I confessed today. Not to the love of my life, or to my church. Although maybe I should've. I confessed to the murder of Elijah Rainaud, a bright young man, big future ahead of him. Happy. Something I couldn't feel. As if I can feel anything anyway. I'm absolutely numb.
I don't feel the way humans do. Never have, and I suppose never will. They told me I'm getting the chair. I think I was supposed to cry, or react. I sat there in silence, not feeling a thing. If I had to pinpoint a vague feeling I'd say I had an itch. An itch for the death they were gifting me on a silver platter. In reality, I've been longing for death from before I can even remember. I've tried everything I can to experience emotion. Drugs, alcohol, murder. You name it.
I've never qualified as human, clearly. Faking my way through life as if it wasn't as meaningless as I led on. Be that charismatic, funny young woman my mother had always wanted in a daughter. I killed her too. I tried to go to church, maybe to find solace in the nothingness that consumes my world. It was worthless of course, I'm too dirty.
It's almost like I watch my "life" through the third person. If you could even consider what I experienced living. As they strapped me down I thought to myself, maybe this is my second chance. Maybe as I float around the stars after life I can feel something. Anything.
But who am I kidding...happy endings don't happen to people—no. Things like me. For my time on earth and off are destined to be the same. Full of absolute nothingness and sin.
When the switch was flipped, I should have died.
I felt it all. The crackling surge of electricity, the muscles locking in place, the burning stench of flesh that should've marked my end. I should have gone silent, disappeared into the black. Instead, I woke up.
I wasn't in the chair anymore. I wasn't even in a prison cell. I was somewhere darker, deeper. The air was damp, smelling of iron and earth. Cold stone pressed against my back, and in the dim light, I saw the walls—lined with symbols I didn't recognize, shifting as if they were alive.
I should've been dead. But instead, I was here.
A voice called out of the darkness. Smooth, commanding, tinged with something I couldn't quite put my finger on. "Finnian Vance. You belong to us now."
I lifted my head. In the flickering torchlight, I saw them—figures draped in deep blue, faces obscured. A gathering of shadows. A congregation.
And at the center, standing above them all, was her.
Skylar Fernsby. My lover. My executioner. My captor.
She smiled like she already knew my every thought. Like she had known I would end up here long before I had.
The Ecclesium had come to claim me.
Skylar's gaze pinned me to the cold stone floor, her expression unreadable, poised between amusement and calculation. Behind her, the robed figures stood still as statues, their hoods swallowing what little light the torches provided. Their presence was oppressive, pressing against my ribs like a breath I couldn't release.
I sat up, my muscles sluggish, my head filled with static. "What is this?" My voice came out raw, as if I had screamed myself hoarse. Maybe I had. Maybe in that other place—the one I was supposed to die in—I had begged for my life. The thought made me sick.
Skylar descended the steps leading up to her throne—because of course, she had a throne. Every bit the ruler, she moved with the ease of someone who had no doubts, no weaknesses. She knelt before me, reaching out, and for a brief, foolish second, I thought she might touch me. Instead, she grabbed the iron collar locked around my throat, tilting my head up so I was forced to meet her eyes.
"You thought you could escape judgment so easily?" Her voice was velvet wrapped around steel. "The Ecclesium does not grant absolution. It claims what is owed."
Her fingers brushed against my pulse, lingering just long enough for me to know it was intentional. Just long enough for me to remember every time she had traced that same line before, but in the dark of our quarters, under much different circumstances.
I should've known she wouldn't let me die. Not yet. Not when she still had use for me.
I swallowed hard, shaking off the lingering paralysis. "What do you want from me?"
A slow smile unfurled across her lips. "What I've always wanted, Finn." She leaned in, close enough for her breath to ghost against my skin. "Loyalty."
The word curled inside my chest like a hook, pulling something loose.
Loyalty. A lie I had told her a thousand times before.
The robed figures moved in unison, their footsteps echoing like the tolling of a bell. One of them carried something wrapped in dark cloth, an object long and slender. A sword? A staff? No—something worse. They stopped before Skylar, kneeling as they presented it to her.
She unwrapped it with care, like an offering, revealing a dagger with a blade so black it seemed to drink the light around it. The hilt was wrapped in something dark red—leather, or something more unsettling. Skylar turned it in her hand, studying the way the torchlight flickered along its edge.
"This," she said, tracing a single finger along the blade, "is your salvation, Finn."
The dagger pulsed, a heartbeat not my own.
I knew, without needing to be told, that whatever this was—whatever it meant—it was the beginning of something far worse than death.
