2025-10-27 10:38:24Morning came late in Valehollow.
Fog blanketed the village so thickly that the church bell sounded as if it were tolling from the bottom of the sea. Cassian stood on the chapel’s threshold, gazing at the small square still slick with last night’s rain. One by one, villagers arrived carrying bread, dried flowers, and candles to place on the stone altar outside the fence.
“For calming the night spirits,” an old woman told him with a faint smile.
He walked back into the church, trying to light the candles on the main altar, but their flames flickered as if resisting survival. The room was damp and cold, and the faint metallic smell still lingered in the air—the last traces of blood from the night before.
He looked up at the cross on the wall. The crack in it seemed larger than yesterday.
A young woman stood there. Pale, her long black hair fell loose beneath a wool hood. Her dark eyes seemed to absorb the light.
“Father Cassian?”
“I… I’m afraid.” Her voice was barely a whisper. “Every night I see myself standing at the window. But my reflection doesn’t move when I do. Sometimes… it smiles.”
Cassian tightened his jaw. “Do you have a mirror in your house?”
“Yes.”
“Break it. And pray before you sleep.”
Mara—that was her name—bowed her head. “I already did, Father. But my reflection appears elsewhere. In water. In spoons. In the eyes of children who look at me.”
The church bell rang softly, three times. Cassian studied Mara for a long while before finally saying, “Come to evening mass. I’ll pray for you.”
He watched her leave, her figure slowly swallowed by the fog. When the door closed, Cassian noticed that the floor where she had stood was still wet—though the rain had stopped since dawn. The small puddle trailed toward the altar like a path of walking tears.
By late afternoon, Father Bren came to the church—a frail old man with trembling hands and clouded eyes. He brought bread, and news.
“Father Cassian,” he said quietly, “I saw something last night.”
Cassian turned. “What?”
“Two of you walking down the main road. One went into the church… the other toward the forest.”
Cassian froze, then forced a faint smile. “Perhaps your eyes deceived you, Father Bren.”
“Perhaps,” the old man replied with a smile. “But only one of them left footprints on the ground.”
Cassian said nothing. He only looked at the tall window beside the altar, where his own shadow warped strangely in the evening light.
Night fell like fog pressing the breath from his chest.
Glass.
He turned sharply. At the far end of the room, a small mirror used for confession rituals hung crooked on the wall. The crack in it was new. He approached slowly, the hem of his robe brushing dust.
His reflection in the mirror looked darker than the room around it.
Cassian touched the crack. “That’s enough…” he whispered. “I won’t let you show yourself again.”
His reflection smiled. He did not.
A chill spread from his fingertips, as if the glass pulsed beneath his touch. The altar candles went out one by one, leaving only a single trembling flame behind the mirror. In that reflection, Cassian saw himself turn around—even though he was standing still.
Then the reflection lifted its hand first.
Cassian stepped back, eyes wide.
“Mara didn’t see her reflection tonight… because I’m using yours.”
“Who are you?” His voice was low, but the tremor betrayed his fear.
Inside the mirror, Cassian’s shadow tilted its head. The movement was off—slightly delayed, like a mimic. Then the smile changed. Wide. Too wide.
“Have you forgotten?” the voice whispered from behind the glass. “I’m the one who called you that night. The one who made you come to this village.”
“Leave this place…” he murmured, barely audible.
But the reflection only bowed its head slightly, as if in prayer, and said softly,
The toll of the bell suddenly shattered the silence.
Only his own image remained—or something like it—but expressionless.
He turned quickly as hurried footsteps approached outside the chapel. Many feet, the rustle of damp clothes, and broken whispers of prayer.
The church door opened slowly.
Mara stood in the doorway, wearing a gray dress clinging to her skin from the dew. Her face was even paler than that morning, her lips tinged blue, but in her eyes something glimmered like an ember.
Behind her, several villagers entered—men and women—all silent, heads bowed, their hands clutching unlit candles.
“Father Cassian,” he said softly, “we’ve come… for mass, as you asked.”
Cassian exhaled, voice steady. “Very well. Let us begin the service. We’ll perform a cleansing for you too—you’ll be protected from whatever you saw in the glass.”
But Mara didn’t move. She stayed by the doorway, smiling the same unmoving smile.
It wasn’t a warm smile. It looked more like a wound shaped to resemble joy.
“My child,” Cassian said gently, “sit in the front row.”
“I already am,” Mara replied softly.
Cassian frowned.
“No,” he muttered. “You’re still standing there.”
Mara’s grin widened, baring her perfectly straight teeth as her eyes bulged.
Before Cassian could respond, a rough hand touched his shoulder.
“Father Cassian?” Father Bren’s voice.
Cassian turned—and all the blood drained from his face.
Between the wooden pews, Mara sat in the very front row, wearing different clothes: a plain white dress, dry, as if freshly pressed.
Her hair was neatly combed, and in her lap lay a black rosary that belonged to no one in the village.
