Chloe Gomez's POV:

The air around the campfire crackled.

They were completely hooked—eyes wide, practically buzzing with anticipation.

"There were two main taboos concerning the Prophet," I continued, keeping my voice low.

"Everyone in Providence Creek lived by these two rules. At least, that's what they claimed."

I paused, letting my gaze sweep over every face in the circle before landing on Holden. He was leaning forward, hanging on my every word.

"First," I went on, "you must never look directly at the Prophet. Never look at her face, and especially never look into her eyes."

I remember the Prophet's face was always shrouded in a thick, heavy black veil. The way it fluttered slightly hinted at the horrors hidden beneath. Even as a child, its mere presence triggered a primal dread in me.

"And the second rule," I added. "You must never mention her name to outsiders, nor speak a word about her."

"It was a secret, a sacred trust passed down through generations. They said this secret protected us."

I never understood why back then.

The story begins when I was just a naive, innocent little girl. It was the first time I ever stepped foot inside the Prophet's shrine.

The air inside was thick with the suffocating scent of ancient incense, masking a sickeningly sweet, rotting odor. The light was dim, barely filtering through the grime-caked windows.

I was young and full of curiosity.

The Prophet's statue stood on a pedestal—a gaunt, frail figure draped in silk robes. Her face was completely obscured by that thick black veil.

I knew the rules, but a child's mind simply cannot resist curiosity. I reached out a tiny hand and tugged at the edge of the veil.

"Chloe, no!" My mother's voice was shrill. Her hand clamped down on my arm, yanking me back with unexpected sheer force.

I jumped, my heart hammering in my chest.

She pulled me down, forcing me to bow my head toward the statue.

She started burning incense, sprinkling the granules into the censer. As the smoke curled upward, she began whispering frantic prayers. I stared at the censer. The embers flickered for a moment, and then, instead of dying down, they... stayed lit, refusing to turn to ash.

My mother's face twisted in sudden panic.

"This is your fault, Chloe," she said, her voice dripping with suppressed terror. "You defied the Prophet's will. She won't accept my offering."

She had to go buy more incense. I knew how precious money was to us. We were barely scraping by, let alone having extra cash to burn for a god. My mother worked her fingers to the bone just to feed us. Every single penny mattered.

While her back was turned to light another piece of wood, my childish resentment flared up again.

I hated that Prophet. I hated the rules, and I hated the fear they planted in my mother's eyes. I wanted answers. I wanted to prove them all wrong. So, I sneaked around to the back of the statue.

The Prophet was said to be an ancient, mysterious guardian who could foresee the future, predict harvests, and ward off evil. The townsfolk claimed that Providence Creek’s prosperity was all thanks to her.

But as I stood behind her, I thought of my mother's calloused hands and her hollow eyes. What exactly had this Prophet foreseen for us?

"If you're really so powerful," I whispered, "why can't you help my mom? Why are we so poor?"

The embers in the censer suddenly extinguished. Not a slow fade, not a lingering trail of smoke, but a sharp, instantaneous hiss, like something having the breath choked out of it.

A violent shiver shot down my spine. I leaned in closer, my heart pounding against my ribs. Through the Prophet's veil, I thought I saw something... moving.

Beneath the black silk, something was writhing.

Before I could process it, strong hands grabbed me, roughly dragging me out of the shrine.

"You two," a deep voice barked. "Are never allowed back in here."

My mother, pale as a ghost, didn't argue. She just gripped me tightly, her fingers digging in so hard it hurt.

She was absolutely furious. Her usually dull, defeated eyes were now ablaze with a rare anger I had hardly ever seen.

"You fool!" She shook me. "What did you do?"

I broke free from her grasp and ran. I ran until my lungs burned.

Finally, I reached the edge of town, where a group of older boys blocked my path. The Mayor's son was among them.

"Look who it is," one of them sneered. "Chloe, did you see her eyes? Did you see the witch's true face?"

The Mayor's son stepped forward, waving a crisp bill in his hand. "Tell us what you saw, Chloe. Just tell us what's under the veil. And this cash is yours."

A hundred bucks. It was more money than I had ever seen in my entire life.

Chloe Gomez's POV:

Staring at the bill in his hand, my stomach churned—not out of fear, but from a deep, gnawing hunger.

"Really?" I asked. "You'll really give it to me?"

"Every last cent," he promised.

Without hesitation, I blurted out everything I had seen: the dark, shifting silhouette beneath the veil, the sickeningly sweet smell, the way the incense had violently snuffed out. I painted a vivid picture of a living terror trapped inside that shrine.

But the boys weren't satisfied. "That's not enough. Anyone could make that up. We need proof. Hard proof."

"What kind of proof?" I asked.

He pointed toward the shrine, its heavy wooden doors shut tight against the gathering twilight. "Get the Prophet's veil. Bring it here, and the money is yours."

