The storm hit before the van reached the gate.
Rain slapped the windshield so hard Elias could barely see the crumbling stone archway ahead. The monastery—Saint Aurelia’s—rose out of the mountain mist like something half-forgotten and half-alive.
“Rustic Airbnb my ass,” Mara whispered, pulling her jacket tighter.
From the back seat, Deacon cracked a beer and smirked.“Looks like every nun who ever lived here died pissed.”
Nadia didn’t laugh. She hadn’t spoken since they turned onto the mountain road—not really. She just stared at the monastery like it was staring back.
The van rolled to a stop.
Out of the rain, a lantern appeared first—floating—then the shape of a man holding it. His face was carved with age and shadow.
“You’re late,” he rasped. “Storm’s angry tonight.”
“We got turned around,” Elias said.
The caretaker ignored him.
Instead, he lifted the lantern, and the flame jittered wildly—almost like it didn’t want to be there.
His voice came low and sharp:
“Listen carefully. Each candle burned keeps a spirit away.”
A beat.
“Don’t let them go out.”
Deacon snorted.“Yeah? And what happens if one does?”
The caretaker stared at him for a long, awful second.
Then—
Very softly:
“You’ll find out.”
Inside, everything smelled like cold stone, mildew, and incense that had been burned into the walls.
The air felt wrong.
Too heavy.
Too aware.
In the great hall, a long wooden table waited—lined edge to edge with thick beeswax candles.
Their wicks were clean. Waiting.
Mara lifted her lighter.“Well. If we’re cursed anyway—”
The first candle lit with a sharp crackle.The flame flickered blue... then settled into a steady gold glow.
Somewhere behind them, something shifted—like a body adjusting in a pew.
Nadia flinched.
“Did you hear that?”
Nobody answered.
But everyone had.
They played cards. Told ghost stories. Pretended nothing felt wrong.
The storm pounded the windows like fists.
At 2:59 a.m., one candle went out.
No wind.
No movement.
Just—gone.
The flame didn’t fade.
It snuffed.
Deacon froze mid-laugh.
“What the—”
A whisper slithered through the dark:
“Deacon...”
His lighter shook in his hand.
“Who said that? Mara? Don’t—quit messing—”
Another whisper.Closer.
“Deacon.”
Lightning flashed.
There was someone standing behind him.
A nun.
Face covered in melted wax.Mouth drooping into a dripping, silent scream.
Her hand reached forward—slow, deliberate—like she’d been waiting decades for him.
The candle near him flared—
—then every light died at once.
His scream didn’t sound human.
And then—
Nothing.
The second candle didn’t fade.
It snapped out—like fingers pinching a throat.
Mara jolted to her feet.
“Nope. Nope nope nope— I’m not doing this. I’m not dying in a church.”
Her voice was too loud. Too fast. Too scared.
She ran.
Her footsteps echoed off stone walls as she sprinted into the corridor, flashlight trembling in her hand.
Elias chased after her, calling her name—
but something about the hallway had changed.
It waslonger. Narrower. Hungrier.
Mara’s breath hitched with every step. Her flashlight beam jittered across the walls—across paintings of saints and martyrs whose painted eyes had turned toward her.
As she ran past the third cross on the wall, the carved Christ’s head slowly tilted — following her with a deliberate, bone-slow movement.
She didn’t notice.
But the monastery did.
Doors multiplied—door after door after door—stretching endlessly like a looping nightmare.
Her heartbeat wasn’t just loud in her ears.
It was echoed by footsteps behind her.
Slow.
Bare.
Wet.
“Mara...” a voice whispered—not ahead, not behind, but inside the bones of the monastery.
She choked on a sob.“STOP! Stop saying my name!”
The corridor narrowed further, pressing in like a throat swallowing.
Then—she saw it.
A door at the end of the hall.
Old. Splintered.
And carved into the wood — not written, not painted, but scratched like by fingernails—
MARA
The letters dripped fresh wax.
She didn’t want to touch the handle.
But something behind her breathed.
Slow.
Patient.
Close enough to feel.
She grabbed the handle and yanked the door open.
Inside was a stone prayer cell.
One candle burned in the center of the room — flame tall and unnaturally still.
A nun knelt in the corner.
Black veil. Wax-drenched habit.
