Duty pulled Kael from the shepherd's hut like invisible chains, dragging him back toward the town he'd fled.
The road to Millhaven stretched before him, familiar yet transformed by tragedy. Every landmark held memories now tainted by loss. The old oak where Mira had climbed too high. The stream where his father had taught him to fish.
Three days. Only three days since his world had shattered, yet the boy who'd walked these paths felt like a stranger wearing his skin.
As he neared his old home, his mind cataloged the necessities even as his heart recoiled from the task ahead. Graves needed to be six feet deep to prevent scavengers, needed proper drainage to avoid water accumulation, stone markers.
Millhaven emerged from the morning haze like a painting slowly revealing itself. Smoke rose from chimneys in lazy spirals, the town beginning its daily rhythms. Normal life continuing its inexorable march while his had derailed entirely.
He skirted the main thoroughfares, choosing alleyways and forgotten paths. The torn clothes and visible wounds would draw attention, questions he couldn't answer without sounding mad. Better to move like the ghost he'd become, unseen and unremarked.
The graveyard lay on the town's eastern edge.
But Kael had learned resourcefulness in his brief vagrant education. A broken fence post served as lever and rusty nails a lockpick. He grabbed a spade with a cracked handle.
He chose a corner plot beneath a weathered elm, far from the neat rows of established families. Here, his family would rest.
The first strike of spade against earth reverberated through his bones. Each subsequent impact became a meditation, a rhythm that quieted the chaos in his mind. Dig. Lift. Deposit. Repeat. The mechanical nature of the task provided refuge from thought.
Blisters formed and burst on his palms. He should have fought. Should have died with them. Instead, he dug their graves.
He didn't pause. Couldn't pause. The purpose was medicine against his memory.
By midday, three graves were dug open, their depths measured precisely despite his exhaustion. The slight slope that would ensure proper drainage, the orientation that would catch morning light. As if such details mattered to the dead.
Now came the harder task.
His house stood as he'd left it, door ajar, windows dark. A official notice nailed to the frame was already beginning to curl at the edges, but he had never seen this seal before.
He entered through the back, each footstep careful. The kitchen still held the copper scent of blood.
His father first. The body had stiffened into its final position, requiring careful manipulation to straighten. Kael worked while sobbing.
He wrapped the body in a tablecloth, the same one his mother had embroidered with careful stitches. The pattern of flowers seemed grotesque now. But it would serve. Everything must serve purpose now.
His mother followed, lighter but somehow heavier. Her face had been arranged with care by whatever had killed her, a peaceful expression that made the wounds seem like artistic afterthoughts. He didn't let himself think about her songs, her smile, the way she'd smoothed his hair when nightmares came.
Mira wasn't there. He searched every room, every corner, even the root cellar that had always frightened her. His sister had vanished as completely as morning mist, his mind filed this away he presumed she was destroyed by supernatural means.
Two graves filled. One standing empty.
He fashioned a marker from garden stones, spelling her name in careful arrangement. If her body couldn't rest here, at least her memory would have a place. The stones clicked together like broken teeth as he worked.
The burials themselves were anti-climactic. Earth covering cloth-wrapped forms, each shovelful erasing more of what had been. He worked steadily, mechanically, until two mounds rose where holes had been. The empty grave he left open, a question mark carved in earth.
Words should be spoken. Prayers offered. Traditions observed. But Kael's throat held only raw silence, and the gods who might have listened had already proven their indifference. Instead, he knelt between the graves and made a different kind of vow.
"I'll remember," he whispered, voice cracking from disuse. "Every day, every breath, I'll carry you with me. And I'll survive. Not because I deserve to, but because someone has to know you existed."
The wind stirred the elm's branches, a sound like whispered acceptance.
He rose on legs that trembled from exhaustion and emotion. The sun had begun its western descent, painting Millhaven in shades of gold that made it seem almost welcoming. An illusion. The town had already rejected him, would cage him if he remained.
As if summoned by the thought, voices approached. Official voices, carrying the weight of authority and intolerance.
"Check the graveyard," one said. "Someone reported seeing that Thornton boy."
"Poor wretch," another responded. "Lost his whole family to the fever. But rules are rules. Vagrants get workhouse or exile."
Kael hide in the shadows between headstones. The guards passed within arm's reach, never noticing the shell of a human among the graves. Their torchlight swept over his family's fresh mounds without pause.
When they'd gone, he emerged for one final task. His house waited, Inside, he gathered what survival demanded, his father's winter coat, too large but warm, a knife.
His mother's sewing kit went into a pocket. Something to remeber her by
The guards were returning, their circuit bringing them back toward the house. Time had run out. Millhaven would close its doors, lock its gates, pretend the Thornton family had never existed within its borders.
Kael stood at the town's edge as darkness fell, looking back at the cluster of lights that had been home. Somewhere among those glowing windows, people sat down to evening meals, told stories, lived lives that continued unbroken. He envied and hated them in equal measure.
The coat hung heavy on his shoulders, smelling like tobacco. The coins clicked softly in his pocket. The knife pressed against his ribs.
His family lay buried. His childhood lay buried with them.
The first stars appeared overhead, cold and distant as the gods they represented. Kael pulled the coat tighter and walked on, each step carrying him further from the boy who'd had a family, a home, a future mapped out.
That boy was as dead as those he'd buried.
But he would survive. he had to. Someone had to remember the Thorntons of Millhaven, even if that someone was a ghost wearing their name.