The cathedral sleeps until a single candle wakes it. Luca enters to quiet a hunger he cannot name and meets Father Malachai, a priest whose hymns sound like invitation.
What begins as vigil becomes rite. Stone remembers, vows bend, and a body learns what it means to be offered, chosen, and kept.
The cathedral was never meant for the living.
Not anymore.
Its doors groaned open only under protest, ancient hinges weeping rust into stone. The wind outside had teeth, but the silence inside had appetite. Luca stepped through the nave like a trespasser, his boots soft on worn marble. Above him, the saints in stained glass had long since faded, their eyes hollowed by time and weather. Only the rose window still watched, its crimson heart a single, bleeding eye.
He carried one candle. Thin. White. Unlit.
He didn’t know why he’d come tonight, only that something pulled him.
Sleep had been impossible.
His dreams had curled like smoke around him.
Salt on his lips.
Fire on his skin.
The air inside was cold, thick with incense that hadn’t been burned in years. The great vaulted ceiling loomed high above, webbed with darkness. Pews lay in uneven rows like broken teeth, and the altar, white stone, veined like bone, gleamed faintly at the far end.
Luca paused just before the chancel. Struck the match.
It flared, then stilled.
And with it, the breath of the cathedral shifted.
The flame hissed as he lit the candle, nestling it into the iron holder beside the altar. Its glow did little against the dark, but it was enough to make the shadows flicker. Enough to make Luca’s own face catch in reflection on the brass chalice nearby.
His eyes looked darker than usual. Sunken.
He made the sign of the cross. Lips moved in a whisper of prayer he hadn’t said since his mother’s funeral.
And then…
The sound.
Soft. Barely more than breath.
A movement in the rear gallery.
A shift in the velvet drapery near the apse.
Luca didn’t turn.
Didn’t speak.
But his body knew.
The cathedral was not empty.
Not anymore.
Behind him, the candle fluttered.
And somewhere in the hush of cold stone and relic dust, the scent of myrrh began to rise.
And with it, a voice he had not heard since the day he arrived in this place.
Smooth. Male.
Ancient.
Luca’s pulse quickened, but his feet remained planted.
He did not turn to see.
He didn’t need to.
He felt the eyes.
He felt the gaze pressing down upon him.
A gaze that did not blink.
“Lux aeterna…” the voice breathed. Eternal light.
And just like that, the game had begun.
The candle flared once, as if gasping, and then settled.
Luca kept his eyes fixed forward, though he felt the weight of the gaze settle over him like ash. It clung to the nape of his neck, slid down the ridge of his spine. His breath clouded the cold air in front of him, shallow and quick, as if he were standing on the threshold of something vast and unseen.
A single footstep echoed behind him.
Not loud.
Not rushed.
Measured. Precise.
He closed his eyes.
Father Malachai.
He hadn’t seen the priest since his arrival three weeks ago, though the villagers had warned him in cryptic whispers: He keeps to the sanctuary. You’ll know if he wants you. Their voices trailed off after that, eyes cast down, like prayers abandoned mid-sentence.
He’d almost believed them superstitious.
Almost.
Another step. The creak of old wood beneath weight. The hush of robes brushing stone.
“Brother Luca,” the voice said, low, sonorous, each syllable laced with dark honey. “Why do you light the candle?”
Luca’s throat worked. His voice felt trapped behind his teeth.
“I…”
He swallowed.
“Couldn’t sleep.”
“Ah.”
A pause. The kind that stretches into the bones.
“Something stirs you.”
It was not a question.
Luca turned, finally. Slowly. The air behind him felt warmer, like breath against his skin. As his gaze lifted, it caught the hem of a robe, black, edged in crimson. Not vestments. Not quite. Something older. The cloth shimmered faintly, as if soaked in night.
Father Malachai stood at the edge of the sanctuary’s light. The candle did not fully touch his face, only the sharp line of his cheek, the suggestion of a smile that did not reach his eyes. He was tall, still, statuesque. His hair dark, his skin too smooth for his age, too pale.
But it was the eyes that froze Luca in place.
Not unkind. But too knowing.
They gleamed as though they saw through the layers of linen, through Luca’s collar, through the shame etched in his dreams.
“You’ve felt it, haven’t you?” the priest said.
Luca blinked.
“The pulse. In this place. The hush that waits for night.”
His tongue felt thick in his mouth.
