The sanctuary no longer remembered what it used to be.
Stone had softened. Wood had curved. The straight lines of the church bent inward, forming arches that looked less like architecture and more like bones. The pews no longer sat in rows — they curled, rib-like, hugging the center aisle as though protecting something alive. The air pulsed with a slow rhythm.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Father Aaron lay on the floor near the altar, his palms pressed against the warped boards. They felt warm. Too warm. Beneath the wood, something throbbed, steady and patient, like a heart buried under skin.
Every breath the building took pulled at his own lungs, synchronizing him with it. When the church inhaled, Aaron inhaled. When it exhaled, his chest loosened without his permission.
He tried to fight it.
"No," he whispered. "You're not alive."
The word echoed back wrong.
Not alive.
Not alive.
Not… mine.
Behind him, the Bible floated from the pulpit. It no longer fell with gravity. It drifted like something underwater, its pale leather cover flexing softly as though breathing. The symbol of the eye in thorns slowly opened and closed.
The pages turned without wind.
They did not rustle.
They sighed.
Aaron pushed himself up on shaking elbows. Every muscle trembled like he had been awake for years. His skin burned faintly, as though invisible ink still crawled across it, writing things he did not want to remember.
He reached for the silver cross around his neck. His fingers closed on it tightly.
"For God so loved the world…" he began.
The church answered instead.
A thousand soft voices, layered into one:
"…that He gave it words."
The altar split with a wet sound. Not cracking — opening. Inside it glowed a dark, pulsing hollow, lined with whispering mouths that repeated fragments of prayer, confession, regret, and fear. They spoke over one another like overlapping pages.
Aaron's stomach twisted.
"This isn't faith," he said hoarsely. "It's hunger."
The Bible drifted closer.
Its pages opened wider than paper should. Inside them was no ink. No scripture. Only depth — black upon black — filled with breathing syllables and half-formed voices.
"Every faith begins as hunger," the book whispered.
The church inhaled deeply.
So did Aaron.
He hadn't meant to.
The air slid out of his lungs, not forward, but sideways, pulled gently toward the open pages. With it came warmth. Then memory.
He saw himself at seven, kneeling beside his mother's bed.
At thirteen, lying about his brother.
At twenty, preaching while doubting.
At thirty, comforting others while empty inside.
Each memory lifted from him like vapor and drifted into the Bible.
"No… those are mine," Aaron whispered.
The Bible trembled in pleasure.
"You were never meant to keep them."
He crawled forward, dragging himself toward the doors that no longer existed. Where the exit should have been, there was only curved stone, pulsing softly, sealed like stitched flesh.
Behind him, the congregation melted into the walls. Their faceless forms stretched and sank, mouths opening in silent prayer as they were absorbed back into the building. Their last expressions weren't fear.
They were relief.
Relief at finally being read.
Aaron sobbed.
"I still believe," he said. "Even if I failed… I believe."
The Bible hovered directly before his face now. Close enough that he could smell it — old dust, candle wax, iron, and breath.
Its pages bent inward, forming a mouth of text.
"Then write."
The church inhaled again.
This time harder.
Aaron's lungs emptied violently. His vision dimmed at the edges. But instead of suffocating, something else filled him — a pressure behind his ribs, a weight inside his thoughts, as if language itself poured into him.
Words crowded his skull.
Not sentences.
Not prayers.
Commands.
Structure.
Order.
He felt his spine straighten. His shaking stopped. His tears dried mid-fall. The fear in his chest folded neatly into something quieter — purpose.
The Bible touched his forehead.
And the last of Aaron — his private self, his doubt, his resistance — was gently erased like pencil rubbed from a page.
He stood.
Not because he chose to.
Because the verse required it.
His mouth opened.
But no scream came.
No plea.
Only calm, practiced speech:
"Chapter One."
Outside, dawn spilled pale light across the windows. The church slowly hardened back into stone. Breathing slowed. Walls straightened. Pews returned to wood. Silence smoothed everything over like fresh ink drying.
By morning, Saint Matthew's Church looked normal again.
Peaceful.
Empty.
On the pulpit lay a simple Bible. Black leather. Gold edges. Ordinary.
If anyone opened it, they would find fresh writing on the first page:
THE BOOK OF AARON.
CHAPTER ONE BEGINS.
And somewhere inside the cover, something new learned how to listen to prayers…
not to answer them —
but to rewrite the people who spoke them.