Page 31 of Threads Of Madly Whispers

Kim’s tears turn to full-blown cries, her shoulders shaking with the force of her sobs.

“They sacrificed her,” she gasps through her tears. “And it’s my fault, it’s...”

She collapses to her knees, her cries raw and guttural as she weeps, her body racked with the overwhelming burden of what she has done.

Two days later, Kimberly’s body was found hanging at Haven’s Academy in one of the classrooms. She was a ballerina, so perhaps she found it fitting to show her last act in a place where she showed her talent.

Ever since then, we’ve gathered fragments that the investigators couldn’t piece together. Kim orchestrated Nova’s unwitting descent into a cult that ultimately led to her death. The Stamatoties, according to archived files, had died many years ago, yet their influence had been subtly revived, slowly reweaving its threads until people had begun vanishing from the town. And this church isone of the documented places where they conducted their rituals.

Nova didn’t deserve to die. Her death, along with the deaths of my parents, is a sin etched deep into my bones, a sacrilege we’ve vowed to avenge with every breath we take. To the world, we may appear as just three disillusioned souls, aimlessly seeking trouble, but they fail to see what we see, the shadows of anguish that cling to our hearts, the bitter thirst for vengeance, driven by the loss of someone irreplaceable.

Miro pushes open the heavy church doors, their rusted hinges groaning in protest, the screech slicing through the still air like a blade through flesh. On either side, rows of pews stretch out like forgotten prayers, and ahead, the long aisle leads to the tabernacle. The candles are unlit, their waxen forms cold and lifeless, a stark contrast to the darkness that fills the room.

There’s an oppressive sense to this place, a thousand years of sorrow and blood woven into its walls, and I feel the darkness close in around me, whispering things only the broken would understand.

This church, this hollow, harrowed place, reeks of charred wood and memories too foul to name. It is abandoned, yet strangely well-kept. As though it is visited often, but by whom? By what? The air hums with dread, the silence of a predator coiled in the shadows, watching, waiting for the inevitable.

“What exactly are we looking for?” I murmur, the question heavy in the air, pressing down on my chest.

“Anything that might matter,” Naseria replies, her gaze shifting to the confessional room, as though it holds the answers to everything. “I’ll start there.”

Miro and I exchange a glance, our footsteps echoing inthe vast emptiness as we move toward the altar. The air grows colder with each step, a chill creeping into my bones, thickening the silence like a suffocating fog.

“This place isn’t just dusty, it’s too clean. Too still.”

“I thought as much,” I whisper, a sense of dread creeping under my skin. The images from that night—the man, the blood, the scream, the sickening thud of the body hitting the ground—have never left me. They haunt me every waking moment, an inescapable nightmare that tightens around my throat.

The altar table is covered in… dried blood. The stench of burnt wood and metallic sting my nose and make bile rise up in my throat. On the table there is a book with a plain red cover. It’s thick and worn out. A circle is drawn around the wooden table with upside down cross symbols and greek wording written along the black line.

I flip open the book on the altar, it’s sight garnering my attention. The pages rustle, brittle and fragile, like they might crumble away at the slightest touch. The ink is fading, as if the words themselves are trying to escape or vanish. The first pages are in Greek, their symbols so alien to my mind I can’t grasp their meaning, but then I find the English. And when I do, the room feels smaller, as if the air itself has grown thick, suffocating.

“Serpents of the river, sigil of the moon, sacrifice of blood, servants of the dead, we must die...”

What does this mean? My fingers tremble as I try to absorb the meaning, but before I can decipher more, Naseria bursts from the confessional room, clutching a wooden box, her eyes wide with panic.

“Someone’s coming,” she breathes, her voice barely above a whisper, thick with fear. The blood drains from my face, cold dread seizing me.

We scramble to hide, crouching behind the pews. My heart pounds in my chest, fast and frantic, like a drumbeat in the still air. The doors creak open, and we freeze. Every muscle tightens, the silence deafening, the anticipation of what’s to come making it impossible to breathe. Footsteps grow louder, deliberate, slow—each one a reminder that we’re running out of time.

The figure steps into view, a silhouette draped in shadows, moving with purpose toward the altar. He sets something heavy on the table with a dull thud, the sound like the finality of a coffin being sealed. A phone rings, like the scream of something dying and for a moment, my breath catches, praying that he doesn’t hear the quiet gasp that slips from Naseria’s lips.

When the man answers, his voice is rough, guttural, growling through the stillness. The tension in my body grows, coiling, but there’s something unnerving in his words that makes my blood run cold. “Speak–” he pauses “ –take care of the situation. We no longer have time.”

The man leaves whatever he dropped onto the table and turns, disappearing into the confessional room, leaving behind an unsettling quiet.

“Let’s go,”I sign, my fingers shaking, my eyes darting around the room. Naseria hesitates, but I pull her close, urgency pulling me forward. There’s no time to lose. However, I snatch the book and the bag he left, our only clues to the twisted reality we’ve found ourselves in.

We slip from our hiding place, but the door groans, its hinges protesting. The sound cuts through the tension like a blade, loud and unforgiving. I feel the blood drain from my face as we move, panic rising like a tide in my chest. The man bursts out from the confessional room, his footsteps pounding behind us. We don’t stop. We run. We run asthough the hounds of hell are closing in on us, our bodies moving on pure instinct, the sound of pursuit heavy in our ears.

We don’t stop until we reach Naseria’s house, our legs aching and our breath ragged, but the terror won’t release us. The night feels endless, the shadows thick with something watching us.

Running through the forest has become a nightmare, a twisted rhythm that we can’t escape. It’s no longer just a chase—it’s survival. And I fear that soon, the very darkness we’ve stumbled into will consume us whole. The past is a chain around our necks, dragging us down, and I’m beginning to think it will never release us.

Chapter 17

Wild Rose

The Unbroken Circle

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