Light doesn't just arrive.
Sometimes, it signs itself.
Vale woke before dawn to a signature etched in golden air. The streetlamps had flickered through the night, but when Leona stepped outside, she found no light in the lamps — only radiance. It drifted along cobblestones, pooled beneath the bridge, glowed in the hollows between houses. It wasn't electricity. It was acknowledgment.
She walked toward the river's bend, the lamp in her hand unlit yet shining faintly. Every step mirrored another — her shadow and the light trailing hers, like a signature following its author. The River lay still, reflecting the horizon in flawless calm.
Standing beneath the old arch of the bridge was a man. His coat was soaked in early mist, collar turned up. He didn't move when she arrived — only looked.
"Good morning," he said softly.
Leona paused. "I should ask who you are."
He smiled. "I'm the one who signed the light."
She stared. "Signed it how?"
He reached into his coat and drew out a stylus — not a pen, but a slender rod of silver. The tip glowed. He pointed at the river. Where the current met stillness, letters appeared: the seven ripples and crescent, flame and circle and cross-lines, glowing faintly in the water.
"The River gave its signature," he said. "But someone had to accept it. Someone had to sign back."
Leona looked at the symbol, then at him. "You signed back?"
He nodded. "Because someone had to become the promise."
The air shifted. The River exhaled. Light rose in the current in waves, tracing his reflection, then hers.
"You?" she whispered. "You were always the promise?"
He shrugged. "A promise doesn't ask permission. It just waits to be kept."
Behind them, Vale's lamps turned on in sequence. The morning light touched each and the radiance flooded the town. People opened doors, stepped into the glow, and the radiance kissed their faces before drifting away.
Leona watched it flow through windows, across eaves, through alleyways. It formed ribbons of hope across the plain stone of the town. Every wall that had worn memory now collected light.
The man moved alongside her, stylus in hand. "I signed so others would know the River's signature wasn't alone."
"Then what happens now?" Leona asked.
He turned. "Now the living carry the sign. The light is no longer just given. It's accepted."
By the riverbank, he traced a line in the air. The stylus glowed. The River answered by rising a fraction, bringing light to the surface where it layered like silver dust.
Children came, laughing, and touched the current. The radiance pulsed beneath their fingers. They ran home, cheeks alight with reflected light.
"You see," the man said, "the River's light doesn't just show the living — it names them."
Leona thought of the ledger, the countless names written, forgiven, rewritten. "Then this is the final naming?"
He shook his head. "Final? No. The one who signs the light starts the naming."
He stepped aside. The stylus floated into the water. It sank. The river glowed, the glow faded. The stylus settled on the riverbed, shimmering.
"Will you sign it?" the man asked.
Leona looked at the stylus beneath the current. It called to her in low tone — an invitation. She knelt, reaching into the water. Cold bit through her boots. She touched the stylus. It felt warm.
"I will," she said.
The river's surface cracked. Light shot upward like small stars bursting. The stylus glowed, darker now, but alive. Beneath her fingers, the water lifted her reflection, shook it, then set it back. The symbol of the seven strokes formed beside her feet.
The man watched. "Now you are its author."
Leona stood. The lamp in her hand lit itself. The reflection in the water changed: her face older, peaceful, eyes no longer haunted by what she didn't know. She touched the symbol in the current.
"I am," she said.
Vale filled with radiance. Lamps blew out without wind. Windows glowed. The River wrote traces of light on bridges and banks, on houses and people, on hearts.
At the square, people gathered. Leona walked through them, light pulsing from the stylus she held. They sensed the naming — silent, but unmistakable.
Jonas held his camera. He spoke without words for long minutes. When he finally did, his voice broke: "You signed it."
She nodded. "I accepted it."
Nia approached, tears in her eyes. "What about the man who signed first?"
Leona looked back at the river. The man was gone. Only the stylus floated on the surface, then sank again, vanished. The River claimed it.
"I carry his work," she said to Nia. "And now, I live its truth."
That night, the lamp beside her desk shone on the first page of a new book: The Book of the Living Name. She opened it. Blank. She laid the stylus beside it. Light filled the room. She wrote.
Leona Prescott — Called, named, alive.
The ink glowed. The stylus drew fine trails of light across the paper, tracing lines before the ink settled.
Then she wrote again.
Vale — Named by the River, carried by its people.
The room brightened. The lamp's circle extended to the walls. Shadows withdrew, hesitant.
She closed the book.
Outside, the River's hum deepened. The current carried the reflection of stars and names and light that could neither fade nor be owned.
The radiance would live.