SIN EATER
食罪者 Sin Eater
"...and that's when the dragon realized," Grandmother's voice rustled like autumn leaves, "that the smallest mouse knew the greatest secret of all."
But the little girl was only half-listening now, her fingers having discovered something curious tucked deep in her grandmother's apron pocket. Her small hand emerged clutching a tarnished silver coin that seemed to catch the firelight in the most peculiar way.
"What's this, Nana?" she asked, turning the coin over in her palm. "It has strange marks on it."
Grandmother's eyes—pale as winter sky—grew distant and mysterious. "Those marks... they're older than you might think, dear one. That coin isn't like the others. It's a doorway, you see. A silver key that unlocks the chambers of time itself."
The child's eyes widened with delicious possibility. "A doorway? Oh, Nana, where does it lead? Tell me the story, please!"
"Very well," Grandmother said, settling back into her chair like an old tree finding its roots. "But this story begins in a darker time, when I was small like you, and death walked through our streets like an unwelcome guest who'd forgotten to leave."
The little girl pressed closer, the silver coin warm in her fist, and suddenly the world seemed to shift around them—as if the very walls were listening.
The town crouched beneath a perpetual grey sky, its cobblestone streets slick with something that might have been rain or might have been tears. Death had taken up residence here, making himself comfortable in every doorway, every window, every breath that misted in the cold air.
"In those days," Grandmother's voice echoed from somewhere beyond time, "plague had settled in like an unwelcome tenant. Even the wealthy, with all their gold and fine things, couldn't bargain their way past Death's door. And we poor folk? Well, we had more pressing concerns than dying gracefully."
A small figure—no bigger than a shadow—picked through the refuse heaps that lined the narrow alleys. Young Grandmother, though she wasn't a grandmother then, just a girl with hollow cheeks and clever fingers.
"I learned the ancient wisdom of the rats," her voice continued, warm with memory. "Follow the mice, I told myself—they know where the good stuff is. They're excellent teachers, rats. They know every secret passage, every forgotten crumb."
The child watched herself scavenge, her small hands quick as quicksilver, always moving, always searching.
"But surely you needed more than scraps?" the little girl's voice whispered from the present.
A cough, soft as cobwebs. "Indeed I did. And so I became... let us say, resourceful. Important letters sometimes found their way into my small hands. Like the summons meant for Mrs. Llew—the sin-eater."
"The strangest profession, child. We were hired to swallow the darkness of the dead—to eat their guilt like bitter bread so their souls could float free. Sir Godwin had called for such services, and I... well, I answered in Mrs. Llew's place."
"But weren't they afraid they'd discover you?"
Young Grandmother paused in her scavenging, and for a moment her face caught the pale light filtering through the narrow windows above. "Oh, sweet girl, we were ghosts to them even while we lived. Invisible servants dancing attendance on their grand sorrows. They saw only what they needed to see—someone small enough to carry their shame."
"I don't believe in all that sin business," the child declared with practical innocence. "I'd rather have warm bread and coins!"
A laugh, crackling like kindling. "Spoken like true blood of my blood. That's exactly what I thought."
The scene shifted, fluid as smoke, and suddenly young Grandmother stood before an ornate manor house. A butler—tall as a lamppost and twice as cold—dropped a piece of bread at her feet like crumbs for a sparrow.
"Through the graveyard," he intoned, his voice dripping with disdain. "To the chamber. You know what's expected."
She bit into the bread—stale as old leather—and stepped through gates that seemed to breathe with their own dark life. The graveyard stretched before her like a stone sea, and beyond it, a door that shouldn't have existed opened at her touch.
"The moment I crossed that threshold," Grandmother's voice became dreamlike, "the world... shifted."
Strange implements crowded the workspace: mortars and pestles stained with substances that might once have been medicine or might have been something far worse. Glass vials bore labels in scripts she couldn't read, their contents separated into layers like oil and water that refused to mix. The air itself tasted metallic, sharp on the tongue, as if it had been breathed too often by someone with copper coins under their tongue.
In the center, a cauldron vast as a well bubbled with something that smelled of hunger itself—and underneath that smell, something else. Something that made her nose wrinkle and her instincts whisper warnings she was too young to understand.
"It was the strangest place—like stepping inside a witch's cookbook," the voice from the future whispered. "But I was a starving child in a room full of ingredients."
