Starfall's Vow

Thin morning light crested the ridge. The forest, lush and green, scattered the sunlight into shards of gold. An abbey stood silent at the summit, gazing down at the city below.

The monastery gates were a weathered amber. The flagstone path was old but clean, and someone had planted flowers along the cloister walls. It was early yet — the grounds were empty, save for the wind.

Sophia Hart climbed the path at a brisk pace, her light spring jacket unzipped, black trousers and running shoes making quick work of the ascent. She fished a crumpled ten-dollar bill from her pocket at the entrance booth and stepped through the gate. Before her rose a flight of pale stone steps, tier after tier, leading up to the great church.

She let out a quiet breath.

A few steps in, her phone buzzed. Ruby Lane — colleague and closest friend.

“Sophia, are you feeling any better? Do you want me to bring you lunch?”

Sophia paused, then smiled faintly. “I’m fine. Don’t worry.”

The line was quiet for a moment. The space around Sophia was wide and open, punctuated by the sharp, clear call of birdsong. Ruby heard it, and her tone shifted.

“Where are you?”

“Mm…” Sophia kept climbing. “The Abbey of St. Clare.”

Ruby’s voice jumped an octave. “You said you were sick last night! Instead of resting at home, you went hiking up a mountain? What, are you praying for a miracle? Since when do you believe in God?”

Sophia had reached the church doors. Her voice was calmer than Ruby’s by half. “Relax. I’m better. Being out helps. I don’t believe in God — but I’ve always had a healthy respect for the unknown.”

Outside, the sun was warm. Inside, the church was cool and dim, steeped in heavy, shadowed colors. A large crucifix hung above the altar, the figure of Christ gazing down with eyes that seemed, in the half-light, to hold both sorrow and mercy.

The air was thick with frankincense — clean, sharp, almost cold. It curled through the silence like something alive, seeping into the skin.

Sophia stood still for a long moment. Then she knelt.

She knelt and bowed — once, twice, three times — pressing her forehead to the wooden pew, hands clasped tight.

As her forehead rested against the cool wood, she heard footsteps. Soft, unhurried. Someone else had come in.

She finished her prayer, kept her eyes closed a few seconds longer, hands pressed together, then rose.

Someone was standing nearby. The same person who’d just entered — and he hadn’t moved on.

Sophia glanced at him sideways and froze for just an instant.

He wore a simple white shirt, dark casual trousers. He was very tall, his hands clasped loosely behind his back. The church was dim, but his face stood out — pale, sharp-featured, startlingly clear.

He stood a few paces away on the open floor. Perfectly still, perfectly straight. He didn’t seem to notice her. His eyes — dark, deep, still as a frozen lake — were fixed on the crucifix above the altar.

Sophia thought there was something odd about him.

Most people who came into a church would glance at the crucifix, maybe pause for a moment, then move on. But this man stared at it without blinking, as though he were trying to read something in it. As if he could… see something she couldn’t.

He must have felt her gaze. He turned his head and looked at her.

“…Hello.” Sophia nodded and gave a small smile.

He was quiet for a few seconds. Then his hands came out from behind his back, sliding into his pockets. A faint smile touched his lips. “Hello.”

He was strikingly handsome. Even that small smile seemed to catch the light, lending a quiet warmth to his features — the corners of his eyes, the line of his jaw. But the warmth didn’t reach his eyes. The smile there was paper-thin — almost absent. Every gesture he made carried a strange stillness, a detachment, as though he were standing slightly apart from the world.

A beat of silence passed between them.

“What were you looking at?” Sophia asked. She couldn’t suppress her curiosity. “At the crucifix — what did you see?”

He looked at her for a long, unreadable moment. Then his gaze drifted back to the figure on the cross.

Sophia assumed he wouldn’t answer. She turned to leave.

His voice came, quiet and unhurried, from behind her: “I was looking… at what makes the face of God different from the face of man.”

Sophia stopped.

She walked a few paces toward the door, then glanced back. He was still standing there in the center of the empty church.

The sky was a deep, flawless blue. Sunlight painted the monastery walls in even gold. The scent of grass and damp earth drifted on the breeze. Sophia wandered into a side chapel. Then another. She climbed the narrow spiral staircase of the bell tower and looked out over the valley. By the time she circled back to the main church, the grounds had filled with people — small clusters of visitors standing on the lawn, drifting in and out of chapels. The silence was gone.

Sophia found this strange. The abbey was never this crowded. She pulled out her phone and checked the date, and understood.

March 19th — the Feast of St. Joseph. When she was a girl, her mother had brought her here on this day. She remembered the monastery kitchen putting out long tables of food — fresh bread, honey cakes, and soup that smelled like the earth after rain. She remembered the taste most of all.

Sophia moved against the flow of the crowd, seeking quieter ground. Beneath a whitewashed wall, a man in a long coat had set up a folding table. Tarot cards were spread before him in elaborate patterns, a crystal paperweight holding them in place against the breeze.

Sophia would normally never approach someone like this. But something about the intricate pattern of the cards held her gaze.

She walked over.

The man’s face brightened. He dragged over a folding chair. “Sit, sit, my dear. What would you like to ask? Love? Career? Fortune?”

Sophia sat. She was quiet for a few seconds.

“I’ve encountered something,” she said slowly. “Something… strange.”

The man raised an eyebrow.

