Chapter 4: A Leap of Faith

Chapter 4: A Leap of Faith

The darkness in the grave was absolute, broken only by the memory of the Baron’s glowing green eyes. He was gone, but his riddle hung in the air, thick and cloying like the smell of upturned earth. Above, the hungry grinding of Congo-Savanne was a constant, terrifying metronome, counting down the seconds they had left.

“A riddle?” Cassara’s voice was a ragged whisper, laced with furious disbelief. She pushed herself up, patting the loose dirt around her. “We’re about to be turned into dust by a floating-head-grinder-monster, and he leaves us with a goddamn nursery rhyme?”

Her hands found the familiar, solid weight of her machete, half-buried in the soil. She drew it free with a soft shing of steel, the sound absurdly small in the face of their supernatural predicament. She ran a thumb along the flat of the blade. “Useless,” she muttered. “You can’t cut a ghost.”

David barely heard her. He was on his knees, his hands sifting through the dirt where he’d fallen. His Bible was gone, swallowed by the darkness. He felt a pang of loss, sharp and familiar, but it was quickly replaced by the Baron’s words echoing in his mind. The answer, missionary, is not in your book. It is in you.

He clutched the small, warm wooden fetish the Loa had given him. It felt ancient, saturated with an energy that had nothing to do with his God.

“‘Cannot stomach a soul that is burning too bright,’” he recited, his voice hollow. “‘A faith fully forged is a feast it must discard.’” He let out a bitter, shaky laugh. “He was mocking me. My faith isn’t forged. It’s shattered.”

“Then you’d better find a way to fix it, and fast,” Cassara snapped, her pragmatism a sharp edge against his despair. She was on her feet, testing the dirt walls of the grave, searching for a handhold, a root, any chance of a physical escape. The walls crumbled under her touch. “We can’t climb out. Not before that thing scoops us up.”

She stopped, turning to face his shadowed form in the dark. “Look, I don’t understand any of this spirit-god-voodoo crap. It’s not my world. But right now, it’s the only world we’re in. That… thing… up there is Savannah’s monster. And that… Baron… is her enemy. He gave you the rules to his enemy’s game. So you have to play.”

Her words cut through the fog of his self-pity. He looked up, seeing not the cynical drifter, but a terrified woman whose survival instincts were so sharp they forced her to bet on the one thing she didn’t believe in: him.

His mind flashed back to the accident. The slick, rain-swept road. The sickening crunch of metal. The prayer he’d screamed into the night, a desperate plea for a miracle that never came. He’d blamed himself, but more than that, he’d blamed God for his silence. That was the moment his faith had cracked, the moment the hollow space had opened up inside him. He’d spent years praying for a sign, for forgiveness, for a voice from the heavens to tell him it wasn’t his fault.

A faith fully forged.

Forging required fire. It required pressure. It wasn't about asking for strength; it was about being strong. It wasn't about waiting for a shield; it was about becoming one.

The Baron’s riddle wasn’t a mockery. It was an instruction manual.

“The monster is hungry,” David said, a new, fragile certainty in his voice. “It operates on instinct. We need to give it something it can’t eat.” He stood up, the wooden fetish still clutched in one hand, his other hand finding the simple silver cross around his neck. “You have to create a diversion.”

Cassara stared at him, her silhouette rigid. “A diversion? You want me to get its attention?”

“Just for a moment. It needs to focus on something else, so I can get out of this grave and face it directly.”

“Face it? David, it ate a ghost!”

“It eats the broken. The lost. The lone,” he countered, the Baron’s words now a lifeline. “Its power is in that dust cloud. It separates, disorients, and isolates its prey. I can’t let it do that. I have to confront it in the heart of the storm.”

It was the most insane plan Cassara had ever heard. It went against every rule of survival. You don’t walk toward the predator; you run. But then she looked at the churning, hellish sky above them, heard the relentless grinding, and felt the suffocating certainty of their doom if they did nothing. She had come to this island seeking a ghost from her past. Maybe the only way out was to trust a man who was fighting his own.

