Chapter Text
In front of God, Ewron kneeled.
The church was empty, but not in the comforting sense of solitude or peace, not in the way holy spaces were supposed to feel when no one was inside them. It was empty. Like something had been left unfinished and then forgotten mid-thought, like silence had been placed here deliberately rather than allowed to exist naturally.
The candles had burned low and uneven, wax spilling over bronze holders and hardening in slow layers that suggested time had been passing without anyone acknowledging it properly. Dust had already begun to settle again on the pews, along the edges of the floor, and the stained glass windows. He ought to clean them again, once he found the time.
He always thought that.
He rarely did.
Ewron kneeled there longer than necessary, hands clasped in front of him, knees weak and unstable from the cold hard ground. He was not praying, not yet. Just present. Then a memory came to mind.
The church had not been his originally.
That was something he kept returning to mentally, because it mattered in a way he couldn't properly explain to himself. He had not built it, had not chosen it in any meaningful architectural or doctrinal sense. He had found it, and the fact that it existed here, on this island, in this condition, with these symbols, had been what pulled him into it in the first place.
You see, before everything. Before the crash and before the island had become what they have come to now know now as life and routine, Kamil Ewron Lachowksi was a priest in training. He was in his 7th year of discernment, and was on his final seminary training. Ewron has been studying theology in a way that had been more-so structural than devotional. It was not his faith that other people tend to romanticise, it was his need to understand systems, structures, and belief. That had always suited him more than he liked to admit.
And perhaps, if he was honest in the way he rarely allowed himself to be, it was not only understanding he had been drawn to. It was visibility. The shape of being known. The quiet satisfaction of being listened to when he spoke, of occupying space that others could not easily ignore. He liked the idea of speaking in a room that fell silent because he had decided it should. He liked the weight of being perceived as something steady, something set apart, something worth attention without having to ask for it directly. He liked being seen in the way people looked at something they were not entirely sure they understood, but trusted anyway.
But Ewron would never say that out loud.
Now back to his train of thought: The church had not been his originally.
It wasn't even something he had been looking for in any meaningful sense when they found it.
At that time, it had been just another stretch of movement across the island, one of those aimless walks that still managed to feel purposeful only because Multi insisted they were. He had dragged them out toward the plains, up on the hill where their Polski Cave was clearly visible below. He was proposing another project for them to work on: a separate hidden lab for their uranium factory in case their current one was ever compromised. With the court case surrounding Alondrissa's train accident unfolding and their own unfortunate involvement becoming harder to ignore because of their connection to Tubbo, Multi argued that they had to be prepared for the possibility that their home might eventually be investigated. That preparation was no longer optional but necessary.
So they walked towards the plains. Multi and Nexe had been talking ahead of them, as they usually did, words half-joking and half-argumentative in a way that made it difficult to separate seriousness from performance. Ewron was behind them, quipping an insult towards Multi here and there and that occasionally made Nexe laugh too hard where they had to stop for a moment to give him time to breathe. Graf had been walking slightly to the side, slower, as if the terrain itself required more consideration than the conversation.
The wind was what he remembered so clearly from that moment. Because it was so consistent throughout their walk that the island felt normal for a moment. Until it wasn't.
Because from the corner of Ewron's eye, a structure appeared. Near the end of the hill, where the ground dropped sharply into a cliff below, a structure stood. It was quiet, deliberate, and entirely out of place.
A church.
Ewron was the first to notice it, rushing towards it with a hitched breath. The others took notice roughly a second or two later, though none of them reacted in a way that gave it immediate importance. Multi spoke first, of course, something casual and dismissive that treated the presence of it as either joke or inconvenience, depending on how one chose to interpret him. Graf slowed without speaking, looking at it in a way that suggested measurement more than reaction. Nexe's attention lingered longer than it should have.
"What—" Nexe started, cutting both the silence and himself off as the structure came into full view.
Multi squinted. "Okay, what a weird place to put a church."
Graf didn't speak immediately. He slowed his pace instead, studying the silhouette against the cliff edge. "It's structurally sound," he said after a moment, more to himself than anyone else. "Stonework like that would need deliberate placement. It doesn't look like it's surrendered to natural erosion or collapse either."
Ewron had not spoken at all.
Because something about it did not align correctly with anything he had been mentally prepared to categorize. There was something about it, something he couldn't name nor put into words. The shape of it should have been simple enough to process, a structure like any other structure, stone like any other stone, yet it refused familiarity and Ewron was beginning to get frustrated from the lack of answers he was getting from his own mind.
"What even is it supposed to be doing here?" Nexe asked, stepping slightly closer now, curiosity overtaking hesitation as he looked up at the building properly.
