The Finale - The Bone-Light: How an Orphaned Village Became a Mouth for Something Older
And it all ends here... apparently!
CHAPTER 11: The Salt-Rite of the Remaining Three
April 11th, 1980 - Ruins of Borsk Orphanage (Sealed Site)
The Invitation to Return
It began with a letter.
Not mailed. Not typed.
Carved, in mirror-script, onto the underside of Anka’s eyelids.
Three lines:
“Return to the place of burning.
Bring the ones who remember.
Sing the god still buried beneath.”
She screamed. But only salt came out.
That night, three survivorsElijah, Anka, and Vojtek..were brought back to the Borsk Orphanage ruins under silent escort. No one spoke on the 7-hour drive.
The land had been condemned. But it was never cleansed.
Under the floorboards, under the chapel’s charred bell tower, something was still twitching in the memory-stained soil.
The Ritual Book Was Her Skin
They brought with them:
• The hymnbook recovered from the hospital (reverse Latin)
• Elijah’s sketches of the tongueless choir
• And a shroud stitched from Callie’s old uniform, still marked with ash prints
But the true text of the ritual was hidden in Callie’s preserved skin.
Found folded inside her childhood notebook, it had been removed in one piece—from her back.
On it, in old liturgical binding, was a Salt-Rite..a forgotten exorcism practiced before the Vatican existed.
The final passage was branded across the spine:
“Let the memory that rots be salted.
Let the song that binds be burned.
Let the vessel remember only silence.”
Drawing the Salt Line
Anka walked barefoot in a circle, spreading a continuous line of bone-ground salt.
Not table salt.
This was child-salt..a chemical mixture derived from the cremated remains of the 27 children who died in the fire.
The Vatican had labeled it “evidence.” But it was off the books.
Anka knew how to draw the circle perfectly. She never learned how.
“They taught me. In the glass. At night.”
Vojtek followed behind her, placing in the salt seven sealed mouths made from wax and hair..each representing a forgotten name.
Elijah stood at the center.
A sketchbook in his hands.
A match in his mouth.
The Memory Breathes Again
At 3:33 AM, the wind inside the salt circle stopped.
The world did not.
Only inside the circle...time collapsed.
Leaves hung mid-air. Fire crackled without burning.
The chapel’s burned bell rang from beneath the ground.
Then, a crack in the soil.
Not wide..but wet.
Like something exhaling beneath a shallow grave.
Elijah drew.
One sketch. Then another. Then another.
His hand blistered with each page.
He wasn’t creating new images..
He was copying them from memory.
Not his.
Callie’s.
The final sketch: a girl inside a crib made of salt, with no face.
Salt and Light Collide
Anka began to hum.
No tune.
Just a breath. In and out.
A slow, growing sound that made the ground sweat.
Vojtek added rhythm..his palms slapping the earth like a metronome.
Elijah tore each page from his sketchbook and set it aflame.
Each one screamed.
The fire didn’t consume the drawings.
It burned the memory they carried.
One by one, the seven wax mouths melted into the salt.
The circle pulsed.
A voice echoed from below the ruin:
“CALLIOPE.
CALLIOPE.
I REMEMBER BEING YOU.”
And Callie answered—
Not with sound.
With removal.
She tore her name from the air.
The God Bleeds Memory
The ground burst.
A geyser of black light and soundless shrieking erupted from the chapel’s foundation.
What emerged was not the god.
It was its final vessel:
A mass of burned children’s clothes, choir robes, and sketches stitched together into a body.
No face.
No limbs.
Just memory wrapped in fabric.
It crawled into the circle, dripping forgotten names.
Anka screamed:
“Salt it!”
Elijah threw the last drawing into the bundle.
Vojtek chanted from the Salt-Rite script.
The entity rose.
Every voice it had ever stolen spoke at once..
“I DO NOT WANT TO BE REMEMBERED.
DO NOT NAME ME.
DO NOT HOLD ME IN FIRE.”
Then...
Callie’s voice:
“Then forget.
And burn.”
They lit the circle.
The god howled, but not from pain.
From relief.
The Ending That Can Be Forgotten
The site collapsed in silence.
Where the circle once stood: a white ring of crystallized salt.
In the center: nothing.
No ash. No bone. No drawing.
Just three children, curled inward.
When dawn broke, each had no memory of the ritual.
• Elijah lost his ability to draw.
• Anka’s eyelids were smooth. No carvings.
• Vojtek could hear birds for the first time.
And Callie?
Her face was seen again.
In a photo taken outside the hospital.
She was smiling.
Holding nothing.
A child again.
CHAPTER 11 ENDS WITH..
The Salt-Rite broke the god's bond to memory.
Not by banishing it..
But by offering it forgetfulness.
Only one thing remains buried in the salt ring:
A tooth.
Still humming.
Check out the bonus final episode with me on my Ko-fi page. See you there soon...
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Tales That Breathe at Night
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Comments (7)
Your writing was quite chilling.
Please subscribe and like my story
This passage, "CHAPTER 11: The Salt-Rite of the Remaining Three," details a chilling return to the Ruins of Borsk Orphanage on April 11th, 1980, following a disturbing supernatural "invitation." Anka receives a message carved onto her eyelids in mirror-script, commanding her to "Return to the place of burning.
he Finale - The Bone-Light: How an Orphaned Village Became a Mouth for Something Older
Yay! You got Top Story! Congratulations! Well deserved for an awesome finale.
Very immersive, I'm going to keep coming back to this.
This finale was nothing short of ritualistic poetry. You don’t just end a story—you exorcise it. The Salt-Rite, the memory that rots, the entity stitched from forgotten names... it all reads like a myth dug up from the soil of our collective subconscious. Disturbing, elegiac, and unforgettable. Bravo.