The Hollow Procession

It began with the wind.

The first breath of wind he had felt in days. A warm current, wrong in its direction, brushing against his skin as he stood at the edge of the burned altar, ashes still clinging to his soles. He looked up—no clouds, no sun. Only that vast gray sky, where no birds flew and no light ever quite returned.

He had thought it was over.

The ritual complete. The Watcher gone. The fire consuming what had to be consumed.

But peace never came.

That night, as the ash cooled and the rice fields began to whisper again, the first one arrived.

He heard her before he saw her.

A soft humming, dissonant and fragile, like a lullaby half-remembered by someone who had died humming it. He turned, slowly, toward the sound.

She stood barefoot at the tree's former roots. A girl. No more than twelve. Her dress was tattered, yellowed with soil and blood. Her eyes were dark, bottomless, the whites of them long since faded.

She opened her mouth, and the humming stopped.

"Kliwon," she said. "I was supposed to be the first."

He said nothing. His throat had gone dry.

"They burned me too early," she continued. "Before the gate was ready. Now I wander. I dream in someone else's name."

Kliwon took a step back. She didn't follow.

"I saw what you did," she whispered. "You ended one gate. But how many are left?"

She turned and vanished into mist.

And he was alone.

Until the next night.

---

The second came crawling.

Kliwon had not dared leave the village perimeter, though the huts were now empty—dusty shells of life once lived. He stayed close to the fields, watching the scarecrow that didn't move, wondering if it would ever rise again.

That was when he heard the dragging sound.

Something scraping against the dry earth.

He turned and saw a man. No face. Skin pale and waxen. He crawled, stomach down, legs bent at unnatural angles. Around his neck hung a broken necklace of bones—tiny ones, bird and rodent and human finger alike.

"I was the offering in Kalibiru," the man rasped, not lifting his head. "The crows came too late. They tore me apart. But not enough. My soul stayed in the bones."

"What do you want from me?" Kliwon asked.

The man stopped crawling.

"I want to go home."

And then his body crumbled—literally fell apart, like dust shaken from old paper.

The bones remained for three full days before turning to ash.

---

By the fifth day, they began to come in groups.

At first, only shadows. Then figures, visible only at the edge of his vision. Faces with no mouths. Mouths with too many teeth. Children holding pieces of themselves in their arms—heads tucked under elbows, feet stitched into wrong places.

Some begged. Some wept.

Most stared.

One whispered to him through the walls of the guest house:

> "You carry the key now. The one who ends must also unlock."

He began to lose sleep.

Not because he feared them, but because they never left.

They watched him at night.

Stood over him when he blinked.

Pressed cold hands to his chest when he dreamed.

---

Then came the voice from beneath the floor.

It did not belong to a person.

It belonged to **many**.

The guest house had begun to rot. Not naturally. It aged overnight, wood cracking, walls sweating black sap. Beneath the floorboards, a soft sound grew louder each dusk.

Knocking.

Scratching.

Then, speaking.

> "Let us in, Kliwon.

> Let us use your name.

> Let us wear your shadow."

He refused.

He sealed the door.

He salted the windows.

But salt meant nothing here anymore.

He had become the offering now—not just of this village, but of many.

Each spirit that came whispered the same warning in different forms:

> "The feast was never just yours.

> Your fire lit every gate.

> And now, they are all open."

He did not understand. But he remembered something from the Watcher's final message.

> *"You must finish what she failed to end."*

What if this—this endless arrival of the forgotten—was part of what had been left unfinished?

Not just a single ritual.

But a chain.

A network of ancient agreements made between man and spirit, all tangled together.

And he—**he**—was the loose thread pulled too hard.

Now the cloth unraveled.

---

He left the guest house on the seventh night.

He could no longer sleep there. It breathed when he didn't. It whispered his name when he tried to pray. The mirror on the wall reflected a version of himself that smiled too long, even when he turned away.

So he walked.

No bag. No shoes. Only the mark on his palm, still shaped like a crow, now pulsing faintly in the dark.

The rice fields parted for him, though no wind stirred them.

And there, beyond the tree's charred roots, he found a circle of stones he had never seen.

Each stone bore a name.

Not names he knew—but he understood what they were.

Victims.

Children.

Those who had been burned too soon. Or not at all. Or in the wrong way.

Each name glowed faintly when he approached.

And when he sat in the center of the circle, the wind began again.

But this time, it carried not feathers—

—but voices.

---

"Tell our stories."

Kliwon lifted his head.

The circle was full now.

A hundred spirits.

Some whole.

Some broken.

All waiting.

"We were never meant to be forgotten," a child said.

"They fed us to fear. Buried us under names not ours."

"Undo it," a man wept.

"Rewrite the offerings."

"Make the feast remember."

Kliwon trembled.

"I don't know how."

"You do," said the first girl, returning once more. "You remember now. That's enough."

Then, one by one, they knelt before him.

Not in reverence.

In necessity.

Each touched his palm.

Each left a piece of their pain.

And he felt it—every death.

Every burning.

Every scream silenced by fire.

And he understood:

The feast was never about sacrifice.

It was about silence.

About pushing away what should have been mourned.

And now the voices returned to be named.

---

As dawn broke—if that dull gray light could still be called dawn—Kliwon stood once more.

He knew what came next.

He could not run from this place.

But perhaps he could walk deeper.

Not into death.

But into memory.

And find the next gate.

Because the fire he lit was not the end.

It was only the beginning of the last story ever buried.

And its ashes still whispered.

**"Walk. We will follow."**