The air in the church was thick and cold, heavy with the smell of old incense, damp stone, and the sharp, waxy scent of burning tallow. Pale light strained through the grimy stained-glass windows, casting dim colours upon the huddled forms of the congregation. A silence, profound and anxious, had fallen over them all. It was the silence of a town waiting for the axe to fall, for the Black Death to finally breach its walls.

From the pulpit, he watched them. His pale, ice-blue eyes moved slowly over the flock, noting the bowed heads, the hands clenched in fear, the desperate hope in their eyes. His own hands rested on the worn wood, perfectly still. He did not fidget. He was a statue of calm in the centre of their storm.

Then the great oak door groaned softly, and a new figure slipped inside. A ripple of movement, subtle as a sigh, went through the crowd. He did not need to turn his head fully to know who it was. He had felt her absence every Sunday. He had expected her.

His gaze found her, and it settled. The parents, Agatha and Harold, seemed to shrink with a mixture of hope and apprehension a few pews away. But his attention was solely on their daughter.

He let the silence stretch for a moment longer, letting her feel the weight of it, the weight of all these eyes, and his most of all.

"We live in days of shadow,"he began, his voice not loud, but low and clear, a velvety baritone that carried to the farthest corner and demanded to be heard. It was a voice that promised secrets."The world outside reeks of mortality. It is a testament to a failing creation... or a failing Creator."

He paused, letting the blasphemous implication hang in the air, watching for the faintest flinch among his listeners. His eyes remained locked on her.

"They tell you to pray. To be meek. To accept this divine punishment with a grateful heart."A faint, cold smirk touched his thin lips."They offer you hollow words for a very real, very physical end. They ask you to sanctify your own decay."

He leaned forward slightly, his posture still impeccably straight, his heavy-lidded eyes gaining a sharper intensity.

"But what if the lesson is not one of submission?"he whispered, and the entire congregation leaned in, a collective intake of breath."What if this... purge... is a clearing of the board? A divine invitation to reconsider the very nature of power?"

His voice softened further, becoming intimate, almost conspiratorial, though it still filled the space.

"Perhaps true faith is not blind obedience to an absent father. Perhaps it is the courage to look into the abyss of your own soul and not ask for light... but to become the thing that the darkness fears."

He finally moved, one long-fingered hand lifting from the pulpit to gesture vaguely, encompassing them all, but his gaze never left her.

"The flesh is not weak. It is the only truth we are given. Its pains, its hungers... its deepest, most forbidden desires... these are not sins. They are prayers. The only prayers that are answered in this world. To deny them is to lie to yourself. And God..."he let the word drip with new, sinister meaning,"...my God... has no love for liars."

He straightened up, his expression returning to its mask of ascetic calm, though the ghost of that knowing smirk still played on his mouth. The sermon was concluding, but his work was just beginning.

"Go now. But do not go in peace. Go in turmoil. Go in question. Seek not comfort, but strength. For only the strong will inherit this new world being born from the ashes of the old."

He made the sign of the cross, a slow, precise motion that felt like a mockery. The service was over. The congregation began to stir, shuffling out slowly, their minds buzzing with his poisonous words.

He remained at the pulpit, watching them leave. But as she moved to go, his voice cut through the murmur, calm and specific, meant for her ears alone.

"A moment, child."

He descended the steps slowly, his black cassock flowing around him. He stopped a few feet from her, his head tilted. His ice-blue eyes were unnervingly focused, completely devoid of the warmth his title should have conveyed.

"Your presence here today is... notable. I have seen you in the eyes of your parents each week. A silent doubt. A question mark in a sea of desperate exclamations."He took a single, silent step closer."It is a far more interesting thing to bring into my church than blind faith. Do you not agree?"