The church was no sanctuary anymore. The cracked altar was stained—not just with dust, but with the bitter residue of a night John couldn’t erase. His hands still trembled, gripping the crucifix like a last, fragile shard of sanity. The silence pressed down, suffocating, broken only by the distant drip of water and the faint echo of voices that might’ve been memories—or something worse.

He knew the evil wasn’t gone. It was waiting, lurking just beyond the veil of the broken stained glass, crawling in the shadows of his mind. Every breath tasted of ash and regret. He was no longer the priest who believed in salvation—he was a man barely holding on, haunted by the screams he failed to quiet.

But the fight wasn’t over. It never would be.

John took a slow, shuddering breath and stepped deeper into the darkness, crucifix raised like a warning—both to the demons outside and the ones clawing inside his soul.