It started with the sun.
At 11:11 a.m. on Day Six, the sun simply… dimmed.
Not an eclipse.
No clouds.
The light of the world turned the color of old ash.
Streetlights flickered on automatically across every continent.
Animals went silent.
Children began to cry without knowing why.
Then the wind came.
A wind that carried no temperature, only dread.
It swept across oceans, deserts, cities, forests—blowing out every candle that had not been blessed, extinguishing every flame not lit in the name of the Lamb.
The Three Days of Darkness—prophesied by saints from Anna Maria Taigi to Marie-Julie Jahenny—had arrived twenty-four hours early.
Because the world had rejected the Warning.
In Rome, Sofia felt it first.
She was in the ruins of the Sistine Chapel, kneeling amid shattered marble and smoking frescoes, when the light changed.
She looked up through the torn roof.
The sky had turned the color of dried blood.
The creature that had worn Alessandro was nowhere to be seen—only a pile of white cassock rags soaked in black ichor.
But something far worse was coming.
She stood, olive-wood rosary clenched in both hands.
The wind hit the Vatican like a fist.
Every unmarked soul in the city screamed at once.
Then fell silent.
Sofia ran.
She ran through corridors that now bled shadow, past windows showing streets where people clawed at their own faces as unseen things dragged them into darkness.
She reached the Pauline Chapel—the last place the Blessed Sacrament still remained exposed.
The monstrance on the altar blazed like a star against the dying light.
Six Swiss Guards and Monsignor Moretti knelt before it, faces radiant with the seal.
They looked up as she burst in.
"It's here," Sofia said. "Early."
Moretti nodded, unsurprised.
"We felt it. The angels told us in the Warning—'Prepare the refuge.'"
He gestured to the walls.
Every window had been boarded over and sealed with blessed wax.
Every door framed with crucifixes dipped in holy oil.
Candles—hundreds of them—blessed beeswax only, burned in perfect circles around the altar.
Sofia understood.
The Pauline Chapel had become a new Ark.
"How many can we fit?" she asked.
"As many as Heaven sends," Moretti said.
Already the doors were rattling.
Voices outside—human voices—begging, screaming, pounding.
"Open! Please! The things—they're in the dark!"
Sofia walked to the main door and pressed her hand against it.
She prayed one decade—fast, fierce.
The pounding stopped.
Then began again—gentler.
A woman's voice, sobbing:
"I saw my sins… I want Jesus… please…"
Sofia opened the door a crack.
A young mother stood there, unmarked, clutching a toddler whose forehead now bore a faint, newborn seal.
Behind her, hundreds more crowded the corridor—former GEA officers, tourists, cardinals who had hidden their faith, street children—all weeping, all begging.
The darkness behind them writhed with shapes that had too many limbs.
Sofia opened the door wide.
"Come in. Quickly."
They poured in—five hundred, six hundred, more—until the chapel was packed shoulder to shoulder.
The doors closed by themselves.
The blessed candles burned brighter.
Outside, the howling began.
In Michigan, the monastery tunnels became a cathedral of light.
Father Elijah, Diego, Dom Pius, and the entire Rosary Army—now thousands strong after the Warning conversions—knelt in circles around a hundred blessed candles.
The darkness above ground was absolute.
But below, the seals on their foreheads glowed like lanterns.
Father Elijah held the Miraculous Medal Sofia had given him against his heart.
He led the Glorious Mysteries.
Every "He descended into hell" sent a pulse of light through the stone.
Demons battered the tunnel entrances—claws scraping, voices promising every pleasure if they would only open the door.
No one did.
Across the world, the pattern repeated.
Every home with a blessed candle still burning became a refuge.
Every soul who had repented in the Warning and refused the Mark found shelter—sometimes in churches, sometimes in basements, sometimes in strangers' houses where someone had remembered the old prophecies.
Those who had hardened their hearts after the Warning…
The darkness took them.
Their screams lasted exactly three minutes.
Then silence.
In Rome, the Pauline Chapel shook as though giants walked the earth.
The creature—fully manifest now, no longer hiding in human skin—circled the Vatican like a dragon.
Its wings blotted out what little light remained.
It spoke in a voice that rattled the foundations:
"GIVE ME THE GIRL."
Sofia stood before the monstrance.
She lifted the olive-wood rosary.
And began the Sorrowful Mysteries aloud.
Six hundred voices joined her.
The chapel filled with crimson light.
The creature screamed and struck the roof.
Stone cracked.
Dust rained.
But the building held.
Hour after hour.
The darkness deepened.
Time lost meaning.
They prayed without ceasing—fifteen decades, then fifteen more, then fifteen again.
Children fell asleep on parents' shoulders.
Old men wept quietly.
Former enemies held hands.
Sofia's voice never faltered.
At what might have been midnight, the creature tried a new tactic.
The doors opened by themselves.
No wind.
No force.
Just… opened.
Darkness poured in like ink.
Shapes moved within it—faces of the damned, hands reaching, mouths promising peace if they would only step outside.
A young Swiss Guard—barely eighteen—stood.
He walked toward the open door.
His mother screamed his name.
Sofia stepped in front of him.
She placed the rosary around his neck.
He froze.
Then fell to his knees, sobbing.
The darkness recoiled.
The doors slammed shut.
The candles burned higher.
Somewhere in the endless night, Sofia felt the monastery praying with her.
She felt every sealed soul on earth linked by the same beads, the same words.
She felt Pope Benedict—freed now, hidden in the catacombs beneath St. John Lateran—praying the same mysteries.
She felt Sarah Kline in heaven, interceding with every Hail Mary.
And she felt Our Lady.
Standing behind her.
Blue mantle.
Hands outstretched.
Crushing.
The creature outside howled in fury and struck again.
The chapel roof finally gave.
Stone rained down.
But the debris stopped mid-air, held by invisible wings.
St. Michael and his angels formed a dome of fire above the ruined ceiling.
The creature struck the dome and burned.
It fled shrieking into the outer darkness.
The candles did not go out.
The darkness lasted exactly seventy-two hours.
But on earth it felt like eternity.
When the first ray of true sunlight pierced the blood-colored sky on what should have been Day Seven morning, the world was changed.
Half the population was gone—taken by the darkness.
The other half knelt in the light, weeping with joy.
In the Pauline Chapel ruins, Sofia stood amid the debris.
The monstrance was intact.
The Host still blazed.
Six hundred souls—alive, unmarked, radiant—knelt around her.
She looked up at the clearing sky.
One day remained.
But the creature was wounded.
And the Immaculate Heart was winning.
Day Six had ended.
One remained.
To be continued…