The scroll stirred before dawn.
No warning. No whisper. Just motion.
Thuta sat bolt upright in the goat shed as parchment rustled inside his satchel. The scroll was unfolding itself — something it had never done before. It lay open across the dirt floor, its surface glowing faintly with a waxy, golden sheen.
Not red. Not flame.
Something older.
The map had changed again. A faint sketch emerged — a twisting grove, branches arching into each other to form a natural gate. At the gate's center, dozens — no, hundreds— of yellow ribbons fluttered from the trees like forgotten prayers.
No coordinates. No symbols.
Just a spiral, half-drawn.
The fourth.
He didn't need the scroll's permission this time.
He packed his things and walked out before the village even woke.
---
The forest wasn't on any map. It didn't need to be. Something in his chest — the sigil, maybe, or whatever stirred behind it — tugged him gently toward the hills west of the river.
The first ribbon appeared an hour into the hike.
Tied low to a branch. Pale yellow. Weathered, fraying at the ends. It fluttered in a breeze that didn't reach his skin.
Thuta paused.
He didn't touch it.
He walked on.
Then another. And another. Higher this time. Tied to trees that shouldn't have grown in this region — ash, oak, fig. The deeper he went, the less Myanmar it felt. The more elsewhere.
The air thickened. Sound dimmed. Even the insects had stopped their chorus.
Time stretched in odd ways. Sunlight slanted wrong, like it wasn't filtering from above but from some faded memory of the sky.
He lost track of how long he walked.
Then, suddenly — the grove.
---
It looked exactly like the sketch.
A circle of trees, their trunks grown inward, twisted into one another like ancient dancers holding hands. Their upper branches formed an arch — not carved, but grown.
And from those branches, the ribbons hung.
Hundreds. Thousands.
Some fresh and clean. Some old and blackened. All yellow.
They didn't flutter. They waited.
Thuta stepped into the circle.
The sigil on his palm burned.
The world hushed.
And then he saw her.
---
She stood across the grove.
A woman. Tall. Pale skin. Long black hair, loose and unadorned. Her robe was the color of ash and dawn, and around her neck hung a single faded ribbon.
Her feet didn't touch the ground.
She wasn't glowing. She wasn't cloaked in mist.
But she wasn't alive, either.
She was simply there.
Thuta froze.
She looked at him — not hostile. Not kind. Just watching.
Her eyes carried the weight of centuries.
He raised a hand. "Who—?"
She vanished.
No sound. No wind. Just gone.
He took another step. Looked around.
Then — a ribbon moved. Not in the wind. As if tugged.
And she was there again, standing beneath it.
Same posture. Same stare.
Still silent.
He tried again. "You're the… Yellow Ribbon Maiden?"
No answer.
But his sigil flared, and a vision hit him like cold water.
---
Flashes of an ancient ritual.
Zawgyi — dozens of them — kneeling before a tall tree. A woman, not one of them, tying the first ribbon to its branch.
A Zawgyi speaks:
"We cannot destroy what clings to breath. So we ask you — bind what we cannot bury."
The woman says nothing.
She turns.
And begins to tie another ribbon.
One for each name.
One for each soul that refused to die.
---
Thuta gasped and dropped to his knees.
The ribbons around him began to sway.
Not in wind.
In response.
He looked up.
The Maiden stood beside the largest tree now — at the heart of the grove. Her hands rested lightly on one of the oldest ribbons.
Her eyes met his.
And a whisper filled the grove:
"They crossed into death and called it alchemy."
Thuta's voice trembled. "What are you guarding?"
The ribbons rustled.
"What they left behind."
He stepped forward. "And if I untie one?"
The ribbons went still.
"Then what sleeps beneath will not forget you."
He stopped.
For a long time, he said nothing. Just stared at the tree. At the gate of memory. Of boundary.
He looked at the sigil on his hand.
It wasn't glowing anymore.
Just waiting.
Like the ribbons.
---
The scroll pulsed in his satchel.
He pulled it out.
A fourth spiral had begun to form — faint, not complete.
And beneath it:
"She guards the breath that was never drawn."
Thuta closed the scroll.
The Yellow Ribbon Maiden was gone again.
But her presence remained. Like a held breath.
As he turned to leave the grove, the largest ribbon swayed behind him.
And from the wind — or something older than wind — a voice followed:
"He's watching me now, too."
-----