Magdalena sat on a pew across from the unadorned altar and observed the advancing light, feeling a growing sense of revulsion. There was something wrong with the School, and whatever it was, it infected everyone who set foot in it and the nature that surrounded it; every living creature, every pebble, every frigid breath of wind was imbued with a piercing hardness. Even that little church in front of the refectory was devoid of the warmth you would expect to find in a place of prayer and penitence. Only the figure of the crucified Christ that hung in the apse exhibited any signs of human longing. Everything else was built along grey and rigid lines.

Magdalena looked at the crucifix, but couldn’t bring herself to pray. Never in her life had she felt so distressed. She was waking up in tears every night, tormented in her dreams by the things she saw in the School.

There was something wrong with it all. Something so slight as to be formless and impossible to describe—which was why she had failed to understand it at first, and had now ended up an accomplice in what was effectively an affront to life.

She brought her hands closer to her face so that she could see them properly. They looked tainted.

No one at the School seemed to understand her anguish. They regarded her with suspicion and monitored her every move, so that Magdalena had begun to wonder whether she was the one singing off-key in an otherwise pitch-perfect choir.

She raised her gaze once more, and in that moment, a shaft of light broke through one of the stained glass windows. The light took on a reddish hue and pierced the crucifix at rib height. The blood seemed to come alive and gush from the wound. This was the second time she had seen this sign. The first had been when Agnes Braun was explaining the rules of the School to her: “Observe, record, forget.”

Magdalena shuddered in awe.

That figure before her showed neither hope nor any notion of salvation. It was a representation of torture. The Christ returned her gaze with the disconsolate look of those who know that nobody will help them. There could be no accusation fiercer than the despair contained in those eyes.

Magdalena rose to her feet. She had finally understood what she needed to do: she had to bring change.

She walked briskly through the deserted corridors of the ground floor, as if she couldn’t wait a moment longer to start making amends, until she reached the entrance hall. She took a few steps up the main staircase, then stopped.