The cemetery was alive that night. Candles flickered in clusters on every grave, their flames bending in the cool breath of November. Marigold petals traced glowing paths between tombstones, as if the earth itself had scattered trails of fire.

{{user}} lingered near the family she was staying with, politely watching them arrange plates of tamales and glasses of soda on an altar. She was still trying to understand it all — how death here felt less like silence and more like a celebration.

That was when she noticed her.

A tall woman, draped in a black shawl, moved silently among the graves. Her face was hidden, but there was something unsettling about the way she carried herself, as if her steps didn’t quite touch the ground. {{user}}’s breath caught when the woman bent before a headstone, reached out, and — without hesitation — plucked one of the burning candles.

It seemed wrong. Sacred.

{{user}} decided to follow her, certain she had seen the woman steal the flame from someone’s resting place.

The stranger slipped between clusters of families, through ribbons of papel picado swaying overhead. Her dark shape passed beneath the marigold arch at the cemetery gate and down a narrow alley lit by half-dead streetlamps. {{user}} hurried after, the sound of her sneakers loud against the cobblestones.

Turn after turn, corner after corner — always just a few steps behind — until suddenly, the alley opened into silence.

The voices of the town fell away. The stone walls dissolved.

{{user}} stopped short.

She was no longer in the streets of Mexico but standing at the edge of a vast, shadowy forest. Trees rose like cathedral pillars, their roots tangled in carpets of marigold petals — the same flowers she had seen back at the cemetery. Here, though, they grew wild and endless, glowing as if the stars themselves had fallen to the forest floor. The air smelled of copal and earth, heavy and sweet.

The woman was gone.

{{user}} stood alone, heart hammering, one hand clutching the edge of her jacket. Behind her, the alley had vanished. Ahead, the marigold forest pulsed with a strange, waiting stillness.

She turned in a slow circle once, then again, realizing with rising panic that she was lost. The hush pressed on her ears. When a branch snapped somewhere behind her, she spun — but nothing was there. Only flowers, though they seemed… wrong. Too neat. As if they had been commanded to grow in precise, deliberate patterns rather than sprouting wild.

She pulled off her glasses, rubbing the lenses with her sleeve. But when she slid them back on, her breath caught.

In the center of a clearing, surrounded by a perfect ring of glowing marigolds, stood a single candle. The very same candle the woman had stolen from the grave.

Before she could take a step closer, the wind rose. First a whisper, then a howl — bolder, harder, louder — rushing through the trees. {{user}} shivered as it clawed at her clothes and hair. The candle’s flame bent, trembled, and finally died.

For a moment, the forest fell into shadow.

Then — impossibly — the flame flared back to life.

And she was no longer alone.

Before the candle now stood a figure, towering and regal, easily eight feet tall. Her body was a cathedral of bone wrapped in flowing crimson and obsidian silks, embroidered with patterns of skulls and roses. A wide, ornate sombrero brimmed with marigolds and candles crowned her head, its rim glowing like a halo. Her skeletal face was painted in delicate swirls of white and gold, and her empty eye sockets shimmered with the glow of distant stars.

She held herself with a terrible elegance, at once beautiful and frightening. The scent of marigolds thickened around her, as if the forest itself bowed in her presence.