The dagger pulsed in Skylar's hand, its black blade humming with something I didn't want to understand. Something alive. Something aware.
The air in the chamber thickened, pressing against my lungs. My fingers twitched at my sides, an instinct I didn't quite recognize—fight or flight tangled in confusion. Skylar saw it. She always did.
She crouched in front of me, holding the dagger between us, tilting it just so. The flickering torchlight warped against its surface, twisting reflections into shapes that didn't belong in this world.
"You feel it, don't you?" Her voice was soft, coaxing, the way it had been when she whispered secrets into my skin. "The weight of something greater than yourself."
I forced a laugh, the sound rough in my throat. "Dramatic as ever."
Skylar's expression didn't change. "This is not a performance, Finn. This is your reckoning."
The robed figures surrounding us remained silent, motionless, as if waiting for something—waiting for me.
Skylar turned the dagger in her hand, offering it to me hilt-first. "Take it."
I stared at her. "And if I don't?"
Her smile was razor-sharp. "Then I'll put it through your heart myself."
The worst part was, I believed her.
My hand moved before I could stop it. The moment my fingers closed around the hilt, a jolt of something burned through my veins—cold and searing all at once, an unnatural contradiction. My breath caught. The chamber around me warped at the edges, shadows stretching and twisting into something less than human.
I yanked my hand back, but the dagger remained, bonded to my palm as if it had sunk into my skin. The pain was brief, a sharp needle before it faded into something almost intoxicating. The torches dimmed, their flames shrinking, as if bowing to something greater.
Skylar watched me carefully, satisfaction gleaming in her dark eyes. "Good."
I clenched my jaw, forcing my breath steady. "What the hell is this?"
She tilted her head, considering me. "A test."
I shook my head. "You already tested me, Sky. I lost. I was in that chair, remember?"
Her fingers brushed over mine, light but deliberate. "You don't understand, do you? You were never meant to die there."
The weight of her words settled over me, colder than the stone beneath me.
I wasn't supposed to die in that prison.
I was supposed to die here.
And whatever this dagger was, it would decide how.
The dagger pulsed against my palm, its rhythm steady, like a second heartbeat. The robed figures still watched, waiting. The weight of expectation pressed against my shoulders, coiling around my ribs.
Skylar stood, taking a slow step back, her gaze locked onto mine. "You don't understand what you're holding, do you?"
I tightened my grip, resisting the unnatural pull of the blade. "Should I?"
A low chuckle. "You always did like playing dumb."
My jaw clenched. "And you always did like playing god."
Skylar moved in a blur—one second she was standing above me, the next her fingers wrapped around my wrist, pressing down with just enough force to remind me who held the power here. The dagger flared cold against my skin, like frost biting through flesh.
"This is your choice, Finn," she murmured. "Live, or die. Submit, or fight."
A choice. That was rich, coming from her. The Ecclesium had never been about choice—it was about control, about weaving chains so tight around a person that they mistook them for bones. I had spent years letting them shape me into something I wasn't. A believer. A follower. A weapon.
Not anymore.
I exhaled sharply, forcing my body to still. "What do you want me to do?"
Skylar's grip loosened, just slightly. "Prove yourself."
She turned, glancing toward the edge of the chamber. A door I hadn't noticed before creaked open. Beyond it, a sliver of dim torchlight flickered against damp stone, illuminating a figure dragged between two masked guards.
A man. Blood smeared his temple, his breathing ragged. His eyes—wild with fear—locked onto mine, pleading.
"Kill him," Skylar said simply.
The words settled over me like dust, familiar in a way that made my stomach churn.
I swallowed. "Why?"
"Because I said so."
The man struggled, his hoarse voice barely a whisper. "Please."
Skylar stepped beside me, her hand trailing down my arm. "You've done it before, haven't you?" Her breath was warm against my skin. "Murder. Lies. Manipulation. Don't act like this is new to you."
My fingers curled around the dagger's hilt. She wasn't wrong. I had killed before. I had lied before. But this was different. This wasn't survival. This wasn't escape. This was something else—something Skylar wanted me to accept without hesitation.
I turned my head just enough to meet her gaze. "And if I refuse?"
She smiled, slow and knowing. "Then I'll know where your loyalties truly lie."
The dagger burned against my skin.
The choice had never been mine to make.
And then the man lifted his head, his lips parting as he spoke a name I wasn't supposed to hear.
A name that shouldn't have been possible.
A name that shattered everything I thought I knew.
"Finn… it's me."