Algar gripped the axe so hard his fingers went numb. He hadn’t felt them for a while, but he didn’t dare loosen his hold. The iron head was sticky with smoke and blood. He ran until his lungs burned.

  Behind him lay the village that no longer existed. The screaming had died, and in its place came a dead silence that pressed into the ears like water. Above the roofs where, that very morning, steam had risen from hearths, only heavy coils of smoke now stood. The wind worried them without rhyme or reason.

  He decided to head for the chapel first. If the world was cracking, you went where the gods were. Korvain’s chapel stood close by, on the forest’s edge, beneath the old lindens.

  Holiness is meant to answer foulness. He’d heard the sentence so many times that sometimes it seemed the words had power on their own. The priest said it at harvest, at the first snow, at burials. Father repeated it without faith—but he repeated it.

  The holy place emerged from the dark—slowly, reluctantly. First he saw the outline, then the stained glass, and at last the split doors.

  The roof had caved inward; the beams were blackened and cracked. A caustic, syrupy note hung in the air. The smell was nothing like it had been during the feast.

  A stake had been driven before the entrance. On it, twisted like a deformed puppet, hung the priest’s body. His eyes were thrown so wide the whites glazed in the moonlight. His mouth had frozen in the shape of a voiceless plea.

  A few paces from the lindens, a black rift gaped in the ground. It wasn’t a natural fissure. The earth hadn’t split—it had been split open. Algar drifted closer, unwilling, as if something tugged at his shirt. Nothing could be seen within—like a bottomless well. But around the rim, symbols ran. They glowed blood-red and pulsed faintly. He had never seen marks like them.

  The chapel door hung on a single hinge. Deep grooves had eaten into the boards once polished with oil. They looked like claw marks—but the claws must have been long and strong. Algar shoved the wing with his hip. It creaked, groaned, and dropped another inch.

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  Inside was dark and empty. Benches lay overturned, one on another, as after a tavern brawl. The altar had split in two. Korvain’s figure was gone. The walls bore many signs—the same as outside, smaller and larger. In places, they’d been drawn with something that shone without flame. On the floor lay the ruined decorations Dara had made.

  In the stone beneath the shattered altar, someone had carved a circle, and within it the symbol of a maddened dog. No ornament—just stark outlines.

  A shape loomed in the sacristy’s dark. It twitched, then stilled: only oil lamps, toppled candles, baskets of herbs. Juniper and mint, crushed underfoot.

  He sat on a broken bench and rested the axe haft against his knee. His hands felt nothing. He didn’t, either. For the first time in his life, he found the place didn’t choke him. Perhaps because the ruined roof let in fresh air. Truth be told, it could have fallen at any moment.

  “Why?” he whispered—without knowing to whom, though he was looking at the sky.

  No answer came.

  He stood—slowly, heavily—and walked a circle around the chapel. On the threshold where children had once scattered petals, someone had poured a black liquid. It had soaked into the stone and would not dry. He leaned on the jamb and looked out over the clearing. The stake with the priest’s body stood unmoving, and yet it seemed to him the head was watching. He looked away—and only then saw, by the linden roots, footprints. Bare feet, small and large, like a pilgrimage—but all in one direction. From the rift.

  He went back inside one last time. He stepped to where the water bowl must have stood that morning. A shard of pottery was wedged in a crack. In a weak ribbon of light, he caught a gleam. He picked it up—a piece of stained glass from the window above the altar. Once it had shown a shield wreathed with grain. Now only a scrap of an arc remained, streaked with a red brush of something that wasn’t paint.

  He slipped the shard into his pocket without thinking. He didn’t know why. Perhaps to have proof it had been real.

  He turned and set off into the forest. At the edge of the clearing, he glanced back once, quickly. The red signs throbbed in an even rhythm, as if counting. The stake stood. The priest watched. The lindens whispered though no wind was blowing. Then it was all behind him.