“Fine,” she said, her voice tight. She found a loose rock, the size of her fist. “I’ll get its attention. But if you get ground into holy dust, I’m going to be seriously pissed off.”

With a grunt, she boosted him up. David’s hands found the lip of the grave, his fingers digging into the damp soil. He hauled himself out, tumbling onto the dust-covered grass.

The world was a nightmare. The soul-dust was a thick, roaring hurricane, visibility reduced to inches. The grinding sound was a physical force that vibrated through the ground and into his bones. Whispers seemed to slither on the edge of his hearing—faint, ghostly echoes of the souls that made up this storm. It was an assault on every sense, designed to overwhelm and terrify.

“Now, Cassara!” he yelled, his voice sounding thin and weak against the din.

From the grave, a rock sailed through the fog, clattering against a tall, unseen tombstone twenty yards to his left.

Instantly, the grinding noise shifted. The guttural roar of Congo-Savanne focused on the new sound. David saw the monster’s spectral head, a terrifying silhouette in the churning haze, float swiftly towards the noise, its burning yellow eyes scanning the fog.

This was his chance.

He took a deep breath, the gritty dust filling his lungs. He let go of the Baron’s fetish, letting it fall to the ground. This couldn’t come from a borrowed god. It had to be his own. He walked forward, directly toward the space the monster had just vacated, into the very heart of the storm.

He closed his eyes. He didn't pray for safety. He didn't pray for victory. He didn't beg for the forgiveness he’d so desperately sought for years. That was the faith of a child, a faith full of cracks. A hollow faith.

Instead, he remembered Cassara’s face in the grave—cynical, terrified, but willing to trust him. He wasn't just David anymore, the missionary plagued by doubt. He was a shield. Her shield.

Lord, he prayed, but the prayer was different now. It wasn't a question. It was a statement. A declaration. Let my soul be the rock upon which this darkness breaks. Use me.

He opened his eyes. He held the silver cross before him, gripping it so tightly his knuckles were white. He poured every last shred of his being into it—not his belief in a distant God, but his absolute, unshakeable conviction in this one, single purpose: to protect. He poured in his guilt, his pain, his years of doubt, and offered them up as fuel for the fire.

And a light began to glow.

It started as a faint glimmer on the surface of the silver cross, then expanded, pushing back against the oppressive, yellow gloom. It was not a violent, searing light, but a calm, steady, and utterly unbreakable radiance. It was the color of pure, unwavering certainty. His soul, once hollow, was now full. It was forged.

The monster, having found nothing where the rock landed, turned back. Its yellow eyes widened as it saw the steady, white light emanating from David. With a hungry roar, it lunged, the invisible crushing force that had seized the ghost reaching for him.

The force struck the aura of light and dissolved like mist against a stone wall.

David stood his ground, the cross held steady, his heart pounding a rhythm of pure, terrifying purpose. The light held. He was not a weapon. He was inedible. He was indigestible. He was whole.

Congo-Savanne shrieked, a sound of pure, thwarted instinct. It was the cry of a starving predator whose jaws had just clamped down on solid steel instead of flesh. It recoiled, its spectral form flickering with rage and confusion. It tried again, lunging from another angle, but the result was the same. The light, the shield of David’s fully forged faith, was absolute.

The monster couldn’t touch him. And as Cassara cautiously peered over the edge of the grave, she saw that the light extended just far enough to envelop the hole she was in. He was protecting them both.

With one last, frustrated scream that tore through the cemetery, Congo-Savanne backed away. The ravenous spirit, denied its promised meal, turned its burning, hate-filled yellow eyes away from them, through the swirling dust, toward the edge of the cemetery. It fixed its gaze on the frail, hunched figure of the old woman who had summoned it, the woman who had made it a promise.

The woman who had failed to deliver.