The darkness was complete.
Not night-dark.
Not forest-dark.
The kind of dark that made your own breathing sound too loud.
For a few seconds, all four of them stayed exactly where they were, tangled together in the narrow space under the chapel floor.
Then Leon said, too loudly, "Is everyone here?"
"Yes," Veyna said at once.
"Yes," Silas whispered.
Darien, who had Leon's elbow in his ribs and somebody's foot on his hand, muttered, "Unfortunately."
That helped, a little.
Veyna struck flint.
The tinderbox sparked twice before the third try caught. A tiny yellow flame climbed up the stub of a candle and pushed the dark back just enough for them to see each other.
The passage was barely wide enough for two children side by side. Old stone walls sweated damp. Roots knuckled through the ceiling in places like buried hands. The floor sloped sharply downward.
Silas looked pale even by candlelight.
Leon checked him first. "Are you hurt?"
"I'm underground," Silas said faintly. "That feels close enough."
Darien sat up and brushed dust from his coat with more dignity than the situation deserved. "Excellent. He still complains. That means we're alive."
Veyna held the candle up. "We have to move."
"Why?" Silas asked.
Something scraped above them.
All four looked up.
The sound came again—faint now, but enough.
Darien's stomach dropped.
Whatever had broken into the chapel was still there.
And possibly listening.
"That," Veyna said.
They started downward.
The passage was miserable.
Too narrow to walk properly, too steep to run, too cold to ignore. Water dripped steadily somewhere deeper in. Once Leon slipped and nearly took Darien down with him; Darien grabbed a root with one hand, Leon's sleeve with the other, and both of them ended up swearing loud enough for Veyna to hiss at them to shut up.
Silas kept whispering under his breath.
At first Darien thought he was panicking.
Then he realized Silas was praying.
"For what?" Darien asked, a little breathless.
Silas glanced back. "Everything."
"That seems inefficient."
"I don't know which part needs help most."
That should not have made Darien grin.
It did.
The tunnel widened abruptly.
Veyna nearly walked straight off a ledge.
Leon caught the back of her coat before she could tumble.
They all froze.
The candlelight wavered over open space below—a deep chamber carved out under the hill. Not endless, not impossible, just big enough to feel wrong after the cramped tunnel. Broken pillars leaned at strange angles. Roots hung down from the ceiling in thick curtains. And at the center of the chamber stood a stone ring half-buried in the floor, black as wet coal and carved with symbols that shimmered faintly when the candle moved.
Silas stared. "That's it."
The dream-door.
Not whole. Not open. Just the outer shape of it.
Darien felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck.
There was a path down—a slope of broken stones along the wall. Veyna took it first, fast and careful. Leon followed, then Silas, then Darien, who kept glancing back up the tunnel as if expecting something antlered and burning to come pouring after them.
Nothing did.
That was worse.
At the bottom, the chamber felt oddly warm.
Not fire-warm. More like the kind of warmth a sleeping animal gave off, deep under fur.
Veyna circled the stone ring without touching it. "I hate this place."
Leon crouched near one of the carvings. "These marks. They're everywhere."
Silas stared at the center of the ring. "Do not touch anything."
Darien looked at him. "You're becoming repetitive."
"I am surviving."
"There's a difference?"
There was something lying just beyond the ring.
Veyna saw it first.
She moved the candle closer, and the flame glinted off black metal.
A key.
Not a normal one. Too long, too dark, too old. Its bow was shaped like a thorned circle, and its teeth were cut in strange uneven angles like they belonged to no ordinary door.
Silas backed up immediately. "No."
Leon stared. "That can't be good."
Darien crouched.
Three voices said "Don't" at once.
He looked up at them.
"What? We came all this way for terrifying architecture?"
Veyna pointed at the key. "That thing looks like it bites."
"It's a key."
"In your hands, those are often the same thing."
Darien would have said something smug.
Instead, the black stone ring beneath the floor gave a slow, hollow thud.
Once.
Like a heartbeat.
All four children went still.
Then it came again.
Silas made a strangled noise and grabbed Leon's sleeve with both hands.
Leon looked alarmed enough by that alone.
Veyna moved closer to Darien, knife out now, though what she planned to stab if the floor opened was anyone's guess.
The key twitched.
Not much.
Just enough to prove it had moved.
Darien stared.
Then, before the others could stop him, he snatched it up.
The chamber exploded with silver light.
Leon shouted.
Silas ducked and covered his head.
Veyna swore so hard the chapel saints probably felt it.
For one blinding second, the black stone ring beneath them became transparent.
And below it—
A vast darkness.
A door.
Larger than the ring itself, far deeper, ringed in burning symbols.
Something pressed once against the other side.
Darien cried out and dropped the key.
The light vanished.
They were left panting in the candle's weak glow.
The key lay at Darien's feet.
A thin red line had opened across his palm.
Silas stared at it in horror. "I told you."
Darien looked down at the blood. "Yes, thank you, the review has been noted."
Leon crouched beside him instantly. "Let me see."
"It's a cut, not a tragedy."
But he let Leon take his hand anyway.
Veyna crouched too, candle close to the black key. "That thing moved."
Silas almost snapped, which for Silas counted as shouting. "Because this whole place is wrong!"
And then—
From somewhere above them, back up the tunnel, came the faint unmistakable sound of stone scraping open.
The four children looked up as one.
Something had found the hatch.
Veyna snatched up the key before anyone else could think.
"We're leaving."
She jammed it into Darien's uninjured hand and ran.
Leon hauled him to his feet.
Silas did not need to be told twice.
They sprinted for the far side of the chamber just as a line of cold blue light appeared at the top of the slope where they had entered.
"Where are we going?" Leon shouted.
Veyna pointed wildly ahead.
"There!"
A crack in the stone wall, half-hidden by roots—too narrow to notice, barely wide enough for children.
Behind them, something shrieked.
Not fully inside the chamber yet.
But close enough.
Veyna threw herself through the gap first.
Silas followed with all the grace of dropped laundry.
Leon shoved Darien after them.
The blue light spilled down the chamber wall.
Darien heard something with too many limbs hit the floor behind him.
Then Leon dove through the gap after him, and the four of them tumbled down a steep chute of dirt, roots, and old stones into daylight.