The Sowing of the Last Light
"Faith should never be measured in graves. And yet here we are—counting the crops, counting the bodies, pretending they’re not the same."
The Cost of Continuance
In other worlds, agriculture is a pact between patience and providence—a simple covenant of labour rewarded. In Duskworn , it is not a pact. It is a bargain.
The land here remembers too much. It does not grow to please. It yields only when something more vital is given. That is the foundation of the rite known as The Sowing of the Last Light—a sacred, sanctioned offering carried out at the edge of each planting season.
It is not a celebration. It is not a prayer.
It is a necessity sharpened into liturgy.
Each season, one soul is surrendered.
And the soil decides if the rest shall live.
The Kindling and the Yield
The one chosen is called the Kindling, a name the Church speaks with ceremonial reverence and bureaucratic efficiency. Kindlings are said to be volunteers—faithful souls who give their lives in service to the One True God, so that others may eat.
But beneath the scripture and song lies a quieter understanding. In practice, volunteering is often a consequence of hunger, grief, pressure, or a priest’s nod. Willingness, after all, is a flexible thing when filtered through Dreamwine—a sacred draught that loosens the will and blurs the line between choice and compliance.
On the last night before the new moon, the Kindling is bathed in moonwater, clothed in white linen, and led to the fallow field. There, upon a bed of freshly scattered seed, they are laid to rest. No blood is drawn. No wounds are made. A prayer is spoken. The priest departs.
By morning, they are gone.
And within days, the crops begin to rise.
The Church’s Doctrine
The Church of the One True God governs all things in Duskworn—land, life, law, and loss. It claims the Rite as divine inheritance, the only shield against the soil’s starvation. Without the offering, the Church insists, the land will refuse to bear fruit, and famine will return.
To question the Rite is to invite ruin.
To defy it is to become the next Kindling.
The Inquisitors enforce compliance. The Sanctifiers administer rites and wine. Villages that resist face “spiritual correction.” Entire lineages have vanished in silence, then returned—compliant, hollow, and grateful.
The crops grow. The people survive. The Rite is working.
That is all the Church requires you to understand.
The Old Ways
But not everyone has forgotten what the land once was.
In the high hills, the deep woods, and the moor-choked valleys, there are those who still keep to the Old Ways—not as rebellion, but as memory. They do not name themselves. They do not gather in temples. They simply remember what once was.
Their rites are older than the Church.
They plant only when the mist lies still.
They bless the soil with honey, not blood.
They leave carved bones in doorways and never say thank you to the things that watch from the hedgerows.
They do not pray to gods. They honour presences—those ancient spirits that once guided growth with rhythm, not sacrifice. The Church calls them demons. The Old Folk call them neighbours.
And the soil? The soil still listens.
The Things Beneath the Fields
There are stories. Always stories.
Of creatures not seen, but felt—beneath the furrows, beneath the frost. They are not divine. They are not human. They are not bound by mortal time.
Some call them Rootlords, or Hollow-Eyed Watchers, or those who remember what we forgot. The Old Folk leave offerings for them: silver pins wrapped in wool, butter left on stones, milk poured into empty spaces.
These are not bargains.
These are acknowledgements.
Because long before the Church taught the soil to hunger, it danced to another rhythm. A rhythm the old ones still hear, if they’re quiet. If they’re careful.
And if they remember that you never make promises in your own name.
The Moon-Flute Girl
Even now, a different story wanders the fields.
She has no temple. No title. No doctrine.
Only a flute carved from fireless wood, copper hair, and eyes like spilled gold.
They call her the Moon-Flute Girl, though she herself offers no name. She appears under moonlight, dances through barren fields, and plays music that lifts the heart and drives back the soil’s sorrow. Where she walks, the earth blooms. Where she plays, the crops rise without blood.
No Kindling. No rite. No permission.
The Church insists she does not exist.
But they still send Seekers to find her.
They never do.
Some say she is an echo of the land’s original covenant. Others claim she is resonance given form—a memory the Pattern refuses to let die. A few whisper that the fey protect her, not because she serves them, but because she reminds them of something they loved before the Church took it away.
Whatever she is, she is hunted.
Whatever she is, the soil knows her.
And it remembers.
Final Thought
The Sowing of the Last Light is not a rite of gratitude.
It is not reverence. It is not tradition.
It is a wound, repeated until it feels like law.
The Church teaches that without sacrifice, the land will starve.
But there are older truths—half-buried, half-sung—that say the land was never hungry until it was taught to crave endings.
And somewhere out there, a girl with a flute still plays the song that soil itself cannot forget.
At a Glance
What It Is:
An agricultural ritual mandated across Duskworn by the Church. Each planting season, a “willing” sacrifice—called the Kindling—is offered to the soil in exchange for a year’s yield. It is considered sacred, necessary, and non-negotiable.
What Actually Happens:
A person is prepared with narcotics and prayer, laid in a fallow field, and taken by the land before dawn. Crops bloom soon after. Villages survive. And no one ever says the body was never found.
Who Enforces It:
The Church of the One True God. There is no other church. There is no other god. Inquisitors and Sanctifiers ensure correct compliance. Villages that resist often develop spiritual deficiencies. Or fires.
Who Resists:
The Old Folk. Not rebels—remembrancers. They follow the quiet customs that predate the Rite: salt lines, midnight honey, music for the hedgerows. Their harvests are smaller. Their dreams, kinder.
Why It Matters:
Because the Rite works. Because something is listening. And because the Church may not be feeding the soil at all—but something beneath it.
The Moon-Flute Girl:
A myth, supposedly. A girl with copper hair, golden eyes, and a flute no fire can blacken. Where she plays, the land yields without death. The Church denies her existence. The fields say otherwise.
Their Official Position:
Fabrication. Pagan heresy. Coincidence.
Their Unofficial Response:
Three Seeker cells lost. One field bloomed for six years without a single Kindling. Incident sealed.
Current Consensus (Such as it is):
The Rite is the only way.
The Kindling must be willing.
The soil must be fed.
And if the girl plays again,
the Pattern itself may shift.
Author’s Note
I’ve always loved writing Duskworn. It scratches that deep gothic itch I’ve carried since childhood—equal parts grief, wonder, and rot. I grew up on Ravenloft, fell hard for The Ancient Magus’ Bride, and never quite stopped thinking about the Sídhe and Tír na nÓg—those timeless, haunting otherworlds from Celtic myth, where beauty lingers just long enough to be dangerous.
You can probably tell where my influences come from: folklore that hums beneath the surface, magic that costs more than it claims, and power that never once needed your permission.
I promise there will be no bees.
Probably.
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