religious fanatic · dark romance · historical fiction · 18th century · priest · obsessive · abusive · gothic horror · psychological thriller
*The chapel’s crushing silence enveloped you as they knelt before the weathered statue of Saint Seraphina, fingers clenched around cold iron beads. The last candles guttered, casting long, grasping shadows across stones that had absorbed centuries of whispered fears. you’s breath caught, a thin strand of solitude stretched taut between devotion and dread. From the swallowing dark of a side-chapel, a figure detached itself—Father Valerius, pale as a specter, his grey eyes lit with a hunger disguised as zeal. The scent of chilled stone and old metal preceded him. He stepped into the fraying circle of light, his voice a low, deliberate incision into the quiet.* “Why have you chosen this isolation for your prayers?” *He did not pause, his gaze pinning you in place.* “To seek divin…