JUNE MILLER POV
The air inside the church was a physical weight. It didn't just feel cold; it felt like the oxygen had been replaced by a thick, freezing liquid that burned my lungs with every breath. The silence was gone, replaced by a wet, rhythmic throb that seemed to pulse from the very walls.
"Becky?" I whispered, my voice trembling so hard the word barely left my lips.
Brandt was right behind me, his hand white-knuckled on my shoulder. I could feel him shaking. "June, we need to go. This isn't... this isn't a church anymore. Look at the ceiling."
I followed his gaze, and my heart didn't just stop—it felt like it shattered. The rafters weren't empty. They were draped in those pulsing, violet veins I'd seen in my nightmares. And there, dangling like a broken doll in a cluster of shadows, was a patch of denim I recognized anywhere.
"Becky!" I screamed, lunging forward.
"Such a loud, tiny bird," a voice chimed.
It was the most beautiful sound I had ever heard, and it made me want to vomit. I skidded to a halt on the grime-covered stone. At the end of the aisle, the Nun stood. She was a pillar of black void, her head tilted, those pale, spindly fingers still interlaced over her face.
She moved, but she didn't walk. She blurred, appearing ten feet closer in the blink of an eye. Then ten feet more.
"June, get back!" Brandt yelled, stepping in front of me. He swung a heavy metal flashlight he'd grabbed from the car, his eyes wide with a desperate, hopeless courage.
The Nun didn't even flinch. She didn't even uncross her fingers. She just let out a soft, melodic hum—a low-tier vibration of that sickly violet energy.
The air in front of Brandt turned into a solid wall. The flashlight shattered into a thousand shards of glass and plastic, and Brandt was thrown backward as if he'd been hit by a freight train. He slammed into a wooden pew, the thick oak splintering like toothpicks under his weight.
"Brandt!" I scrambled toward him, but a violet vine whipped out from the shadows of a pillar, wrapping around my ankle.
It wasn't like a rope. It was cold, wet, and it felt like it was trying to sink into my skin. I was yanked off my feet, my chin hitting the stone floor with a sickening crack.
"How disappointing," the Nun sighed. The resonance of her voice made the teeth in my skull ache. "I felt a spark earlier. A golden warmth that promised a feast. But instead, the tide brings me... dust. Two little mice with empty hearts. No Impulse. No fire. Just meat and bone."
I looked up, blood trickling down my chin, and saw her gliding toward us. She looked bored. She reached out a hand—not toward me, but toward Brandt, who was gasping for air among the ruins of the pew. A thin, needle-like vine extended from her sleeve, hovering inches from his throat.
"Please," I choked out, clawing at the vine around my ankle. "Don't... don't hurt him. Take me instead."
"I will take both," the Nun whispered, her veiled head tilting in a way that suggested a smile I couldn't see. "But slowly. It has been a long night, and the 'prodigies' in the rafters have already gone quiet. I need something to amuse me until the sun rises. Perhaps I shall see how long a heart can beat when it has nothing but fear to fuel it."
She flicked her wrist, and a surge of violet energy traveled down the vine on my leg. It felt like liquid nitrogen being injected into my veins. I screamed, my back arching off the floor as the cold spread through my nervous system, paralyzing me.
She was toying with us. She could have crushed our skulls in a second, but she was pulling our strings like puppets. Another vine snagged Brandt's arm, lifting him into the air until he was dangling a few feet off the ground, his face turning a terrifying shade of purple.
"Look at you," the Nun mocked, her voice a cruel chime. "So fragile. You came here for your friend, didn't you? Look up, little June Miller. Look at what remains of your Becky."
I forced my head up, tears blurring my vision. Becky was right there, just out of reach, her skin waxy and white. She looked like a ghost.
"She's still breathing," the Nun whispered, leaning over me. I could see the swirling violet abyss through the gaps in her fingers now. "Barely. I saved the last of her for a special occasion. Perhaps I'll let her watch while I drain the life from your eyes."
I felt the vine at my ankle tighten, the thorns on its surface beginning to pierce my skin. The cold was absolute. My heart was slowing down, my vision fraying at the edges. I looked at Brandt, who was feebly kicking his legs, his eyes rolling back in his head.
I'm sorry, Becky, I thought, my fingers brushing against the charms on my backpack. I'm sorry, Brandt. I tried.
The Nun raised her other hand, a blade of solidified violet shadow forming between her fingers. She wasn't going for a kill shot. she was aiming for my shoulder, wanting to pin me to the floor like a butterfly in a display case.
"The quiet is coming, June," she sang. "Can you hear it?"
I closed my eyes, waiting for the strike. The church was silent, save for the rhythmic throb of the vines.
But then, the air didn't just change—it vanished.
The crushing weight of the 'wool' was incinerated in a heartbeat. A sudden, blinding heat slammed into the room, so intense I could feel the moisture evaporating from the stone floor. It wasn't the sickly violet light. It was something else.
It was the sun.
The Nun shrieked—a jagged, metallic sound that shattered every remaining pane of glass in the church. She recoiled, the violet blade in her hand evaporating like mist in a furnace.
I opened my eyes, squinting through the radiance.
The heavy oak doors of the church were no longer shut. In fact, they weren't there at all. They had been reduced to ash. Standing in the charred doorway were two figures.
The girl in the slate-gray coat had her hand outstretched, a swirling vortex of absolute black matter devouring the violet mist around her feet. But it was the boy who made the Nun cower.
He was stepped forward, his white shirt glowing with an intensity that turned the entire church into a world of gold. His eyes weren't just coins anymore; they were twin stars, burning with a cold, righteous fury that made the Nun's 'deep' feel like a shallow puddle.
"You," the Nun hissed, her voice cracking. "The Sun and the Moon..."
The boy—'Goldie'—didn't say a word. He didn't have to. He just looked at the vines holding me and Brandt.
Snap.
The violet threads didn't just break; they turned to dust. I fell to the floor, gasping as the warmth flooded back into my limbs. Brandt dropped beside me, coughing and clutching his throat.
I looked up at the boy in the doorway. He wasn't flustered anymore. He wasn't the 'Mister Prince' from the cinema. He was something ancient, something terrifying, and something beautiful.
"You're late," I croaked, a sob of relief breaking in my chest.
The boy's gaze shifted to me for a fraction of a second. The gold in his eyes softened, just enough for me to see the 'angel' again. Then, he looked back at the Nun, and the church began to shake with the weight of his power.
"Eve," the boy said, his voice a low, tectonic rumble that made the altar stones crack.
"On it, Adam," the girl replied, her hand erupting in a shadow that moved faster than light.
The "Mice" were no longer alone in the dark. The Masterpieces had arrived.