The lock on the church door was big, old, and impressively resistant to blunt damage. It was even easier to pick than a common modern lock, according to Lily. She cracked the thing in barely a few seconds.

  Bullshit, that skill of her was.

  When the door opened, a gust of stale air rushed outside. It smelled of dust and old people, with a hint of electrifying current underneath. He felt goosebumps cover his skin as he savored the sensation. Rotten fruit, and burning wood, and misplaced hope. He seriously doubted that things were supposed to smell like that. It wasn’t even a smell, but the association of smell? The smell of the air, instead of reminding him of things, simply told him what it was reminding him of.

  Not that he had any memory of how misplaced hope was supposed to smell like. But he just knew.

  “You think there’s anyone inside?” he asked quietly while peering into the darkness.

  “If there are, they’re dead,” Lily replied casually, though he could notice wariness in her expression. It seemed he wasn’t the only one with a mild case of supernatural sensations. “There’s only dead people in houses, if there’s anyone at all.”

  “Zombies, maybe?” he guessed, trying to see anything at all without going in. It was like light from the outside simply refused to cross the threshold. “This is creepy as fuck. I bet there’s zombies. Or ghosts.”

  “Probably ghosts,” she agreed.

  Okay, no, she wasn’t supposed to agree! The fuck he was supposed to do with ghosts?!

  “If it’s ghosts, I’m going invisible,” the little monster declared. “You can just run away, I think.”

  “Great plan,” he replied dryly. “Who’s gonna go in first?”

  She looked at him skeptically.

  “Hear me out,” he said. “If you go first, you get attacked first. And if you’re attacked first, I can use my skill and save you. It’s just logical, right?”

  “Are you scared?”

  “I’m not scared, I’m–”

  “Chicken.”

  He went in first.

  Floorboards creaked underneath him as he slowly went further inside, holding his dagger ready. Lily walked closely behind him, brave enough to go inside but not brave enough to keep some distance between them. Whatever was happening to the lighting in this place, it was not normal. Darkness parted around him like he was the one illuminating things, but not because he was a source of light, but because he was banishing darkness. He quickly glanced back and noticed that Lily had a similar effect on the surroundings, destroying the foggy darkness in a circle around her. They didn’t have a light source, but they could see, not because there was light, but because it wasn’t dark.

  His head slightly hurt, trying to make sense of the sensations. It reminded him of the goblin’s spawn point, in a way, like common logic was overwritten by a higher authority, and things made sense because it said so.

  “Yeah I really doubt there’s any survivors here,” he said quietly, mostly to fill the space with noise. “Why the fuck is it so dark? There’s windows outside. It should be brighter.”

  “It’s the silence of the end,” Lily whispered. Her gaze was unfocused, in a way he saw a few times when she listened to her skill when she was trying to explain it to him. “The darkness of long rest. The misplaced hope. The futile dream.”

  “You will not do a creepy girl routine on me!” he whispered back at her angrily. Not that he was afraid of raising his voice, but… Okay, he kinda was. “Snap out of it!”

  “It’s– it’s okay,” she whispered back, her focus returning. “I don’t think it’s dangerous. It just exists.”

  “Let me guess, your grandma had a gift?” he asked, still focused on his surroundings in case of a sudden ghost attack. The fuck was he supposed to do against ghosts?! He was starting to see the backs of wooden benches as they slowly went further in, on the edge of the darkness. “A little bit of psychic in your blood, eh? A lucky charm passed on through generations? Ever saw any weird things as a kid?”

  “I’m–”

  “If you get possessed I’m getting the fuck out of here.”

  “I’m not gonna get possessed!” she snapped back at him. Still, none of them dared to raise their voice, talking in angry whispers. “I don’t think it’s me. Are you telling me you don’t feel it?”

  “Nope, no weird supernatural sensations at all, unlike you I’m a perfectly normal–”

  “Dennis, stop fucking around!” she grabbed the sleeve of his shirt. He could tell she was scared. “Listen!”

  To be fair, he was actively trying not to listen. Or smell. Or… perceive. That was ‘surviving a creepy house 101’. Beat the supernatural fuckery through the power of sheer ignorance. The character doesn’t get eaten by a monster until he notices it, everyone knows that.

  He wanted to come up with another retort or a joke, just to distract himself further, but something in her gaze stopped him. He just hoped it wasn't a ‘pretend to be persuasive’ situation again.

