The notebook snapped shut, and silence once again became the sole master of the room.
The candle died out in a final wisp of gray wax smoke, plunging us both into that eternal gloom.
I stood up from the living room table where the flame had just finished burning down.
Inspecting a piece of furniture in the corner of this main room, my eyes caught a stack of dusty documents.
The sheriff hadn’t lied when he said he would send them over: the death registries and town reports were right there, left for our attention.
I sat back down to flip through the yellowed pages, deeply focused.
Alya turned to leave the living room and head to her own bedroom upstairs.
As she climbed, just as she reached the top of the wooden staircase, her foot caught a step and she stumbled backward.
In a fraction of a second, my hunter’s reflexes took over.
I lunged from the living room and caught her mid-air before she could crash into the ground, leaving us face-to-face for a fleeting moment.
Time ground to a halt.
Her large, dark eyes locked deeply into mine.
I gently helped her stand back up, and remaining as mute as ever, she simply adjusted her posture before slipping away into her room without a word, leaving me alone in the hallway.
The next day, under a heavy sky of pitch-black clouds, the playful mood was gone.
Yet, it took very little to break the ice.
Alya climbed up onto the roofs with me for the inspection.
Leaning out over the empty drop, I pulled out my notebook to trace the creature’s path and sketch a quick drawing of the beast.
Glancing over my shoulder, Alya furrowed her brow before making a perfectly undisguised pout of pure disgust.
Alright, fine, I draw like garbage.
My monster looked more like a plucked chicken than a Calamity, but the effort was there.
My meticulous structural analysis of the buildings spoke for itself: the creature was massive, and it had wings.
Moving from one roof to another, the evidence was glaring—several open zones and gaps showed absolutely no footprints whatsoever.
It wasn’t jumping from roof to roof.
It was gliding, invisible, over the narrow alleyways.
Suddenly, my gaze locked onto the distance, straight toward the chapel.
Through the protective shroud of mist, a motionless silhouette was staring right at us.
It didn’t move an inch.
It was watching us.
Adrenaline spiked through my veins.
The rush wiped away my exhaustion, and I bolted across the slippery tiles to try and cut off its escape.
Alya immediately made a move to follow in my footsteps, her hand flying toward her hilt, but I spun around without slowing down:
“Go back to the house and watch the perimeter!”
I slid down a cast-iron gutter and took off, moving like a shadow inside the chapel.
The place was a freezing chasm of stone.
The silhouette knew I was there.
I pursued it at a breathless pace, watching it fly from hallway to hallway, turning sharply around the massive stone pillars.
It was playing with my nerves, but I never lost sight of it.
In a final burst of speed, I saw it duck precipitously into a room at the end of a corridor plunged into total darkness.
“Got you,” I whispered, a fierce grin creeping onto my lips.
I threw the door open with a sharp shove, ready to spring.
But instead of a trap or a dead end, I found myself standing on an elevated balcony overlooking a monumental nave.
At the exact center of this grand hall, the Mother Superior was praying too, kneeling before an immense white sheet heavily maculated with fresh blood.
The silhouette had vanished, melted into the mass of dark robes.
My only chance of spotting them was to blend in.
Creeping down the stone steps with light steps, I slipped into the back rows.
I got down on my knees in turn, adopting the posture of a perfect believer to avoid raising any suspicions.
The prayer concluded with a collective sigh.
The silence became heavy as lead.
It was then that the Mother Superior rose to her feet.
She turned around and walked straight toward me, her strange, almost mystical gaze locked directly into my eyes.
“Are you a believer, my little Eden?” she asked in a soft voice that echoed against the stone walls.
I stood up to my full height, meeting her gaze without flinching before dropping my reply:
“By dint of existing…
we all end up believing, one day, that there is something above us.”
Her lips curved into an enigmatic smile.
“God never forgets a child who thinks of Him.”
I took a step forward, closing the distance between us to set the stage, and asked with a sharp politeness:
“May I see the corpse?”
The nun’s smile vanished instantly, her face reclaiming a strict ecclesiastic severity.
“It is unfortunately forbidden…” She paused, locking her eyes onto mine with a disturbing intensity.
“…but for this once, Eden, I am going to make an exception.”