This paper addresses a problem central to medieval religious consciousness and canon law: the fate of individuals placed under a state of penance who die before the prescribed period of sanction has expired. Within medieval Christian anthropology and eschatology, incomplete penance casts doubt on the possibility of salvation- those who have not fully repented risk condemnation to hell and eternal torment. At the same time, in popular belief, they may even be perceived as remaining undecayed and being transformed into vampires. This tension between the linear time of imposed penance (chronos) and the decisive moment of death (kairos) compelled religious authorities to seek normative and theological solutions. Focusing primarily on Byzantium and the Balkan regions, the paper shows that this issue became especially acute after the Ottoman conquest, when ecclesiastical organization was weakened, fragmented, or destroyed, and access to clerical authority and sacramental practice was often irregular. Through an analysis of religious texts, and above all of canon law collections (nomocanons), the paper examines how questions concerning the predictability of the hour and time of death were articulated, whether and under what conditions communion could be administered to the dying, or even to the dead, and how such practices functioned as kairotic strategies to mitigate social and ontological inequality between "upright" believers and those temporarily excluded from full participation in the community. In this context, the governance of time emerges as a crucial instrument of mercy, justice, and the maintenance of both social and cosmic order