The Lie That Brought Light - Act I

Gloamhaven was a place the sun forgot.

It sat in the low veins of the New Jersey Heartlands, where fog clung like regret and soot blackened teeth before smiles could form. The town was built on a mine and buried by it—collapsed ambitions piled atop the bones of workers who thought they could outrun the dark.

Theophilus Grane had only ever loved two things: his son Ellory, and the church he preached in. One collapsed. The other held the collapse.

Ellory was twelve when the explosion happened. They said it was a fault in the shaft supports. A tremor. A spark near the dynamite. All anyone could recover was one of Ellory’s gloves. Still warm. Still soft.

Theophilus took it in both hands and whispered, “You’re not gone.”

And something heard him.

He stopped preaching. Stopped eating. Stopped sleeping. The townspeople said he was grieving. They let him be. For a while. Until the bones arrived.

First from old cemeteries. Then fresher. Theophilus always had a key to the mortuary. The sheriff didn’t question him—until his own brother’s grave was disturbed.
By then, it was too late.

The attic above the chapel was thick with dust, and thicker with purpose. Theophilus spoke prayers to a pulpit of no one, surrounded by diagrams older than scripture and more exacting than any Gospel. They came from a book his grandfather had hidden beneath a false floorboard. It spoke of The Lantern of Bones. Diagrams were captioned with smudged and faded latin that read: "lux iacet intus," meaning the light that lies within.  

Its vessel made from ribs, vertebrae, and faith—lit by flame that burned with truth.

In his grief, Theophilus assumed, correctly, the bone lantern was a container. He assumed, incorrectly, it would house the soul--the light within-- of whoever's bones were used to construct it. He assumed building it with Ellory's bones would keep Ellory with him.

And so, Theophilus constructed The Bone Lantern in silence. Ellory’s bones were scrubbed, carved, aligned with trembling hands. "I will bring you back, my son," he whispered, solemn. Theophilus broke Ellory's small ribcage and used it to frame the lantern's glass. Ellory's spinal fragments circled the base. Theophilus made the lantern's handle from Ellory’s polished femur.

He placed it on the altar. Prayed.

And the flame appeared.

It glowed a soft, pale blue—just faint enough to mistake for moonlight.

He gasped. “Ellory?”

No reply. Only a single flicker.

“You’re safe now,” Theophilus whispered.

The flame flared. Flickered.

“Theophilus' heart sank. 'Ellory, my son, you've come back to me,’ he insisted, his quivering voice cracking with forlorn hope.”

The light dimmed, then pulsed—once, twice—like a heart. Like breath held beneath truth.

And when Theophilus said nothing—just stood beside it, beneath memory and grief—the flame came alive.
Soft. Warm. Listening.

As though something else had arrived.
Something not his son.
Something summoned.
Something that agreed with the lie… and fed.

By week’s end, the townsfolk said Theophilus was walking with a glow under his coat. A priest with a secret fire. They avoided him. But not before he tested it.

One lie? A flicker.

Two? A flare.

But when Theophilus said nothing at all—when he simply stood near someone denying their guilt—the flame came alive.

Gloamhaven had many secrets. But it had never seen them burn.