"Standing," Multi replied immediately. "Clearly."
"That's not what I meant."
Multi simply shrugged, "Still accurate."
Graf moved a little ahead of them, gaze tracing the edges of the structure more carefully now, like he was trying to reconstruct intention from geometry alone. "It's not recent," he added after a pause. "If anything, it predates most of what we've mapped on this side of the island."
"That doesn't make sense," Nexe said, frowning slightly. "We would've come across it before."
"Not necessarily," Graf replied calmly. "With the way our cave is placed, visibility is most likely obstructed at this exact angle, it could have been missed entirely."
Multi let out a short breath through his nose. "Or we're just all collectively bad at noticing churches on cliffs. Come on guys, we've seen far more creepier structures than a church on a hill on this godforsaken island."
Ewron didn't look away from the structure. "I don't think it’s just 'a church.'"
That made the air shift slightly. Even Multi stopped speaking for a second longer than usual.
"Yeah? What is it then, Father Ewron?”
Ewron hesitated, choosing to ignore the tease. His gaze stayed fixed on the entrance. "I don’t know," he admitted after a moment, quieter than before. Then, more to himself than anyone else, he added, "Let's see."
He stepped forward first again.
Not quickly this time. There was no urgency in it, only the same pull he felt when he first saw it.
The threshold of the church did not change as he approached it, but the feeling of it did, like distance itself was being reconsidered in real time.
The stained glass windows were the first thing Ewron properly noticed once he stepped further inside.
Not because they were beautiful.
They were, but not in any way he could immediately classify as intentional decoration or traditional design. The patterns were too simple for that, too restrained, as if whoever had made them had not been interested in storytelling or iconography.
There were no clear saints, no scripture scenes, no familiar religious depictions that usually came with stained glass work. Instead, it was just colour. Layered and repeated in uneven panels that let light through in a way that felt slightly altered rather than purely filtered.
A soft pink tint bled into the space.
Not bright enough to be obvious at first, but present enough that once noticed, it became difficult to ignore. It settled over the stone floor, over the edges of the pews, over the carved symbols on the walls, changing nothing and everything at the same time. It did not behave like natural light passing through glass usually did; it did not scatter or shift properly when people moved through it. It stayed, as if the light itself had been assigned a condition before entering the room.
Ewron paused without meaning to.
Pink was not a colour that held meaning in any doctrine he knew. Not liturgically, not historically, not symbolically in any structured theological system he had studied. And yet here it was, repeating itself across every pane, consistent in tone even where the shapes of the glass changed.
Behind him, Multi stepped in and immediately frowned. "Why is everything slightly… pink?"
"I don’t think that's normal stained glass," Nexe said quietly, already looking up at it with curiosity rather than concern.
Graf studied the windows for a moment longer. "The pigment distribution is intentional. It's too uniform to be accidental tinting."
Ewron didn't respond.
Because what bothered him wasn't the colour itself.
It was the way it made everything inside the church feel slightly removed from what he expected reality to look like.
The church was bigger on the inside than it should have felt. Not magically bigger, just… wrong in proportion. The ceiling rose higher than expected, the walls stretched further back, and the space felt too long for what it looked like from outside. The stone was old, but not broken down. It didn’t look like it had been worn by time. It looked like it had been placed and left exactly as it was meant to be.
There were no signs of any religion he knew.
No cross. No clear altar style. No markings that matched Christianity, or Catholicism, or Orthodoxy, or anything else he had studied before. Even the usual things churches had: statues, scripture symbols, carvings on glass that usually meant something specific. None of that was here.
This time, it was nothing Ewron could understand or categorize. It simply was it's own.
Like the space had decided how it wanted to be seen.
Like it was refusing to deviate from it.
Ewron let his gaze move slowly across the room again, as if looking longer might eventually force something familiar to surface. It didn't. The church stayed the same in its refusal. Stone, silence, and that soft pink light filtering through the glass like it belonged there more than anything else did.
Behind him, the others were closer now.
Their voices had returned to normal volume again, adjusting back to discomfort instead of silence.
Graf was still looking around the structure like he was trying to map it in his head. Nexe was staring at the symbols again, slower now, less certain. Multi had moved slightly further in than the rest, hands on his hips, looking around like he was already trying to decide how to use the space rather than understand it.
Multi was the first to break the stillness, his voice returning with that easy tone that didn’t quite match the weight of the place. "Well," he said, glancing around like he was already measuring space instead of meaning, "this is actually kind of perfect."
Graf turned his head slightly. "Perfect for what?"
