The Last Treasure

The wind picked up outside. Beyond the howling of the tempest, only the clack of rosary beads and the shallow breathing of a decrepit chapel remained — the last audible signs of life for miles. In the decades following the Desolation, the planet — once lush with animals, vegetation, and people — had become a cold and barren rock floating in a cold and barren universe.

Dom Eremus slowly opened his eyes and sighed, his fingers still wrapped around the rosary. The beads had long been worn to near-polish from devotion. Their weight was as familiar as breath. He did not count the prayers anymore — not out of forgetfulness, but because time itself had unraveled, and prayer was the only thread left to hold.

He stood and faced the altar. Behind it, in a glass case framed in tarnished gold and steel, the Relic shimmered faintly. It had never spoken. It had never moved. Yet he had watched it daily for decades, and somehow — through silence — it had spoken volumes.

Outside, the wind screamed. Within, the Relic pulsed.

The monastery had once been a sprawling sanctuary, its cloisters filled with chanting brothers, its gardens fragrant with life. Now, its courtyards were barren, the fountains cracked and dry. Ivy and moss had died long ago, leaving only desolate stone and a whisper of what once was.

Dom Eremus moved through these ruins like a ghost — each step deliberate, each breath measured. His duties had shrunk to the essentials: sweeping dust from the chapel floor, lighting the few candles that had not yet been consumed, and keeping the Relic clean.

The Relic — enshrined in its crystal vessel — was the last beauty left. Though it never spoke, its faint, inner glow persisted. It had become the axis of his existence, the silent listener to every whispered prayer.

Sometimes, he imagined that the Relic pulsed in response to his devotions. A trick of light, perhaps. Or something more.

Every morning, Dom Eremus performed a Mass of memory. No chalice. No bread. No wine. Only the gestures remained. He would stand before the altar, lift his hands, and murmur words remembered from a world long gone:

Hoc est enim corpus meum.

The silence that followed felt sacred.

On days when his strength failed, he remained kneeling, the rosary coiled like a serpent in his hands, his lips moving soundlessly. Even then, he felt watched — not by the wind, nor by the ghosts of the brothers who once walked these halls, but by the Relic itself.

Its presence filled the chapel like sunlight once filled the earth.

It was during one of these silent Masses that he noticed the first sign: A shadow moving just outside the chapel doors.

He froze, rosary suspended in his fingers.

No one had come here in decades. He had buried the last of the brothers himself — their bones resting in the crypt below. Travelers avoided this place, whispering rumors of curses, or ghosts, or worse.

But now, in the pale dust beneath the threshold, he saw footprints. Fresh ones.

That night, he did not sleep.

He sat before the Relic, its faint glow reflecting in his tired eyes, and he thought of what the world had been. He remembered the bells, the gardens, the laughter of novices. He remembered bread warm from the oven and the simple joy of a shared meal.

All of it was gone now.

Only prayer remained.

Perhaps this, too, would end soon.

He heard the footsteps long before the door creaked open.

They were not slow, reverent steps. They were the heavy, deliberate kind — the kind that preceded theft… or death.

Dom Eremus did not rise from his pew. He did not look up. He only continued the rhythm of breath and prayer.

The door groaned.

And a man entered.

Gaunt. Starved. Wrapped in a patchwork of armor and cloth, one eye swollen shut, one hand gripping a rust-pocked blade. His breath came in huffs — not from fear, but from desperation.

“I never thought I’d see another person again,” the man said eagerly.

Dom Eremus opened his eyes.

The man stepped closer. “I thought there might be something here worth taking. What is that?” He pointed toward the altar. “Something shining in the dark. Something worth something?” He jerked his head at the case. “That it?”

Dom Eremus did not answer.

The raider scowled. “You alone?”

“I am never alone.”

“I’ve been watching you for two days,” he snapped. “You lie.”

He unsheathed his blade with a hiss of steel.

Dom Eremus simply bowed his head.

The raider struck.

The old monk crumpled with a gasp. Blood darkened his robes. He collapsed at the foot of the altar.

The stranger knelt and got to work. A practiced hand. Tidy cuts. Sawing motions. When he had his fill, he wiped his mouth and sighed in contentment.

He stood over the lifeless monk, grinning in satiety. For a moment, he waited — expecting perhaps a last curse, a final riddle.

But there was only the wind.

And the pulsing glow from the case.

He turned toward it.

“All mine…”

He stepped closer.

The glass was clean. Too clean. Untouched by time.

Inside, framed in a sunburst of gold, rested a small white circle — suspended in silence, burning with stillness.

The raider stared.

“What… is this?”

He reached out to open the case.

The moment his fingers brushed the seal, a jolt surged through him. Not heat. Not cold. But a stillness deeper than silence. A scent like ozone filled the chapel. And there — in a flash — he saw it:

True Power wrapped in gold and ivory.

Light flooded his being. Electricity coursed through every molecule. His breath caught. He tried to look away — but couldn’t.

His eyes widened. Pupils dilated in the light.

Not at the gold. Not at the glass. But at the center.

At the Host.

At Glory.

He staggered back. His blade clattered to the stones.

He dropped to his knees.

The light vanished.

Only the faint pulse remained.

He sat beside the old monk’s body for hours. At first, in silence. Then in grief.

He had no name for what he had seen. No words for the stillness that had entered him like light through a crack in the wall.

He looked down at the corpse — the flesh he had torn — and trembled.

That he had desecrated this man filled him with revulsion. He stumbled outside, fell to his knees, and retched into the dust.

He did not return to the road. He did not run. He remained.

The grave was shallow.

The earth near the garden had grown hard over the years, brittle from sun and neglect. He dug with his hands at first, then with a rusted spade he found in a collapsed toolshed. It took most of the day.

He wrapped what remained of Dom Eremus in a linen cloth and placed him gently into the earth.

For the first time in his memory, he spoke a prayer.

It was clumsy and brief. He didn’t know the words. But the silence that followed felt received.

As he stood over the grave, he reached into the old monk’s robe and pulled free the rosary — its black beads smoothed by decades of use. He held it in his hand, weighing it.

His hand moved to toss it into the grave, to bury it with the man he had killed.

But he stopped.

Something in him resisted.

He stared at the beads. At the cross.

Then slowly, he lowered his hand and slipped the rosary into his coat pocket.

He walked back to the chapel in silence. The wind picked up again, but it was different now — no longer howling, only whispering.

He stepped inside.

The flickering candles cast shadows on the walls. The Relic pulsed, steady and soft.

He turned and closed the heavy doors behind him. Firm. Final.

And the world outside fell away.

Inside, a man knelt at the altar. His face was worn. His hands were scarred. But his eyes were clear.

He did not count the prayers. He simply prayed.

His old life was gone.

 Only Dom Eremus remained.