Loop

Akena's heartbeat dropped. The rustle of the leaves due to the breeze was muffled, and all Akena could hear was the sound of her breathing. She huffed, panic creeping in as the only source of her safety had started to crumble. Her breath hitched as she quickly but gently placed the rosary in her pocket. Her hand trembled as she recalled the words of her sisters.

The sisters at the church used to tell tales, although most of the orphans didn't believe them. Eventually, the children couldn't take it anymore and blabbed to the priest, asking for the truth. Everyone almost automatically assumed the tales were false. Despite the warnings from the elder sisters, the younger ones approached the priest and asked him about the stories. What proved their confidence wrong was the priest's silence. If they had been false, the priest would have said so, as he was obliged to tell the truth. But his silence had become the answer. The priest didn't show it to the children, but he was outraged once he found out about the tales the children were told.

One of the stories the sisters had told was about a girl. A girl of ten who had merely been separated from her father during a carnival. A brave young child she was; she didn't cower in fear or cry. She walked around asking people if they had seen her father. Many noticed the child, clearly convinced it was the only possibility for the young one's loneliness.

The young girl later approached another young girl, asking, "Have you seen my father?" The naive girl told the lost girl that if she visited the church, she would find her father there. The lost girl hummed as she stepped forward in a hurry, her tiny feet approaching the church. She sat on one of the benches in front of Christ's statue, waiting for her father. Not long after, the priest of the church asked her, "Hello, child. May I ask where your parents are?" "No, sir, I do not know. I was told to come here to find my father," she replied in her soft, childish voice. The priest smiled at the little girl's bravery. "Is that so? Then shall we pray while we wait?" The girl nodded, despite having never prayed in her short life.

The priest handed the little girl a white rosary. "Here, child. They say good wishes from the angels reside within these sacred beads. If you pray holding these, your wish just might get fulfilled," a blatant lie to convince the child. The child smiled as she took the rosary in her tiny hands and joined her hands, wrapping the beaded string around her wrist. The priest softly chuckled at the child's innocence, but his smile grew fainter before it completely disappeared as he noticed that the color of the beads had turned from white to a dark black.

The priest abruptly got up from his seat, taking a step back. "Y-you..!" The little girl turned her head toward the priest. "Father?" The priest staggered as he felt something off in his back. The rosary completely crumbled in the little girl's fist. "Father? When will my father come? Can you be my new father?"

Days later, they found a man's body in the forest, recognized by people as the little girl's father, who had taken her to the carnival. The little girl had gone missing, and the priest of the church became paralyzed and still sits in a vegetative state at a nursing home in Rome. The sisters had told the children that when darkness comes for the light, the light will no doubt be tainted by it, however small it may be. But when the darkness crumbles the beads of light, it's not your faith in question. It's a sign of danger—a sign of a sinister being lingering just beside you. "You must not fight it... not because it might harm you, but because you can't," they said.

But even if Akena were to run... where would she run? Where could she go? She was in the middle of nowhere, her surroundings—the country, the language—unknown to her, and something beyond her knowledge was at play here, something that was not human. But a human's survival instinct didn't fail Akena. She ran as fast as she could in a direction far from where she had stood. She didn't know where she was heading or where she would reach; all she knew at that point was that if she stopped to take even a breath, she would not live to see another day in peace. She ran for as ling as she could remember and when her legs had finally gave out making her trip she got hersekf uo form the ground, grunting only to see the same tree from where she had started her marathon.The tree that stood beside the apparent witch's abode. Her eyes widened and she felt frightened.. Truly frightened. But Akena had yet to realize the actual biggest mistake she had made: not throwing away the tainted beads.