes were nearly torn through. A duffel bag sat beside him, bulging with junk—clothes, wrappers, bits of twine, and a cracked radio.
The boy slowed.
The lantern glowed brighter as he approached.
The man looked up.
"I ain't dead," he muttered. "Not yet."
"I know," the boy said gently.
"But it glows anyway," the man continued, eyeing the lantern with a strange half-smile. "Guess that means I'm close, huh?"
The boy said nothing.
The man nodded toward the gates. "I come here every week. Don't know why. Don't even remember who's buried here. But it feels like… like someone's waitin' for me."
He tapped his temple. "Can't remember much. Pieces are gone. But dreams? Dreams never leave."
The boy sat beside him. The lantern rested on the stone between them.
"What do you see in your dreams?" the boy asked.
The man closed his eyes.
"Hair like smoke. A laugh that made my chest feel bigger. A road at sunset, and a woman who always walked ahead, waitin' for me to catch up."
He opened his eyes again. "Don't know her name. But I think I loved her."
The boy felt the flame stir.
A soul not yet dead.
But a story still unfinished.
This wasn't a haunting.
It was a memory clinging to life.
And this man—
He hadn't been forgotten.
He had forgotten her.
The boy looked at the lantern, now pulsing slowly.
It didn't guide only the dead.
It guided the lost.