A breeze rustled the leaves overhead, dry and whispering. Sophia’s hands rested flat on her knees. She was choosing her words carefully, about to continue, when she looked up — past the fortune teller’s round, unremarkable face — and saw the man from the church.

He was moving through the crowd near the monastery kitchen, where a line had already formed for the feast-day meal. The line was mostly older people — women with shopping bags, men in caps, talking loudly and laughing. He walked through them with his hands in his pockets, head and shoulders above the rest, his white shirt almost luminous in the crowd. He was impossible to miss.

He paused. Leaned down and said something to the elderly woman ahead of him. Her voice carried across the yard, cheerful and loud: “What are we doing? What does it look like — we’re getting the monastery bread, dear! Best bread in the county, been making it for centuries. You want some? Come on, get in line behind me!”

Several people turned to look at him.

To Sophia’s surprise, he nodded and stepped in line behind the woman.

Just minutes ago, in the church, he’d spoken about the face of God with the gravity of a philosopher. He’d seemed like someone from another world — remote, untouchable.

And now this man from another world was standing ramrod straight, hands behind his back, waiting in line with a group of retirees for free bread.

Sophia’s lips curved. She was about to look away when his head turned — sharply, as if he’d felt something — and his eyes found hers across the crowd.

“My dear? Are you still with me? What did you want to ask?”

The fortune teller’s voice broke in.

Sophia’s gaze dropped back to him. She paused, then said, “Here’s the situation. The mainframe system at our institute has been behaving… abnormally. I think either something supernatural is interfering, or we’ve been hacked by someone far beyond ordinary—”

A ringtone cut through. The fortune teller’s phone, from inside his coat.

“Sorry, just a moment.” He pulled out an older-model smartphone. “Yes? Yeah, I’m set up. Got a client right now. Uh-huh. I’ll be home for lunch. I’ll pick up the kid after I pack up this afternoon…”

Sophia fell silent.

A strange flatness settled over her. The whole thing suddenly seemed absurd — sitting at a folding table in front of a stranger who was arguing about pickup times, asking him about mainframes and the supernatural.

She pulled a ten from her pocket, set it on the table, and walked away without another word.

The sun was high now. The whole abbey was drenched in light, and the smell of fresh bread drifted everywhere. Despite the weight she carried inside, Sophia was hungry. She looked toward the kitchen — the bread had already been distributed. Round tables were full, people eating heartily. She didn’t see the man anywhere.

Then she noticed two monks emerging from the kitchen carrying trays of pastries — small golden squares, glistening with honey. She hurried over.

By the time she emerged from the crowd with two honey cakes in her hand, one of the monks called out behind her: “That’s the last of them, I’m afraid!”

She walked on, biting into one. It was delicate, sweet, almost weightless — the kind of pastry that dissolved on the tongue. Her brow eased.

A few steps later, a pair of black casual shoes and two long, straight legs appeared in her path.

Sophia looked up.

Him again.

Sunlight filtered through the branches overhead, scattering light and shadow across his face. A gentle breeze stirred the air. People passed on either side. He stood before her, hands behind his back, those dark eyes catching the light — she couldn’t quite read what was in them.

He’d finished the bread already?

Sophia swallowed her bite of pastry and nodded at him. Then she stepped sideways to go around.

A hand — long, lean, precise — came up and blocked her way.

Sophia stared up at him, startled.

His expression was calm. He lowered his hand slowly, returning it behind his back. He was tall to begin with, and standing this close, with his hands clasped behind him and his gaze fixed on hers, he gave off a subtle but unmistakable sense of pressure.

Why was this stranger blocking her path?

The image of him lining up for monastery bread flashed through her mind. And then it clicked — of course. What other reason could there be?

She looked down at the remaining honey cake in her hand.

Then held it out to him. “Here. Go ahead.”

He didn’t take it immediately. He looked at her, then at the pastry.

Sophia smiled. “It’s really good. Don’t worry — it’s yours.”

Another few seconds of silence. A faint crease appeared between his brows — she didn’t understand why. But she didn’t overthink it. Finally, he reached out and took it. His fingers were pale and slender. Even the way he ate was unhurried, almost elegant.

He finished it quickly.

Sophia smiled at him again and moved to step past him.

Then his voice came — low, unhurried, warm at the edges: “Miss. I’ve eaten the pastry as you asked. I suppose I can now tell you why I’m here.”

…What?

Sophia looked at him.

“I know what happened to you,” he said. “I know about the thing you can’t explain.”

Sophia’s breath caught. Her whole body went rigid.

He stood with his hands once more behind his back, his eyes gentle as they held hers. Sunlight carved a soft shadow along the bridge of his nose.

“I can help you.”

The sky was bright and clear, the sun warm and golden on the skin. But Sophia Hart felt a chill run up her spine — cold, sudden, soaking through to the bone.

And he just stood there, watching her with that unshakable calm.

Sophia was absolutely certain she had never seen this man before today. She held her silence for a beat, then spoke.

“I don’t believe in the supernatural. I never have.” Her clear, fine-featured eyes met his without a flicker. “You’ve got all your limbs and a decent face. Find an honest living — stop running scams.”

The breeze stirred softly around them. People came and went. Sunlight fell across his face, rendering every line of it distinct and still.

He said nothing. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

Sophia stepped forward to leave.

His arm came up again, blocking her path. The soft, clean fabric of his white shirt was right in front of her — she nearly walked straight into it.

This time, irritation flared. S