They reached the Upper Peninsula just before dawn, two white vans limping on fumes and prayers.
The last road sign had been shot out weeks ago, but Marcus knew the way from old GEA training maps. A single gravel track twisted north through pine forests so thick the sky disappeared.
Snow began to fall—fat, silent flakes that stuck to the windshield like blessings.
Sofia woke as they turned onto a narrower path marked only by a weather-beaten wooden sign:
OUR LADY OF THE WOODS MONASTERY
Contemplative Cistercians – 1947
"No Trespassing" had been painted over with "All refugees welcome in the name of the Immaculate Heart."
Father Elijah exhaled for the first time in six hours. "They knew."
The vans rolled into a clearing and stopped.
The monastery looked like it had grown out of the forest itself: low stone buildings, cedar-shingled roofs heavy with snow, a small chapel whose steeple bell was already ringing—slow, steady, joyful.
Monks in white habits and black scapulars poured out of the front doors—twenty, thirty, forty of them—faces glowing with the same luminous seals that marked Sofia and the children.
An old abbot with a beard like Elijah the prophet walked straight to the lead van, eyes fixed on Sofia through the windshield.
He opened her door himself and bowed so low his forehead nearly touched the snow.
"Daughter of Mary," he said in a voice rough from years of silence, "we have been waiting for you since 1917."
Sofia stepped out barefoot into the snow and didn't feel the cold.
The abbot—Dom Pius—took her hand gently and turned it palm-up.
The faint imprint of the Host still glowed there like a Eucharistic miracle that refused to fade.
He fell to his knees in the snow, and every monk behind him followed.
Behind Sofia, thirty-two new refugees spilled out of the vans—former GEA enforcers, little girls clutching rosaries, the ex-gangster Diego, the sinful priest Elijah, and Captain Sarah Kline who had once pointed a rifle at Sofia's head.
Every single one of them now wore a brown scapular.
Dom Pius rose and opened his arms.
"Welcome to the Ark," he said simply. "You made it through the first night."
They fed them first—hot oatmeal, real honey, coffee strong enough to wake the dead.
The refectory had been emptied of tables; cots lined the walls instead. A hand-painted banner stretched across the far end:
THE TRIUMPH OF THE IMMACULATE HEART BEGINS HERE
After breakfast, Dom Pius led them to the chapel.
It was small, plain, perfect.
A life-size statue of Our Lady of Fatima stood where the tabernacle should have been—crown of stars, hands outstretched, heart pierced with seven swords but radiant with light.
Beneath her feet, carved into the marble floor in letters six inches deep:
IN THE END MY IMMACULATE HEART WILL TRIUMPH
Sofia stopped breathing for a moment.
Dom Pius noticed. "We carved that the day Benedict XVI consecrated Russia—1984. We knew the promise was still coming."
He gestured to the pews. Every monk knelt. The refugees followed, clumsy but earnest.
Then the abbot did something no one expected.
He turned to Sofia.
"Child," he said, "the monastery has been praying fifteen decades every day since October 13, 1917. We finish the final mystery at 3:33 p.m. every afternoon—the exact minute the sun danced at Fatima. Today, for the first time in one hundred eight years, we will not lead it."
He placed a large, ancient rosary of olive wood into her hands.
"You will."
Sofia tried to protest, but her voice wouldn't come.
Father Elijah stepped forward, eyes red. "She's exhausted—"
Dom Pius smiled gently. "The Virgin never chooses the strong. She chooses the weak so no one can boast."
At 3:28 p.m. the chapel bell began to toll.
Monks, refugees, children, former enforcers—seventy souls in all—knelt in perfect silence.
Sofia walked to the front on legs that should have collapsed hours ago.
She looked at the statue of Our Lady.
The statue looked back—and winked.
Just once.
Sofia's tears started before the first word.
She raised the olive-wood rosary and began, voice small but growing:
"In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit…"
Seventy voices answered "Amen" like thunder.
They prayed the Joyful Mysteries and the chapel filled with the scent of lilies that had no business blooming in December.
Sorrowful Mysteries—crimson light poured from the wounds in the statue's heart and rested on every sealed forehead.
Glorious Mysteries—angels became visible in the rafters, wings of fire and ice, singing in perfect Latin.
Luminous Mysteries—the Eucharist appeared above the altar again, larger this time, spinning slowly like a sun.
When Sofia reached the final Hail Holy Queen, snow stopped falling outside.
The clouds parted.
For exactly three minutes the winter sun danced—exactly like Fatima, exactly like Chicago the night everything began—only this time the entire monastery grounds were bathed in gold.
Phones were gone, satellites blind, but every soul present knew the miracle was real.
When it ended, Dom Pius stood.
He faced the community and spoke the words they had waited a lifetime to hear:
"The Great Tribulation has begun.
The Age of Mary has begun.
And we are no longer a monastery.
"We are the first battalion of the Army of the Immaculate Heart."
He turned to Sofia—who was glowing so brightly now she cast shadows—and knelt again.
"General," he said simply.
Every monk, every refugee, every child followed.
Even Father Elijah, tears streaming, knelt.
Sofia looked at them all—terrified, exhausted, on fire with grace—and did the only thing she could.
She raised the olive-wood rosary and whispered,
"Then we start with tonight's fifteen decades. Together."
Outside, far away in Rome, Prince Alessandro felt the dance of the sun like a slap across dimensions.
He crushed another goblet.
And somewhere in the stratosphere, something ancient and serpentine hissed in fury as a tiny monastery in Michigan became the first place on earth where the serpent's head began—imperceptibly, but unmistakably—to be crushed.
To be continued…