Vermilion appeared on the road like a deceptive painting — clean colors, well-kept facades, gardens that breathed where the rest of the world had learned to suffocate. There were trees on every corner, children running hand in hand, tables where neighbors shared bread and laughter. Father Mateo, coming from the dusty road, had the uncomfortable sensation that someone had painted an ideal and wrapped it in straw so that no one would notice what sustained it all.
They received him with an almost military kindness: offerings of fruit, the best room in the municipal inn, and conversations that slid between hospitality and an insistence that he stay and preach. “Vermilion is a blessing,” said the woman who brought him water. “Kazin protects. Speak of salvation.” The name sounded heathen, ancient; a local god, this so-called Lord of Gifts, a name that mouths uttered with both respect and intimacy.
In the first few days, Mateo believed he was witnessing a miracle. The streets were clean, the children knew their verses, and the elderly spoke of memories with an almost prophetic tenderness. But, like someone noticing a dissonant note in the middle of a perfect choir, the priest began to notice absences. Children he had seen playing when he arrived would disappear for hours; swings were left empty at nightfall. When he asked, he met with evasive answers: “They were called to help with the cult,” “they are learning to honor Kazin,” “they will return with blessings.” The voices were sweet, but the eyes looked away.
On a wall behind the main square, portraits of the King hung in profusion — old paintings, faded photographs, small banners with the monarch’s profile. In many houses, images of the King occupied the place of honor, between crucifixes and family photos. Someone told him, like one delivering a whispered secret, that the King had been born there. The entire city, it seemed, guarded the memory of the throne with a devotion bordering on the religious.
Fourth night: the priest decided to stay awake. Hidden behind a heap of baskets, he watched. As darkness fell, the lanterns were extinguished, and the residents walked calmly toward the center of the square. Bags with small bundles were lined up, red ribbons braided around simple boxes. When the pyre was lit, no one screamed; the fire rose clean and high, a living column that licked their faces as if it wanted to read them. People formed circles. An ancient discipline was present, almost mechanical.
It was then that the stillness turned into rite.
Those closest to the fire began to undress, not out of lust — but like someone shedding a weight to be reborn. Clothes left their bodies in orderly folds, like instructions placed on the ground. Around the pyre, men and women, grown and whole, rose slowly from the ground: the scene was one of subtle levitation, a span or two high, as if they were supported by invisible currents of light. There was no trick; there were no ropes. The sensation this spectacle provoked in Mateo was one of displacement: the world he knew was loosening. Those bodies did not dance; they floated with empty expressions, eyes full of a joy that was not human.
Surprisingly, the fire began to project onto the house walls not only flames but images. When the light hit a portrait of the King, the figure seemed to take on depth, and with the heat, Mateo's mind was invaded. They were short, rapid glimpses: festive tables, hands giving coins, children running under a pavilion of banners — a collective memory stitched together in flashes. The images appeared with such insistence that they were not mere memories: they entered like commands, small impressions burned into the skin of the soul.
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Mateo tried to resist. He murmured prayers, clutched his rosary until his knuckles turned white, and repeated the names of saints as if they were defenses. But the presence of that pyre and the faces — especially the King’s — kept seeping in. The laughter came first as a shiver he wanted to escape, then as a sudden burst: a low chuckle that sprouted deep in the priest's throat, involuntary, which he did not recognize. The feeling of relief was as absurd as it was immediate; it took him like a wave and made him stand.
Around him, voices joined in a chant: something ancestral that mixed tones of gratitude and short phrases — “We give to receive,” “Kazin guards us,” “The King blesses us.” The priest, who had arrived in Vermilion with a cross on his chest and faith enough to distribute plows of healing, sang along. The rite was consummated through the night; naked bodies floated, hips brushing the air, hands outstretched in an abandonment that was both ecstasy and annihilation.
The next morning, the square dawned intact. Children returned to running as if nothing had changed. But something in their eyes had shifted: a break in the brightness, a shadow that accepted without knowing why. Mateo woke up in his inn with a dry throat and a racing heart. In the notebook he kept for entries, he scribbled shaky lines that could not contain the feeling of having been taken: “Here, the gift has a price. I saw them offer — and I was offered up.”
In the days that followed, the priest became a spectator and student of that city. He observed the morning preparations: the carved dolls that were later left in front of houses, the baskets of supplies that came from discreet donations, the red ribbons that joined hands. The conversations were always kind, but there were hesitations when he asked about the children who disappeared for nights. “They are going to learn,” they repeated. “They return blessed.” And nothing more.
The priest's curiosity turned into obsession. One night, he decided to infiltrate closer. Hidden among shadows, he approached the innermost perimeter. He saw hands untying clothes, heard murmurs that were not words, heard names — including the King’s — whispered with a devotion that seemed to take the place of prayer. He stepped forward and, to the naked hands leaving the circle, he spoke in a low voice, calling for help. No one answered. It was as if the sound of that sacred presence — Kazin — had sealed their mouths.
When he entered the circle, the vision was total: men and women naked, levitating, eyes closed, singing. The fire, high and blue-orange, projected onto every face in the crowd the image of the King, multiplied in shadows that danced on the walls. The sensation was of being transported elsewhere, where the gift became ritual and the ritual became law. Mateo realized, with a chill that disarmed him, that this was not just devotion — it was a pact.
He also saw the faces of children among the people — not the ones playing in the street, but others, who appeared after the chanting, pale and always quiet, holding gifts in their hands. What the priest could not yet put into words was how the eyes of those children seemed empty, as if part of something had been taken from them. The hypothesis forming in his mind was a knot: if the city provided peace and abundance, where did it come from? What price was paid for a place immune to the horror of the Empire?
The line separating faith and delirium gave way in a final laugh — from Mateo and those surrounding him. They laughed for a reason he could not explain later: a shared joy as old as fire. They sang “We give to receive” until their throats were ground raw. In the priest's notebook, under that phrase, he wrote in almost illegible handwriting: “I depart with a blessing and a curse. Vermilion is a garden and a trap. The King was born here, and here he reigns without sitting on the throne. Beware: the gift we receive may be what consumes us.”
When he finally brought his hand to his face and stepped out of the city, the laughter still trembled on his lips — not the laughter that heals, but the proof that, for one night, his name had been tied to the city that delivered gifts. Vermilion remained behind him, impeccable, perfumed, with its paintings and its fires, a city that had found a cruel way to maintain beauty: to offer up that which is most loved.
