The dew made the cobblestone path beneath Charles's boots shine, muffling his steps. There was a single, faint toll of a church bell somewhere in the distance, too muffled to tell if it came from the steeple or his mind. The dogs stopped ahead, hackles raised, fixed on the alley between the tobacconist's storefront and the old slaughterhouse. In the shadows, something moved, sluggish, slithering, almost human but wrong in its posture. It did not walk but glided, its head turning without a neck, arms and legs a little too long, as if taken from a range of unrelated bodies.
Charles didn't flinch. He just kept on walking. The dogs whimpered and followed, tails between their legs, ears laid back. Fog rolled over the figure without a struggle, as if it had waited to take it back. He never said a word about it, never glanced back. He'd witnessed worse in London back rooms, in interrogation cells, in mirrors he no longer possessed.
By the time he reached the boarded-up old post office now covered in crude carvings, the sky had faded to a dull orange, the hue of corroding metal beneath the floodlight. The scent of ash was more potent here, familiar. He kicked the door once. It groaned open, hanging on a single hinge. Inside, one candle flickered on the floor, and eight stones were arranged around it. One of them still had a red smear on it. Blood, or something. Charles came in without breaking step.
Someone waited in the dark. A chair scraped. Wood groaned. Camila's silhouette emerged, hair tied back, face sharper in the dim glow. She wasn't alone. Next to her, a woman Charles hadn't seen before, older, narrow as a willow branch, skin papery and pale. A black lace veil hung just above her eyes. "She doesn't speak," Camila said, voice clipped. "But she hears."
The woman smiled, a tic instead of an expression, and Charles noticed teeth too clean for someone so old. She extended her hand. In her palm, a fragment of charred parchment. On it: a symbol Charles had once noticed carved into a child's rib cage. Back in Rotterdam. A triangle of thorns, with a sideways eye inside. The ink is still damp.
She would like you to deliver this," Camila continued. "To the widow." Charles did not move. "The Widow of Fire's a myth." Camila looked down. "Not anymore.".
Wind rattled the boards above. Something heavy scuttled through the rafters. The woman in the hood stood up, uttering words in a voice that was like dry leaves crunching underfoot. The candle extinguished. Total darkness. Charles did not delay. He returned into the fog, stuffing the parchment into his pocket. The dogs followed him, eyes constantly on the shadows that surrounded them.
The widow's property was across the other side of the swamp road, beyond the butcher's cross and the blackened iron fence that had been struck by lightning a few years back. Nobody built there anymore. The land wouldn't let it go.
Charles climbed the path slowly, every step sinking just enough to feel like the ground wanted him. The house looked alive, windows like eyes, chimney crooked like a neck bent in prayer. Ivy crawled along its spine, the leaves slick with sap that smelled faintly of sulfur.
He didn't knock. The heat within hit him first, thick, dry, like the blast from a furnace. The hallway was tight, the walls covered with paintings turned toward the wall. No photos. No memories. Only absence.
The Fire Widow sat beside the fire, swathed in red cloth, the flames dancing across her shriveled face. Her eyes were burned blind, yet they sought him out unerringly.
You've walked through ash," she croaked. "And brought a whisper with you." Charles offered her the parchment. She did not take it. "Read it," she said.
He opened the note. The ink shimmered dimly, throbbing like a star in its last moments. He didn't recognize the language, yet his lips moved regardless. Words tumbled forth. The fire rippled. The heart split apart. A soot-stained tunnel yawned behind it, exhaling cinders and something ancient to smoke. She smiled. "You've opened the gate."
As the stranger walked on, in the village, fog closed in, curling round doors and on windowsills. Children wailed in beds. Dogs would not bark. Camila is on her porch, hand on her belly. Above, the sky grew red. Behind her home, in the woods, Christopher once again stood beside the burned truck, bag in one hand, lighter in the other. He looked at the trees as though they would say something. They did.
Leaves shivered. The bark peeled back in vertical slits. Eyes opened in the trunk. A groan rose from deep in the earth, rolling, heavy with judgment and weight. He did not run. Somehow beneath Ossendrecht, under roots and rust and stone, the cross-shaped flame in the slab chamber flickered to life. The bone rings creaked and realigned. The spiral stone Warinya had removed from the bowl started to warm in her coat pocket at the inn, smoke curling from the seams. And at the back, in the dark behind the stairs of the inn, the girl from the café appeared once again, this time without a face to speak of. Just lips, against the misted glass, spelling out a single word, "Run."
The shriek faded as they reached the front of the cottage. Camila's door creaked open, swinging in the wind like a fractured jaw. No sign of forced entry. Only wrongness. A silence that was not right. The dogs tugged nervously at the doorway, hackles raised, whining low. Charles pushed them aside.
Inside, first came the odor of iron and ozone. Not just blood. Something worse. Thicker. The kind of smell that doesn't disappear. His boots stuck to the floor where something oily had been spilled, still wet. Lights weren't on, but there was moonlight coming through broken slats of the window. Enough to see the track.
