Romain Vallière
At Christmastime, the spiritual world was anything but quieter.. on the contrary, it grew restless, agitated, strained. People wanted to believe in peace and salvation, but beyond that belief something was gathering... coiling itself together like air before a storm. The veils thinned.. prayers, chants, masses, drums, petitions, fears pressed into the same narrow spaces all at once. Spirits and lost souls did not tolerate overcrowding. Christmas brought chaos because too many voices demanded the same things: protection, forgiveness, a new beginning. And even here, people could not agree on what Christmas was supposed to mean. Everyone followed a different tradition, which in itself was not the problem, if the goodness they displayed had actually been practiced, if it had come from something real instead of performance.
On these nights, the ancestors drew closer. Lower spirits grew bold. Those who were usually bound began to wander. Christmas was not sacred to the spiritual world.. it was a rupture, a fresh tear that never truly closed. A wound in reality, stretching wider and wider between Halloween and Christmas, left open long enough to fester. In the week before Christmas, Romain cleaned his tools, renewed old bindings, spoke to the dead as they grew restless and impatient. He made sacrifices out of obligation. It was a destiny he had to submit to again, because if he didn’t, all of this would consume him, strip him down, tear him apart piece by piece. Rum for the ancestors, some tobacco for the guardians, salt and ashes in places where the city had forgotten that not only the living mattered, but also those who had passed… and those who had been erased.
On the Holy Night itself, he withdrew from the streets as the bells rang and the candles were lit. There, he held the balance. He turned away spirits clinging to false promises, he bound those who sought to feed on fear. And he reminded the ancestors that this was not their time to judge, but to watch. These were tasks he resented in part, because many of those celebrating and drinking in New Orleans did not deserve such protection in his eyes. But his magic did not discriminate... it worked on everything, on everyone... worthy or not.
The witcher did not join any celebrations, he never did. He spent the night alone, seeing himself as what he had always been: a tool that had to function so that the world would not tip further out of balance. He did not deny others their festivities, some of them were sincere, searching for love, companionship, something resembling closeness. Most, however, drowned themselves in spectacle, grand parties, excess, waste.. throwing away food that could have kept others alive. You learned to live with that hypocrisy, you learned to judge it constantly. Romain could not cleanse the filth from those who wrapped themselves in virtue, nor could he convince them to live differently, to share instead of hoard.
And he did not want to... that was not his task.
His only concern was to do what needed to be done, and to survive it himself, because this time did not pass over him gently, and it would leave its mark.