The Lie That Brought Light – Act III

The lantern no longer flickered in secret.

At funerals, it pulsed. During confessions, it flared. In the streets, when someone whispered “I’m fine,” it began to glow.

No lie escaped it.

No comfort survived it.

A widow stood at her husband’s grave and whispered, “He didn’t suffer.”

The lantern burst into cold flame.

By week’s end, miners resigned in droves. Guilt had made cowards of them all. One man—quiet, pale—walked into the town square and wept as he confessed:

“I pushed him. It wasn’t an accident.”

He dropped his pickaxe and left without a coat. No one followed.

Households unraveled like wet rope.

A boy screamed when his mother told him everything would be okay.

The lantern glowed from the next room.

Theophilus tried to keep it hidden again, but it was too late. Its light leaked through curtains. Through wood. Through him.

He stood at the altar, holding it in both hands.

“I made this to honor my son,” he whispered.

The flame pulsed.

“Ellory,” he gasped, “this was for you.”

The flame flared.

He sank to his knees. “Say something,” he begged. “Anything.”

But there was no voice. No whisper. Only light.

He prayed again—bible open, knuckles white.

Nothing answered.

That night, Theophilus fell asleep in the attic above the chapel, slumped over the diagrams. His fingers stained with wax. His lips cracked from cold.

He dreamed of the mine.

The walls bled water. The air was still and hollow. Something dripped from the ceiling.

Then—Ellory.

He stood barefoot in the dark. Pale. Expressionless.

“Father,” the boy whispered. “It’s not me.”

Theophilus reached for him, weeping.

“You made something else,” Ellory said, and vanished into the tunnel.

Theophilus woke screaming.

The flame blazed—hungrier than ever. It wasn’t flickering now. It breathed.

The next morning, the church was found empty.

No blood. No struggle.

Just burn marks scorched into the pulpit—arching ribs etched like a cage had been opened from the inside.

Only the book remained, spine open to a page Theophilus never saw before.

A single line written in trembling black ink:

“That which answers is not always what was asked for.”

Days later, a parcel arrived in Dourbridge, three towns east.

It was wrapped in canvas and tied with butcher's twine. The address scrawled in frantic penmanship: Cyril Harrow.

Inside: a lantern. Bone-handled. Rib-framed.

One rib missing.

A note enclosed:

“It glows when they lie.

And when you do, too.”

Cyril laughed—a single, uncertain bark.

He muttered, “I don’t believe this thing even works.”

The flame flared.

He froze. Stared at it.

Outside, fog rolled in.

The street grew silent.

And far below the chapel ruins, something still breathed.

Theophilus was gone.

But the light remained.