Page 100 of Fallen: Darkness Ascending, Vol.1

I should have known better than to seek answers from him.

Father Andrei, despite our strange encounter, is the gatekeeper of the village’s darkest secrets. His solemn gaze never betrays what he knows or what he has seen. But today, there is a palpable shift in the air. My next decision might cross the line into something I can’t undo.

I have to in the name of research and anthropology , I tell myself.

The moment I step into the priest’s cottage, I know something is wrong.

The faint light from the oil lamps cast long, angular shadows that seemed to crawl toward me from the small room.

The warmth from the flames does little to chase away the chill that prickles my skin.

Father Andrei sits by the hearth, the flickering firelight casting his features in half-shadow. I can’t see his eyes, but I feel them—sharp, unblinking—the moment I step inside. Of course the door was unlocked. No one in this ancient little town bothers with locks. No one but me.

Little good that did against the man before me.

His voice breaks the hush like a blade dragged across stone—low, gravel-worn, and far too expectant.

“You should not have gone there, Hana.”

It’s the name I offer strangers—easier on foreign tongues, easier to forget. A habit born of living between cultures, of always translating myself.

But as he speaks it, I remember all the times Ma and Nainai warned me about the weight names carry. How there was power in the tongue. And in this moment, I’m grateful he doesn’t know mine.

My feet are planted firmly on the floor, my heart hammering in my chest. I can’t sit. There’s a weight in his words, a subtle threat hidden behind the concern that never reaches his eyes.

“I had to,” I reply with a steady voice. “I need to know what’s going on. What he is. What’s beneath the chapel.”

Father Andrei doesn’t answer immediately. Instead, his gaze flicks briefly to the table beside him, where an old, leather-bound book sits open. The pages are yellowed, filled with unrecognizable symbols, in a language lost to time, one I knew I haven’t come across before.

“ Solareth is not a name to be spoken lightly,” he says finally, his voice softer, as if each word had been carefully chosen. “Not a name for curious minds.”

I boldly step forward with my hands clenched into fists at my sides. “I’m not afraid of the truth.”

Father Andrei’s lips twitch in a half-smile. “You should be. She was.”

The dead ought to stay where they lie. I took another step closer. “Then tell me what she knew. What you know. About the chapel. About Solareth .”

Saying his name out loud alters something within me. The priest’s eyes narrow—a flicker of a shadow, quick and fleeting, before it vanishes behind the thick veil of indifference he’s worn for so long. He looks at me as though weighing the consequences of his next words.

“Your mother—she was... part of something older, something that began long before either of us arrived here.”

My pulse quickens. He’s lying. “What was she part of?”

He slowly reaches for the book on the table, his fingers grazing the pages before he pulls it toward him, a deep sigh escaping his lips.

“She was chosen,” he says, his voice low. “But not by God. Not by anyone who was ever truly human.”

I step back, my mind racing. Chosen? Nainai would have never let anything happen to her. She died with us, with family. Safe…

“Impossible. Chosen for what?” I whisper, as if speaking too loudly would shatter the fragile thread of truth he might be offering. “What does Solareth have to do with this?”

Each time his name grazes my tongue, my heart constricts and skips a beat.

Father Andrei stares at the book, his hands trembling slightly.

“He was among the first. The Morning Star. The one who fell. And in his fall, he burned everything—everything that came before him, and everything that came after.”

I shivered but not from the cold, but rather from a phantom touch that caressed the back of my neck. I refocus on what the priest is trying to say, comparing mental notes of different cultures. “So, he’s a god?”

His head snaps up, eyes suddenly sharp. “No. Not a god. A creature . A being of impossible desires. He came to us disguised, as a healer, a savior... a son of light.”

I think back to the drawings Rasvan showed me. The burning, twisted wings. The reflection I saw in the mirror. The impossible shape of the figure I saw at the ritual and then beneath the altar.

“My mother—what happened to her?” Ma, what did you do before you came back home to die with us? Nainai, what did you hide from me?

Father Andrei’s face hardens. “She was lost. She vanished . Just like the others before her. He takes them. Devours them. Not in body, but in soul. In memory. In purpose. And once he has consumed you... you will never return. You will never be whole.”

He doesn’t know she escaped. He doesn’t know she made it back home…

But the floor beneath me shifts and pulses. The shadows in the corners begin to thicken, unfurling toward like demonic fingers eager to grasp.

“No,” I say, shaking my head, still unwilling to tell him everything. “This is insane. You’re lying.”

Father Andrei’s gaze remains fixed on me, unblinking, his face taut. His fingers grip the book so tightly, his knuckles turn white.

“ You have already been marked, ” he whispers.

There it is again. Marked. What does he mean? Why me? Why my mother? Did it go all the way back to the other women in my bloodline too?

“None of this makes any sense.”

He lowers his gaze to the book again, his voice thick with warning. “You’ve already touched him, Hana. In your dreams. In the chapel. He knows you. He remembers you. And now, he calls to you.”

A cold shiver runs down my spine.

Frowning, I slowly shook my head in denial, though part of me already understood.

Father Andrei closes his eyes. When he opens them again, guilt swims behind them.

“There is a price,” he murmurs. “A price for knowing too much. ”

Suddenly, the door to the cottage slams shut. I whirled to see it still bolt in place, the air shifting in electricity.

A shadow in the corner of the room morphs. It’s too tall, stretching unnaturally across the stone wall. The edges distort as though the very nature of light is warping around it.

Father Andrei doesn’t move. He doesn’t speak. His face drains of color, his eyes wide and wild, as if he can see something I can’t.

I feel it then—the shifting in the space between breaths, reality splitting into a new realm.

I turn back to him, desperate, fearful. “What did you do?”

“He’s already here,” his voice trembles.

The air itself rippled as if in the presence of heat only there isn’t any in front of me.

"You’ve come far, Mayang."

I turn but the shadow is gone.

Father Andrei stands in the corner, half-swallowed by shadow, his eyes wide—not with surprise, but with dread.

And in that moment, I understand.

He knew. He knew this would happen the moment I stepped into his cottage, the moment he saw me on that chapel path. He didn’t stop me. He didn’t warn me. He let it unfold like a prophecy already written in ash.

Because it had to.

Because I had to.

And now—now I don’t know what I’ve stepped into. I don’t know if the thing beneath the chapel is the end or the beginning. I don’t know if Ma ever truly escaped it. Or Nainai before her. Maybe they only ever bought themselves time.

Perhaps that’s all I’ve done too.

And maybe… I won’t be the one to break the chain.

I feel it breathing behind me again. Closer. Hungrier.

And I wonder—too late—if it’s already too late to run.