Part 1 — 'The Silence Before Prayer'
The rain had not stopped for three nights.
It fell in slow, relentless sheets across the mountains, turning the cemetery road to mud and carving dark rivers through the grave mounds. When Victor reached the cathedral, its doors hung open like a mouth gasping for air. A thin mist slithered through the threshold, carrying the scent of wet stone and long-dead incense.
He paused just inside. His boots sank slightly into the sodden carpet of decayed hymnals. A cross — half-rotted, half-glimmering — leaned against the nearest wall. He traced its surface with a gloved hand. Silver flaked away beneath his touch.
"Sanctus… sanctus…" he murmured, voice barely audible. A prayer, or maybe a habit.
Inside, the nave stretched into shadow. Rain leaked through holes in the roof, hissing when it met the candle stubs still burning along the pews. The flamelight revealed them — the congregation.
At least forty bodies sat neatly in the benches, each upright, each facing the altar. Their skin had the color of paper soaked in milk. Some still wore rosaries. All had their eyes open.
Victor didn't flinch. He'd seen this before — the work of a predator who preferred ritual over carnage.
He walked the center aisle slowly, hand brushing against the silver cross at his neck. The air grew colder the nearer he came to the pulpit. Somewhere above, a bell swayed on its rusted hinge, ringing once, faintly, like the sigh of an old ghost.
A drip of blood — black, thick, fresh — fell from the ceiling and struck his shoulder.
Victor's gaze lifted.
Something moved in the rafters.
He exhaled, calm, deliberate. "You always did have a taste for theatrics, Cardinal," he said quietly.
The silence answered him first, then a low chuckle — wet, hollow, echoing through the rafters like the stirring of wings.
He unfastened his coat, revealing the twin pistols holstered beneath. The first gleamed like polished midnight, runes pulsing faintly silver along its slide. The second reflected candlelight in gold and white, its surface too perfect for mortal steel.
Victor drew both. Crossed them at his chest. Whispered the words that steadied his pulse:
"Deus, arma mea."
God, my weapon.
He stepped forward, boots clicking on stone, eyes fixed on the altar at the far end. A single candle burned there, defying the storm's draft. The flame trembled, then flared high — green, then crimson.
Somewhere above, the chuckle became a hiss.
Victor's lips curved slightly — not a smile, exactly. More like anticipation sharpening into prayer.
He lifted both pistols toward the altar and said softly, "Let's begin Mass."