"We cannot—"
"That would bind her spirit—"
"Her soul will not be able to—"
Their voices clash, uncertain, frightened.
But Petru’s wife turns on them, her voice rising above theirs all. "Her soul is not yours to guard," she says. "God will judge what is left of it."
Through the smoke, his cassock appears again.
Popa Dorin stands still, watching, his expression drawn tight, doubt flickering there—
For a moment, everything hangs.
Then—
A single nod.
"No—" I scream, the sound tearing from me. "No—please—"
Hands push forward.
They reach throughthe heat, through the rising flames, cloth clutched tight between them. I twist, I thrash, what little strength I have left giving out in a final, desperate struggle. My body arches, strains against the rope, against the fire itself.
"Stop—please—please—"
The cloth comes down over my face. It presses against my mouth, my nose, my eyes, stealing what little air remains, trapping the heat against my skin. Hands force it into place, binding it tight around my head, sealing it there. My scream dies inside it, trapped, turned inward.
The fire roars louder in the dark. The air disappears. And I am alone inside it.
I cry until the sound no longer belongs to me.
It tears out of me again and again, each sob breaking against the cloth, swallowed before it can reach the air. My throat shreds beneath it, the sound turning raw, then hoarse, then something smaller, thinner, until even that begins to fail me. Still I try. Still I call.
Mama.
No answer ever comes.
Only the fire.
It crackles and feeds and moves, a living thing that does not pause, does not listen, does not care. My skin tightens, splits, peels where it meets the flame, unbearable bursts that tear through whatever remains of me, then vanish again into something numb and distant. It climbs higher, closer, wrapping itself around what remains of me, pressing in with a heat that once was pain. Now it dulls.
My thoughts slip. They come in fragments, breaking apart before they can form, drifting away like ash carried upward into something I can no longer see.
The screams fade. The sobs too. My body still moves, but I am no longer inside it.
A scent reaches me, familiar in a way I cannot place at first, something that might have once meant comfort, food, a hearth at dusk. It wraps around me gently, almost tender, and for a moment it does not feel wrong.
Then it settles, and I understand.
It is me.
The thought passes without shock. It does not strike the way it should, does not tear anything open. It simply is, and then it drifts away like the rest.
Voices reach me, distant now.
"Why does it take so long—"
