Marcus turned his attention to me.“And you accepted this arrangement?”
The question hung in the air.I felt Desiderius’s subtle tension, the way he shifted his weight almost imperceptibly.One wrong word could destroy our deception before it began.
I swallowed hard, the dryness in my throat making the words scrape out.“We had nowhere else to turn.”My eyes dropped to the floor in practiced submission.“After Silas fell, we were...frightened.Desiderius was our only hope to prevent us from falling further from grace.Before our hunger drove us to further sin.”
“Grieving.”Marcus repeated the word as though tasting it.“You grieved for the man who made you monsters?”
The hunger twisted in my gut, sharpening into something like anger.But I forced it down, remembering Matthias’s warnings.“We grieved for our shepherd, Brother Marcus.He didn’t turn me; I was bitten by another.He saved me, offering me a chance at redemption.Silas showed us that even the damned might serve God’s purpose.”
Something shifted in Marcus’s expression—not softening, but a subtle recalibration of his assessment.He looked at Matthias.“You vouch for them?”
“With my existence, Brother Marcus.”Matthias’s conviction rang clear.“I found them through divine providence, living like animals in an abandoned shelter, starving themselves rather than hunt the innocent.They could have fed on anyone in the past days, but they chose suffering over sin.”
Marcus stood, moving around the desk with deliberate steps.He stopped before Ruth, who trembled but held her ground.“And what of you?What did you do before your transformation?”
“I was a craftswoman,” Ruth said carefully.“The Order declared me a witch.I wasn’t, but Silas did what he believed necessary.”
“And now?”
“Now I serve a different purpose.”
He moved toward Rebecca, who couldn’t quite suppress her flinch.“You’re young.”
Rebecca nodded, unable to speak.I could feel her hunger like a second heartbeat, synchronized with my own.We were all walking a knife’s edge, and Marcus knew it.He was testing not just our loyalty but our control.
“The year of absence troubles me,” Marcus said, returning to his desk.“The Order cannot function without a proper hierarchy, without accountability.Your mentor—“ he gestured to Desiderius, ”—however well-intentioned, operated outside our structure.”
“I ask your forgiveness,” Desiderius said, bowing his head slightly.“My years of service have perhaps made me presumptuous.I should have brought them to the Order immediately, but I feared they weren’t ready.That they might fail your tests and be destroyed.”
“My tests are not arbitrary, Nightwalker.”The title came out sharp, a reminder of what we were.“They serve a purpose.”
“I understand that now,” Desiderius replied.“Which is why we’re here.To submit ourselves to your judgment, to prove our commitment to the cause.”
Marcus studied us for a long moment.The silence stretched until I thought I might scream.Under normal circumstances, Marcus might have ordered our immediate execution.But Matthias made it clear—to complete their “purge,” their purification, they needed Nightwalkers willing to sacrifice themselves for the cause.
“Very well,” Marcus said finally.“We shall see if your mentor has sufficiently prepared you for true service.”
He returned to his position behind the desk.From a drawer, he withdrew a leather-bound ledger and opened it to a blank page.The scratch of his pen seemed unnaturally loud as he began recording our names, our origins, the circumstances of our death and transformation.
“You will undergo the Ritual of Submission,” he announced, not looking up from his writing.“If you survive it with your faith intact, you’ll be granted provisional status within the Order.You’ll be assigned duties, supervised carefully, until you prove yourselves worthy of our cause.”
“We’re ready,” Desiderius said.
Marcus moved to the cabinet behind his desk, producing a key from a chain around his neck.The lock clicked open with the finality of a coffin lid closing.He withdrew a Bible bound in leather so ancient it had darkened to nearly black, its surface marred by dozens of palm-shaped burns.
Marcus set the Bible on his desk with the care of a priest preparing an altar for communion.“Since the Order began consecrating Nightwalkers, all who come to us as you do must undergo this ritual.”His finger hovered above a palm-shaped burn that had scorched through several pages.“Each mark bears witness to one like you who stood where you stand now.The depth tells its own story—how many faltered, how few succeeded.”
He opened the Bible to a page marked with a blood-red ribbon.I could see handwritten notes in the margins, surrounding the scorched handprints, all recording names and dates.A ledger of the damned who’d bought into the Order’s false gospel in the desperate pursuit of redemption.
“You will place your hand upon the Word,” Marcus instructed, his voice taking on the cadence of liturgy.“You will repeat the Oath of Service, word for word, without removing your hand regardless of the pain.Those who pull away, those who falter in their recitation, are judged unworthy of the chance we offer.”
“What happens to the unworthy?”Rebecca whispered.
Marcus’s expression didn’t change.“They are released from their temporal suffering, their souls left to the judgment of the Almighty.”
The euphemism hung in the air like incense smoke.Released.Destroyed.We all knew what it meant: a stake, fire, or the sun’s unforgiving light.
“Who begins?”he asked.