  He sighed, and peered deeper into the darkness.

  The first thing he realized was that there was no point. The darkness wasn’t anything special, just a facet of this… place. What was special was the space. Everything around them. It was the same aura they felt outside, but magnified, and because it was stronger it was easier to feel out the nuances of it. He didn’t look at it with his eyes, or listen with his ears, or smell with his nose. He knew.

  The unrewarded faith. Hope lost at the last moment. Fear of death, unfulfilled. False safety. Rot and new hope and rot again. A glorious dream.

  Yeah, this thing was harmless. Like Mind, it had no focus, and therefore did nothing but fill the space with noise.

  Huh.

  “It’s a stat?” he asked outloud, trying to pin down the sensation. “A skill? Stats and skills are the same, so… it’s the same thing? Not mine, and not yours. It’s bound to this place? The church? The church has a skill?!”

  The smell of incense, familiar and annoying. A mundane ritual. A spark of true faith. A shameful secret.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  “I think it’s more like a stat,” Lily said quietly. “It doesn’t do anything. It’s…”

  “A church,” Dennis said. “The fucking church has a ‘church’ stat. And it’s really shitty. I wonder if it levels up? Do you think it’s the source of the exp aura, or did it just sunbathe in it until it got the stat?”

  “It’s not the source,” she replied. “I mean, maybe it’s the source of the aura, but it’s not the building. It’s… there,” she pointed in front of them, in the direction where the feeling became the strongest. They were standing between the wooden benches, and while they couldn’t see behind the darkness, he was pretty sure that the source was where the altar would be.

  “Five bucks says it’s a dead dude,” he made a bet. “With a dagger in his heart or something.”

  “You don’t have the money.”

  “I’m pretty sure I can find five dollars easily enough. There’s a bank not that far away, you know.”

  “The one you tried to use as an excuse to kill me for robbing?”

  “Those were extenuating circumstances. I don’t think it counts as robbing if the owners are dead, so it’s legally okay to take the money.”

  “I think it’s gonna be an artifact,” she said, trying to look into the darkness. He couldn’t see shit, so he doubted she could either. “An old saint’s bones or something like that. They don’t sacrifice people in churches.”

  “Maybe it was a front for a cult. I bet they were performing a weird ritual and summoned the apocalypse. The aura is fitting.”

  “I don’t feel any ‘sacrifice’ in it. It’s just a weird dread. It’s not fitting at all.”

  They kept standing between the benches, looking at the place where the altar would be if they only took a few more steps.

  “Care to check?” he asked.

  “You go first.”

  “No, you go first.”

  “Chicken.”

  “I will not fall for this twice.”

  “But I’m just a small little girl. You can’t seriously suggest–”

  “You don’t get to play this card either.”

  “Hmph!”

  They were both looking in the direction of it, trying to glimpse some hint of what it was and how likely it was to be a deadly ghost. Or a zombie.

  “Together?” she proposed.

  “Yeah, it feels like we’ll just stand here and do nothing otherwise,” he agreed easily enough. “It’s probably nothing anyway.”

  She grabbed the sleeve of his shirt again. It seemed that she just liked to have something to hold. Or was she actually scared that he’ll run away and leave her if he saw a ghost? He didn’t think he would, that would be very much against his moral compass. Probably should’ve specified that he was mostly joking when he said that. People often didn’t understand when he was, it was a common problem.

  Whatever, he didn’t mind. He took a step forward. The darkness receded. He took another one.

  Lily took a sharp breath.

  It wasn’t a dead body, regretfully, so he didn’t win his bet. It wasn’t a relic either, so at least he didn’t lose. It was just some kind of… mindfuckery.

  Above the altar, there were cracks. The closest thing to describe them would be to say that they were cracks in the air, like a broken glass of reality spreading out in all directions. That description was the closest, but yet it was absolutely false. Those cracks weren’t spread around in space, no, they were spread into the space. Or from the space? From outside the space? If a mirror had depth instead of being a sheet of glass, those cracks would be spreading out along the depth.

  This was that, but in space. Something was shattered, but the damage was outside the normal three dimensions of space, and yet he saw it, not with his eyes because they definitely didn’t have the capacity to perceive this shit, but with that same sense that he used to feel out his skill. The mindfuckery of it all came from the fact that he was perceiving something that his mind didn’t have a fucking clue how to decipher. He couldn’t make any associations or to describe it fairly, because he simply had no reference for it. It was a thing outside not just his understanding, but his ability to understand.

