There's a difference between feeling watched and being invited.
Being watched comes with tension, paranoia, and the sense that you are being stalked, evaluated, and marked.
But invitation? That comes with silence. The kind that settles too comfortably inside your chest, making you think that stepping into the dark is your idea. I couldn't resist it anymore.
I left just after midnight. I didn't wake Marin and didn't write a note. If I didn't come back, she'd know where to look—or not to look. I took nothing I couldn't carry silently—no lanterns, no firearms.
Just my journal, a bone spike in each sleeve, and the old crowbar I kept tied beneath the cot.
The chapel was breathing again. Not literally, but every stone felt warm, as if it had been sitting too long near a slow-burning fire. I followed that warmth to the eastern wall of the basement, the wall that didn't align with the foundation's blueprints.
The cracks had started two days ago, thin at first, but now they were wider, running vertically down the center seam where the old stone met the reinforced concrete. Last night, the crack hummed when I touched it. This morning, it responded. And tonight? It opened when I knocked.
Behind it, I found a staircase. It wasn't carved; it was formed, as if the stone had changed shape around the idea of descent.
The stairs led into a narrow corridor of blackened limestone and rough mineral, sloped like a funnel. The walls were slick, not with water, but with something thinner—something that evaporated faster than it should.
The steps were shallow, countless. I walked for ten minutes without seeing a bend, a branch, or even a crack in the wall. No insects, no moss, no life. Only down. At some point, I stopped keeping track of time. The slope sharpened and became steeper. My boots found more metal than stone beneath the moss-black lichen lining the walls. I didn't speak or breathe loudly.
Even my thoughts began to quiet. Because the deeper I went, the more I could feel it. Not a presence, not a being—just a pressure, like I had stepped into the lungs of something sleeping that had started to exhale.
The path finally curved and opened. The chamber beyond wasn't large—about twenty feet wide, circular, with a ceiling that glowed faintly blue, as if reflecting a moonlight that didn't exist. The floor was bone-white and clean.
In the center, a single object sat—a pedestal. And on it was my journal. Not the one I brought, but another copy, older, worn, and frayed along the edges. When I opened it, the first page was mine—my handwriting.
My first entry:
"Day 1. I still remember my name. Lucas Reed. Tacoma. Human. I think." I flipped to the next page, and then the next. They were all mine—exact words, same scratches, even the ones I had scribbled out. Every page was replicated with perfect accuracy up until Day 14.
Then… nothing. Blank. Untouched. As if everything that came after hadn't happened yet or, worse, wasn't supposed to.
I placed it back gently, didn't take it, and it didn't burn.
Just stepped back and turned slowly in the chamber. On the far wall was another triangle, smaller than the one at the culvert. It was more like a puncture than a mark.
Beneath it, carved into the wall in near-microscopic script, it read: "We do not shape the world.
We invite the world to shape itself in our image." No signature. No threat. Just intent—the kind that doesn't ask and the kind that waits.
I should've left then, turned back, returned to Marin, pretended the chapel was still just a shelter, not a mouth that fed on our stillness. But I didn't.
Because I wasn't scared, I was hungry for answers, for certainty, for proof that I was still me. Or that I'd become something worth writing about. I stayed in that chamber until the walls dimmed, until the light flickered in rhythm with something unseen, and until the air thickened, just enough to make my ears ring.
And when it did, I whispered into the quiet—not a name, not a demand—just one word: "Why?" The walls didn't answer, but the journal flipped itself to the last page. Written in a hand that looked like mine but wasn't,
it said: "Because you wrote us first." I left the chamber without looking back.
The stairs felt longer on the way up and sharper. I heard things on the climb—not voices, but readings. Lines I'd written once and forgotten—phrases from my journal echoing from nowhere:
"I remember my name…", "I ate him out of clarity…", "If I don't change, I die…" Every word I'd poured into that book came back out—not as memory, but as confirmation.
I was no longer observing Gluttony; I was narrating it. I returned to the chapel just before sunrise. The door sealed behind me with a hiss, a sound I didn't remember installing.
My hands shook as I undid my boots—not from fear, but from friction. Every nerve in my body felt wound tighter, and every thought carried weight it shouldn't. I tried to write, but the pen didn't work; it bent.
When I gripped it tighter, it cracked in my palm. I didn't wake Marin. I just sat beneath the altar, back against the stone, and watched the candlelight flicker over the broken faces of forgotten saints.
Day 22. The chapel is hollow beneath the stone. There are stairs, rooms, and things that were never completed. Something was left out of the journal that I hadn't written; it ended where I should have.
I saw my handwriting echoing itself and heard my voice repeated as evidence.I didn't eat today, but something inside me did. I no longer trust the words I write, but I trust the hunger that writes them.
Outside, the sky turned silver with morning, but the birds didn't sing, and the wind didn't rise. Yet beneath my feet, something shivered in the stone. For once, it didn't feel like a threat; it felt like a chorus, singing a song I had only just begun to remember.