A letter written by Flynn Richert found in the Crack of a Wall at the Abbey of the Whispering Shadows.
I sit here in the depths of the Abbey, in this godforsaken undercroft that reeks of despair and madness. The stone beneath me chills to the marrow, and I reckon it’s seeped into my soul. My hands are shackled, but they’ve overlooked the fire still burning within me – a fire they aim to douse with their righteous cruelty. With this pilfered paper and pencil stub, I record what may be my final testament as Flynn Richert, the man they couldn’t tame.
Our journey to the Abbey was a blind descent into purgatory. A rough sack over my head stifled my breath and robbed me of sight, yet it was the sounds that etched the deepest scars in my memory. The clop of hooves on cobblestone, the murmured prayers of those damned nuns – each syllable a nail in my coffin. The clank of chains kept time with our steps, a macabre march to oblivion.
I strained against the fabric that blinded me, desperate for any hint of our path. The scent of pine and damp earth gave way to must and stone as we delved into the Abbey’s bowels. Their whispered shadows spoke of a place forgotten by time and mercy.
I have been no saint; that much is God’s own truth. But what man deserves this? To be stripped of his freedom, his very essence, by those who wield piety as a weapon?
As they led us down the cold, stone corridors, the air grew thick with despair. I could hear the soft weeping and muffled screams emanating from behind heavy doors – the laments of lost souls who’d been swallowed by this place. The nuns marched ahead, their habits whispering against the stone floors with an unsettling rhythm, unfazed by the symphony of torment surrounding us.
We passed by open archways leading into chambers that resembled butcher’s blocks more than rooms of healing. My eyes couldn’t help but be drawn to the twisted figures within – prisoners strapped to tables, contorted in agony. Some were silent, their eyes vacant as if their spirits had long fled their broken vessels. Others thrashed against their restraints, their cries piercing my very core.
One scene seared itself into my mind: a man whose limbs were stretched beyond their limits by some infernal device. His joints dislocated, his tendons taut as bowstrings. His voice was raw from screaming, yet no merciful hand came to ease his suffering. Instead, a nun stood over him, her face an impassive mask as she recited scripture like a death knell.
The nuns spoke of purification through pain – a doctrine of cruelty masked as salvation. It was clear to me then that this was no place of godly work; it was a charnel house dressed in piety’s robes.
I felt fear then – not the adrenaline-fueled terror of a gunfight or the rush of evading the law – but a deep, soul-clenching fear that left me hollow. The sight of those wretched souls broke through my hardened exterior and whispered to me of fates worse than death.
As we continued our march to my cell, I stumbled upon an image that will forever be etched in my nightmares: a woman whose eyes had been sewn shut, her lips moving in silent prayer as blood wept from her sealed vision. She reached out to me as I passed by, her fingers brushing mine – a touch colder than the grave.
I have found enemies in these nuns, creatures of habit and cruelty wrapped in the guise of sanctity. They are not the gentle caretakers of souls I once mocked in my ignorance; they are judges and executioners, their sentences inscribed with rosaries and crosses. Their methods are unyielding, calculated to fray the mind as a rope against stone.
I could not hold my tongue when faced with the Abbess – that stern specter who commands this place. Eleanor, they call her, though I see nothing of mercy in her. When she addressed me with her icy gaze, probing for contrition, I met her with defiance. A grave error, as I soon learned.
For my insolence, they subjected me to an ordeal that chills me still. A chair of sorrows awaited me – straps for the limbs and a crown of iron to encase my skull. They spoke of purging demons from my mind as they wound the screws tight and darkness took me.
I endured hours…days perhaps…in that chair. My thoughts were no longer my own; they became whispers that slithered through my consciousness, seeding doubt and fear. My memories twisted into grotesque parodies of themselves – even now, I question what is real and what is the lingering venom of their treatment.
The numbness in my limbs still lingers, a testament to the chair’s cruel embrace. If I had harbored any delusions about the nature of this place, they have been thoroughly crushed beneath the heel of the Abbey’s merciless regimen. Today, as I scrawl these words in secrecy, I find myself yearning for the oblivion that once gripped me within that iron crown.
