PROLOGUE
All characters, names, events, places, and scenes are purely products of imagination. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
“Evil does not arrive with horns. It arrives weeping. It asks for absolution.”
They say the Devil never knocks. She confesses.
Vatican Archives – Confidential Entry, Year of the Lord 1293
One will come veiled in virtue. She will not tempt with lust, but with longing. She will speak of God, cry for Heaven, and ask for forgiveness from the one who must not falter. She shall not strike. She shall only ask.To tempt the priest who does not yet kneel and through him, desecrate the altar of Heaven. And if he kneels before love instead of light...The sanctuary shall fall.
Stamped Confidentialis: Sanctum Officium.
The Prophecy of St. Gerlachus – Banned and Unverified
Present Day....Northern Italy
Luca D’Angelo woke as if drowning in holy water. His breaths came sharp. His throat was dry. His fist was clenched so tight around his crucifix that its outline was seared into his skin.
The dormitory was still cloaked in the heavy silence that lives only in stone monasteries and locked cathedrals. The candle beside his bed had gone out. But he had seen her again. A girl. Pale and beautiful veiled in smoke. Her voice soft as candlewax melting over bone.
“I want to be forgiven,” she whispered, somewhere between sorrow and seduction.
“But I want you to love me first.”
He sat upright, drenched in cold sweat. The crucifix at his throat stung as if it had turned to flame. This was not the first night she had come to him in dreams. And each time, she felt more real.
In the hallway outside his door, a breeze stirred. But all the windows were closed. And in the confessional far beneath the chapel , the door creaked open. Though no one had touched it. And something entered. Something that remembered the shape of prayer. But had forgotten the taste of Heaven.
