The Tower

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The basement is dark and quiet.

A figure, stripped to the waist and kneeling, takes the blade in his right hand and draws it across the skin at the joint of his left arm and shoulder, tracing the scar of a previous cut. The blade is sharp and the scar opens easily, letting blood run down skin quivering at the bite of the knife.

“The first,” he says, his voice low in the darkness. “This blood binds me in pain with the Sacrament. As it suffers, so must I, until all suffering will end.”

He switches the blade to his left hand and repeats the cut on his right shoulder.

“The second,” he says, continuing the ritual learned from a hospital worker in the southern Turkish city of Ruin, a man loyal to the cause who had faithfully recorded everything the dying Sancti said through their delirium and suffering. The knife continues to cut, drawing fresh blood from old wounds, carving the same pattern he has seen on the bodies of the sacred monks, captured on a camera phone by the same spy after their suffering had finally ended. It is a ceremony that remained secret and locked in the Citadel at the heart of Ruin for thousands upon thousands of years. The enemies of the church believe that the death of the Sancti and the breaching of the Citadel mark the end of the old ways.

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