The Sistine Chapel had been stripped bare.
No benches.
No velvet ropes.
Only the frescoes—Michelangelo's ceiling blazing with restored color under hidden lights—and one long table of polished obsidian set exactly beneath the hand of God reaching toward Adam.
Two chairs.
Alessandro stood when Sofia entered.
He wore a simple white cassock with no insignia, the kind a pope might wear on Good Friday.
The effect was deliberate.
He did not bow.
He did not smile.
He simply looked at her with those winter-sea eyes and said, very softly:
"Welcome to the heart of the world, little sister."
Sofia stopped ten feet away.
The olive-wood rosary was already in her hands, moving slowly through the first decade of the Joyful Mysteries without sound.
Alessandro's gaze flicked to the beads and something ancient flinched behind his pupils.
He gestured to the chair opposite him.
"Sit. We have seven days and I would not spend the first minute on ceremony."
Sofia did not sit.
"I will stand," she said. "Mary stood at the Cross."
A flicker of genuine amusement crossed his face.
"Touché."
He sat instead, folding his hands on the obsidian table.
"Let us be honest from the beginning," he began, voice velvet and venom. "You believe I am the one John saw on Patmos. The beast. The son of perdition. The Antichrist."
He let the word hang in the air like incense.
"I prefer a different title: the Last Reconciler.
The one who will finally end two thousand years of division, violence, and superstition."
He leaned forward.
"Look what your Church became, Sofia.
Pedophile scandals. Empty pews. Popes apologizing for existing.
I have done what none of your saints ever managed: I united every religion under one banner in seventy-two hours.
No more crusades. No more jihads. No more children frightened of hell because they missed Mass."
He spread his hands.
"I offer peace. Real peace. Not the false peace of your gospels that never quite arrived."
Sofia's beads clicked softly.
Alessandro's eyes tracked the sound like a snake watching a mouse.
"Take the Mark," he continued. "Not as submission—as partnership.
You and I together. You keep your precious Rosary, your scapulars, your little miracles.
I keep the world from tearing itself apart.
Billions live. No more martyrs. No more blood in the snow."
He pushed a small crystal box across the table.
Inside lay a single brown scapular—identical to hers—except the wool was threaded with gold and the images of Our Lady and the Sacred Heart glowed faintly.
"A gift," he said. "Enchanted, if you like. Wear it and every soul who ever prays a Rosary through you will be… protected. No pain. No purgatory. Straight to whatever light you believe in."
He leaned back.
"Or refuse.
And tomorrow the seven days end early.
I open the camps.
Your monastery in Michigan becomes ash by sunset.
Every sealed forehead I can find will be burned off with acid and replaced with my Mark."
He smiled gently.
"Choose, little sister.
Peace and life.
Or war and death."
Sofia finished the decade.
She stepped forward—not to the chair, but to the table—and placed the olive-wood rosary on the obsidian surface directly between them.
The moment the wood touched the stone, the fresco above them—the great hand of God reaching for Adam—flared with real light.
Alessandro's chair scraped backward an inch.
Sofia spoke for the first time since entering.
"You offer peace without Christ.
That is not peace.
That is the peace of the grave."
She touched the crystal box with one finger.
It shattered into a thousand pieces that turned to ash before they hit the floor.
Alessandro's mask slipped for a heartbeat—something old and reptilian glared out.
Then the smile returned, colder.
"Day One," he said. "You still have six left to change your mind."
He stood.
"Tonight you will sleep in the Domus Sanctae Marthae.
Tomorrow we speak again.
And every day you refuse, I will show you one truth your Church hid from you."
He walked past her toward the door, pausing at her shoulder.
"Tell me, Sofia… do you know where your Pope is?"
He whispered the answer against her ear, breath colder than the Atlantic night.
"Ask me again on Day Seven."
Then he was gone.
The chapel doors closed by themselves.
Sofia stood alone beneath the fresco of the Last Judgment, surrounded by silent saints and angels who seemed—impossibly—to be watching her.
She knelt, pressed her forehead to the obsidian table where the rosary still lay, and began the Sorrowful Mysteries aloud.
Her voice echoed off the ceiling where God's hand reached forever toward man—and for one flickering instant, the painted fingers moved a fraction closer.
Somewhere in the Vatican's secret archives, a single sealed envelope marked with the third secret of Fatima began to bleed light through the wax.
Day One had ended.
Six remained.
To be continued…