The elevator wasn't loud or even mechanical.

  It was a wide, circur ptform humming faintly over a vertical shaft of stone. No rails. No gears. No visible counterweight.

  Just blue runes, id into the walls in thin lines that pulsed like a slow heartbeat.

  Ard lifted his ntern and peered over the edge as if expecting to see a floor. There was nothing but darkness below, dense enough to swallow light.

  "This is it," he said, not quite to us, but to the writ still in Lumiere's hand. As if the parchment were the true authority here and we were merely passengers.

  Lumiere nodded once. She held the writ close to her chest, careful. Controlled.

  Benet stepped onto the ptform with the ease of a man boarding a carriage. Veyne followed, choosing his position with the same deliberation he had used at the ledge.

  Rocher tested it first with his weight, then held out a hand to me. Once I was on, he positioned himself between me and the edge without seeming to.

  "Stay close," he murmured.

  I wanted to counter that I wasn't a child. I couldn't. My hands were already damp against the straps of my pack.

  A long trip up the mountain, only to go down.

  It would've been funny if it wasn't so ominous.

  There was a practical reason for it, however.

  Demonic miasma was heavy. It sank. It clung to low pces and pooled where air did not move. The deeper you went, the worse it got. The entrances lower on the mountain had deliberately been colpsed for that reason. If the seal ever cracked open—if something ever tried to spill out—it was better to have it fight uphill.

  So this was the st way in that remained intact. Up high. The least convenient entryway was also the safest.

  And I could see the other logic too.

  The game designers had absolutely used this as a loading screen.

  Several minutes of elevator time to stream in the underground environment, swap in different enemy tables, and make the pyer feel like they were descending into something enormous and ancient.

  Except there were no menus here. No loading icon. No music cue to soften the wait.

  Just the ptform under our boots, and the shaft swallowing us.

  The elevator shuddered once.

  Then it began to descend.

  The blue glow slid upward retive to us as the walls passed. The air cooled in small increments, each one noticeable, as if we were moving through yers of the mountain rather than into a single space.

  I forced myself to breathe evenly and turned my attention away from the edge.

  The padins had settled into their positions with practiced instinct.

  Ard and Tomás stayed close to Lumiere, hovering around her shoulder line. Ard kept his ntern angled so it illuminated her, as if she were a relic that needed guarding from the dark itself.

  Tomás mirrored him, but less smoothly. His gaze kept flicking to Lumiere, then away, then back again. Like he was afraid someone would accuse him of staring.

  Veyne chose the far end of the ptform where he could see everyone at once. He stood with his back precariously close to the edge, head slightly bowed, eyes up. The posture of someone who trusted no one and had trained himself to survive that way.

  And Benet...

  Benet did not stay anywhere.

  He slipped in and out of vision like a bad habit.

  One moment he was near Ard, smiling in polite conversation. The next he was leaning over the edge, peering down with theatrical curiosity. And when Rocher stepped away to have a word with Lumiere, he got behind me, close enough that I could smell incense on his clothes, yered over sweat.

  My stomach tightened. The elevator did not sway. It didn't offer pces to brace yourself. It was too stable, too precise, and that precision made me think about what would happen if the magic failed.

  A long drop. A clean death. Or a broken one.

  "Not used to heights?" Benet asked softly.

  I did not answer him. My jaw was tight.

  He smiled anyway.

  "It makes me nervous too," he said, as if we were sharing a private confession. "This contraption. This dead city. All of it. I don't know how the Church expects anyone to stay calm."

  I gnced at him. "You're a padin. This is supposed to be your job."

  He lifted one shoulder in a shrug that was almost charming. "Technically."

  His voice dropped, conspiratorial. "Truth is, I was living very comfortably as a priest. Warm bed. Warm meals. People bringing me gifts because they wanted blessings. I could deliver sermons with my eyes half closed and still get appuse."

  Rocher's attention flicked toward us. He did not move, but I could feel his awareness sharpen.

  Benet continued, undeterred.

  "Then Bishop Halbrecht came along," he said. "And he had... ideas. A new path. A new kind of power."

  He let the word linger. Power.

  "The offer was too good to pass up," he added lightly. "A promotion. Authority. Better clothes. A sword at my hip, instead of a book in my hands. All because I just so happened to have some talent with the bde."

  He looked at me as if expecting admiration.

  I felt none.

  He wasn't cut out to be a padin, much less a priest. He was just a parasite with a pleasant face.

  Benet leaned closer. "Still, I find the darkness below... unsettling."

  He was close enough now that I had to fight the urge to step away, and there was nowhere to step. The elevator offered only edges.

  "It's reassuring," he went on, "to know we have such... capable company."

  His eyes traveled down my face and did not stop where they should have.

  I held his gaze ftly. "Don't."

  He chuckled, like I'd made a joke.

  Then he did it anyway.

