The pact deafened all hearts and minds in a syrupy, numbing procession. Children gracefully moved forward in white robes, ignorant of the ashes that stained their trains. All was soundless. With every step, the room somehow became even more mute as one by one, souls were extinguished. Their eyes were closed, nostrils immune to the powder in the air that rose far above their heads like clouds.
None of them could reach the top of a chalkboard.
They longed to return to the dust.
That dust was newborn ash. The first child to touch the candle. The one chosen to be the first to leave this world, Remoria, and begin the pact that they had all agreed on. Normally guards would have stopped them, locked them in cages, fed them, begged them to stay alive and breathe another thousand gulps of air, stare at a sun that gave no blessing of blindness. But they had planned this pact well, just as the other pacts were done before.
The long road had led to the ruins where Remoria’s life of a land had began. Commanders of magic in the waking world had used the souls of thousands to bind demons inside a fictional world within the scroll. Here they could romp and play and destroy humankind as they liked without causing any damage to the outside world.
That demon was long dead, and with her was the main cause of death in Remoria. Now souls came here almost every day to live eternally, meant to be consumed but never fading. Given a great life without limits, only to waste away and eventually turn to dust. The demon had once been their only fear.
Now, the main cause of death— the only cause of death-- was suicide.
A singular torch bore witness to the empty cathedral, where the demon once made its decadent home, using souls sealed in the scroll as footstools. It gave a shadowy shine to dust covered couches, broken golden pillars and cracked marble floors. Any glass in the carpets and stone had been crushed to dust with the bare feet of children as they marched in their pacts, not minding the smoke in their lungs or the bleeding in their feet that would soon not bother them much longer.
The second child touched the flame. His fingertips darkened, bursting from inside as if he were made of hardened dust, then in a bright flame that resembled the torch, his entire body erupted into a smoke that enveloped the children behind him.
They began to form in line, shuffling forward. A girl clung to another’s hand. They had been longtime friends. She clung, not out of nervousness, but rather to keep her nerves from succumbing to the cold. Her hair was nearly falling out completely. The girl next to her looked ashen, her skin as frail as paper. They walked forward, slowly, silently, as if they were both blind. Without a look between them, they separated, friend from friend, not remembering so much as the other’s name by now.
The last clumps of hair retreated from the girl’s head as she felt her cracked lips part. Her hands were close to the torch, and she began to breathe ever so slightly faster. Warm. It had been so long since she felt genuinely warm. Behind her, the grey girl swayed with a vacant expression. Had anyone turned around, they likely wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between anyone else and their own reflections. All the world in this tribe had vanished to become a singular mirror. All eyes had become grey. All faces had become slack. All skin had become dry and useless and painful. The girl let her hands cup around the gigantic flame, bigger than any fire she had ever seen.
Words had not passed her lips in at least a hundred years. There had been no vow of silence. She simply had nothing to say. Her throat tightened, pulling at the words as if tightening around them like a noose.
“Goodbye Remoria.”
Fire embraced her palms. She embraced the ash.