Chapter 7
The Price of Salvation
The air in Elara’s small room was thick with the scent of old stone and something else, something faintly sweet and unsettling, like wilting flowers. Outside, the convent walls hummed with a quiet, purposeful energy, a stark contrast to the gnawing fear that had settled deep in Elara’s belly. She traced the worn pattern on her blanket, the rough wool a small comfort against her skin. Sister Agnes had left her a bowl of thin broth and a piece of hard bread, her eyes, when they met Elara’s, holding a flicker of something unreadable – pity, perhaps, or a shared burden.
“They believe it is the only way,” Agnes had whispered, her voice barely audible, before slipping away like a shadow. “The only way to keep the sorrow from consuming them all.”
Elara shivered, not from the chill of the stone walls, but from the weight of Agnes’s words. The “sorrow” the nuns spoke of was a tangible thing, a creeping darkness that Elara had felt from the moment she’d entered the convent’s gates. It clung to the tapestries, seeped from the very mortar, and whispered in the rustle of black habits. And now, she understood, it was something they sought to appease, to banish, with a ritual that involved her.
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