Epilogue: The Violet Hour

They say curses end with sacrifice.

They say the dead sleep soundly once the debt is paid.

But no one says what happens to the ones who gave more than they were asked.

Greyhollow has known peace for a year.

No flickering lanterns in the trees.
No hoofbeats on the wind.
No missing townsfolk with blank stares and bloodless throats.

But a few days ago, a girl came to the edge of the moor with a question in her heart and sorrow in her step.
She claimed she saw a woman in the mist—face hidden, body cloaked in a violet glow—guiding the lost back to the road.

No one believed her.
But the next day, a boy who’d vanished in the hills was found asleep beneath a hawthorn tree, warm and breathing, his coat covered in ash and winter roses.

They called it a miracle.

I called it Éirelyn.

They think the Host was banished.
That the curse ended clean.
But I know better.

The Headless still ride—but slower now. Quieter.
Their hate dulled.
Their hunger... waiting.

Perhaps even monsters can mourn.

Sometimes, when the night is thin and the veil thinner still, I walk to the altar where she left me.

I light a lantern.
Just one.
And let it burn violet.

Not as a summons.
Not as a warning.

But as a promise.

She became something more than a legend.
More than a ghost.
She became the light that walks with the damned, the hand that offers one last choice.

Not death.

But dawn.

And when my time comes, when the years have worn me hollow, I will ride again.

Not to find her.
But to follow.