The first gospel of the Church of Eternal Light was spoken in whispers.

  Maria had been young when Thomas first taught her to cross her fingers in the shape he vaguely remembered from when he was little. They practiced in shadows during the short rest times between work, where guard attention got weak enough for quiet talking.

  "People would stand together," Thomas had told her, showing how to make the cross with his fingers against his chest. "They'd say words to the light in big rooms with colored gss."

  Maria had been amazed by his broken memories—pieces that meant something without making a full picture. Before Thomas, the only religious teaching in Blood Farm #17 had come in whispers from older blood bags during recovery after blood-taking.

  "The light sees you," they would say quietly. "The pain won't st forever."

  These small bits might have stayed just that—disconnected words without bigger meaning—if not for Maria's curse and her desperate need to understand it.

  After her first transformation, the scattered pieces became her lifeline. While other blood bags accepted their life with dull giving-up, Maria couldn't afford such weakness. Her monthly curse demanded expnation. The fragments of faith became the foundation she built on, night after night, in whispered talks with Thomas and the few others old enough to remember bits of the world before.

  "What were the words they said to the light?" she had asked Thomas over and over.

  He would wrinkle his forehead, searching for memories from earliest childhood before the farms. "Something about... forgiving? And bread? And a father?" The details were shadows, feelings rather than clear memories.

  "Did the light answer?"

  "Don't think so. Not with words people could hear."

  Maria had put together her understanding from these pieces, sorting and arranging them like precious stones found in dirt. When something didn't fit with what she knew, she changed it. When there were gaps, she filled them with what made sense in their reality.

  By the time Maria was twelve, she had begun sharing her growing beliefs with others in the sleeping area. She hadn't meant to become a spiritual leader—it started simply as comfort offered to a crying child after a particurly brutal blood-taking session.

  "The demons take our blood because we need punishment," she had expined, holding the child's hand. "All of us did bad things, or those who came before us. But the light still sees us. When we've been punished enough, the light will come back."

  The child had stopped crying, looking at Maria with desperate hope. "Really?"

  "Yes. Every drop of blood they take counts toward what we owe. One day the debt will be paid. Then the light will burn away the demons, and we'll be free."

  Word spread through the sleeping area, passed in whispers during work shifts and quiet moments before sleep. Blood bags began seeking Maria out, asking her to expin more about the light and the punishment and the promised freedom. Her curse gave her words power—she was marked in a way others weren't, suffering more intensely each month. Surely the light had chosen her.

  In the fifteenth year of her life, Maria held her first organized prayer meeting.

  Ten blood bags had gathered in the narrow space between sleeping spaces, huddled close while Maria softly said the words she had created to expin their world.

  "We gather in darkness to remember the light," she had begun, tension and excitement making her voice shake. "The demons feed on our bodies, and we must take our punishment, but they can't have our souls."

  The words had come together over years of careful thought, testing different expnations against the harsh realities of the blood farm until she found a framework that offered both meaning and hope. She mixed in Thomas's vague memories, the whispered comforts of those now processed out, and her own gut understanding shaped by her curse.

  "The light tests the strongest ones hardest," she had continued, unconsciously touching her arm where the prickling feeling had begun earlier that day. "That's why some suffer more than others. The light gives hard tests to the special ones."

  By her sixteenth year, her spoken gospel had taken its final form. The Church of Eternal Light wasn't an organization with formal structure—it was a way of understanding that spread through whispered repetition from blood bag to blood bag. Some embraced it completely. Others took pieces that helped them endure. A few rejected it entirely, seeing no purpose in Maria's expnations.

  One evening, as she led a small gathering in prayer, Thomas had watched with an expression of wonder mixed with sadness.

  "Did I get it wrong?" Maria had asked afterward, noticing his expression. "Is this not what people used to believe?"

  Thomas had shaken his head slowly. "Don't know if it's right or wrong. The things I remember... they're just bits. Little pieces." He'd hesitated, choosing his words carefully. "But the old stories, the ones from before I was taken—I think they were about loving each other. Not just about punishment."

  Maria had thought about this, rolling the strange idea around in her mind. Love wasn't something much talked about in the blood farms, where survival took over from softer feelings.

  "Maybe loving is what comes after," she had finally decided. "After the punishment is done and the demons are gone. Maybe that's what the light wants us to learn through suffering."

  Thomas had nodded slowly. "Maybe so."

  That night, Maria had added a new part to her gospel—the idea that sharing food and comfort with other blood bags was preparation for the world that would come after punishment ended. It gave meaning to the small kindnesses that happened even in the brutal pce of Blood Farm #17.

  Now, at eighteen, Maria's gospel was complete. The Church of Eternal Light offered expnations that matched their reality:

  The blood farms existed because humans deserved punishment. The vampires were demons sent to extract this payment. Suffering had meaning as debt repayment. When enough blood had been paid, the light would return and set them free. Until then, they must stay strong inside, keeping their souls clean even when their bodies suffered.

  Her church had no written words—writing was forbidden to blood bags except for the most basic work-reted markings. Instead, the gospel existed in Maria's memory and in the memories of those who listened to her. It passed from person to person in whispers, changing slightly with each retelling but keeping its core message of meaning through suffering and hope for eventual freedom.

  Each night after work, Maria would say the central prayer she had created—The Promise—and others would join in as they learned it:

  "When we've suffered enough, When our blood has paid the price, The light will break the dark, And demons will turn to ice.

  Their fangs will break like gss, Their power will fade away, The chains will fall to pieces, As the light brings judgment day.

  We are more than just blood bags, Though they drain us every day. We are children of the light, And freedom is on the way."

  The words flowed naturally, simple enough for even the youngest blood bags to remember yet meaningful enough to offer comfort to the oldest. The rhythm made the prayer easy to recall even for those who struggled with memory after years of blood loss and trauma.

  For Maria, the gospel provided more than community leadership—it gave meaning to her curse. Each monthly transformation became a purification ritual, a special suffering that marked her as chosen by the light for some greater purpose. The pain had reason. The memory gaps had expnation. The animal instincts that sometimes surfaced between full transformations were tests of her spiritual strength.

  She had no way of knowing that her entire spiritual understanding was built on a complete misunderstanding of her own nature. That what she saw as divine curse was actually something else entirely. That somewhere beyond the blood farm fences, others like her lived with full knowledge of what they were.

  Her gospel would face its biggest test when her world grew beyond the fences of Blood Farm #17—but for now, it was the foundation that kept her standing. The light she offered to others kept her own darkness away.

  And in a pce where hope was the hardest thing to find, that was miracle enough.