After they released me from that infernal chair, a new torment awaited. Ice baths, they called them, as if such a benign name could encapsulate the brutality of the act. The first time they dragged me to the tub, I fought with all the vigor of a cornered beast. But resistance was futile against their cold conviction. They plunged me into a sarcophagus of icy water, and every nerve in my body screamed in protest. Over and over again, until my very heartbeat seemed to freeze within my chest. Each immersion was a death in miniature, a gasping plea for air as my body rebelled against the cold.
My cries echoed off the stone walls, unheard or simply ignored by my captors. The nuns – those handmaidens of suffering – watched with impassive faces as my spirit cracked and fissured like the ice that encased me. They spoke in hushed tones of purification and rebirth, but their eyes betrayed no hint of compassion. They were as cold and unyielding as the waters that sought to cleanse me of my sins.
The ordeal stripped me bare, not just of warmth but of defiance. I am reduced to shivering flesh and brittle bone, a man teetering on the precipice of his own sanity. My mind fogs with each submersion, thoughts scattering like leaves in a gale. I find myself clinging to fragments of who I once was – Flynn Richert, the indomitable – even as they dissolve beneath the Abbey’s relentless tide.
I endure these baths daily now, each one more harrowing than the last. My skin has grown numb; I can scarcely feel my own touch. But it is not the numbness of flesh that terrifies me—it is the numbness creeping into my soul.
I can endure no more; this I confess to these tattered pages. I am broken—shattered by relentless waves of cold salvation. They may control my flesh, bend it to their cruel design, but somewhere deep within this husk lies Flynn Richert—the man who led his gang with iron resolve, who stared down life’s barrel unflinching.
At night – at least I think it’s night; time blurs in this place – they force some bitter draught down my throat. It’s meant to purge sinful thoughts, they claim. All it does is send me into fits, my mind a whirlpool of terror and regret.
I confess now what I’ve never uttered aloud: I am sorry. Sorry for the lives taken, for the fear sown, for the innocence burnt away by my own hand in that orphanage blaze. The weight of those tiny souls haunts me here in this darkness.
I am sorry for seeking power through bloodshed, for leading men down this damnable path. My guilt is a tangible specter in these cells; it claws at my insides, demanding retribution.
The worst is yet to come – or so they promise in hushed tones that slither like serpents through the bars. They speak of an operation tomorrow to excise the sin from my very brain. Each whispered word from those veiled lips sends spikes of ice through my veins.
I am terrified. There’s no bravado left in me to mask it; fear has stripped me bare as any scalpel could. The Abbey has become my tomb, and these nuns the harbingers of my end.
I write these words not knowing if they will ever be found or read by another soul. If by some chance they are, let them serve as both confession and warning: there are fates far worse than death awaiting those who cross the Abbey Of Whispering Shadows.
As for me… I expect no salvation or reprieve. My story will likely end within these stone walls, forgotten like so many before me.
I haven’t laid eyes on any of my gang since we were ensnared by those black-robed specters. We are each ensnared in our own private purgatories, but their voices… their voices sometimes reach me through the stone.
Bryce, that sly devil, I heard him once. He was spitting venom at the nuns with all the defiance of a cornered snake. His voice echoed down the corridor, a litany of curses and jeers that would make a sailor blush. Then came a sound I’ll not soon forget – the dull thud of flesh being beaten mercilessly. It silenced Bryce’s bravado; since then, his voice has been conspicuously absent from our grim chorus. A chilling void has taken its place, one that whispers of unspeakable things done in the name of righteousness.
And Cole… young Cole, his cries pierced the silence some days past. The terror in his voice was palpable – it clawed at my insides and dragged out a sorrow I didn’t know I could feel. He begged for mercy with a raw desperation that no man, let alone a boy on the cusp of life, should ever know. It gnawed at me then and gnaws at me still – for all his reckless ways, he doesn’t deserve this crucible.
In these walls, I’ve heard things that would turn a lesser man’s blood to ice. Cries that echo through corridors with no witness save for the uncaring stone. Desperation claws at me like a living thing. It whispers that perhaps I deserve this fate.
They say redemption lies at the end of this road. Yet all I see is an endless abyss stretching before me, whispering promises of salvation wrapped in torment.
If this is to be my end…if these words are to be my last…let them stand testament not just to Flynn Richert the criminal, but to Flynn Richert the man – who fought until there was nothing left but whispers in the shadows.
May God have mercy on my soul, Flynn
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