Chameleon Magazine

In a wind-bitten village built on the edge of the world, there stood a temple that housed a single flame. The villagers called it the Lantern of Dawn, and they said it had burned since the birth of light itself. No one remembered when it was lit, only that the priests warned: “If it goes out, so will hope.”

Each week, pilgrims came to kneel before it, whispering their prayers to the dancing glow. But one winter, a young woman named Aria—an apprentice glassmaker—noticed something odd. When she delivered new glass panes for the temple’s windows, she saw soot on the floor near the Lantern, thick and black as if from a chimney. Curious, she followed the trail and found a hidden hatch behind the altar.

Beneath the temple, she discovered a man tending a furnace. From that furnace rose a narrow pipe that led upward—straight to the Lantern’s bowl. The sacred flame, she realized, was no miracle. It was fed, day and night, by ordinary fire.

When Aria told the High Priest, he grew pale. “You must not speak of this,” he said softly. “The people need their dawn.”

“But it isn’t dawn,” she replied. “It’s smoke.”

“Then let them dream of sunrise,” he said, and closed the hatch behind her.

Word spread anyway—half rumor, half wind—and soon the villagers quarreled in the square. Some said Aria was a liar, others that she was chosen to reveal a deeper truth. The temple doors were barred; the priest vanished. And though Aria begged the villagers to come and see for themselves, few dared. For it was easier to bow before a lie than to stand in the cold waiting for a new light to rise.

In time, the Lantern guttered and died. The people did not weep for the loss of the flame—only for the silence that followed, where no prayers echoed and no one dared to look up at the stars.

“Many fear the dawn, not because it ends the night—but because it shows what was never light at all.”