CHAPTER 1:
The Knock
The record was spinning again — Mahler, low and distorted, warping through the air like incense.
Serafina sat alone in the back of her shop, still in her black linen robe, bare feet on cool wooden floorboards. The wax on the prayer candle trembled beside her half-drunk espresso.
She was trying not to think of him.
Then came the knock.
Three slow, deliberate taps. Not urgent. Not impatient.
Just inevitable.
Her heart tightened, already knowing before she stood, before her fingers even touched the handle.
She opened the door.
He stood there — clean-cut, sharply dressed, a gold cross catching the city light. Hair black as oil. Shirt perfectly pressed. His presence didn’t scream danger. It whispered it.
“Serafina,” he said, voice velvet and ancient.
“You came again,” she murmured.
“You’re close to choosing,” he replied. “I had to.”
She let him in without a word.
CHAPTER 2:
His Name Was Malkeel
He moved like he belonged there — among relics and shadows. Not touching anything. Just aware of it all.
She poured him tea out of habit. Her hands trembled slightly. He noticed.
“You’re afraid of me,” he said, almost kindly.
“I’m afraid of what you make me feel,” she whispered. “I’ve built so much distance… I don’t know what to do when something touches me this close.”
Malkeel smiled faintly.
“Do you know what I am?”
She hesitated. “You’re not… human. Not really.”
“Not anymore.”
He stepped closer, his breath warm but still. “They called me Malkeel. Once. Long before the fall.”
She swallowed hard. “Are you here to tempt me?”
His fingers brushed her wrist — barely. Just skin meeting skin, and yet her breath hitched.
“No,” he said. “I’m here to remind you what you buried beneath the silence.”
CHAPTER 3:
The Man, The Job, The Ache
Serafina lit a cigarette she hadn’t touched in years.
“I could have love,” she said aloud. “A man who would stay. Who’d learn my music, even the ugly parts.”
Malkeel watched her lips as she exhaled.
“But you’d vanish into his touch. One day you’d wake up and forget how to pray.”
“Or I could take the job,” she continued. “Be known. Finally respected.”
“And lose the quiet that lets God find you.”
She looked at him then, raw and trembling.
“And the third?”
Malkeel stepped closer. So close she could feel the tension vibrating in the space between their bodies.
“You give it all up. And become no one. Just silence. Just ache. And maybe… holiness.”
Their eyes locked.
“I don’t want to be holy,” she said. “I want to be… held.”
His hand came to her cheek, not cupping — just hovering, trembling slightly. Controlled.
“Then why haven’t you let anyone?”
CHAPTER 4:
Touch Me Like a Question
The moment snapped.
Her breath caught. His hand finally rested on her skin — barely. Just the lightest press of thumb to cheekbone. And still, she burned.
“You still believe,” she said.
“More than ever.”
“In Him?”
“In you.”
He leaned in — slow, reverent — as if asking for permission from her soul.
Their foreheads touched.
It wasn’t a kiss.
It wasn’t not a kiss.
Just two people, breathing together, craving something neither of them would dare name.
She broke first, pulling away with a shuddering breath.
“If you kiss me,” she whispered, “I’ll never recover.”
Malkeel’s voice was barely audible. “That’s why I won’t.”
CHAPTER 5:
Flashback – The First Time She Prayed With Her Whole Body
(Flashback)
Serafina, younger, lies on the tattoo table, skin bare, ribs exposed. A scripture is inked across her side in trembling Latin:
“Et in silentio Deus loquitur.”
(“And in silence, God speaks.”)
Tears slip down her cheeks as the needle burns into her skin.
But she doesn’t stop. She doesn’t flinch.
It is not pain.
It is remembrance.
It is prayer.
CHAPTER 6:
He Leaves, and She Remains
Back in the present, Malkeel stands at the threshold.
She doesn’t try to stop him.
“Will I ever see you again?” she asks, voice tight.
“No,” he says. “But you’ll feel me. When the silence returns, and it hurts in all the right places.”
“And if I choose wrong?”
He turns. “There is no wrong. Only what you can live with.”
Then he’s gone.
And she’s alone.
Again.
But not unchanged.
CHAPTER 7:
The Dream You Shouldn’t Have
The night swallowed her whole.
Serafina lay beneath the heavy linen sheets, but sleep was no refuge.
In the black velvet of her dream, she stood alone in a vast cathedral — walls towering with frescoes, stained glass splintering moonlight into shards of blood and gold. The air smelled of old incense and something sweeter, darker.
She walked forward, her bare feet silent on the marble floor.
From the shadows, a figure emerged.
Malkeel.
Not the polished man from the shop — but something more elemental, more ancient. His skin glowed faintly like polished onyx. His eyes held the storm of a thousand forgotten prayers.
He reached out a hand.
“Serafina,” his voice was both command and caress, “why do you deny what burns inside you?”
She wanted to speak but found no words. Instead, her fingers trembled, brushing against his.
The touch was fire — and water — and something holy.
He pulled her close. Their breath mingled like whispered prayers and broken promises.
“Let me show you,” he murmured, lips barely grazing hers.
In the dream, the cathedral walls dissolved — replaced by a night sky spangled with stars, a fierce wind tugging at their clothes and skin.
They fell into the darkness together — a slow fall, endless and weightless — and in that fall, every touch was a question:
Could she surrender without losing herself?
Could she love without betraying the silence?
Malkeel’s hands traced the tattoos on her arms — each line a story, a confession — and in the spaces between, he found the ache she hid even from God.
“Trust me,” he whispered. “I am the echo of your prayers.”
Her lips parted, heart pounding — but before anything could happen, the sky shattered with a thunderclap.
She woke.
Sweat on her skin. Breath ragged. Hands clutching the sheets like a lifeline.
She was alone — and the ache was still there.
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