The Lantern Thief

It was so terribly cold. Snow was falling, and it was almost dark. Every night, without warning, a flame would vanish. Not flicker. Not sputter. Just—gone.

The lanterns along the streets swung in their iron brackets, flames dancing like tiny, desperate wings.

Mara’s lantern outside our house had gone dark, leaving the doorway swallowed in half-shadow. Her hands rested on her swollen belly, jaw tight with frustration.

“Not again,” she said, worry threading her voice. “Third time this week.”

“I know,” I muttered, resentful of having to brave the cold to re-light her flame.

“Then do something, Joren,” Mara said, “I’m not stepping into the dark with the baby kicking like this.”

I ground my teeth. “Fine. I'll go. I’ll see if I can catch who’s doing it.”

“Don’t take too long,” she said, eyes flicking to the empty street, “and don’t go into the forest.”

The snow had already begun covering the evening’s footprints. Whoever, or whatever, was out there moved quietly and quickly.

I stopped at the edge of the porch, brushing ice from Mara’s darkened lantern.

Nothing.

My chest hollowed, as if my own fire had dimmed.

A lantern extinguished was more than a shadow on the street. It was a theft of the owner’s magic.

I pressed my palms to the lantern. The metal shivered and glowed until a tiny spark leapt onto the wick.

The lantern caught. Golden warmth pushed back the shadows clinging to the doorway.

Smoke stung my throat, tanging against the magic humming in the air.

A gust tore down the street, rattling the remaining lights.

One by one, they flickered—hesitated—then died. Ice bit my cheeks unfriendly.

Whatever had done this wasn’t human.

The thought struck first as a tingle in my head, then as ice sliding down every nerve.

My stomach turned, instinct screaming at me to go back inside.

But I couldn’t linger. Mara was waiting, and I wouldn’t let anything touch her.

I grabbed my lantern, warmth still humming inside it, and stepped onto the snow-draped path toward the forest.

The drift of wet stone and ancient pine persuaded me in.

The sun had fully set by the time I entered the forest. A foolish decision, I knew. My ancestors had died this way—lured by whispers and shadows—and here I was, trudging through snow that deepened with every step.

Branches, heavy with snow, groaned. Every step sounded too loud. Lantern light danced across trunks and frost, barely scratching the encroaching dark.

A branch snapped nearby, not from me.

Something in the forest had marked my trespass.

My flame flickered, jumping like a living thing.

Shadows twisted.

Branches stretched at impossible angles, black shapes slipping just out of focus.

I tightened my grip on the lantern—and then, without warning, it burned as bright as it ever had.

Heat surged through me, spilling down my arms and into my fingers.

The forest sighed, a long, low rumble vibrating through the roots and frozen trunks, as if it were alive and amused.

The forest responded.

Lantern light caught snowflakes and flashed like sparks as branches shuddered, shedding powder in soft avalanches.

Letting the warmth lead me, I followed. Every shadow twitched just beyond the reach of the light, shifting when I wasn’t looking directly at it. I knew then.

I was not alone.

Shadows darted between trunks, impossibly fast. I spun, saw nothing.

Then another.

Then dozens.

Shapes like hands, faces, flashes of fire morphed into forms I should have recognised, yet none held still long enough to name.

My boots sank into drifts that hadn’t existed moments before, snow shifting beneath me.

Whispers rose in a chorus: “The hunter waits. The hunter waits. Do not look, do not touch, do not linger.”

“Joren,” a voice hummed from everywhere and nowhere.

I froze.

Harsh cold curled in my lungs; a hunter’s laugh, a god’s warning, a spirit’s song, all at once.

“You shouldn’t be here,” it said mildly. Almost kindly. “Not with that little flame.”

I forced my eyes to adjust to the darkness.

The shadows obeyed, drawing themselves together: towering, statuesque, antlers of stone draped in moss and roots, limbs veined with glimmering stone.

It tilted its head, studying me.

“Oh,” it murmured. “A Caelith.”

I squared my shoulders. “And you are?” I demanded. “What do you want?”

It laughed.

Soft at first.

Then sharper, cracking like dry wood splintering. The shape blurred and vanished, reappearing farther back, then farther to the side.

Paths I had walked my whole life cross the wrong way. Trees stretched and leaned, trunks folding over one another as if space itself had grown pliable. A hunter weaving the forest to his delight.

“Lost already?” it murmured, voice silk-smooth and cruel, each word tugging at me. “Joren Caelith.”

Shadows flared across the trees.

Flickers of familiar homes.

Mara’s silhouette.

Lanterns guttering, dying midair.

Each vision collapsed before I could reach it.

My fire surged hotter, straining to stabilise the lantern. Still, the forest twisted around the creature’s amusement—teasing, rearranging itself just beyond my control.

I hadn’t realised I was running.

Then I saw it again.

A flare between the trees, taller than any man, moss clinging to shoulders like tattered cloaks.

“Such effort,” the voice sighed. “And for such a small flame.”

The forest bent around it, paths bending, shadows stretching, darting like living things.

A hunter cloaked in legend and fear, both god and ghost of the woods.

The figure moved with impossible grace. A predator slipping between the trunks, each step scattering sparks in its wake.

Its laughter curled through the air. Every shadow flared, throwing up fractured glimpses of my home.

I lunged, trying to reach it, but the figure blurred, splitting into dozens of forms, each one laughing before slipping away.

“Stop hiding!” I yelled. “Show yourself!”

I staggered to a halt, gasping.

Then, as abruptly as it had come, the figure folded back into the dark, leaving only scorched snow and the faint, lingering tang of wet stone and moss, and taking my lantern flame with it.

Darkness closed in.

The forest pressed against me. Cold gnawed through coat and skin alike, biting at wrists, collarbone, and lungs.

I stumbled, clawing at the lantern, but there was nothing.

Just dead glass and frozen metal.

My body shook, wrung out by cold, fear, and the sudden absence of something that had always been there.

I sank to my knees in the biting cold.

The lantern lay cold and useless in my hands.

My chest ached where my fire had once throbbed—spent, empty, scraped raw from the effort of relighting Mara’s just before. I tried to push heat through my veins again, to coax a spark—nothing.

Nothing filled the hollowness inside.

Shadows flickered with the last echoes of stolen flame. Somewhere, deep in the forest, an antlered hunter watched, patient and eternal.

It was so terribly cold.

Snow fell.

And it was dark.