It gives without resistance, opening inward with a slow, hollow sound, revealing the dim interior, the candles still burning, their light trembling along the walls.
"Come."
The air shifts once more, and he enters.
Inside, the priest stands before the altar. The cross is clutched in his hand, his lips moving without pause, the words spilling out in a rush, each one thrown forward as though it might strike, might hold, might drive us back.
He does not look at Lucian. Only me.
"Depart—" his voice cracks, rises again, louder, "depart from this body—"
The water leaves his hand in sudden arcs, splashing across the space between us.
It strikes my arm.
A sound rises, a faint hiss that curls into the air and makes the skin beneath it blisters in pale, wet shapes that fade almost as soon as they form. The sensation flickers—brief, distant, ridiculous.
The priest's face has changed, the certainty fractured.
"Be gone—" he forces out, the cross trembling in his grip. "In the name of—"
Lucian closes the distance in a breath, hand closing around the priest’s throat, lifting him from the ground with a slow, deliberate ease. The vessel falls, shattering against the stone, water and fragments scattering across the floor.
The priest’s feet leave it.
His hands claw at Lucian’s wrist, the cross slipping from his grip, striking the ground, spinning once before coming to rest.
Lucian watches him. Smiles.
"You men of God," he drawls, almost fond. "You never fail to delight me."
The priest chokes, his lips still moving ceaselessly, still forming words that no longer reach anything.
"Always so certain the door will open for you… and never for anything else."
The candles burn low along the altar, their flames small, steady, untouched by what has entered this place. I take one. The wax is warm where it has begun to soften, the flame bending slightly as I lift it, as though it, too, recognizes what it is about to become.
I walk to him, and he sees me now. His eyes widen, not in recognition, nor mercy, but with something that trembles between both and finds neither. Still, his lips move. Still, he prays.
The candle touches cloth.
For a moment, nothing. Then the fabric darkens, curls where the flame catches. It spreads slowly at first, licking along the edge of his sleeve, a thin line of orange that creeps upward, almost hesitant, as though testing what it has been given. The smell rises with it, filling the air before heat has time to follow.
He never stops.
His voice wavers, falters, then steadies again, the words forcing themselves through a throat that no longer fully obeys him. The fire climbs, finding the folds of his cassock, slipping into them, feeding, growing.
Lucian does not let him go.
The flame deepens. It takes hold. The cloth peels back to reveal the skin beneath, and when it does, the sound changes. A wet crackle replaces the soft hiss, the fire no longer skimming but consuming.
His voice breaks, an involuntary sound escaping him before he forces the words back, louder now, faster, as though he might outrun what climbs his body, what eats through him piece by piece. The skin blisters, swells, splits open in places where heat gathers strongest, the flesh beneath exposed, curling inward as it feeds without pause.
Finally, the prayer ends. The scream begins in its place.
It tears out, raw and uncontained, nothing left to shape it, nothing left to hold it back. The body jerks, twisting in Lucian’s grip, the fire now everywhere, devouring cloth and flesh alike.
At last, Lucian releases him.