“I thought… it was just dreams.”
“Not dreams,” Malachai whispered. “Whispers. This place is full of them.”
Luca’s eyes darted to the crucifix above the altar. Christ hung limp and cracked in the rafters, his face eaten by time.
“I shouldn’t be here.”
Malachai stepped closer. One hand extended, slow, deliberate, toward the brass bowl of holy water resting on its pedestal. He dipped two fingers in, and then lifted them, droplets trembling.
“You are here,” he said, gaze locked on Luca. “And now you must choose.”
“Choose what?”
“To listen.”
His fingers hovered in the air between them.
A single drop fell.
It hit the floor with a sound too loud, too final.
Malachai’s smile deepened. Not cruel. But certain.
“The candle has been lit,” he said softly. “The rite begins.”
Luca stood very still.
The candle’s glow wavered between them, casting Father Malachai’s outstretched fingers in gold. Holy water traced the line of his knuckle, poised to fall again. The space between them was small now, but thick. Weighted with breath and unsaid things. Luca could hear his own heart louder than the wind outside.
Malachai’s voice cut through the silence like silk through skin.
Kyrié, eleison…
The words were sacred. The tone was not.
Luca swallowed. His mouth was dry.
He had taken vows. He had bent his head and swallowed ritual like wine. But this, this was not what they had taught. The priest’s words were scripture laced with something older, something with teeth.
Still, Luca stepped forward.
One pace.
Then another.
Closer to the bowl. Closer to Malachai.
He didn’t remember making the choice. It didn’t feel like choice at all.
The priest dipped his fingers again, raised them, this time to Luca’s chest. He traced a wet cross just above the heart, and as the water soaked through the thin cotton of Luca’s shirt, a tremor followed. Not cold. Not holy. But something stranger.
A heat that rose from beneath.
Malachai’s fingers lingered at the final point of the cross, pressing lightly.
“Your body speaks,” he murmured.
Luca’s lips parted.
“I, I don’t know what you mean.”
Malachai tilted his head.
“No?” he said. “Then let it listen.”
His hand fell away. But not far.
He turned, drifting back toward the altar. Robes whispering like smoke against the floor. He paused beside the tall iron candelabra. The single flame flickered in recognition, as if bowing.
And then he looked back.
“You may come,” he said.
No louder than a confession.
No softer than a command.
Luca’s breath caught.
His feet moved again. Of their own accord. As though the stone itself urged him forward.
With every step, the hush of the cathedral grew deeper. Not silent, but pregnant. The kind of quiet that pressed in from all sides, as though the stone walls were listening. Watching.
Waiting.
Malachai stood at the altar, one hand resting lightly on its edge. Behind him, the crucifix loomed, and above that, the eye of the rose window glowed faintly red in the candlelight.
Luca approached.
The priest turned to him fully, eyes never blinking.
“Do you trust me?” he asked.
Luca nodded before the question could even fully settle in the air.
“Yes.”
Malachai smiled.
Not the smile of a man.
The smile of something that had waited too long.
“Then kneel,” he said.
Not here.
Not yet.
But the moment was already beginning.
Luca knelt.
The stone was cold beneath him, biting through the thin fabric of his trousers. It grounded him, sharp, real, but everything else was shifting. The candlelight trembled on the walls, casting long spires of shadow that reached up toward the vaulted ceiling like fingers craving heaven. Or pulling it down.
Father Malachai stood above him.
The robe he wore shimmered like oil in water, dark with undertones of crimson that pulsed when he moved. He said nothing at first, only watched. And when his hand came down, slowly, reverently, it was with the same grace he’d use to lift the host.
He touched Luca’s forehead first. With just two fingers. A blessing. Or something that pretended to be.
“Corpus sanctum,” he murmured. Holy body.
Then those fingers slid down.
They traced the ridge of Luca’s nose. The dip between his eyes. The line of his cheek, where a single bead of sweat now clung despite the cold.
Luca’s breath hitched.
The touch moved lower, brushing his throat, his Adam’s apple jumping beneath it. The gesture was gentle, precise… and deliberate. When the fingers reached the hollow at the base of his neck, they paused, then pressed lightly against the pulse.
“Still mortal,” Malachai said, almost to himself.
Then, softer:
“But not untouched.”
Luca’s eyes fluttered closed.
His hands tightened in his lap.
He felt himself being read.
