short fiction · 2026-10-07

The Sigil at Blackstone

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

In the ruined chapel of Blackstone Monastery, the sigil carved into the altar stone had long since lost its sharp edges. Centuries of damp wind and wandering lichen had softened the lines until the original symbol—a circle intersected by three waves—was now a vague depression, like a breath held in stone. Yet, when the novice Brother Ansel traced his fingers over the hollow, he felt a pull, not of sight but of recognition. The monks who had worn the sigil on their robes were gone, their chants silenced, but the shape’s memory lingered in the stone’s marrow, in the way the light pooled at dawn, in the hush that fell when the wind slipped through the broken arches. It was not the symbol’s clarity that carried its weight, but the erosion itself, each softened curve a testament to the countless hands that had once touched it, the prayers whispered over it, the grief and hope worn into the rock. The sigil had become a vessel for absence, and in its vagueness, it held more meaning than any pristine emblem ever could.