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14
The stairway the shadow had taken plunged far deeper than the previous tunnel, and the air grew heavier with each descending step, thick like damp velvet pressing against their lungs with oppressive weight.Cassian gripped the stone rail as he followed the twisting descent, and with every passing meter the sounds from the club above faded entirely, swallowed by an unnatural hush that felt ancient, deliberate, and aware of their presence.Celene’s footsteps echoed behind him with unsettling clarity, each tap too loud in the silence, as though the stairwell wished to amplify her fear and feed on it like a starving creature tasting blood.When they finally reached the bottom, a vast chamber opened before them, carved into a perfect circular shape with pillars resembling humanoid figures holding up the ceiling, their stone hands stretched overhead as if forever praying for forgiveness.An altar stood at the center of the room, but unlike the basement beneath the basilica, this one pulsed
13
The derelict chapel at the edge of the eastern district felt wrong from the moment Cassian and Celene stepped beneath its shattered archway, as though the remaining structure mourned a history it could no longer carry.Rain-soaked wind swept through the broken stained glass, scattering colored fragments across the floor that glittered faintly like dried tears beneath the muted daylight.Cassian surveyed the interior with cautious breath, noticing how the shadows clung unnaturally to the corners even though the sun should have dispelled them, and he sensed a presence lingering like a memory refusing to fade.Celene moved closer to him, clutching the hilt of her concealed ritual dagger beneath her cloak, and her tense expression revealed she felt the same invisible eyes watching from the dark.“We should not stay long,” she whispered, her voice barely a breath, “because something in this place has been waiting far too patiently.”Cassian nodded, scanning the cracked tiles for any sign o
12
The morning after the bell tolled three times, Valenfort awoke beneath a sky the color of diluted ash, and the citizens moved through the streets with the quiet dread of people convinced something terrible had already chosen them.Cassian walked beside Celene toward the eastern district where the church guards had supposedly discovered a body, and every step felt heavier than the last because he already sensed the corpse would not resemble anything natural.The eastern district was usually filled with bakers opening shutters, children running barefoot, and merchants preparing their stalls, but today the entire street stood eerily empty as though the whole neighborhood had collectively agreed to hide.A cluster of armored guards stood around a boarded door, their hesitant posture revealing fear they could not mask despite the rigid discipline of the Church’s enforcement order.When Cassian approached, several guards stiffened while others subtly reached for their weapons as if expectin
11
Celene did not speak for the first several minutes after they fled the underground chamber, and Cassian could tell she was choosing her silence carefully rather than losing her voice to panic.They stepped into the cloister hallway where moonlight washed through the tall arched windows, painting pale stripes along the floor that looked disturbingly like bars of a cage they had both unwillingly stepped into.Cassian leaned against the stone column, trying to calm the frantic tremor in his hands, though the shaking worsened when he thought about the reflection speaking with a voice shaped perfectly like his own.Celene kept her distance at first, watching him as though he were a cracked vessel leaking something dangerous into the air, yet her breathing gradually steadied enough for her to approach him.“You were not supposed to see that room,” she said with a quiet intensity that felt more like a verdict than an explanation, her eyes fixed on him with a mixture of fear and reluctant res
10
Cassian waited until the last of the choir boys extinguished their lanterns and followed Ardent up the winding stairwell toward the clergy’s quarters, leaving the basilica echoing with hollow breaths of cold evening air.The silence felt wrong, as if the walls themselves inhaled in anticipation of something he was not meant to hear, yet absolutely meant to discover.He moved through the nave with deliberate steps, each footstep softened by the worn crimson runner that stretched to the altar like a vein carved into the marble.When he reached the small wooden gate behind the pulpit, he felt an unexplainable pressure hugging his ribs, an invisible warning urging him to stop, but stopping had long ceased being an option for him.The gate creaked open with the slightest push, revealing a cramped stairwell descending into the basilica’s lower foundation where the choir stored their props and where the priests claimed old relics slept.Cassian had visited the storage room once before and fo
9
Seven years ago.The night outside the window glowed with a cold silver light. The wind shook the old trees in the yard of their grandmother’s long-abandoned house. The air was thick with dust and damp earth, yet that night, two brothers stood in the middle of the living room, watching a shadow on the wall that moved without light.Cassian held a small lantern, while Elias gripped a short sword etched with the sign of the cross.“He’s here,” Elias whispered. “I heard him when we opened the back door.”Cassian took a deep breath. “Don’t act rashly.”“Too late for that, brother.” Elias’s gaze lifted toward the ceiling. “Look.”The ceiling trembled softly. From between the rotten boards, black liquid began to drip—falling to the floor like blood flowing backward.Cassian pulled a small book from his coat pocket—Manual Obscura, a copy of an old scripture known only to the Church’s highest-ranking demon hunters.He read quickly in Latin:“Fiat lux in tenebris, et umbra cadat in nomen Domin
