They said the church was holy.
They said it was built for God.
But if you listen closely, the ground still whispers something else.
Long before the bell tower pierced the sky, before the first prayer stained the air, the earth beneath Saint Elior's was already awake. The villagers found bones there... hundreds, maybe more... bones tangled together like roots that had been trying to escape.
The priest, Father Coren, told them it was a test of faith. "We build where evil once stood," he said, pressing a trembling hand over the dirt that hid so many dead.
So they built.
Stone by stone, hymn by hymn.
And when they finished, they said the air smelled clean again.
But it didn't.
It smelled like rain.
And old blood.
Years passed. Prayers filled the walls, confessions soaked into the wood, and the dead learned to wait quietly beneath the altar.
Until the rain came back.
That night, the candles flickered though the air was still. The sisters were praying, soft voices rising and falling, when one of them... Sister Maeve... looked up.
The crucifix was bleeding.
Thick, red trails ran down the carved body of Christ, dripping onto the floor, hissing as if the stone itself burned.
"Father," she whispered, "it bleeds again."
Father Coren came forward, eyes sunken, face pale as parchment. "Don't look," he told her. His voice cracked halfway through. "Just… pray."
But Maeve couldn't.
Because the blood wasn't random anymore.
It was forming words.
Letters she didn't know, curling on the floor like snakes.
The bell tolled at midnight.
Twelve times.
No one touched the rope.
On the twelfth ring, every candle went out.
And in the dark, a humming started. Soft. Distant. Almost like someone remembering a song.
The sisters froze. One by one, the prayers died in their throats. The humming grew louder... fuller, until it became a voice. A woman's voice.
Maeve turned, heart pounding. The choir loft above them was empty ... except it wasn't.
A figure stood there.
Barefoot. Drenched. Her hair hung wet around her face, her dress clinging to her skin. She looked like she'd stepped straight out of the rain. Her eyes… they were colorless, but not blind. They were seeing .... everything.
"Who are you?" Maeve whispered.
The woman smiled... a small, broken curve of her lips.
"I was the first prayer this place ever heard."
Her voice didn't echo. It layered... like many people speaking through her, all at once, all wrong.
The sisters screamed, but no sound came out. Their rosaries snapped, beads scattering across the floor like teeth.
Father Coren raised his cross. "In the name of-"
The woman tilted her head. "Your God buried me here."
She stepped closer, her feet leaving no trace, but the floor darkened under her as if the light itself refused to touch her.
"Do you know what they called me?" she asked softly.
No one answered.
"They called me witch."
The rain outside turned violent, hammering the stained glass windows until the colors bled. Father Coren shouted a prayer, his words slurred, desperate. The woman laughed... a sound like breaking glass.
The blood on the crucifix rose, shaping itself into symbols that twisted in the air, glowing faintly.
"Your prayers are mine now," she whispered.
And then the church screamed.
The windows exploded inward, shards catching candlelight as they spun. The candles relit themselves... burning black. The wind howled through the open doors, though the storm stayed outside.
The sisters fell to the floor, clutching their throats, their eyes wide with silent horror.
Maeve crawled toward the door, trembling, whispering a prayer that died on her tongue. Her hand met something cold... the stone was breathing.
She looked up, and the witch was there.
Her face was inches away, beautiful and terrible. Her eyes burned faintly gold now, her voice low enough to shake the air between them.
"Do you know why it rains here, little one?"
Maeve shook her head, tears streaking down her cheeks.
The witch smiled... and for a heartbeat, she looked human again. Sad. Lonely.
"Because the sky remembers."
Her cold fingers brushed Maeve's face. "And soon," she whispered, "so will he."
Then she pressed a bloodstained finger to Maeve's lips. The church buckled. The floor split open like ribs. Every wall groaned and folded.
When the villagers came at dawn, there was nothing left. Only the bell tower leaned in the gray light, its bell swaying gently in a wind that didn't exist.
On the altar... what little remained of it... they found a single line scratched into the stone by human nails:
When the name returns, the rain will fall again.
The years passed. The story became a bedtime tale, a warning, a myth. The church was rebuilt, burned, rebuilt again.
But the bell still rings twelve times when the rain comes heavy.
And under every floor, the earth still moves... breathing, waiting.
Because some prayers were never meant to be forgiven.
And some names are never meant to be forgotten.
Somewhere far from Saint Elior's ruins, in a quiet apartment, a mirror fogs over. Raindrops form inside the glass, sliding down like tears.
Two words appear, traced by an unseen hand.
"Qin Yuelin."
"Found you."
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