For one breathless moment after the silver light vanished, the whole square stood still.
Then everyone moved at once.
Someone screamed.
Someone else shouted that the gods had spoken.
A man fell to his knees in the mud. Two women dragged their children behind them. Bran dropped the torch he'd been holding and stamped at it wildly, as though ordinary fire had suddenly become offensive.
Darien could not move.
He could still see the black door.
Not with his eyes—not exactly—but stamped somewhere inside him. A door under the earth. A ring of carved symbols. Something on the other side, sleeping hard enough to feel like hate.
Beside him, Silas had both hands pressed over his mouth.
Leon grabbed his shoulder. "Silas."
Silas looked up too fast, eyes glassy with fright.
Veyna swiped at the blood under her nose with the back of her hand and stared at the red smear as if mildly insulted by it.
Father Elian was coming down the chapel steps.
Not running now.
Walking.
And looking only at the four of them.
Old Mara reached Veyna first and seized the back of her collar. "What did you do?"
Veyna jerked free at once. "Why is it always my fault first?"
"Because you look guilty when the weather changes."
Father Elian stopped in front of them.
Up close, his face looked worse than Darien had thought—gray around the mouth, eyes too bright, one hand shaking badly enough that he tucked it into his sleeve.
"You four," he said. "Inside. Now."
Darien found his voice first. "That sounded like an order."
Father Elian looked at him, and whatever Darien had meant to say next died there.
Because the priest was afraid.
Not generally afraid, not village-afraid, not bad-harvest, dead-sheep, silver-rain afraid.
Afraid of them.
Leon noticed it too. His jaw tightened. "We'll come."
Father Elian turned immediately toward the chapel.
Silas hesitated.
Veyna glanced at the crowd pressing back from them in a widening circle. "I don't think staying here is better."
That settled it.
They followed Father Elian up the steps.
The villagers recoiled as they passed.
That hurt more than Darien wanted it to.
Vael had never exactly loved them. But it had known them. That was different. Old women who had once cuffed them for stealing apples now crossed themselves when they came too close. Men who had shouted for Leon to lift barrels or chase goats would not meet his eyes. Even Tomas, who had once lost a tooth to Leon's sense of justice, stared at them like strangers wearing familiar faces.
Inside, the doors slammed shut behind them.
The sound boomed through the chapel.
Silence followed.
The air smelled wrong.
Not just incense and old wax and damp timber like always. Now there was something sharper under it—stone struck by lightning, cold metal, a sweetness so faint it felt dangerous.
The altar cloth had burned through in a perfect silver ring.
Darien stared at it.
Silas did not. He looked everywhere else first: the cracked saint statues, the crooked pews, the little iron lanterns hanging cold from their hooks. As if enough ordinary things still in place might make the rest make sense.
"They all heard it," Leon said.
Father Elian nodded once.
"What was it?" Silas whispered.
The priest didn't answer. Instead he came closer, lowered his voice, and asked, "Tell me exactly what you saw."
Darien folded his arms. "Why?"
"Because I asked."
"That is not an answer."
"Darien," Leon said warningly.
Darien ignored him. "What did we see? The same thing the whole village saw, apparently. Light. Panic. You looking like death with better posture."
Veyna made a sound that might have been a laugh in a kinder world.
Father Elian did not.
He looked at Darien for a long moment, then at Leon, Silas, and Veyna, as though checking that all four still existed where the voice had left them.
Then he said quietly, "Did you dream last night?"
All four went still.
Silas answered first, because of course he did. "Yes."
Father Elian shut his eyes briefly.
Leon frowned. "You knew."
"Tell me what you saw," Father Elian repeated.
This time Leon answered.
"A door," he said. "Stone. Buried deep. And something behind it."
Silas nodded too quickly. "I dreamed that."
Veyna looked deeply annoyed with the whole universe. "Wonderful."
Father Elian turned to Darien last.
Darien held his gaze. "Yes."
The priest's shoulders sank, just a little.
Then he said the last thing any of them wanted to hear.
"It has started."
Nobody spoke.
Because nothing good had ever followed words like that.
Veyna broke first. "What has started?"
But Father Elian was already moving.
He crossed to the altar, dropped to one knee, and reached beneath the burned cloth. His fingers found something hidden under the stone lip—something metal. There was a click. Then a grinding sound under the floor.
A narrow section of stone beside the altar shifted open.
Cold dark breathed up from below.
Silas stared. "There's a passage under the chapel?"
"There was supposed to be no need for it again." Father Elian stood. "Listen carefully. You go down there, you follow the tunnel until it opens, and you do not touch anything that calls to you."
Darien blinked. "That is the worst instruction anyone has ever given us."
Leon stepped forward. "Why are we going anywhere?"
Something hit the doors from the other side.
All four children jumped.
A second impact followed, harder.
Then a wet scraping sound dragged across the wood.
Silas made a choking noise.
Veyna's hand flashed to the little knife at her wrist.
The third strike split one of the upper panels.
Blue-white light leaked through the crack.
Father Elian's face went white. "Go."
"What is that?" Leon demanded.
The priest looked at him with naked horror. "A warning."
Another crash.
The iron latch bent inward.
Father Elian grabbed Leon by both shoulders so suddenly the boy startled. "Take them and run."
Leon looked stunned.
Darien laughed once, sharp with nerves. "You say that like he's in charge."
"I am if someone has to be," Leon snapped.
The door shuddered again.
Veyna didn't wait anymore. She shoved Silas toward the opening in the floor. "Move, priest."
Silas looked at the darkness below like it might personally judge him. "I hate this."
"Get in line."
Leon hesitated one heartbeat longer, looking between Father Elian and the splitting door.
The priest made the choice for him. He pushed Leon hard toward the passage.
Darien caught himself on the altar edge, looked once at Father Elian, and said, low and fast, "You knew something was under the village."
Father Elian met his eyes.
"Yes," he said.
The door burst inward.
Darien ran.
He dropped into the opening just as something shrieked behind him—a sound like an animal learning how to sing in a dead person's throat.
Leon slammed the stone hatch half-closed above them.
Veyna seized the iron ring from below and yanked.
The slab shut fully.
Darkness swallowed them.
Then, from above, through layers of chapel floor and earth and old stone, Father Elian shouted one final thing.
"Whatever you hear—don't give it your name!"
Something hit the hatch overhead so hard dust rained down into their hair.
Silas whimpered.
Darien, breathing too fast in the dark, said the only thing he could think of.
"That was unhelpfully dramatic."
And Veyna, somewhere ahead of him in the black, let out one startled laugh.