Not footprints. Drag marks. Wide swipes as though something heavy had been pulled through the room and disappeared down the hall. A thud, then silence. Rose slipped in behind him, barely breathing, her presence like a shadow creeping over a deeper darkness.
Charles moved silently, following the trail. He extended a hand to the doorframe, where red smears trailed down in clawed scratches. Not Camila's usual mess. This was deliberate. Conceived. A message he had yet to learn how to read.
"Wait," Rose whispered, her breath almost nothing. "She's not alone."
He moved his head, but her gaze was directed to the ceiling. At the soft screech above. Like fingernails on wood. Then: a groan, low.
Charles ascended the stairway, protesting step by slow step. Air narrowed. Choked by stench and rot. Halfway, he halted. A humming noise is coming down the hallway. Female. Familiar. Off-key.
The bedroom door was ajar. Light played inside. Candlelight. He went in.
Camila was kneeling on the floor, hands bound in front of her with wire, blood dripping from her wrists. She had her head thrown back, hair spilling around her face. A man was crouched over her, naked chest and white face, humming a lullaby to an invisible child. His fingers were twisted in her hair, yanking her up with a sadistic kind of gentleness.
Charles recognized him at once. Not by face. By the scar, an old cigarette burns at the base of his throat. He remembered putting it there. London. Fifteen years ago. A brothel raid gone sideways. The man's name had been Miguel or Mika or something fake.
"Always said we'd meet again," the man rasped, eyes never leaving Camila. "Didn't think it'd be here. But I'll take it."
Charles did not blink. Did not speak. He just progressed, slowly, deliberately. His fists clenched. "You came all the way," Mika went on, "and she still didn't lie to you."
Camila groaned, eyes snapping open. "Don't…" too late. Mika advanced, drawing something from the shadows. Not a weapon. A vial. Thick pink liquid, the same hue as powder Christopher had brought.
This. This is the root," he told her. "Not the concoction the boy does with. This is the mother. You take it, you see what she sees. See who she is, truly." Charles did not look at the vial. He looked at Camila. "Is that true?"
She cried, but she did not nod. Did not deny it either.
Mika grinned, teeth as yellow as paper. "Tell him, Cami. Tell him about the first cargo. The girls. The ones you brought through the cult farm in Breda. Tell him who lit the fire that night."
Camila closed her eyes. Charles's voice dropped to a growl. "You're lying." "No," she whispered, barely audible. "Not all of it.".
There is a moment's silence. And then downstairs, barking, rasping, and terrible. The storming footsteps follow. Rose's voice: "We have to go. At once. They're coming."
Mika hurled forward quickly, bottle upraised higher, but Charles moved faster. He sprinted toward the man, shoving his shoulder into his side, smacking him down onto the dresser. The vial shattered as it struck the surface. Steam-like hissing filled the room. Mika screamed, moving back in a stumble. Smoke arose from his body. "Breathe not!" Camila screamed, strangling.
Charles grabbed her by the arms, cutting the wire with his knife, and yanked her to her feet. Her knees buckled. He threw her over his shoulder. "Out!" Rose yelled below. "They're in the woods!"
The three of them crashed down the stairs, avoiding the creeping fog now seeping through every crack. Not fog smoke. Drugged. Laced. Charles already felt it taking hold, slowing the blood behind his eyes.
They crashed into the porch. Figures emerged from the trees in long coats and white gloves, masks with empty eyes, their movements smooth and unnatural. The cult. Jacob Witness Sect. Hunters now.
"Back!" Charles shouted, throwing Camila onto the back of one dog, Max, the biggest, and slapping its side. "Go!"
The dog took off, Camila clinging to its scruff. Rose didn't delay. She ran for the truck in the ditch, keys already clinking. Charles moved to face the masked men. Five of them. More in the shadows. No guns. They weren't needed.
The one at the front went ahead. A woman, from the line of her neck. Her voice echoed beneath the mask. "You brought him here. The fire-watcher. The badge-breaker."
Charles said nothing. He slumped forward, stance readjusting. Prepared. "You will see," she breathed. "You will all see."
They attacked. Charles moved through fire fists that broke bone, feet that whipped legs from under robes. But there were too many of them. Too many of them damn it. His hands clawed him. A needle ripped his skin. He roared and sent one crashing back, tearing the mask from their face.
A child. Fourteen at the most. Blank eyes. Ears sewn shut. Something inside Charles shattered.
He shoved them out of the way and ran, his ears throbbing with blood, the baying of the dogs guiding him through blackness. Rose at the truck, engine humming, Camila slumped on the backseat, eyes glassy and wide.
He dove into the water just as Rose floored it. Behind them, the woods erupted in flames. The cult did not follow. They never had to. They had his blood now. And blood was an invitation.