Chapter 3

Seated in the passenger seat beside his wife, Timothy was utterly lost in thought. Being the head of the family, the weight of their situation pressed down on him harder than anyone else. He was a practical man, built on logic and decisive action. He simply wasn’t used to being completely clueless when it came to protecting his family.

As a father—and as a seasoned businessman—his total inability to comprehend or even categorize what was happening bothered him deeply. He glanced sideways at Elizabeth. Her hands held the steering wheel at a rigid ten-and-two, her eyes locked onto the road ahead. She was still learning to drive, and because she lacked confidence behind the wheel, she took every opportunity to practice. When she drove, she maintained an ironclad focus, barely uttering a word.

Timothy found it endearing—just one of the innumerable things he deeply admired about her.

He remembered falling for her the very first moment they spoke. In those early days, he’d searched for any excuse to talk to her, and she had always given him her full, undivided attention. When he finally mustered the courage to ask her out—ignoring his past string of terrible luck with women—she had smiled and after a week of silence, she finally said yes.

It had been clear skies and smooth sailing until a few years into their marriage, when Timothy lost his job. He had always harbored a dream of starting his own venture, so he took the leap, pouring his meager savings into a new business. But enthusiasm couldn't replace experience; early on, the business wobbled on the brink of failure. That was when Elizabeth did something that blew him away: despite his desperate protests, she resigned from her own secure job to join him. Her sharp operational mind and calm behavior balanced his raw passion, transforming the failing company into a massive success.

That sacrifice sealed it for him. The fact that she had been willing to risk her own stability for his dream made him feel indebted to her for life. He would do anything to put and to keep a smile on her face. And so, despite the cold dread coiling in his gut, Timothy felt a flicker of relief. With Elizabeth at his side, he believed they could face whatever storm was brewing.

Elizabeth signaled and made a smooth right turn, taking the final access road toward Baldel.

Geographically, Baldel was a dense, shadowed forest sitting at the base of a steep, towering mountain. But just before the treeline lay a sprawling, neglected settlement that carried the same name. It was inhabited mostly by squatter communities and desperate people living hand-to-mouth. It was a notoriously rough area, but the locals generally kept their aggression among themselves. They rarely bothered travelers heading toward the forest path—mostly because the locals knew that four out of ten people who ventured into the deep woods of Baldel never came back. If a group of strangers was foolish enough to attempt an expedition into those trees, the locals simply let them march to their doom.

"Tim... are you sure about this?"

It was the first time Elizabeth had spoken since they left the house, and likely the first time she had taken her eyes off the road all morning.

"It’s a gut feeling, Liz," Timothy replied softly, staring out the passenger window. "You can never be truly sure with those." He looked back toward the rear seat. Victor was leaning against the door, completely silent, earphones plugged in, staring intently at his phone screen as his thumbs flew across a mobile game. Timothy let out an exasperated sigh and turned back around. "What I’m really not sure of is what kind of danger I’m dragging you two into."

Elizabeth said nothing, her knuckles whitening slightly on the steering wheel.

"You know what?" Timothy pushed on. "Maybe you and Victor should just stay in the car. Or better yet, drive back. Let me go in alone, check it out, and bring a report back to you."

Elizabeth didn't even turn her head. She just kept her eyes glued to the road ahead, her jaw set firm. Timothy took the hint. He knew that silence was the only thing keeping her from unleashing a furious lecture on why she would never let him go in alone.

Up ahead, the mountain loomed larger, casting a massive, cool shadow over the approach. A few moments later, the dense treeline parted, revealing the looming silhouette of the abandoned cathedral. Elizabeth carefully pulled off the unpaved road, parked on a patch of dead grass, and cut the ignition.

"You're going to rot your brain with that phone, Victor," Timothy said, unbuckling his seatbelt. He turned around to face his son, but Victor didn't react. "Victor!" Timothy barked.

Victor jerked, pulling out one earbud. "Huh? Oh. Right."

"We're here. Get out."

