The Night of Thirteen Bells
The rain began just before midnight.
Eliana pulled her dark coat closer around her shoulders as she hurried through the narrow streets of the old town. The wind carried the smell of wet stone, dead leaves, and something strangely metallic.
Blood.
She stopped.
Across the empty street stood an ancient church. Its broken windows were covered in ivy, its walls blackened by centuries of storms. Nobody had entered the building for more than a hundred years.
At least, that was what everyone in town believed.
Eliana had passed the church hundreds of times, but tonight something was different.
A single red light glowed behind the tallest window.
Then the bell rang.
One.
Two.
Three.
She counted each strike, feeling her heartbeat grow faster.
Twelve.
Silence.
Eliana exhaled shakily. Perhaps the stories were nothing more than old village legends.
Then came the thirteenth strike.
The sound was deeper, louder, almost alive. The ground trembled beneath her feet. Every streetlamp went dark.
And from somewhere inside the church, a woman's voice whispered:
"Eliana..."
She froze.
Nobody in this town knew her name.
Nobody should have known she was there.
Slowly, the enormous church doors began to open.
A figure stood in the darkness.
A tall man dressed in black, his face hidden beneath the shadows.
"You shouldn't have come here," he said.
Eliana stepped backwards.
"Who are you?"
The stranger raised his head. His eyes reflected the red moon like two drops of blood.
"The question, little girl, is not who I am."
He took one step towards her.
"It's why the dead have been waiting five hundred years for you."
And then Eliana saw it.
The same mysterious symbol that had marked her shoulder since birth was glowing beneath her skin.
The church bell began to move again.
But this time, nobody was pulling the rope.