Her shoulders shook like she was sobbing.
“M–ma’am?” Mara whispered.
The nun stopped shaking.
Very slowly...
She turned her head.
There was no face.
Just wax.
Melted, dripping.
A smooth surface where eyes and nose should be...
but the mouth was open.
Stretched impossibly wide.
And full of teeth.
Mara stepped back—
The candle flame pulled toward herlike it was inhaling.
Her breath caught.
The room pulsed—
and the candles in the hallway behind her began to go out one by one:
SNAP. SNAP. SNAP.
Each extinguished flame echoed like bones breaking.
Mara turned to run—
—but the doorway behind her sealed shut.
The walls began closing in.
“PLEASE! PLEASE! LET ME OUT!”
The nun rose from her kneeling position without using her hands—just lifting like a puppet pulled upward.
Wax dripped from her body and hissed when it hit the floor.
She moved toward Mara, arms stretching too long, too thin.
Mara clawed at the stone walls until her nails split.
The nun leaned close.
Her wax mouth opened wider—teeth scraping against teeth—
and she whispered:
“You let the flame die.”
The walls slammed inward.
Mara’s scream was cut clean in half.
Then—
silence.
Elias reached the door moments later.
When it creaked open, the cell was empty.
No Mara.
No nun.
No sound but the flicker of that single candle flame.
And above the empty bed...
the wooden cross began to drip.
Slow, thick drops of blood falling onto the white sheet like punctuation.
Elias staggered backward.
“Nadia,” he whispered.
Then louder—
“NADIA—RUN.”
Nadia and Elias crouched on the stone floor, surrounded by trembling candlelight.
Neither spoke.
Neither breathed normally.
The monastery breathed for them.The walls expanded and contracted like lungs, groaning softly with every inhale.
Wax tears slid down the candles as if they were sweating in fear.
Somewhere beyond the glow, footsteps dragged across the floor:
Soft.
Wet.
Bare.
Elias lifted a shaking hand toward the flame nearest him.“We just have to keep them lit,” he whispered.“If we keep them lit... we make it till sunrise.”
His voice was breaking.
His sanity was too.
Nadia didn’t look at him.
She was staring into the darkness — into the shape moving just at the edge of the candle glow.
It was tall.Not walking —swaying.
Like a marionette with strings pulled by an unseen hand.
Elias swallowed hard and reached for another candle, trying to steady it.
Something whispered his name.
Not from the hall.
Not from the air.
From inside his skull.
He froze.
“Nadia...” he whispered. “Did you—did you hear that?”
Nadia finally met his eyes.
“No,” she breathed. “But they know yours.”
The shape in the darkness stopped swaying.
Then it charged.
A sound like bones snapping echoed through the hall as it launched forward—far too fast, far too wrong.
Elias grabbed the closest candle like a weapon.
“BACK—BACK UP—”
The nun — or what used to be one — hit him with impossible force.
Her wax-draped hands slammed around his face, pressing his cheeks inward, forcing his jaw open wider and wider—
until his scream twisted into a wet choking gargle.
His eyes bulged.
His body convulsed.
Wax flooded his mouth.
Pouring down his throat.
Pouring into his lungs.
His legs kicked once—
twice—
then stopped.
The creature held him upright, molding his face with deliberate, ceremonial slowness — like sculpting clay.
When she let go, his skin shimmered softly.
Wax.
His features frozen mid-terror.
His body toppled to the floor with a dull, hollow sound.
Like a candle dropped on stone.
Nadia didn’t scream.
She couldn’t.
Her body had gone numb — frozen between horror and disbelief.
The creature slowly turned toward her.Its melted veil brushed the ground.
The remaining candles trembled, fighting against the darkness.
Then—one flame faltered.
It sputtered... shrank... and finally died.
The room seemed to inhale at the same moment Elias went still, his wax-fused body collapsing to the stone floor.
Only one candle remained now.
Nadia’s.
Its flame shook violently, as if it knew it was next.
Nadia clutched thelastcandle—its flame wavering violently.
“Please,” she whispered.
To the monastery.
To the flame.
To God.
To anyone.
“Please... don’t go out.”
The footsteps stopped.
The dark leaned in.
And the final flame struggled to stay alive.
Silence swallowed the hall once Elias’s candle died.
