The Keeper and the Flame

The priest lifted the skull from its velvet shroud.

Smooth with age, the bone gleamed in the torchlight, the hollows of its eye sockets deep as wells. Once, this had been the head of Sanktai Ilarion, whose relics were said to heal the sick and keep the wandering dead at bay. The priest set it carefully upon the altar and pressed a beeswax candle into the crown, where centuries ago an artisan had carved a hollow for it. With a flint strike, the wick caught. Flame trembled, then steadied, burning with ineffable clarity.

The faithful bowed their heads, waiting.

The priest bent closer. Beneath the candle’s faint crackle, he heard it: a whisper like parchment torn, or dry reeds rubbing together. Words uncurled in his ears, precise yet cryptic.

A harvest will rot unless buried first. A child not yet born will split the rivers.

When he repeated the words aloud, murmurs swept the hall. The prophecy was strange, but in time, they knew its truth would come clear.

The days that followed brought pilgrims. They crowded the temple, pressing close to the altar, clutching beads, votive cloths, little carved animals. Each sought guidance. When the candle was lit, the skull whispered again. Every night, its flame gave a new message: warnings, riddles, blessings.

A farmer came first, holding a blighted stalk of barley in trembling hands. The whisper told him to burn his field’s edges, and the rot would vanish; by dawn, green shoots had already pushed through the ash. A widow knelt next, clutching her husband’s dagger. The whisper urged her to bury it beneath her threshold, and thieves never troubled her home again. Even a young mother carried her fevered infant to the altar; the skull breathed a single word—water—and when she bathed the child, the fever broke.

Some resolutions came swiftly: a lost sheep returned; a hidden illness revealed itself. Even quarrels over inheritances were stilled by the skull named the truest claimant.

The priest wrote them all down in a vellum codex, filling page after page. Ink stained his fingers, smudged the cuffs of his sleeves. At times he paused, quill hovering, wondering if he recorded prophecy or condemned his flock to an unchosen fate.

What troubled him was not the accuracy of the messages, but the candle. Wax should have guttered long ago, yet it burned steady and clean, the wick unchanged. The flame never shrank, though the blackened tip should have fallen to ash. And the skull—sometimes the brow tilted, as if listening. Sometimes the jaw seemed wider, teeth bared in a silent grin. Once he thought he saw a hairline fissure spider across the temple of the skull, as though bone strained to contain the light.

He began to dread extinguishing the flame.

Sleep abandoned him. Long after the nave emptied, he crept back to the altar, trembling with equal parts devotion and fear. Alone, with only the flicker for company, he bent close to hear. The whispers were different now, speaking not only of parishioners’ concerns but of him.

The shepherd must walk into shadow. The keeper must learn what it means to be kept.

The words lodged in his chest like thorns. He pressed a hand against his ribs, half-expecting light to shine through his fingers. His prayers grew frantic, muttered in corners where no one could hear, begging Ilarion for mercy, for release, for a sign that he was only a vessel.

In his dreams, when exhaustion finally claimed him, he saw the skull on his pillow, the flame fluttering inside its crown, its light spilling across his chest as if measuring his heart. He woke with smoke on his tongue. He wondered, not for the first time, whether prophecy revealed God’s will—or only shackled men to it.

Some rejoiced at the prophecies’ clarity. Others were uneasy. They wondered how long the skull had been hidden, and why the temple had guarded it in secret. Old women whispered that Sanktai Ilarion never died, only waited; bone masking flame, voice echoing across centuries. Children dared each other to press ears to the temple doors at night, claiming they heard two voices whispering, one saintly, one human, arguing like brothers.

On the seventh night, the candle faltered.

The priest knelt, hands hovering over the skull, heart pounding as the flame shrank to a bead of ember. The nave seemed to shrink with it, shadows swelling against the walls. The assembled faithful clutched one another, waiting for the last word.

Do not fear the ending, the whisper breathed. It is a passing of breath, nothing more.

The ember guttered out, leaving only a faint curl of smoke.

At the altar, the priest leaned closer to the skull. In the hollow where the wick had been, something glowed. Tiny, alive, pulsing like a heart. A living wick, not wax nor thread, but a filament of light. He reached out and cupped it in his palm. Warmth seeped into his skin. It did not burn. It throbbed gently, patient, waiting.

Then the skull crumbled into dust.

The priest let out a stuttering gasp, his fingers sifting through the heap of pale grains of bone. The reliquary shattered too, velvet and gilded fittings collapsing as if hollow all along. Dust coated his lips; he tasted age, iron, and the faint sweetness of beeswax. He was alone with the wick.

Outside the temple, the people gathered, restless, expectant. Their murmurs fell into silence when the priest emerged. Lantern in hand, the tiny wick flickering within, he stepped among them. The whispers walked with him, twining through the night air, brushing his ears, insistent.

Some villagers pressed closer, eyes wide with awe; others stumbled back, covering their mouths as though afraid the flame might leap into them. A child cried out, silenced by her father’s hand. Even the dogs cowered, tails tucked, whining at the strange light.

When he raised the lantern high, its glow swept across their faces, and the priest listened for the choice.

Verdell Walker is a speculative fiction writer whose work explores power, legacy, and marginalization. Her fiction is featured and forthcoming in "Tractor Beam" and "Reckoning". Her nonfiction writing has appeared in "Bustle", "Vox", "Forge", and "ZORA". She can be found on Instagram: @verdellwalkerwrites and Substack: @verdellwalker.