Confessions in the Tempest

The storm clawed at the chapel's rotting beams, its fury ripping stained glass from the windows and scattering shards like poisoned confetti. Ayla braced against the altar, her palms pressed to pages torn from Lucas' childhood poetry journal. The ink bled crimson where his teeth had punctured the parchment years ago.

"Listen to this," she shouted over thunder, thumb smearing a verse etched in wolfsbane resin:

If blood is the price of memory Let me drink until the past dissolves—

The wolf lunged. Splintered pews exploded as his claws grazed her ribs. She tasted iron and defiance.

(Three miles underground, Lila's charcoal sketched frantic lines on asylum walls. Each stroke mirrored the chapel's cracking foundation.)

II. Fractured Hymns

Ayla's forehead pressed against his snarling muzzle. Rain sluiced between them, carrying the scent of Lila's antiseptic prison and Selena's childhood soap.

"Remember?" Her voice cracked. "You wrote this after she melted your vocal cords. Couldn't speak for six months, just... growled."

The wolf froze. A memory clawed through the feral haze:

Age 11. Lucas crouched in the laboratory drainage pipe, charcoal stolen from Selena's furnace. The poem etched on moldy brick:

Forgive me for surviving

Present-day Lucas retched. His claws spasmed, puncturing his own palms. Blood dripped onto the poem, activating a hologram of Selena at eight years old—shackled to an adjacent cell, teaching Lila to carve promises on the walls.

"See?" Ayla's thumb dug into his third vertebrae. "She was never your jailer. Just another rat in the maze."

III. Reverse Baptism

Lightning struck the chapel's rusted bell tower. The shockwave toppled a statue of the Virgin Mary, revealing a cavity stuffed with Selena's dissected dolls. Their porcelain limbs twitched, wired to a transmitter pulsing with Lila's heartbeat.

Lucas howled. The sound shattered remaining stained glass, projecting kaleidoscopic memories onto the storm:

Selena at fourteen, stitching wolfsbane into his birthday cakeLila's first seizure syncing with his transformationAyla binding his bleeding wrists with rosary beads

"Enough!" Ayla slammed the journal against his muzzle. "You want penance? Be the damn monster. Tear my throat out. But stop pretending this is all her fault!"

His teeth closed around her collarbone. She didn't flinch.

(Real-time: Lila's IV bag overflowed with bioluminescent fluid. Her sketch of the lab's ventilation system glowed beneath bandages.)

IV. Echoes in the Circuitry

The wolf's grip slackened. A guttural whine escaped his throat—"Stay" mangled into static.

Ayla seized the hesitation. "You think eating these words will erase them?" She shoved a crumpled page into his jaws. "They're in your marrow. In every cell she tampered with."

The poem dissolved on his tongue, releasing nano-recorders from Selena's experiments. Projections flickered:

Lila's fifth birthday, frosting smeared over lab reportsSelena's first kill at nine (guard's neck snapped clean)A clandestine hug through cell bars, sisters unaware of cameras

Lucas convulsed. His claws tore at the chapel floor, unearthing copper wires that pulsed with Lila's voice: "Sister's nightmares taste like rust. I keep licking the walls."

V. Absolution Protocol

Dawn bled through shattered windows. Lucas lay curled around Ayla's knees, human-shaped but vibrating with unresolved transformation. She pressed the final poem to his bleeding palms:

If moonlight is a scalpel Carve her name from my bones

The chapel's hidden speakers crackled to life. Selena's pre-recorded laugh echoed: "Sweet, isn't it? How love curdles into scripture."

Ayla crushed the transmitter underheel. Somewhere, Lila's heartbeat flatlined for precisely sixty-six seconds.

When it resumed, her first diary entry of the day glowed on the chapel wall:

"Found Sister's tears in the ventilation shaft. They crystallized into keys."

-

Thunder shook the chapel's rotting rafters. Ayla's boot slipped on hymnal pages fused to the floor by decades of blood and candle wax. The wolf cornered her beneath the cracked dome, his breath reeking of Lila's antiseptic prison and Selena's childhood perfume—honeysuckle layered over hydrochloric acid.

"Still playing martyr?" She ripped a page from the journal, its edges serrated from Lucas' adolescent teeth marks. "This verse—you wrote it the night she replaced your bone marrow. After you begged her to."

The wolf froze. Rain sluiced through the dome's fissures, illuminating the poem's hidden layer—Selena's fingerprints preserved in silver nitrate.

(Memory bleed: 14-year-old Lucas strapped to an operating table. Selena humming as she drilled into his femur. "Don't worry," she'd crooned. "I'll make you strong enough to protect her.")

Ayla pressed forward, the journal's spine cracking against his chest. "You let her. Because you thought it'd keep Lila safe. Because you were scared."

His claws pierced her shoulders. She leaned into the pain, forehead meeting his feverish muzzle. "Funny, huh? All that tampering... and you still can't lie to yourself."

The storm stalled. In the silence, a sound emerged from the wolf's throat—half growl, half sob.

Somewhere, a ventilation shaft groaned open. Somewhere, a doll's porcelain hand twitched, clutching a key made of crystallized tears.