  “It’s a cthulhu-tesseract!” he described it perfectly.

  “What’s a tesseract?” Lily asked, her gaze still transfixed on the thing.

  “A four-dimensional cube,” he said wisely. “Notably useful for opening portals for alien invasions and summoning Thanos. It makes total sense that that would be it.”

  “It’s not a cube at all though,” she pointed out. “Just… damage.”

  “That’s just minor details,” he waved her off. “It totally fits. I bet this church was a front for a hidden magical cult, and they had the tesseract, and they fucked up during a creepy ritual and summoned the apocalypse.”

  “I think this is just a church,” Lily refuted. “The aura here doesn’t feel like secrets or conspiracies, or magic. I mean, it’s magic, but… it’s not about magic. You get what I mean.” She took another step towards the cracks, examining them closer. “And this is not even an object, you can’t ‘have’ it. And… feel it out. It’s different.”

  He came closer, basically an arms length away from the cracks, and tuned in his magical senses to inspect them.

  Huh, to think about it, he had cool-ass magical senses. That was neat.

  The cracks had a voice, but it was weak. Much weaker than the church around, and easily lost in the cacophony of ‘churchiness’. It was quiet, barely a whisper. He strained his newfound psychic muscles as hard as he could before he could barely figure out the smallest traces of a meaning.

  To take. To grab. It didn’t sound like a good thing, but it didn’t feel malicious. There was an undertone to the feeling, a background that made it, somehow, a good thing? He focused more, the darkness around him visibly closing in as he aimed this new muscle of his to perceive more.

  Collecting trash. Removing waste. Containing dangers.

  He breathed out, tension leaving his muscles as he relaxed the hold on his senses. The darkness, that just a moment ago was barely a few yards away from him, receded back. He could hear his pulse in his ears, and he felt slightly dizzy. He wondered if those senses could be trained. Was there a stat for them? There was no perception stat. He desperately hoped that it wasn’t Soul.

  “What do you hear from this thing?” he asked Lily.

  “It’s… grabby? Like picking up a candy wrapper?”

  She felt more or less the same then. If the Soul was responsible for this ability, the difference in what they perceived would’ve been more noticeable. He didn’t have one, after all.

  “What’s your Soul at?”

  “Thirty.”

  “Ah, oka– Fucking thirty?!” he shouted, looking at the girl in disbelief. The sound echoed around the church, and he froze as he felt the darkness be disturbed.

  It was just a fucking church stat in the air, it was aimless, didn’t have any coherent image, and didn’t really do anything. But you’re not supposed to shout in the church.

  It was reacting. It didn’t like him. It was agitated.

  Thankfully it couldn’t do shit, only whine in skill-speak.

  He didn’t move for a few seconds. Then Lily appeared beside him. It was a bit embarrassing to admit that he didn’t even notice when she went invisible, he was just too focused on the surroundings. Supernatural ones, not the ones where he would’ve noticed that she was gone for a moment.

  The church-darkness noticed though.

  Magic was either a miracle, or witchery. It didn’t know which, it couldn’t have a single fucking coherent thought, but either way it was excited-hateful. Stupid thing was contradictory, but it didn’t care. It paid even more attention to them.

  “The thing’s harmless,” he whispered quietly, unsure if he was trying to calm down the girl or himself. “It can’t do shit.”

  “Y-yeah…” she nodded shakily.

  The cracks in front of them noticed the church. He could hear them.

  To remove waste. To contain. To eradicate everything undesirable. To banish false-gods.

  A horrible screeching pierced his ears. The cracks spread like brambles, faster than he could perceive.

  “Oh fu–”

  They pierced the altar, the air, the floor, the walls. They dug into the darkness like it was soil, and the church screamed.

  They dug into him, and into everything around them. The world was made of cracks.

  He looked at Lily, her expression was frozen in panic. Like he was seeing her through a dirty window. A reflection of her in tinted glass.

  His skill didn’t activate. She wasn’t savable.

  Horror almost touched his heart, because this would be such a stupid death, and he could do nothing about it, but before he could even think of falling into despair, the cracks receded, tearing the darkness into pieces while they coalesced into a point. Then they were gone.

  “–ck!”