Twelve-year-old Theo expects his forced silent retreat at the Monastery of Whispering Cliffs to be tense, strained, and filled with his mother Elina’s chilling silences. He doesn’t expect her to vanish without a trace. Perched on the rugged Oregon coast, the monastery is a fortress of shadows and secrets. The air hangs heavy with the scent of incense, a desperate attempt to mask the metallic tang of the sea and something far more sinister. The monks, their faces placid masks, move with an unsettling serenity, their silence more oppressive than peaceful.  Their hushed reassurances do nothing to quell Theo’s rising panic.
Cut off from the outside world, Theo’s anxiety spirals into paranoia. Every creak of the ancient floorboards, every rustle of the wind, becomes a menacing whisper.  Half-forgotten nightmares of a shadowy figure and a whispered threat resurface, intertwining with the chilling reality of the monastery. Within the dust-choked library, he discovers a hidden journal. Its brittle pages whisper of other disappearances, of unsettling rituals conducted under the cloak of darkness.  The cryptic entries hint at a secret history woven into the monastery’s very stones, a history that is now horrifyingly entwined with his own.
Brother Nathaniel, a young monk haunted by his own demons, emerges as an unlikely confidant.  His sorrowful eyes hold a flicker of understanding, a shared pain that draws Theo to him. Nathaniel’s kindness offers a fragile anchor in the rising tide of Theo’s fear, but even he can’t fully dispel the growing dread. He speaks in riddles, offering oblique warnings about the monastery’s true nature, the darkness that festers within.
Driven by desperation, Theo uncovers a hidden chamber beneath the chapel, a place where the air is thick with the stench of ancient evil.  Strange symbols mirror the carvings that twist and writhe on the walls, and the remnants of arcane ceremonies litter the floor: burnt candles, dried herbs, and a single, rusted chalice stained with what looks disturbingly like blood.  Here, amidst the chilling remnants of forgotten rituals, Theo uncovers a terrifying connection between his mother’s disappearance and the monastery’s sinister history. He realizes the monks aren’t seeking solace; they’re feeding an ancient, unknowable entity, and his mother has been chosen as its next victim.