"Alright, sir," Victor muttered. He dropped the phone and earphones onto the leather seat and pushed his door open. But a sudden, sharp impulse made him pause. He reached back inside, snatched his phone, jammed it into his pocket, and stepped out to join his parents.

Together, the three of them stood before the gigantic, silent structure.

It was a domineering piece of architecture, built from dark, weathered stone that had stood against the elements for decades. Looking at the vaulted arches and intricate stained-glass frames, each of them wondered the same thing: what could have possibly driven people to abandon a building of such fantastic architecture? None of them knew the true history behind the church’s desertion. All they knew was local rumor—that it had been shuttered so long ago that only a few elders in the town remembered faint, fractured bits of what had happened there.

When Timothy pushed open the heavy double doors, the interior greeted them with an oppressive blast of stale air.

It smelled of dust, rotting wood, and something far more unsettling beneath it—a faint, metallic tang that made the hair on the back of Victor’s neck stand up. Everything inside Victor screamed at him to turn around, sprint back to the car, and leave.

He glanced at his parents. Instead of fear, their faces held a sharp, intense curiosity. Both of his parents possessed an unyielding, almost stubborn need to dig up the root of any mystery they encountered. Once they locked onto a problem, they couldn't drop it. Victor knew he had inherited that exact same curse. There was no turning back.

They stepped fully into the nave. The sheer antiquity of the space took their breath away. Towering stone pillars stretched upward into the shadows of a vaulted ceiling, while rows of decaying wooden pews lined the central aisle like forgotten sentinels.

"Let's split up and search," Timothy whispered, his voice echoing softly off the stone walls. "Keep your eyes open for anything out of place."

For several minutes, the only sound was the crunch of debris beneath their shoes as they picked through the ruins.

CREAK.

A loud, sharp groan of wood snapped the silence. Victor and Elizabeth instantly turned toward the sound.

Timothy was standing near the middle aisle. The sound was strange because, as far as any of them could tell, the cathedral floor was made entirely of solid, laid flagstone. However, thick, moth-eaten runners—ancient, faded rugs that had rotted into near-rags—were stretched along the stone floor at regular intervals.

Timothy paused, then tapped his heel against the spot again. Thump. Thump.

It wasn't stone beneath his boot. It was hollow, echoing wood.

"Over here," Timothy said softly.

Victor and Elizabeth hurried to his side. Together, Timothy and Victor grabbed the edge of the heavy, dust-caked rug and pulled it back. Beneath the threadbare fabric lay a set of thick, reinforced oak boards built flush into the stone floor—a trapdoor leading to a hidden basement.

"It’s totally normal for cathedrals to have basements, right?" Victor asked, his eyes locked on the heavy wood.

"I suppose so," Elizabeth said, her eyes searching the floorboards.

"Sure, but I doubt most people would have the entrance located right in the middle of the main nave," Timothy noted, dropping to one knee to examine a rusted iron lock set into the wood.

"I think they call them crypts," Victor added, remembering a detail from one of his late-night reading sprees. "Most old churches have subterranean crypts where they bury bishops or saints."

"I know what a crypt is, son," Timothy replied without looking up. "And their entrances are usually built into side chapels or marked with heavy stone slabs—not hidden under a rug in the middle of the aisle."

Victor watched his father trace the keyhole. It was choked with rust and grime. Without a key—or any idea of when the door had last been unlocked—it looked completely impassable. But Victor knew his father's temperament. Apart from knocking the man unconscious and dragging him out, nothing was going to stop Timothy from trying to get through that door.

"I'll look around for a key or a tool," Victor said, turning back toward the side aisles.

He began pacing up and down the transept, inspecting the carved stone reliefs on the walls and lifting the edges of other fallen tapestries. Meanwhile, Elizabeth drifted toward the elevated sanctuary at the front of the church.

As she reached the heavy stone altar, something caught her eye—a subtle, unnerving seam in the dark mahogany paneling at its base.

"Tim! Victor!" she called out, her voice crisp. "Over here."

Timothy and Victor hurried up the altar steps. Elizabeth was pointing at a concealed, recessed panel built into the foundational base of the stone altar itself. It looked like a hidden compartment, flush with the woodwork.

