Page 2 of Where the Dark Knelt (Worshipped by Darkness #1)

Eveline

Another day, an ordinary working day at first glance, felt like it finally broke me.

I came home shaking all over, trembling with anger, hysteria, and all the emotions I’d been suppressing for so long.

I was just so tired of everything. I didn’t even close the door.

I collapsed right there on the doormat in the hallway.

My whole body trembled. I sobbed uncontrollably, truly hysterically. Everything blurred, my chest ached.

And today… today it all just came crashing down.

That’s how I ended up on the floor, crying like a three-year-old mid-tantrum, overwhelmed by this aching, desperate need to matter.

But no one needed me. All this corporate bullshit just drained me emotionally, mentally and morally.

If it weren’t for my parents, more precisely the fact that I lived with them and ate at their expense, I’d be starving and probably on the streets.

I could barely afford to cover my wishlist, let alone basic needs like food or rent in this economy.

And if I really thought about it, surviving on my own wouldn’t mean working.

It would mean plowing. Like a beaten-down horse worked 24/7, whipped into obedience and tossed a single carrot once a week just enough not to collapse and lose what little sanity it has left.

That’s what it would take to afford rent. Three jobs. Maybe more.

This world was going to hell. And I hated it with everything I’ve got in my rotting soul.

My boss, a 38-year-old woman, was always humiliating us, especially me.

Every day, she reminded me how worthless and stupid I supposedly was.

“You’re no good,” she’d sneer. She threatened to fire me constantly.

But today... today, something in our conversation hit me differently.

She told me to burn in hell, actually said those words, just because she overheard me talking to my girlfriend outside the office.

But that wasn’t even the worst part.

My girl and I were arguing. Just trying to figure out whether there was still something left between us or not.

And we decided… there wasn’t. That our paths would split anyway.

So we ended it. And only a few minutes later, a few fucking minutes, she posted a photo on social media.

A damn photo of a ring on her finger, hand-in-hand with some guy! !!

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. We had been fucking dating for five years. Five. Years. And this? Was this what had been going on behind my back the whole time?

God, our relationship had run its course, maybe.

But I was still trying. I was planning a future.

I wasn’t even taking her out on dates anymore because I was secretly hoping she would do something for me for once.

Just once. Buy me flowers. Plan something.

Invite me somewhere. I was always the one organizing, fixing, giving.

Why is it always me? Why do I always have to be the one who tries? Why can’t someone just — just fucking once — fight for me?

No one ever appreciated me the way I wanted to be appreciated.

No one ever saw the way I loved. And maybe I was just stupid and delusional for staying with her that long.

Hell, I even bought rings. I thought maybe they’d help save us.

But I never proposed. Because I started to see it, how distant she’d become.

How she pulled away completely. So I gave up. I really gave up. Fuck it all.

But still... to see her with someone else that quickly? After everything?

Even if our love had faded, it shattered me, to be replaced so easily. Like I meant nothing. Like I was just some stupid, disposable mistake. At work, it was the same. One wrong move and they’d toss me out without a second thought.

I’m so tired of everything. So. Fucking. Tired.

I sobbed and curled into a ball, pulling my knees up to my chest, trying to hug myself, trying to calm down. But the technique didn’t work. Not this time.

And in that moment, all I could think was that my life had become miserable and utterly worthless.

By the age of 21, I had achieved nothing.

Everyone around me seemed to be getting married, buying their first apartments, cars, houses.

And me? I still lived with my parents. I hadn’t earned a goddamn thing.

I wasted money on food deliveries, clothes, gadgets…

Sure, I’d saved up for a trip to Greece, but even that now felt like some unreachable dream.

My thoughts spiraled chaotically, jumping from one failure to another.

I was nobody. I was going nowhere. And when I thought about it…

university would be over in a couple of months.

So what? I wasn’t going to work in my field.

Nothing made sense anymore. None of it. This life — my life — was meaningless.

Goddamn it, it was all so fucking pointless.

Each new thought only dragged me deeper. I shook harder, trying to clear my head, but the thoughts just piled up like a landslide, they were slowly growing, crashing and then smothering me.

I don’t remember how long I lay there on the floor. I only snapped back when I heard the front door handle rattle. My father stepped into the house, his black priest’s robe billowing slightly around him. His mouth dropped open in shock.

He dropped to his knees in front of me, grabbing my shoulders. “What happened?” he asked. “Eveline! Oh Dear Lord, what happened?”

I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t even know what exactly had happened, where exactly I took the wrong turn, when I lost faith in myself… or in God.

“Almighty God, save and preserve my daughter…” he murmured, beginning to recite a prayer, but I couldn’t hear the words clearly.

My head was full of static. I stared at him with glassy eyes, not understanding why he was praying.

His words couldn’t reach me. They couldn’t drown out the pain clawing at me from the inside.

“My sweet little ashrose … was it another attack?” he asked, his voice trembling.

His pale gray eyes had faded over time, dulled by age and too much sun, worn down like stone from all the years he spent outside at the church in the heart of the city.

I just shook my head.

My face burned from the salt of dried tears.

My eyes were swollen, the capillaries so strained it looked like one had burst completely, blood flooded the corner of my vision.

My body was falling apart under the weight of it all.

I wasn’t some tough little tin soldier. And I thought bitterly: If God gives his hardest battles to his strongest warriors…

then why me? Why these battles? Why so brutal? What is he preparing me for?

The answer never came. It never had. I gave up on getting answers long ago.

God didn’t speak to his servants, not to me at least. My father always said otherwise.

Said I was just too stubborn, too blind, too deaf to hear Him.

Said the problem wasn’t that God was silent, but that I didn’t want to listen.

I took a deep breath, about to say something, anything, to my father, but he was already on the phone. The fragments of his conversation floated toward me, and they froze me in place.

“I’m tired of watching her struggling like this every day… She’s drowning in this darkness. These demons are sucking the last light from her soul. Depression has her body now. Please… help me save her…”

Help me.

Demons.

Depression.

How did he know?

And the demons, the ones I’d seen in the dark, the ones I never told anyone about, how did he know about them? Were they real? Like real-real? Or was it just my mental illness to see them? I did not know, could not know for sure.

Oh, God.

No. No, no, no.