Like scripture. Like prophecy.
The priest moved behind him.
Luca stayed very still.
He heard the sound of water again, the faint splash as Malachai dipped his fingers once more into the bowl. Then the wet whisper of those fingers gliding down over Luca’s wrist, marking him. Claiming him.
“You are a vessel,” Malachai whispered into his ear. His breath was warm, his words ancient.
“You will carry what others could not.”
Luca trembled.
A single drop of holy water traced the inside of his forearm, like a vein lit with something sacred… or profane.
He wanted to speak. He didn’t know what he would say.
But when Malachai stepped back in front of him, there was no space for words.
Only air. Thick. Sweet with incense that had not burned in decades.
The priest reached forward once more, placing his thumb just beneath Luca’s bottom lip.
“Your mouth,” he said.
Luca’s lips parted, involuntarily.
Malachai didn’t kiss him.
He didn’t need to.
He only stared.
And Luca felt it everywhere.
The altar behind him groaned.
The candle flickered so violently it nearly extinguished itself.
And still, the priest held his face, the pad of his thumb damp, trembling now with holy water or something deeper.
Then:
“Are you willing?” Malachai asked.
Luca didn’t answer.
He bowed his head.
The priest’s hand slid away.
And the cathedral exhaled.
The breath between them broke like a wafer.
Luca knelt, head bowed, hands trembling in his lap. The marble beneath his knees was bruising him, but he didn’t move. He didn’t want to. Not when the air itself had gone tight with meaning. Not when the hush of the cathedral had changed from emptiness to hunger.
Father Malachai stepped closer.
His robe whispered over stone, the fabric sighing with every motion. He circled slowly, his shadow sweeping across the altar, the candle, the boy on his knees. His hands were clasped in front of him now, as if in prayer. But his gaze never lifted from Luca.
“Good,” he murmured. “Very good.”
Luca felt it then, what the villagers never said aloud. Why they crossed themselves when the tower bell tolled past midnight. Why no one entered this sanctuary after dark.
It wasn’t fear.
Not really.
It was knowing.
Malachai came to a stop behind him once more. Close enough that the heat of his body bled into Luca’s spine. He leaned down, lips near the shell of Luca’s ear.
“There is an offering to be made,” he said. “And it begins with surrender.”
Luca nodded.
But Malachai’s hand came to his shoulder.
“No,” he whispered. “Say it.”
Luca’s breath caught in his throat.
He spoke, barely more than a gasp.
“I surrender.”
The words echoed strangely, swallowed by the cathedral’s yawning dome.
And then the priest’s hand slipped beneath Luca’s chin, tilting his face upward.
Their eyes met.
Malachai’s were fathomless. Black-ringed irises that flickered gold for a moment in the candlelight.
He was smiling.
Not gently.
Luca’s throat tightened.
The priest’s other hand moved forward now, fingers brushing along the edge of his collar. A slow undoing. The first button parted with a small, deliberate sound. Then the next. And the next.
Luca’s skin prickled in the cold, exposed one inch at a time.
When the last button gave way, Malachai eased the shirt apart.
He did not touch.
He only looked.
And the way he looked,
Luca felt it like fingers. Like flame.
“You’re beautiful,” the priest said, reverent.
Then he turned, stepped once to the altar, and dipped his fingers again into the holy water.
He came back.
And this time, he drew the sign of the cross over Luca’s bare chest. Slow. Wet. Heavy.
Each stroke of his finger seared.
Luca gasped.
Malachai didn’t pause.
“In nomine Patris…”
A finger across the chest.
“Et Filii…”
Lower, down the centre.
“Et Spiritus Sancti…”
He circled Luca’s heart.
And then he said nothing. Only looked. Waiting.
Luca didn’t know what he was waiting for.
Until he heard the rustle of cloth behind him.
Until he felt the first tug at his belt.
Not his own hands.
Malachai’s.
He didn’t ask.
And Luca didn’t stop him.
The robe fell open.
The candle hissed.
Malachai breathed against his neck.
🔥 THIRST: SEASON ONE 🔥
The club, the bodies, the hunger. Every encounter a pulse, every story a flood.
Inside you will find an exclusive you cannot get anywhere else: Between Floors. Two men, stuck in an elevator, pressed skin to steel, the rush turning to fuck before the doors ever open.
👉 Get Thirst Season One now. Drink deep, come undone.
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