The Gravekeeper

I have walked this graveyard for as long as I can remember.

The names on the stones have faded, worn away by time, but I do not forget them. I tend to the graves as if the dead might still care. Sweeping away the leaves. Fixing the flowers. Speaking softly to the ones below.

No one else comes here. No footsteps but my own. No voices but the wind's.

And yet, tonight, I hear something else.

A whisper.

My name.

I stop and Turn.

By the oldest grave, where the mist clings the thickest, stands a woman in white.

She looks at me—not through me, but at me, as if she knows me. Her long hair floats on the wind, her gown frayed with age, yet her eyes are clear. Too clear.

"You have been kind to us," she says, her voice quiet, like something lost between this world and the next. "But why do you stay?"

I frown. "Because I must."

Her head tilts slightly. "Must you?"

A strange feeling coils in my chest. The answer feels wrong, though I don't know why.

I have always been here. Haven't I?

I try to recall how I came to this place, but the memory is like fog—thick, shifting, refusing to be held.

The woman steps forward, her bare feet making no sound on the damp earth.

"You do not remember," she says. "But you will."

And suddenly, the mist parts.

A sharp wind cuts through the trees. The graves blur, the lantern in my hand flickers—and the past rushes in.

Flashes of steel. The roar of battle. The sting of cold seeping into my bones.

I see myself falling. Blood pooling beneath me. The sky darkening. A voice, her voice crying out my name.

And then—silence.

My breath catches. The weight of the lantern in my hand feels foreign, wrong.

Because it was never mine to carry.

I look at the graves—at their silent, patient stones—and at last, I understand.

I was never the gravekeeper.

I was one of the dead.

I sink to my knees, my fingers trembling against the cold earth. My own grave is here. I have walked past it a thousand times, speaking to the others but never to myself.

The woman kneels beside me, her touch cool yet gentle. "You have lingered long enough."

I look at her, and the last piece of the puzzle slides into place. I know her.

She was someone I swore to protect. Someone I had died for.

And she has waited for me, all this time.

The mist fades. The graveyard softens, no longer a place of duty, but of rest.

I take her hand. The lantern slips from my grasp, the flame flickering out.

And at last, I leave, Leave with her to the world beyond the mist, where I belong.

— The End.