"For what we were talking about," Multi replied, gesturing vaguely toward the ground beneath them. "Hidden place. Out of the way. No one's going to randomly stumble into this unless they're actively looking for it."
Graf frowned slightly. "You’re not seriously thinking of building under this."
"I am seriously thinking of building under this," Multi corrected easily. "We were literally looking for a place nobody would find. Congratulations, we found one."
"That’s not the point," Nexe said, still staring at the altar now. "It's a church."
"Is it?" Multi asked lightly, almost like it was a joke, but not fully committing to it.
Ewron didn't answer immediately.
His attention stayed on the far end of the room. On the altar. On the symbols carved into the stone behind it, still unreadable, still refusing to become anything he could properly hold in his mind without forcing it.
It didn't feel like a church he knew.
It didn't feel like anything he knew.
And yet it was here. Existing anyway.
"Well," Ewron said finally, voice quiet but steady, "you found what you were looking for."
Multi looked at him as Ewron walked further in.
His footsteps were quiet against the stone floor, but in the stillness of the church, even quiet things carried. The pink light from the stained glass shifted slightly across his shoulders as he moved, but nothing else in the room changed. The space did not react to him. It simply continued existing the same way it had been before they entered.
He stopped at the front.
Right in front of the altar.
Multi leaned slightly to one side, like he was already trying to decide how this space could be used. Graf was quiet, eyes still scanning the structure with that slow, measured attention. Nexe looked between Ewron and the altar, curiosity and uncertainty sitting together in his expression.
Ewron placed a hand lightly on the stone.
Cold. Still. Unmoving.
Then, without turning around yet, he spoke. "I'm going to keep it."
His voice wasn't loud. It didn't need to be.
It just landed.
He finally turned slightly, enough to face them properly while still standing in front of the altar, like he had already placed himself where he intended to stay.
"I want to understand what this is," he added, eyes flicking briefly back to the symbols behind him. "And I can't do that if we just leave it."
Multi let out a short breath, half amused, half interested. Graf didn't object. Nexe didn't either. Just kept looking at the church like it might answer him if he stared long enough.
The church did not react.
Neither did anything else.
And Ewron stayed there a moment longer than necessary, as if waiting for the silence to decide whether it meant agreement or refusal.
It did neither.
It simply remained.
The present returned to him the way it usually did. Without warning, without transition.
A tight pull in his chest came first. Then the cough.
He turned his head slightly, just enough to avoid staining the altar directly, but the blood still left him. A thin mark on the stone floor in front of him, dark against the pale marble surface. He stared at it for a moment longer than necessary, as if confirming something that had already been confirmed too many times before.
Then he wiped his mouth once, slow and practiced. Nothing about his expression changed.
The candles were still burning low. The wax still hardened in uneven layers along the bronze holders. Dust still gathered where no one had cleaned it properly. The stained glass still poured soft pink light across the floor, unchanged, unbothered by anything happening inside the room.
The church was still empty.
Still silent.
For a month now, it had stayed like this.
The church had been reinforced beneath, claimed, measured, studied. Multi had gotten what he wanted out of it. Graf had mapped every structural possibility. Nexe had stopped asking what it was supposed to be and started asking what it could be used for.
And Ewron... Well Ewron had spent all that time trying to make it speak.
It hadn't.
Not once.
Until now.
The pink light shifted. Not across the room. Not slowly. It simply stopped.
Like the entire stained glass above him had been interrupted mid-function.
Ewron's breath caught immediately.
The altar responded before anything else did.
The blood on the stone didn't stay still. It didn’t spread. It didn’t fade. It reacted.
A shape formed inside it: not carved, not drawn, but imposed. Like something had pressed meaning into the surface from somewhere else entirely.
Behind him, footsteps shifted.
Someone spoke. Multi, uncertain. "Uh… what is that?"
But Ewron wasn't listening anymore.
Because the pink light above the altar had thickened into something denser than colour.
It was no longer just filling the room.
It was concentrating.
And in that concentration, something new entered the church.
Not through the doors.
Not through the walls.
But as if the space itself had finally allowed something through that had been waiting on the other side.
The symbols on the altar changed again. Lines that had originally been cut and lost through the intricate carvings of the wall suddenly move to encircle it's way back into itself. Circles that had been formally askew, back into it's original forms.
They did not stop halfway.
They completed.
Ewron felt it before he understood it.
A pattern settling into place that had never been visible before now, as if the church had been holding part of its own meaning back until this exact moment.
And in that moment, Ewron finally had something he had never gotten from it before.
A direction.
Not fully understood.
Not fully named.
But undeniable.
Something had entered the system of the church that was not the church itself.
And for the first time since they found it on the cliff, it had begun to explain itself.