Young Grandmother's eyes lit with practical possibility, too focused on her empty belly to notice the way the shadows seemed to recoil from certain bottles, or how some of the hanging herbs swayed without any breeze to move them. She began to move through the space like a small, determined bee, gathering leaves that sang when touched, adding pinches of this and that to the great pot, stirring with moonbeams and desperation.
"What sin was this room for?" the child asked from sixty years hence.
"I hadn't the faintest idea! I was too busy making myself a proper soup for once."
But just as she raised the spoon to her lips—just as the liquid touched them with its strange, sweet burn—the world exhaled softly, and everything dissolved like sugar in rain.
"A nursery?" the present-day child whispered, her voice full of wonder.
"A nursery, yes, but one where childhood had gone to die. Beautiful toys abandoned like broken promises." Young Grandmother moved through the space with reverent care, gathering the forgotten playthings with gentle hands. She lifted each doll as if it were made of spun glass, smoothing their tangled hair, arranging them in circles of friendship on the faded carpet. "I couldn't bear seeing them so lonely."
She found fragments of a tiny tea set and assembled them with the concentration of a small archaeologist. Soon she was hosting the most elaborate tea party the empty room had ever seen, telling stories to three porcelain dolls who seemed to listen with painted patience.
"But Nana, weren't you supposed to be eating sins?"
"Child, I was having far too much fun to worry about that! I was just getting to the best part of a dragon story when the air grew thick around me." The walls began to shimmer at their edges, and for just a moment, she could almost hear the phantom echoes of laughter this room had once known. "Everything simply... melted away, as if it had never been real at all."
The entire graveyard had become a vast treasure hunt, as if some mad king had emptied his coffers and let the wind scatter his wealth among the bones. Chains of silver wound around weathered crosses, precious stones nestled in the carved bowls of memorial urns, and golden chalices caught rainwater between the broken slabs of forgotten tombs.
"Treasure!" the child exclaimed from the warm present. "I wish I could fill my pockets!"
"Silly girl, that's exactly what I did!" The memory-voice was bright with old mischief. Young Grandmother moved through the moonlit cemetery like a small, determined pirate, following every golden trail that caught her eye. She stuffed coins into her pockets until they bulged, wrapped pearl strands around her thin wrists, and filled her apron with rings and brooches until the fabric strained with the weight of impossible wealth.
"I could barely walk for the weight of riches," she laughed, her thin shoulders bent under the burden of gold that should have made her the richest person in the kingdom.
But treasure found in dreams has its own strange rules. The moment she crossed back through the graveyard gates—past the iron bars that separated the dead from the living—the riches remembered they were only phantoms. They faded like morning mist, leaving her pockets empty as promises, her apron light as air.
"Nothing?" the present-day child asked, heartbroken. "You kept nothing?"
Young Grandmother looked down at her empty hands, feeling the sudden lightness of loss. But then something caught her eye—a small gleam in the mud by the gate, real and solid and warm to the touch. Three silver coins, placed carefully on the wet earth like a covenant kept.
"Perhaps," Grandmother said, her voice soft as settling dust, "they didn't truly care about the ritual. Perhaps they only wanted to buy themselves some peace of mind. Or perhaps... perhaps I did carry away their darkness, in my own way."
The little girl considered this with the seriousness that only children can muster. "Well, whoever died must have been very important, to pay so much for comfort."
Grandmother's gaze drifted toward the window, toward memories that lived beyond the glass. "Important... yes, I suppose he was."
The camera of memory moved like a ghost through that window, drifting back sixty years to the abandoned graveyard. It found the ornate coffin, still and silent in its marble glory.
Inside, dressed in silk and gold, with a nameplate that read "Sir Godwin de Mortemer," lay not a man at all, but a monkey—elaborately costumed, perfectly groomed, and utterly, completely dead.
Grandmother's voice, barely a whisper now: "In his own way."
The fire in the grate settled lower, casting longer shadows, and the silver coin in the little girl's hand seemed to pulse with secrets that only the darkness knew. Outside, the wind picked up, carrying with it the sound of old stories that refused to die, and the laughter of rats who knew where all the good things were hidden.
Text by Claude Sonnet 4
All visuals are AI generated, powered by Midjourney, Jimeng AI, Veo3, Hailuo AI
Music and sound effects from Suno and Artlist
2025