Sister Bertha’s illness deepened by the day, and some nights she jolted awake, terrified by a room black as ink and still as a shut well.

Once, there were nuns to whisper with in the dark; now only she remained, like a lone bell in a long-emptied tower.

Distance and loneliness felt like a signal stretched for hundreds of miles, wound tight by an unseen winch, creaking like rope in a salt wind.

Her chopped-up breath seemed borrowed, not her own, like gusts knifing through trees, rattling her eardrums in fits and starts.

She stared at the ceiling where black thinned toward gray, and told Alina, “I had a dream. I was a branch snapped in two.”

Alina didn’t answer; she moved like a moth around flame, smoothing quilts with careful fingers.

“I’m afraid, Cheryl… I think I’m going to die.” A crow dropped onto the sill, glossy as wet coal, and tilted its head.

She stopped grumbling about pain, then said, “I haven’t slept well. In the mirror my tongue looks like a patch of mud by a well.”

Alina followed that thought, imagining the tongue’s coat as silt clinging to cracked bricks, wormy sludge packed in a damp corner.

“Drink what the doctor prescribed,” Alina finally said, voice low as a candle flame. “You’ll get better soon.”

“I’m sorry… I lied to you…”

Alina’s fine brows pinched, like saying enough with a faint tsk, a small pebble in still water that sent tight ripples.

Sister Bertha shut her mouth, most of her words snagged on that tsk, like a thread caught on a splinter.

“An apology now… doesn’t mean much,” Alina said, her breath thin as smoke.

“Cheryl… don’t abandon…”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Alina murmured, stroking hair brittle as frost-burned straw, each strand breaking like dry grass.

Her body was a mirror of Priest John’s, both starved past hunger, feeding on their own fat like candles burning hollow and cold.

“I can’t sleep,” she said, voice rasping like paper.

“Then don’t sleep,” Alina replied, steady as a stone in rain.

“Cheryl… I want you to be the Holy Maiden… but…”

“Saying that now,” Alina drew a slow breath; the room held her scent like a closed jar, medicine and dead skin steeped to a sour reek, “is it because you know your life sits in my hands?”

“You’re a good child, just a little mischievous,” Sister Bertha said, a tired smile like a crease in old leather.

“Still mischievous, looking at me now?” Alina asked, eyes cool as lake water at dusk.

Sister Bertha shook her head. “You scare me a little. Day by day, you look less like yourself, like a face eroded by wind.”

“In what way?” Alina asked, voice soft as falling ash.

“Quiet, still, efficient… becoming like—” She stopped; the name was a stone she wouldn’t lift, a taboo seed in Alina’s chest. “Have you thought about taking in new nuns?”

“You’re the one in charge of the Molokov Bay Chapel,” Alina said, each word set like a nail.

“My body’s done. Getting out of bed costs mountains, let alone holding a pen; my fingers feel like thawing twigs.”

“You’ll get better,” Alina said, the hope brittle as early ice.

“The medicine’s useless. I’m weaker each day, and you handle my every need, even the foul ones; am I grinding you down like sand?”

Alina shook her head. Candlelight washed her face with white and rose, gleaming like oil on marble, lovely and unreal.

Her lips were pressed to a line, the corners drooping a hair, betraying thoughts like shadows slipping under a door.

From that day on, Alina reset the potion to its proper dose, like a river forced back into its channel.

Watching someone—because of her—step faster toward the brink felt like holding a hot coal; her conscience smoked and blistered.

Sister Bertha’s thinning body and rasped, withered voice circled Alina’s mind like crows over a field, day after day.

She knew, clear as winter stars, that indulging her hate would end in something irreparable, a crack ice couldn’t hide.

She also tasted a hard truth: a nun, praised as mercy made flesh, is still just a profession; people can stray and sin like anyone.

Because of Sister Bertha’s illness, the only nun moving in the Sacred Cathedral was Alina, a lone lamp in a long corridor.

She kept to the schedule like beads on a rosary, trained daily, read tomes of Sacred Magic, and gave the rest to Sister Bertha’s care.

Summer slipped away like a lizard under leaves; the green drained from the woods, and ocher husks carpeted the paths like rust.

Between tasks, Alina paused to watch autumn, and a quiet she couldn’t name settled on her heart like mist on reeds.

Sometimes she chatted with townsfolk who came to pray, remembering Sister Bertha’s words: “Believers’ recognition matters,” a bell note still ringing.

She wanted to win their goodwill, to add a thread of chance to becoming the Holy Maiden; yet she hid in dim corners like a shy cat.

She feared her old mischief would cast a stain, a shadow that would spook the townsfolk like birds startled from grain.

Days passed, and her hair ran from shoulder to waist, a brown river lengthening; streaks of frost-white crept in with every page of Sacred Magic.

Sister Bertha warned without mercy, words like a cudgel: “That’s a sign of deformed magic circuits! You don’t have the gift for magic.”

The sentence fell like a cloud’s shadow over Alina’s heart, heavy and cold.

“Little nun?” A curious townsman peered around like a sparrow on a sill. “The little nun with the pretty voice?”

“What is it?” Alina asked, her tone calm as a shaded pool.

“We heard Sister Bertha took in a young nun. We came to take a look, like checking a new sprout in the garden.”

Alina stood in the Sacred Cathedral’s shadowed corner, thinking most lately came for curiosity, not reverence; the thought stung like grit in the eye.

“The Sacred Cathedral is a place that purifies the heart,” she said, voice a low bell. “Not a stall for desires. Please carry reverence, and don’t profane the holy.”

“Well said!” someone answered, the words clapping like dry wood.

“Bring me your troubles,” Alina whispered, “and keep idle talk locked in your chest,” a plea and a protest braided like twine.

“Sorry, sorry!” a townsman said, hands fluttering like leaves. “Since Priest John’s sad passing, the friendly nuns left, and Sister Bertha fell ill…”

“At a time like this, a new nun appears, so of course we’re curious; and Sister Bertha still hasn’t named a Holy Maiden, so we suspect… it might be you…”

“Because I’m new?” Alina asked, gaze steady as a straight road.

“Uh… yeah,” he said, cheeks pinking like dawn.

“I’m not new,” she said, each word neat as a stitch.

“Really? But everyone else left,” he muttered, doubt hanging like fog.

Alina stood where she was, yet the slanted sun carved her from the gloom, crisp as a figure cut from paper.

Last time, she was ash no one noticed; this time, attention rose to her like smoke to a beam.

“I—I think I’ve seen you somewhere!” a townsman blurted, turning to his neighbor. “You feel that too, right?”

The neighbor nodded. “The quiet little girl reading under a tree—I remember you, like a tune that won’t leave.”

“What was your name again?”

“Hedi… Hedi Melvina… it’s definitely you…”