Jerusalem — 5:46 A.M.
The morning prayer bells echoed faintly across the outer walls of the old city, each chime carrying with it the scent of dew and incense. Nathaniel walked briskly through the winding paths of the monastery garden, trying to shake the images from his head. The flickers. The scream. The concrete hallway.
He had barely slept after returning from the courtyard. His thoughts had looped endlessly — like a tape replaying over static.
Now, the stillness of early dawn felt heavy.
His steps slowed near the far end of the garden — an area few of the brothers visited. It was enclosed by stone ruins, older than even the monastery itself. The air here had a thickness to it, almost like the past lingered.
Something pulled at him.
The same pull he felt when he looked at the black stone.
He stepped through a vine-covered archway and paused.
The stone altar at the center was cracked — not in the way time might weather stone, but in a perfect, almost surgical line. A clean, dark fracture ran across its surface, like something had sliced it.
Nathaniel approached.
Something shimmered above the crack. Barely visible.
He blinked.
It wasn't shimmering — it was splitting.
Just above the altar, reality itself was… warping.
A line of air rippled, like heat rising from pavement. But more than that — there was depth. Layers. Through the shimmer, he thought he could see… another version of the altar. Broken differently. Covered in ash. The background was darker. Redder. Like a world burning.
He reached out—
And a force hit him like a hammer to the chest.
He flew back and landed hard against the ground, wind knocked from his lungs.
A whisper followed.
"Seven…"
He scrambled upright, heart racing.
The shimmer was still there, the split in the stone pulsing like a heartbeat.
"Who's there?" he shouted, louder than he meant.
No answer.
He dared step closer again — slower this time.
And that's when he saw the symbol carved just beneath the fracture. It hadn't been there yesterday. Or ever.
It was the same shape that appeared in his dream the night after the visions began: a thunderbolt divided by a serpent, coiled around seven stars.
He stumbled back, adrenaline screaming in his veins.
Someone was watching.
No — something.
He turned, expecting to see Eliam or one of the others.
Instead, at the edge of the vines, half-covered in shade, stood a young boy.
Barefoot. Pale. Maybe ten years old. His eyes impossibly black.
"Nate?" the boy said quietly, cocking his head.
"Who… who are you?" Nate asked, nearly whispering.
The boy stepped forward. "You dropped something."
In his hand was the black stone.
Nate hadn't even realized it was missing.
He reached to take it.
Their hands almost touched—
Flash.
The garden disappeared.
He was standing in a hospital hallway — bright white, flickering. Blood smeared the floor. An alarm blared somewhere far off. Someone screamed his name.
"NATHANIEL!"
Then—
Snap.
Back in the garden.
The boy was gone.
The stone was in his hand.
Nate backed away from the altar, from the fracture, from the growing sense that everything was a lie.
---
Monastery Archives — 7:01 A.M.
Brother Eliam stood before the heavy door of the archive chamber, his lantern casting a long, flickering shadow.
He opened a thick leather-bound book — a restricted volume from the Temple's hidden vault. As he turned the page, his hand stopped over an illustration.
The serpent and the thunder.
"Too soon," he whispered.
But behind him, unseen — a shimmer passed across the stone wall.
The split was spreading.