My mind raced. The Prophet's statue was tall, but not impossible to scale. I could reach it.

I imagined that money. It was enough to buy groceries, maybe even a new dress for my mom. Enough to make her smile, to show her I wasn't just a burden, that I could actually help.

If I did this, maybe she wouldn't be in such a rush to marry me off.

"I'll do it!" I declared, my voice shaking with a mix of dread and desperate hope. "I'll do it tonight!"

I waited until the whole town was asleep, the moon hanging high in the night sky.

The shrine cut a sinister silhouette in the pale moonlight. My fingers fumbled clumsily with the rusted padlock, but a piece of wire surprisingly did the trick.

A sharp click echoed into the dead of night.

I pushed the heavy wooden door open, breaking the silence with a low creak. A single beam of moonlight pierced the gloom, illuminating the path to the Prophet's pedestal.

I wedged a rock against the door, leaving it cracked open just enough so the wind wouldn't blow it shut.

The air inside was freezing, stagnant, and reeked of rot.

A deathly silence enveloped me, broken only by the frantic thudding of my own heartbeat.

I could feel the Prophet's presence—a heavy, suffocating weight pressing down on me. But the thought of the money pushed my fear aside.

I climbed onto the altar, then hoisted myself onto the pedestal, my eyes locked on the spot where the Prophet's statue was supposed to be.

But there was nothing there!

The Prophet was gone.

My mind went completely blank as a sudden, paralyzing wave of terror crashed over me.

I stared blankly at the empty space, my hands gripping the edge of the pedestal so hard my knuckles turned white. Where did it go?

Chloe Gomez's POV:

Beads of nervous sweat seeped from my palms.

The pedestal was still there, and embedded right in the center was a jagged iron spike pointing straight up.

Scattered around the base of the spike were rusted iron nails.

I reached out and touched the spike, instantly yanking my hand back.

It was warm—almost hot—and sticky. It wasn't old tree sap; it was something wet, viscous.

With a sickening jolt, I realized it was blood.

My childish brain scrambled for an explanation. Maybe they put the statue away? Took it to be cleaned?

But right before I entered the shrine, the statue's silhouette had been clearly visible for a split second. It was right there. I was absolutely sure of it.

How could it just vanish?

I looked around. The old, dilapidated shrine groaned around me, its wooden beams creaking under the weight of time. Cobwebs hung from the high ceiling like tattered burial shrouds.

It was just a crumbling old building, nothing more.

A cold chill slithered down my spine.

And then, I saw it. A side door, usually kept tightly shut, was slightly ajar, revealing a sliver of total darkness behind it. My eyes were drawn to it against my will, sensing the secrets hiding in that pitch-black void.

As I stared, a round, vaguely human-head-shaped silhouette slowly peeked out from behind the crack of the door, then quickly darted back into the shadows.

I gasped, a lump forming in my throat.

I jerked backward, stumbling off the pedestal and crashing hard onto the dust-covered floor. A sharp pain shot up my tailbone.

I lay there frozen, completely paralyzed with fear.

Then, an elongated shadow flitted across the gap in the side door and vanished.

Suddenly, I heard the sound of a rock being kicked away. A second later, the sliver of moonlight filtering through the front door disappeared.

The shrine was plunged into an abyssal, pitch-black darkness. It felt like a massive, invisible weight was crushing me.

Panic erupted in my chest.

I scrambled to my feet, stumbling blindly in the direction I thought the door was.

My hands slapped against solid wood. I shoved against it with everything I had. It wouldn't budge.

My teeth were chattering uncontrollably, but I clamped both hands over my mouth to stifle any sound.

Every single cell in my body was screaming at me to shriek for help, but an icy, primal instinct told me I couldn't. Whatever was in here with me, I didn't want it to find me. Not yet.

I dropped to my knees, crawling on all fours toward the incense altar, my heart hammering like a drum.

I scrambled frantically and wedged myself underneath it.

I was trembling violently, all four of my limbs shaking. I buried my face between my knees, praying to a god I didn't even believe in, begging for dawn to come.

And then, I heard it. A soft, rustling sound. Like something being dragged across the stone floor.

It was getting closer. Slow and steady.

My terrified brain tried to rationalize it. A stray dog? A rat? But the sound was far too heavy for that.

The altar cloth rustled. Two skeletal hands crawled onto the floor.

It was dragging something—a heavy, embroidered robe—across the stone tiles. It was the exact same silk robe that had been draped over the Prophet's statue.

I sucked in a sharp breath.

It wasn't a statue.

It was her. Or rather, whatever remained of her.

A horrifying realization clamped down on my heart.

It's the Prophet! The thing crawling on the floor... is the Prophet!

But... wasn't she dead? Wasn't she a statue?