"Any idea how to open it?" Victor asked, leaning down to inspect the seamless wood.

"There's always a way," Timothy said flatly.

He turned on his heel, walked briskly out of the cathedral, and returned a minute later carrying a heavy claw hammer from the car's emergency kit, with a flathead screwdriver and a wrench shoved into his back pocket.

"Stand back," Timothy commanded.

He planted his feet, raised the hammer high, and brought it down with all his weight against the center of the wooden panel.

CRACK.

A dull, hollow splintering echoed through the quiet church. The wood was old, but it was solid oak. Timothy didn't hesitate. He raised the hammer again and began striking the panel with relentless, rhythmic blows. Ten strikes. Twenty. On the thirtieth strike, the wood finally surrendered with a loud splintering crunch, the head of the hammer caving straight through the panel.

Timothy used the claw end of the hammer to pry away the jagged splinters, clearing a hole large enough to reach inside. He shone his phone's flashlight into the cavity.

What they saw inside was completely unexpected.

Lying within the dark, dust-free interior of the hidden box were three antique fountain pens—crafted from a dark, metallic material that caught the light unnaturally—and a thick, leather-bound book that looked like an ancient ledger or journal.

Victor cleared his throat, leaning in for a closer look. "Am I crazy, or does that look nothing like a altar Bible?"

"It definitely isn't," Timothy agreed. He reached his hand into the recess and carefully pulled the heavy book out into the light.

They stepped back from the altar toward a stone communion table. Timothy placed the journal down, and Elizabeth and Victor flanked him, peering over his shoulders.

"Let's see what you're hiding," Timothy murmured.

He flipped open the heavy leather cover.

To their utter bewilderment, the pages were filled with dense, sweeping script, but not a single word was written in English—or any recognizable modern language. The characters were sharp, geometric, and ancient, weaving across the yellowed parchment in complex, deliberate patterns. Timothy shuffled through page after page, but the result was the same. It was completely unreadable.

With a heavy, disappointed sigh, Timothy closed the book. "It's useless to us if we can't read it," he muttered, turning to head back toward the altar compartment.

Just as the book snapped shut, a strange sound vibrated in Victor's ears.

It was a quiet, layering sound—like dozens of voices whispering in unison just beyond the edge of the room. The words were soft, rhythmic, and urgent, rising in volume until they seemed to echo right inside his skull.

Victor gasped, spinning around instantly to look at his parents.

Neither of them reacted. Timothy was calmly placing the journal back into the broken altar shelf, and Elizabeth was brushing dust off her sleeve. They couldn't hear it. The voices were entirely in his head.

As suddenly as it had started, the whispering stopped, leaving behind a cold, ringing silence. Victor rubbed his temples, his heart hammering against his ribs.

"I'm... I'm going to wait in the car," Victor said, his voice slightly strained.

"Alright, son. We'll be out in a minute," Timothy replied without turning around.

Victor turned and walked quickly down the main aisle, eager to escape the suffocating atmosphere. But as he passed the final row of dark wooden pews near the exit, a glint of metal caught his eye.

He paused, stepping closer to an old, high-backed chair tucked away in the shadows of the corner. Protruding from the dark leather cushion was a ornate, dark metal handle.

Victor stepped closer, his chest tightening. It was the hilt of a knife.

He glanced back over his shoulder toward the altar. His parents were still distracted, arguing quietly about the basement trapdoor. Acting purely on instinct, Victor reached out, wrapped his fingers around the cold metal grip, and pulled.

He expected resistance, but the weapon yanked free effortlessly, sliding out of the chair as if it had been placed there minutes ago.

Victor froze, holding the weapon in his hand. The blade was short, double-edged, and covered in intricate, geometric symbols—the exact same symbols he had seen etched onto the dagger in his recurring nightmare. A sudden wave of vertigo washed over him.

Panicking at the thought of what his mother would say if she caught him holding a weapon, Victor quickly shoved the dagger deep into his jogger pocket, pulled his shirt down to cover the bulge, and hurried out the double doors into the bright, blinding sunlight.