Evening of Day Three.
The loggia above St. Peter's Square had been transformed into an open-air dining hall for the world.
Long white table draped in gold cloth.
Crystal glasses.
Cameras from every surviving network positioned at perfect angles.
Billions watched live—some in hope, some in terror, some already wearing the Mark and laughing at the "last fanatic."
Sofia walked out at 8:00 p.m. sharp.
She wore the same simple white dress from the monastery, now cleaned and mended by unseen hands.
Brown scapular visible.
Bare feet.
Alessandro rose to greet her, white cassock catching the floodlights like moonlight.
He pulled out her chair.
The world held its breath.
Sofia did not sit.
Instead she placed the small golden pyx—the one Dom Pius had given her on the airstrip—on the exact center of the table.
Alessandro's smile froze.
"What is this?"
"The reason I came," Sofia said calmly.
She opened the pyx.
Inside lay the single Host consecrated three nights earlier in Michigan, still radiating faint warmth.
Alessandro stared at it as though it were a live grenade.
"You brought contraband into my house," he said softly. "A piece of bread you believe becomes—"
He could not finish the sentence.
The word caught in his throat like a bone.
Sofia looked straight into the nearest camera—straight into the eyes of every soul still watching—and spoke in clear, gentle Spanish first, then English, then Italian.
"This is not bread.
This is the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ, true God and true Man.
The same Jesus who rose from the dead and took every child into heaven the night the world ended."
She lifted the Host between thumb and forefinger, holding it high for the cameras.
"I have come to Rome to offer Him to you one last time."
Alessandro's face contorted.
Every light on the loggia flickered.
The temperature dropped twenty degrees in seconds.
He raised one hand—and could not lower it.
His fingers locked in a claw.
Sofia began the prayer before Communion aloud:
"Lord, I am not worthy that You should enter under my roof…"
The Host in her fingers began to glow.
First soft gold.
Then brighter.
Then brilliant white.
Alessandro stumbled backward, knocking over his chair.
The floodlights exploded one by one.
The cameras kept rolling on emergency batteries.
Billions watched as the Host levitated from Sofia's fingers and hovered three feet above the table, spinning slowly.
Then it bled.
A single drop of real, red blood formed on the lower edge—perfect, luminous, alive.
The drop fell.
It struck the white tablecloth and spread into the perfect image of the Shroud of Turin face—eyes closed, thorn-crowned, serene.
Another drop.
This one struck Alessandro's empty wine glass and turned to real wine—deep red, fragrant, warm.
The glass overflowed without breaking.
Alessandro screamed.
Not in Italian.
Not in any human tongue.
A sound like mountains cracking.
He clawed at his own face, drawing black blood that smoked where it touched the marble floor.
Sofia never flinched.
She continued the prayer:
"…but only say the word and my soul shall be healed."
The bleeding Host lowered gently into her hands.
She consumed it.
The moment it touched her tongue, light exploded from her entire body—pure, blinding, Eucharistic.
Every screen broadcasting the feed went white for seven full seconds.
When vision returned, Sofia stood alone on the loggia.
Alessandro was on his knees twenty feet away, retching black bile that writhed and dissolved before it hit the ground.
The tablecloth still bore the face of Christ in blood.
The wine glass still overflowed without ceasing.
Sofia looked into the cameras again.
"Jesus Christ is alive.
He is here.
He is coming back.
"Refuse the Mark.
Pray the Rosary.
Receive Him worthily while there is still time."
She made the Sign of the Cross over the world.
Every sealed soul watching—hundreds of thousands now—felt the Host rest on their own tongue spiritually.
Millions without the seal fell to their knees in apartments, streets, Mark centers, and began weeping without knowing why.
In the monastery in Michigan, Father Elijah dropped the Miraculous Medal he had been clutching for three days and began laughing and crying at once.
In his underground cell, Pope Benedict felt the chains fall from his wrists entirely and clattered to the stone floor.
Alessandro finally looked up, face twisted beyond human.
"You… will… regret… this…"
Sofia walked to him, knelt, and placed her hand on his forehead.
Where she touched, the skin burned with the shape of a cross.
He shrieked and scrambled away.
"Day Three," Sofia said quietly. "Four left."
She stood and walked back inside, leaving the bleeding tablecloth and the overflowing chalice for the world to see.
The broadcast cut to static.
But every recording of those seven minutes went viral before Alessandro's technicians could scrub them.
By midnight, the Mark centers in twelve major cities were empty.
By dawn, brown scapular enrollments had begun in secret again for the first time since the vanishings.
And deep beneath the Vatican, something ancient howled in chains that were suddenly, inexplicably tighter.
Day Three had ended.
Four remained.
To be continued…