Page 117

The walls feel closer now. The air heavier.

A sob claws up my throat, bitter and raw.

I want to tear the journal apart. Rip every page. Scatter the ashes to the wind.

But I don’t.

Because the truth isn’t trapped in these pages.

It’s written in me.

Every word he scrawled, every sermon he preached, every secret he buried beneath scripture, it’s in my blood, my bones, the marrow of the monster he shaped with his hands.

This… this isn’t just his gospel.

It’s mine now.

I close the journal gently, my fingers lingering on the cracked leather cover. “You didn’t just burn this place down,” I whisper. “You lit me up with it.”

It settles in my chest. Heavy. Permanent.

Maybe I was never meant to escape him.

Maybe I was forged from the fire all along.

A rustling breaks the silence, soft, insidious.

I freeze. Every nerve fires. Another shuffle. Closer.

“Who’s there?” My voice echoes, thin and hollow.

A figure shifts from the shadows. Warren Lewis steps forward, moving with the slow, deliberate grace of someone who already owns the room. The faint stench of smoke clings to his coat. His hands hang loose, but the air tightens around him, like the walls are leaning closer.

“I knew you’d come,” he says, voice low and steady, a serpent’s lullaby. “The prodigal always returns to the altar, even if it burned them to ash.” He lifts his eyes to mine, a glint of cruel knowing behind them. “You’re your father’s daughter, Lydia. Born of brimstone and Sunday best. You think you walked away, but this place, this fire, it’s in your marrow. It calls you back like smoke calls a house down.”

He leans forward, voice dropping to a whisper that feels colder than a shout. “You blame the blaze for your scars, but deep down, you miss the heat. People like us, we don’t fear the fire. We build churches in its name.”

I don’t allow his words to affect me. I don’t want to show him how he affects me.

“You think you’re the only one with one of my father’s journals?” I ask, picking up the journal and dropping it back on the pulpit. I hold his stare, letting the silence stretch between us until it hums like a live wire. “Of course you didn’t. You’re too smart for that, Warren,” I say at last, my voice low and clear. “He wrote these entries because he needed to dress the sin up in scripture. Needed a doctrine to justify the damage.” I step forward, the knife a quiet weight in my pocket. “I don’t need scripture, Warren. I don’t need permission. I know exactly what I am.”

Warren’s mouth twitches, somewhere between a smirk and a sneer. “Just like him,” he murmurs, something between regret and reverence in his eyes. “You carry the fire, same as he did.”

I shake my head slowly, pulling the blade free with steady fingers. “No, Warren. I am the fire.”

He watches me for a beat, then his smile shifts, cold now, gleaming.

A low chuckle rolls from his chest, thick as oil. “You think you know the whole story, Lydia, but you don’t.”

I tilt my chin, blade glinting between us. “Why so talkative now, Warren? After all this time, what’s got your tongue so loose? I didn’t even know you were involved until a few days ago. Always figured you for background noise, a man who let his wife and daughter suffer while he polished pews and looked the other way.”

His smile widens. “That’s the story you needed, isn’t it? That I was weak. That your father stood tall, and the rest of us were just shadows behind him.”

He steps forward, boots rasping across old wood. His eyes drop to the blade, then rise to meet mine without flinching.

“But we were never shadows, Lydia. We were his hands. His teeth.”

He leans in, his breath cold. “You think this sickness started with him? It didn’t. It’s older. Deeper. We didn’t build the fire. We kept it fed.”