#i saw a hannigram fan on tiktok saying she had a million words in less than two years and tons of fics

[suchawrathfullamb]

Saint Hannibal/Devotee Will tale

It was a slow descent, or perhaps an ascent, depending on the eye that beheld it. Will Graham arrived at the monastery as a man burdened by his own trembling mind, the fever of his visions mistaken for affliction. But in that place of stone and candlelight, his ailment became something else: a gateway. The monks saw in him what they had seen in others before—a fragile soul, writhing in the hands of God.

It began with the visions. Saint Hannibal, the Devourer of Shame, came to him in dreams first, his face luminous with something more than holiness. There were whispers in the corners of the cloisters, the murmurs of the faithful who spoke of the saint’s secret teachings. Will listened. He listened until listening was not enough. He followed the traces left in hidden texts, in faded frescoes, in the subtle ways the monks averted their eyes when speaking his name.

Saint Hannibal had chosen a devotee before—Clarice Starling, the woman buried beyond the eastern wing, her grave unmarked save for a single alabaster relic clutched in her still hands. It was there that Will found it, a smooth, ancient thing, cool beneath his touch. He brought it to his lips. The first time was reverence. The second was indulgence. By the third, he understood that ecstasy was its own form of worship.

When the monks found him writhing before the altar, his back arched, his breath labored, they called for exorcism. But Will did not fear their rites, for he had already been touched by his saint, already purified in his own way. The body is a threshold, he knew this now. The heat overtook him, a pleasure so complete that it burned, and the world around him swayed, the monastery bending into something else. He fled, chased by holy men with their books and their prayers, down into the catacombs where the air was thick with incense and rot.

The tomb was waiting. Saint Hannibal lay there, just as Will had seen in the depths of his mind—not as dust and ruin, but as he had been in life, perfect and whole, his body radiant beneath the stone. Will wept. He kissed the bones that were not bones, pressed himself into the corpse that was not a corpse, and in that union, he ceased to be merely Will. He became something else: lover, acolyte, sacrifice. His final breath left him not as a gasp, but as a prayer.

By the time they found him, he was draped over the remains, his body cooling against the relics of his saint. In the flickering torchlight, the monks saw only madness, desecration, possession. His devotion became legend, his name lost beneath the weight of condemnation. But deep in the catacombs, where the air never stirred, something watched. Something listened. And somewhere beyond the veil, a spirit smiled.