The Lanterns of Taal Ridge

The path to Taal Ridge was a stitched scar along the mountainside — narrow, ancient, and always whispering. Locals said the wind carried the voices of those who had climbed before, a soft chorus urging every traveler not to turn back. But for Arel Vazim, turning back was not an option.

He hadn’t come for the legend, nor for the mountain.

He had come because there was nothing left for him below.

Two months before, Arel’s younger sister, Mira, had died in a storm-flooded valley. She had been the bright pulse of his life — the only person who believed he could become more than a drifting mechanic fixing roads no one remembered. When she was gone, the world became a dim hallway with no exit.

Until he found her old journal, tucked behind a drawer.

One line, circled in fading red pencil, pulled him to the mountain:

“Someday, Arel will climb Taal Ridge. Not to escape… but to become.”

He didn’t understand what she meant — but grief makes pilgrims of us all.

So he climbed.

The morning fog curled around his boots like pale roots. His breath puffed in uneven bursts as the trail grew steeper. Hours passed. He pushed himself because stopping felt like betrayal, and because the mountain air carried a strange promise — a quiet steadiness he hadn’t felt since Mira laughed for the last time.

By dusk he reached the halfway hut, only to discover it wasn’t empty.

An old woman, wrapped in a coat of mismatched patches, sat by a tiny stove. Her eyes glimmered like polished stones.

“You’re late,” she said, as if they’d known each other for years.

Arel blinked. “Late for what?”

“For your turning point.” She poured tea as calmly as someone discussing the weather. “Tea?”

He hesitated only a second. Grief had stripped him of fear.

The tea smelled faintly of citrus and smoke. “Do you live here?”

“I live where hearts break and mend,” she said. “Tonight, that happens to be here.”

He tried to laugh, but it cracked on the way out. “You talk like Mira.”

“Then she must have talked like someone who understood mountains.”

Arel froze. The woman met his gaze with a soft, unwavering stare.

“You climbed to forget,” she said. “But Taal Ridge only allows those who climb to remember.”

Arel’s throat tightened. “Remembering hurts.”

“And healing hurts more,” she murmured.

She handed him a small lantern carved from pale wood. Inside, a single ember glowed.

“Carry this to the summit. Release it at the edge of the sky. It will show you what you truly came for.”

Before he could ask how she knew his name — if she had spoken it aloud — the lantern flickered brightly, as though urging him onward.

He left the hut with the ember’s glow guiding the darkening trail.

Night fell like ink poured over the world. The mountain wind sharpened, slicing through the silence. Yet the lantern glowed steady, warm, alive.

Arel thought of Mira.

Of her stubborn hope.

Of how she believed he could hold light even when darkness gnawed at him.

By the time he reached the summit, the stars looked close enough to touch.

A ledge jutted over the valley — the edge of the sky.

He lifted the lantern.

His hands shook.

Not from cold — but from the weight of letting go.

“Mira,” he whispered, voice cracking. “If you can hear me… I’m trying.”

As if responding, the tiny ember flared into gold.

He released the lantern.

It rose slowly at first, then caught a current of mountain wind and ascended in a sweeping arc. Higher, brighter, drifting toward the stars.

Arel watched until it became a small dot, then nothing at all.

And for the first time since Mira’s passing, the heaviness in his chest loosened — not gone, but no longer crushing. Grief had not left him, but it had softened. Made space for breath. Maybe even for tomorrow.

Behind him, a faint voice echoed on the wind — warm, familiar:

“Not to escape…

but to become.”

Arel smiled. A small one, but real.

Then he began the climb down — not as a man searching for something lost, but as someone finally ready to live again.