I clasp my head and scream. These night terrors. Some nights I can’t escape them. They fold into each other, twisting into haunting memories I cannot outrun. It always takes time for my mind to understand what is happening and to remember that none of it is real.
That I am not really here, and this is all just a messed-up figment of my imagination.
This one is the worst of all, and I do not want to face it or hear what I know comes next. Yet it arrives before I can brace myself.
This time, my stomach is swollen, tight with a contraction. I am holding my legs and bent forward—the pain is nearly unbearable. I take deep breaths for calm and try to wake, but another labor pain seizes me. My stomach clenches hard around my womb. I bear down and shout, the agony splitting me apart. I scream not only from the pain but from the sickening frustration of reliving this over and over.
My heart gallops as if it alone is fighting to signal I must wake.
A thin, pitiful wail rises through the cavern. A baby's cry. It echoes off the stone and into me, and the sound jerks me awake.
My new bedroom chamber is silent, although the memory of that cry clings to the edges of the silence and the shadows. As it has for many years, it will follow me for the rest of the days.
Tears rise fast and spill over. My chest lifts and falls in uneven, desperate breaths. I cover my face with shaking hands. “Just a dream. Just a dream. They are dead. You are alone. It was just a dream.”
If only the dead did not live so vividly in my mind.
In all these years alone, I have never learned how to escape them. Perhaps that is my punishment for everything I have done to earn this so-called honor.
Chapter Three
Where Is Your God Now
The Chosen
Year 2236
It begins on a day of rest. A Sunday. All the important turns in my life seem to choose holy days.
I am in the room where I have spent most of my solitude in recent years, Grand Minister Judiah’s private quarters. A woven prayer pillow, embroidered with Mary Magdalene’s sorrowful face, cushions my knees. My breaths are steady as I attempt to empty my mind of wayward thoughts and sink deeper into reflection.
The mountain interrupts my morning meditation.
The earth lets out a long, low moan. Not a human sound. Not anything natural. A cavernous, rolling groan, followed moments later by a violent shudder that ripples through the monastery as though its bones have been hollowed out.
The floor rises, and I lose my balance. The prayer pillow slides out from beneath my knees. I lurch up to my feet without thinking. Another vibration follows, stronger, pushing through the stone walls like a wave.
The ceiling gives the first warning.
A sharp crack splits through the beige plaster, clean and decisive. It widens with startling speed, racing to the far side of the room. Another crack opens across the right wall and climbs upward in a jagged diagonal. Parts of the ceiling break off and rain down, along with clumps of earth, when the rock above is exposed.
It’s as if the chamber is being pried open by unseen hands.
A golden cross on the wall crashes to the floor.
Outside air, which I have not felt in years, whips into the room. It nearly wipes out the flame inside a nearby lantern on the Grand Minister’s desk. Books vacate shelves, and a small bust of St. Augustine rattles off a small table and breaks on impact.
I rush around and gather what I can, the important items, the Good Book being the first, the extension to it. After quickly wrapping them up into a blanket, I snag the essentials—my cloak, the dagger the Grand Minister gave me on the day of his death—before racing out the door.
Using the monastery walls, I anchor and steady myself as I go. The tremors have become more pronounced by the second. I do not have long. I know that much. Still, it’s troubling to think that even here, in the very heart of the mountain, I am not safe from whatever force is rocketing the earth.
Yes, I knew it was coming. Not the day. Not what exactly would unfold. And I was not sure if here, I would sense anything happening in the world above. For all I know, the events may already have taken place. It is exactly the doubts that have plagued me these past years. That I have been negligent in my service to Him and have missed days on which I should be doing something other than sitting idle. I should be above, starting the hunt.
From the devastation being wrought through the monastery as it begins to fall apart, that was not true. It begins now. The waiting.
Food and various dried goods have already been secreted away. If I can make it, I will be able to sustain myself for some time. But should I be cut off from those supplies, all will be for naught. This is the only thing on my mind as I hurry down hallway after hallway.
I must get to the chamber the Grand Minister showed me the day he gave me my final instructions, or die trying.
