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Closer. Closer.

A hand fists my hair, yanks hard.

Pain rips through my scalp as I’m wrenched backward, the glass tumbling from my grasp, shattering against the stone with a sharp, final crack.

They slam me back against the altar, my spine jolting against wood, breath knocked from my lungs.

Clyde looms over me, his face a mask of twisted fury, his eyes alight, wild and consuming. He grabs my arm, tight and bruising, as he drags me into the center of the room.

The men close in around us, their faces a storm of anger, confusion, fear.

“This is your last chance, Lydia,” Clyde says, his voice low but lethal. “Fall in line. Accept your place. Or face the consequences.”

I lift my head, blood dripping down my chin, tasting iron, tasting defiance. I meet his gaze steady. Unyielding. Mine.

“You’ll burn,” I whisper, my voice shaking but unbroken. “Every last one of you.”

Clyde’s jaw clenches. His lips press into a hard, pale line.

He turns to the men, his voice rising, cold and resolute.

“He that believeth not shall be damned,” Clyde intones, his voice clear, unwavering. “Mark 16:16.” The words fall heavy, final, like a gavel striking stone. “She has chosen her path.”

He draws the knife from his belt, the blade glinting in the dim light, clean, cold, waiting.

He kneels beside me, his movements slow, reverent, like a man approaching an altar.

“For the wages of sin is death,” he whispers, his breath warm against my cheek. His voice is gentle. Almost loving. “And you, Lydia… you have sinned.”

The blade finds my chest.

And then, it plunges deep.

Pain rips through me, white-hot, blistering, consuming. It blooms outward, a shockwave, a fire, a scream trapped inside bone.

But even as the pain swells, even as the world tilts and spins and darkens. I hold onto it.

That flicker.

That flame.

That last defiant spark.

They didn’t break me.

Not completely.

Not yet.

The girl’s face. The one thing I couldn’t save.

The darkness swallows me whole.

EPILOGUE

The room reeks of blood and sweat, the acrid tang of dying candles mingling with the suffocating heat. Shadows ripple along the walls, flickering and restless, as if they can feel what’s just happened.

Lydia Anderson’s body lies crumpled, naked, and bruised on the floor, her eyes wide open and unseeing, fixed on the ceiling in open, unblinking defiance. She is not breathing. She will not breathe again.