Chapter 6: Guilt Made Flesh
390 Words
The spirit’s hands slammed into the barrier at the edge of the circle—sparks flew like shattered glass.
I stumbled back. She was trying to breach the ritual line.
Leo chanted under his breath, his red thread glowing like fire.
Madam He tossed herbs into the bowl and shouted, “Keep her name! Anchor her guilt!”
The spirit shrieked. Her form twisted—her arms stretched like smoke, her body shifting between my shape and someone else’s. A hundred faces flickered across her skin: my mother, Erin, my younger self, strangers I couldn’t name.
“You carry all this,” she screamed. “All this weight. All this silence. You let it rot inside you.”
“Maybe I do,” I whispered. “But I won’t let it define me.”
I stepped forward, heart pounding.
The spirit-Cici hissed. “You think you’re brave? You think this makes you better than Erin?”
“No,” I said. “But it makes me me.”
I reached for the thread that tethered her to the scroll—the last glowing remnant of the parchment’s ink now floating midair like a vein of light.
I grabbed it.
A jolt shot through my arm like electricity.
Behind me, I heard Leo shout, “Now!”
I yanked the thread.
It snapped with a sound like breaking bone.
The spirit screamed.
The circle flashed white.
Then silence.
Smoke curled into the air, and the jar—what remained of it—crumbled to dust.
I collapsed to my knees.
Leo rushed to me, grabbing my shoulder. “It’s over.”
Madam He stepped into the circle, her face grave. “You severed the anchor. The spirit’s form is dissolved.”
“Then it’s gone?” I asked.
She shook her head slowly. “It’s unbound. That’s different.”
“So it could still…”
“No,” she said firmly. “You took responsibility. You accepted the guilt. You didn’t reject it, and that’s why it couldn’t consume you.”
I stared at the ashes.
Was that all it took?
Acceptance?
Xiao Hei swooped down from the rafters and landed on my shoulder.
“You didn’t die,” he muttered. “Unexpected.”
I laughed. It sounded more like a sob.
But I was alive.
And the jar was gone.
- Writer
