A FEW HOURS LATER...

  Careful. Step where I step.

  No, really. Don’t stray. These roots have memory! And they hate being touched…

  Down here, the walls don’t echo right. They bend sound sideways. Try whispering and you’ll hear yourself in a different voice. Trust me, it’s not fun the first time.

  There — see that? That’s not a door. That’s a mouth. Stone shaped like teeth, tongue carved from old bone. You walk through and it swallows you. That’s the point.

  Don’t worry, I’ll talk us through...

  Whispersight, open. Ancient Tongue, speak. We come bearing pactblood!

  There. It moves.

  You feel that pressure in your lungs? That’s presence. You’re being seen now — the old way.

  He’s waking.

  Look up. Higher.

  That’s him.

  Yes. That. The thing that looks like a dream you tried to forget but couldn’t. His form doesn’t stay still because he doesn’t need to — a god of contradiction. He was never meant to be looked at, only believed in.

  My vessel returns.

  There it is. His voice.

  “I bring a candidate,” the man beside you called out.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  He already knows, of course. He’s known since before we met. Time’s a flat thing to him.

  Shapes shifted at the edges of your vision. Nothing stayed still. Everything bent and changed the moment you tried to make sense of it, like the entity refused to be understood.

  Then the eyes appeared. They opened in places where there had been none, blinking slow and ancient, and every one of them turned toward you.

  Blood has been spilled… Oaths have been broken…

  The voice came again, hissing now.

  I can feel it in the root. In the hollow places where my name still lingers. This is my dominion, Vael. Nothing dies here without me knowing. So tell me. Was it devotion that guided your hand? Or was it something else? Something lesser. Your will, not mine. Speak.

  Vael didn’t rush. He raised his head, thoughtful.

  “She ran,” he explained. “Tried to, anyway. But her soul stank of borrowed power. Old roots. Wrong kind. It was her husband, too. Turns out the cleaver wasn’t just for pigs.”

  The darkness rippled.

  Apostasy, the god growled. In my Hollow.

  You saw it more clearly now — not fully, but in suggestion. The quiet dread behind the innkeeper’s eyes. The tremor in his wife’s voice. Not fear of death. Fear of betrayal. Of being caught serving something older, quieter, hidden in plain sight.

  You were not wrong to destroy them…

  The presence changed again, coming closer.

  But the rot runs deeper still.

  There is another… a lesser one. False-born. Clinging to my shadow.

  Beside you, Vael went still.

  “One of theirs?” he asked. “A remnant?”

  The god answered.

  An apostate... festering on the roots of Bell’s Hollow. Worshipped in secret. Named in silence.

  Vael exhaled slowly. “You want it dead.”

  The god’s eye pulsed. Vast, ageless.

  I want it ended.

  There was a beat of silence.

  Vael turned, his eyes finding yours through the gloom.

  “You want to kill gods?” he asked quietly. “Then this is where it begins. The most sacred vow.”

  He held your gaze. Whatever he saw in your eyes, it seemed to settle something in him.

  “Well,” he murmured, drawing his coat back to reveal the hilt at his hip. “Looks like we’re staying in town a little longer.”

  The darkness around you pulsed in approval.

  Find it.

  Cut out the root.

  Bring its name to ash.

  Somewhere above — or maybe inside — the voice in your head made a low chuckle.

  Told you, it said. Worst decision of your life.