Page 101 of Fallen: Darkness Ascending, Vol.1

S tanding in Father Andrei’s cottage in shallow breaths, my back is slick with sweat despite the cold. The fire crackled, small and weak, casting its glow onto the priest’s face. But the warmth never touched his eyes. They remained hollow. Watching me too closely.

The shadow from before had vanished, but its weight still lingered. The air felt rinsed —like something had passed through it that didn't belong in this world. Something not done with me yet .

I turned to Father Andrei.

“What was that?” I ask, my voice hoarse. “What did you summon?”

He looks at me calmly, as if the terror of moments before never happened.

“Not summoned,” he said. “Recognized.”

The words feel wrong—a line from some ancient play, repeated by a man who had memorized his role too well. My eyes drop to the leather-bound book again. The symbols move even now, writhing faintly beneath the page, as if reacting to my presence.

“You’ve known all along,” I said slowly. “About what would happen the moment I stepped foot in this place.”

Father Andrei closes the book without a sound, his hands steady now.

“There are things you inherit,” he says nonchalantly. “And then there are things that inherit you .”

I step back. There’s more to what he’s saying. “You’re part of it, aren’t you? Whatever this is—whatever happened to my mother. You knew.”

His smile is almost... tender . What exactly was his relationship with her?

“Your mother believed she could escape her calling,” he says. “You, at least, are not burdened by that delusion. You're here. Asking the right questions.”

“I came here to find answers,” I answer bluntly, “not be manipulated.”

He tilts his head.

“And yet... you stayed. Even after the mirror. Even after the altar. That’s not the behavior of someone who wants to run.”

There’s something different in his voice that slithers somewhere in between a threat and kindness. I don’t like it.

“You could leave,” he adds softly. “Tonight, even. I wouldn’t stop you.”

But he doesn’t blink as he says it.

I look toward the door, then to the small side table near the hearth—just beside the firewood rack. There’s something there. A sliver of silver that occasionally glistens. I took a step closer .

A ceremonial knife. Thin. Blackened with age.

I turn back to him, heart racing. “What is this place really, Holy Father? This village, this chapel—it’s not just a remnant of some forgotten faith. It’s alive . It’s watching.”

He doesn’t answer.

So I press further with more confidence. “There’s a society, isn’t there? A—group. A cult.”

His smile never wavers. But his eyes—God, his eyes.

“If there is,” he says, “would that matter?”

I blink. “What?”

He stands slowly, carefully, like a man choosing not to wake a beast beneath his floorboards. He crosses the room, folding his hands before him. His black cassock sways like a shroud.

“There have always been those who prepare the way. Silent orders. Keepers of the threshold. Not worshippers, no— tenders . Shepherds .”

My stomach turns.

“And what do they tend?” I ask.

Father Andrei’s gaze flick to the shuttered window. Outside, the trees sway though there is no wind.

“The wound,” he says. “The first fracture. The place where heaven tore itself open and let him fall. Solareth is not a curse. He is a promise. And promises must be kept .”

The room feels smaller with every word.

“And my mother?” I whisper, wondering just how much he knows about how it all ended.

His eyes snap back to me with a flicker of what looks to be pity.

“She refused. She tried to seal the wound. Tried to forget me.” His voice shifts but quickly regains. “But forgetting is betrayal.”

My eyes narrow slightly. Was that hitch in his breath? I begin to look at the priest through a different lens. As well as my mother. Was he the reason why she was able to escape?

“What happens to those who refuse?” I ask .

Father Andrei tilts his head again as if considering.

“I wouldn’t know,” he says. “I’ve never tried.”

He’s a shepherd in a black robe, not tending to souls, but guiding them to the mouth of something starved and winged, something vast enough to love the world only through consumption.

I swallow the bile rising in my throat. He was going to offer my mother as a sacrifice but things shifted between them… Ma, what else are you hiding?

“There’s something beneath that pedestal,” I say, shifting the conversation. “Something more than what rests there. A ritual space. Twelve relics. Symbols. What are they?”

Father Andrei turns his back to me, walking slowly toward a cabinet behind his desk. He opens it and reveals old scrolls, vellum faded with time, sealed with wax that bore a symbol I’d seen in the chamber below—a circle with four eyes, weeping flame.

“Altars need vessels,” he murmurs. “And vessels must be emptied first.”

My breath catches. I remember the dreams. The feeling of something hollowing me from the inside out. The burning in my chest when I touched the feather. The whispers that knew my name.

He turns again, scroll in hand. But he doesn’t offer it.

“You are more than your questions, Hana,” he says. “You are... aligned. That’s why the mirror showed you. Why the shadow followed. Why the chapel opened .”

I want to scream in frustration at the constant riddles. There’s never a straight answer with him. Something in me freezes at the way he says my name—reverent, possessive. As if it no longer belongs to me, but to the altar he’s already built… in preparation for a sermon for my sacrifice.

“Why me?” I whispered. “Why not someone else? There are plenty of people in the world.”

His smile widened. “Because your blood remembers, even if you pretend you don’t. ”

My blood? Ma. Nainai. Does he mean my bloodline?

In a voice too casual for the weight behind it, he adds?—

“You should be careful, Mayang . Curious women often disappear in these hills. The forest has ways of making people forget they were ever here.”

How does he know my name?

He steps forward, placing a hand gently on my shoulder. It takes everything in me not to recoil.

“Go home,” he whispers. “Get rest. Dream softly. You’ll see him again soon.”

And like that, I’m dismissed.

I leave the cottage trembling. The cold bites into my skin, but I welcome it. It meant I’m still alive. Still real. It clears my mind.

But deep inside, I feel an unraveling. A thread had been pulled in that chapel, and now I couldn’t stop the memories from bleeding through.

The way Nainai spoke of the power of the tongue. Ma. The determination in her eyes that last night. The night she told me never to return.

The night I did anyway.

I return to the house, to my mother’s journal, flipping past old sketches and pressed herbs, until I find it—something I had missed before.

A page stained with old tears, folded and hidden in the spine. A note scrawled in her unmistakable hand:

“I tried to close the gate. But he only needs one memory. One seed. Mayang, if you're reading this—it's already too late. He won’t come with wings. He comes as the voice you trust. And he only needs you to say yes.”

Nainai’s voice drifts back as well, long and weathered from my youth, yet clear and solemn: “Mayang, you must understand the oldest truth—some cages are shaped by silence, but the strongest are forged with a single word.”

And I don’t remember ever saying no…