Chapter I : Part I
The sky had never smiled upon Mistfield.
A grey sun hung above like the eye of a dying man — always watching, yet never truly seeing.
Isadora Mercy Holloway stood barefoot on the frozen earth outside the crumbling shack her mother once called home. Her hands and feet ached, raw and red from hard labour and, at times, the sting of stones thrown by the villagers — but the blood never faded.
It couldn’t.
Not when it was her own.
That morning, the villagers whispered again.
> “She walks like her mother once did.”
“Did you see her eyes? Like a demon’s, dipped in ash.”
Isadora heard them — she always heard them — but said nothing in return.
Her black dress hung loose on her thin frame. The hem was torn, like it had been chewed by rats. Wind clawed at her arms, but she did not flinch.
She did not move.
She only stared.
The shack’s door groaned behind her. Heavy footsteps.
The air filled with the stench of stale liquor and rotting meat.
> “Still standing there, you pig?” said the voice, rough and rusted like corroded iron.
“Get inside before God’s wind kills you.”
It was the voice of Gideon Holloway — her father.
A man of flesh and bone, but with no soul left to carry.
Whatever love he once had died with Ophelia Mary Holloway — burned alive, they said, for witchcraft.
Though others whispered her sin was darker than the Devil himself.
Isadora turned her head slowly.
> “Drinking before the sun could even blink,” she said.
Gideon grunted and spat into the dirt.
> “SHUT IT! What else is there to drink... when even God turns His face from this house?”
He stepped inside, coughing like Death had taken up lodging in his lungs.
Isadora did not follow.
Her gaze drifted toward the well at the edge of the yard — the one her mother had once forbidden her to approach.
No bucket. No rope.
Just a stone mouth that breathed something… older than water.
She thought she heard her mother’s voice again that morning.
Faint.
Like a lullaby carried on frost.
> “Close your eyes, my child... for light reveals what was never meant to be known…”
Isadora blinked.
And the well fell silent again.
---
Three hours later, she stood in the village market — not to buy, but sent by Gideon to steal salt from the table of a deaf old woman.
Isadora knew it was a trap:
The people of Mistfield did not worship gods, but they believed in blood law.
> “Whoever steals from the voiceless shall have all five fingers severed and fed to swine — by the God who hears in silence.”
Isadora didn’t believe in their gods.
She didn’t believe in this world either.
She believed only in the voice.
The voice that now whispered behind her ear — though no one stood behind her.
> “One by one, they will fall... their blood shall redraw the true shape of the world... a world where God is just an ornament.”
Isadora closed her eyes, clutching the folds of her dress tightly after hearing that sharp, killing whisper.
Then — like a shadow slipping back into memory — her eyes opened on their own.
And she was already standing in front of the church.
A place once meant for prayer, redemption, and wishes… now the most forsaken ground in Mistfield.
Her hands were bleeding, though she didn’t know why.
The church’s stone walls were filthy, and above the door… a cross turned upside down, nailed with rusted spikes and strands of human hair.
And carved into the wooden door was a symbol she had never seen before —
A circle, with a black eye at its centre.
Beneath it, a simple inscription:
> “The Unseen Face watches you when you are not watching.”
Isadora stepped forward.
> “Who are you?” she whispered.
No answer.
Only the toll of the old church bell — though it had broken years ago.
And in the church’s shadow, something watched her.
Something without a face.
---
That night, Isadora slept on the floor without a blanket.
But her dreams did not sleep.
In them, her mother screamed without sound…
and a woman in flowing white tore at her skin, searching for truth beneath flesh.
Isadora awoke with blood on her hands and a tongue that whispered on its own.
She did not know what was happening.
But she knew —
it had begun again.
