Silence. The only sound was my own panting.
My legs buckled, and my knees hit the stone. I tried to push myself back up, but my body wouldn't obey.
My knife rattled against the stone floor. I gripped the handle tighter to stop it.
They were going to hang me.
I'd killed them and kept running because that's what the Order taught me to do. Kill when necessary. Protect yourself. Righteous violence was holy.
But they'd been the ones tying a noose.
Lorenzo had been right. About Azevedo. About the Foundation. About all of it. He must’ve been. Why else would they try to kill me?
I pushed myself up and followed the corridor deeper, boots splashing through puddles I couldn't see. The passage opened into a chamber that stole my breath.
Skulls lined the walls in careful rows, thousands of them stacked from floor to ceiling. Femurs and ribs filled the spaces between, arranged in patterns that might have been beautiful once, might have been prayers made of bone. A stone altar stood at the center, cracked and stained dark. Torchlight flickered across a fresco that covered the entire back wall, paint faded and crumbling but still visible after centuries.
St. Michael the Archangel towered above everything, wings spread wide, sword raised. Beneath him, a great horned dragon writhed in its death throes, the blade driven through its skull.
I stood among the bones of the faithful and stared up at my patron saint. How many of these skulls had belonged to priests like me? Warriors for the Church who'd killed when ordered, trusted when told, served until they were placed in these walls to watch over the living?
How many of them had asked the wrong questions?
My vision blurred, and I slammed my fist into the wall. The pain made me grit my teeth. The stigmata wound split wider. Fresh blood ran down my wrist, but I hit it again because the pain was better than the thing clawing its way up from my chest.
"Where were You?"
My voice echoed off the skulls and came back hollow.
"I prayed every night for you to save my mother. Begged You to save her, and You let her die, anyway."
The rage came up so fast it choked me. Three days. God had given me three days to process her death before He took Gabriel, too.
I hit the wall again, and the knife clattered from my grip.
"Six months and my father showed up with a replacement. He was just seven years old. Gabriel's age. And You watched him bite me. Watched my father smile like it was all going according to plan."
My fist hit the wall again. More blood.
"Then Azevedo. Sweet, gentle Azevedo, who told me I'd find purpose, who was selling children the whole time, and I signed the checks."
My voice cracked and turned vicious.
"I killed for You, and the second I asked questions, You let them put a noose around my neck."
Silence pressed back from the darkness. All these years, and He still had no answer for what he’d put me through.
My legs gave out, and I went down hard, knees cracking against stone. A sound ripped out of my throat that didn't sound human. My shoulders shook and I couldn't stop them, couldn't stop any of it. The sobs came up from somewhere deep and they wouldn't stop coming.
I pressed my forehead to the cold stone floor as the grief crashed over me in waves.
My whole body shook. My fists pressed against the stone until the stigmata wounds screamed. Salt and snot ran down my face and mixed with stone dust. The taste of it coated my tongue like I were swallowing the bones themselves.
The skulls watched me fall apart and didn't look away.
I don't know when the sobbing finally stopped. I just knew the chamber had gone quiet except for my ragged breathing.
I lifted my head. Stone dust and tears and blood crusted my face. My lips were cracked and tasted like copper and salt and centuries of death.
