The Binding feast

Long before Roxanne was even born—before she even learned the sound of river-wind or the taste of summer salt—there was a feast that was being held beneath a red moon.

The entire family gathered, as they did each year, beside the black curve of the river.

There were no invitations. The call was in their blood.

Each house arrived with gifts and songs. Children chased fireflies through the high grass while older women lit the sacred fire and began the slow work of cooking. They did not speak of the ritual until the sun dipped behind the trees.

The entire place looked festive.

The place is cast in a warm glow of red and yellow from the sunset slowly turning darker.

Only then did the book appear.

Wrapped in dark cloth, carried by three elderly women whose names had long since been forgotten even by themselves.

The younger ones watched in reverent silence as the cloth was slowly undone, revealing a leather-bound tome stained with ash, blood, and river-silt. No one spoke of the rituals but they all were always there for it.

It was not read aloud.

It was remembered.

—

There was a time when forgetting was a gift.

When the river swallowed memories not to punish, but to protect.

It swallowed memories that would hurt to be remembered.

When the seals placed by the Guardians were strong enough to bind even grief.

But time, as always, erodes.

And where memory fades, something else grows—hunger.

Hunger that is insatiable.

—

At the center of the ritual stood a girl no older than seventeen. Her name had been chosen long before she was born. It passed through generations like a whisper: Joslyn.

The river accepted her.

Or so they believed.

But what the Kin did not see—what they chose not to see—was that the ritual required more than memory, more than blood. It needed something deeper.

It needed sacrifice.

---

When the chants began, the water rose unnaturally fast. The sky turned dark despite no clouds. And deep beneath the surface of the river, something ancient opened its eyes.

Joslyn did not scream when the ritual cut her palms open.

She screamed when she saw her sister’s reflection, flickering beside her own—twisting, warping, changing.

And then she was gone.

Not dead.

Not broken.

But bound.

The feast ended in silence.

The river was fed.

The book was closed.

And the Kin danced around a fire they no longer understood.

---

Generations passed.

The ritual remained.

And deep in the mud of the riverbank, the memory of that night waited—patient, dark, and unfinished.

Until a girl named Roxanne would rise.

And remember what no one else dared to.

They say Roxanne once stood at the edge of the Black Mouth and chose to remember when no one else would.

They say Amelia gave up her own memory so the world would not fall apart.

But stories change.

And now, fewer know their names.

Some believe the rituals were myths.

Some believe the Book never existed.

And some—the dangerous ones—believe forgetting was a mistake.

They chose to remember, to continue the ritual not knowing what lay ahead.

---

In the heart of the old woods, where even light forgets how to return, a child with no name walks barefoot in the dark.

She is not lost.

She is looking.

Behind her, a trail of roots lifts as if stirred by thought.

Ahead, a voice rises from the soil like mist:

> “Let it go. Let all of it go.”

The voice is not loud but firm and unmistakable.

---

At the Veilhouse, a young Guardian wakes in the middle of the night.

Their hands are covered in ink.

And on the page before them—one that was blank hours ago—a single line has appeared:

> “Roxanne never lived.”

The line simply appeared out of thin air like a premonition or perhaps like a hint.

---

The river ‘that remembers’ is no longer safe.

Because now, the river wants to forget.

And it will drown anyone who tries to stop it.

Roxanne, a young girl, decides to go against everyone and curiosity gets the better of her. Seeing what the ritual does she goes against all.

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