Nadia didn’t move.
Couldn’t.
Her breath shook as she gripped the final candle—her candle—hands slick with sweat and trembling so hard the flame wavered dangerously.
The monastery no longer breathed softly.
It growled.
Deep. Low. Almost pleased.
The shadows thickened around her, pressing closer like a living thing hungry for warmth.
“Nadia...”A voice whispered from the dark—not mocking, not angry—but tender.
Like someone calling a child home.
She squeezed her eyes shut.
“No. No. I’m not— I’m not going to let you—”
The footsteps started again.
Slow. Deliberate.
Bare feet dragging across ancient stone.
The sound grew closer... and closer... until it circled her.
She kept her gaze locked on the flame.
Her last lifeline.
Her last defense.
“Please,” she whispered to it, to herself, to whatever still cared.“Just until sunrise...”
Something cold brushed her hair.
She flinched—but didn’t drop the candle.
The darkness shifted, forming the faint outline of a face beside her.
A melted veil.
A hollow jaw.
Wax-teeth inches from her ear.
The nun leaned close—her voice leaking out in a sticky, wet rasp:
“You let the others burn.”
Nadia shook her head desperately.
“I—I didn’t— I tried—”
The nun’s hand extended toward the candle.
Not fast.
Not aggressive.
Slow.
Certain.
A death sentence given gently.
Nadia jerked back.
“NO!”
Her cry echoed through the hall—bouncing through corridors and stone chambers like a bell tolling for the dead.
The nun stopped.
Not out of hesitation.
Out of patience.
The flame trembled violently.
A cold wind—impossible, sour, ancient—breached the air.
The candle flickered once—
...twice—
Nadia held her breath.
“Please,” she begged.
“Just—stay—alive.”
The flame stretched tall, as if trying.
Then—
very softly,
almost apologetically—
it went out.
Darkness swallowed the hall.
Immediately, something enormous exhaled behind her—long and satisfied.
Nadia didn’t scream.
She didn’t run.
She only managed one broken whisper:
“Mom...?”
Then hands—cold, waxy, countless—closed around her arms, her throat, her waist—
and pulled her backward into the dark.
Her feet scraped once against stone—
and then she was gone.
By the time the storm broke, night had already done its damage.
The monastery sat silent under the pale morning light—no longer howling, no longer shifting, no longer breathing.
Just waiting.
The iron gate creaked open, and the caretaker stepped inside with the same calm, unhurried steps of a man following a routine older than memory. His boots crunched over gravel and broken candle wax scattered across the courtyard like bones.
He didn’t bother calling out.
There was no point.
Inside the great hall, the air hung heavy with the scent of melted wax and something sweetly rotten—like flowers decaying in a closed coffin.
He paused.
No blood.
No bodies.
No sign of panic or struggle.
Just stillness.
On the table sat four candles.
Perfectly spaced. Perfectly shaped.
Still warm.
Each one molded into a human face—eyes closed as if dreaming, mouths twisted into silent terror.
The caretaker lowered his head in something that wasn’t quite respect, but wasn’t mockery either.
A ritual.
A promise.
“Rest easy, children,” he murmured.
He struck a match.
The flame flared, small but alive.
He lit the first candle.
Its wick hissed before catching, then burned steady.
Deep within the monastery, something stirred.
A whisper of movement.
A soft shuffle.
Like something waking after a satisfying meal.
He lit the second candle.Then the third.
The hall darkened, as if the shadows themselves leaned closer to watch.
Before lighting the last one, he paused—not in hesitation, but in acknowledgment.
The air behind him shifted.
Soft, wet footsteps approached—bare feet dragging across stone.
Getting closer.
Closer.
Right behind him.
He didn’t turn.
He never turned.
He just lit the final candle.
The flame wavered... steadied... and held.
Behind him, the footsteps stopped.
Silence settled over the hall like dust.
Outside, the morning sky brightened—soft blues pushing away the storm clouds.
For a moment, everything looked peaceful.
Safe.
Then—far out on the horizon—dark clouds gathered again.
Heavy.
Bruised.
Hungry.
The caretaker blew out the match and tucked it into his coat pocket.
There would be more storms.
There were always more storms.
And when night returned...
the candles would need to be lit again.
