The smell of the incense, once a comforting familiar smell of his childhood and a constant reminder of growing up in the church, now choked Bishop Alistair Stone like a tightening vine. As he walked through his church, the cathedral church of Saint Thomas, the icons of the saints, once served as a glimpse into heaven for the bishop, but now they look back at him with a judging expression. The saints, if they are real, peering into the empty soul of a once proud man as if they are mocking him with their unwavering faith and devotion to the God he once loved, but who now a mere distant memory. With an emptiness in his heart, he traced the worn inscription on the altar cloth with his finger – I am the way, the truth, and the life – and a bitter laugh escaped his lips, “the way to what?”, he thought.

Alistair, once renowned for his sermons and passion for the faith, and a well-known celebrity bishop throughout England, felt a void within his soul. This, a result of years of struggling with unanswered prayers, the constant reminder of human suffering, and the hypocrisy he saw within the Church, a church he once loved and devoted his entire life to, had eroded the very foundation of his belief. This coupled with being a year of loss for the Stone family. Beginning in January when Alistair suddenly lost his executive assistant, a twenty-four-year-old theology graduate from Oxford, and someone with a passion for service, who suddenly died of a brain aneurism while visiting friends in the United States. This followed by many churches in his dioceses voting to leave over theological issues, leaving the young bishop with just a handful of churches left to shepherd.

Then Alistair’s world was turned upside down that summer, when Beatrice Stone, Alistair’s wife, and mother of their six children, was diagnosed with cancer, despite being healthy and having no family history of the terrible disease. Alistair had always thought that the story of Job was just a morality lesson meant to teach obedience, but here he was truly living the torment that God imposes on his loyal subjects. All of this would lead to his doubt, which like a distant wildfire, had finally made its way into his spirit, leaving in its wake a barren landscape.

But this was not a sudden loss of faith, it began subtly. A fleeting interest in the ancient forbidden texts and stories, a curiosity with the shadows that danced at the edges of his Christian faith. He began his study of the Fallen One, the one known as the adversary, and the light bringer. Lucifer, once the Morning Star, cast out for his disobedience and willingness to question the divine order. In his study of the forbidden, Alistair was able to see his struggle, he was able to relate to the fallen angel’s rebellion and slowly began to sympathize with him.

The whispers started softly, a thought here and there, a seductive counterpoint to the familiar litanies of the mass. The whispers promised liberation from the shackles of blind faith that Alistair clung to. But it was not the whispers, it was the intoxicating feeling he got from the freedom of self-determination. A power that filled him with a primal energy, a dark echo of the divine call he once had. A shadow of the voice that once spoke to him. But this voice was different, this voice filled the void that Alistair once felt. This voice had always been there. It was a voice that was always calling his name, it was the voice that he was longing for.

And then, on a moonless night in October, his wife, and children asleep, Alistair, in the solitude of his study, had a moment of letting go of all that he was once. The strong Anglican Bishop gave into the voice that had been calling out to touch his soul. Alistair knelt, not before the cross that hung above his kneeler, but before an ancient sigil that he had etched into the floorboards underneath a decorative rug. A pact whispered, a soul offered, a final descent into the darkness. This was his moment of letting go.

The good bishop had fallen.

Next Chapter: The Pact