  His arm began to slide around my shoulders, casual, proprietary, as if he had every right to touch me.

  Rocher moved.

  I didn't even see the full motion. One moment Benet's hand was midair, the next Rocher had his wrist in a grip that stopped the gesture cold.

  Not crushing. Not violent.

  Absolute.

  Benet blinked, surprise fshing across his face before he repced it with an indulgent smile.

  "Tsk," he clicked his tongue. "Careful."

  Rocher's voice was quiet. "Go away."

  Benet's smile widened, but his eyes sharpened. "Or what?"

  "Or you'll be spending your first few minutes down there finding your teeth."

  Rocher held Benet's wrist until he relented. Only then did he let go.

  Benet rubbed the spot as if he had been injured. He hadn't. But he wanted me to see him as a man being wronged.

  "I meant no harm," he said smoothly. "Just being friendly."

  He drifted away again, slipping toward the far end of the ptform like smoke.

  Veyne's gaze met mine briefly. His expression did not change. But I saw the attention behind it.

  Ard spoke from near Lumiere, as if to reassert control through procedure. "The descent will continue until the ptform reaches the city level. It seems there's a while still to go."

  He shot Benet an admonishing look. "Watch your footing," he said. "Be careful around the edges."

  The elevator continued downward.

  The blue runes passed in repeating patterns, and I tried to use them as an anchor for my mind. Sequence. Geometry. Order.

  But my body did not care about logic. My body cared that we were sinking into the earth and there was no visible bottom.

  Finally, after what felt like far too long and yet not long enough, the elevator slowed.

  The runes brightened once, fring with effort. The ptform shuddered, then settled.

  The air hit us first. A cold, stale breath from a space that had been sealed and patient.

  Ard lifted his ntern and stepped forward. The ptform was flush with a carved stone nding. Beyond it stretched darkness lit dimly by scattered blue glow, the same runes, but older, fainter, half-buried in dust.

  We stepped off one by one.

  The City of the Vaulted Dead opened around us.

  Ruins, but not the kind that crumbled. The kind that endured.

  Stone buildings stood in broken lines, eerily empty, their walls carved with the same geometric nguage as the entrance. Pilrs rose where roofs had fallen. Arches spanned empty air. Water channels ran dry along the ground, their edges worn smooth.

  The ceiling overhead was not the sky. It was rock, distant and lost in shadow. The sense of weight was immediate—the mountain pressing down.

  Somewhere far away, there was the sound of dripping water, slow and steady.

  I set my pack down carefully and rolled my shoulders. My muscles ached from the climb, then clenched again from the descent.

  "Stay near the elevator," I said, before anyone else could wander too far.

  Benet opened his mouth, perhaps to object to a nun telling padins what to do. Rocher's stare shut him up.

  "We base close," I continued. "If something goes wrong, we need a clear exit. And we need a route for supply runs if this takes longer than pnned."

  I moved to where Veyne stood so that I could get a clear picture of everyone. He backed off immediately, frowning.

  "Fan out," I said. "Find a pce to camp. Oh, and watch each other's backs. No wandering off alone."

  Veyne's eyes narrowed slightly. "You speak as though you're expecting an attack."

  "I don't know what's down here," I said. "Neither do you. Whatever the Demon Lord did to this pce might still be here."

  Ard nodded once, surprising me. "It's reasonable to be cautious."

  Tomás looked relieved to have someone giving instructions that sounded like certainty.

  Rocher adjusted the strap on his own pack. "We should find a defensible spot. Cornered, if possible. One entrance, clear lines of sight."

  "Agreed," Ard said.

  They began to move, spreading out in controlled increments.

  Ard and Tomás remained close to Lumiere, their nternlight keeping her in the center of the formation like a candle protected from wind.

  I followed them for a few minutes, then slowed, letting the group get a few paces ahead of me.

  Then I stopped.

  "You can come out now," I said, quietly.

  For a moment, nothing happened.

  Then a figure peeled away from the darkness near the elevator's side, emerging from a blind spot I would not have thought possible on a ft ptform.

  Evelyn.

  The Sacred Mask of Xolotl dangled from her fingertips, the embroidered teeth patterns catching the blue light. She wore an annoyed expression in pce of it.

  She rubbed her forearms as if trying to get feeling back into them.

  "You could have warned me," she said, voice low. "Do you know what it's like to hang off the side of a completely ft elevator with nowhere to wedge your boots? Thirty minutes of nothing but air and praying your grip doesn't slip."

  I blinked. "Was it thirty minutes?"

  Evelyn gred at me. "It certainly felt that way."

  She flexed her fingers, then shook the cramps out of one hand.

  "I was afraid I was going to take a long plunge," she added. "And then you'd have to expin to Lumi why there's a bloody puddle at the bottom of the column."

  I snorted despite myself. I immediately covered my mouth, gncing toward the darkness where Lumiere's group had gone.

  Evelyn's mouth twitched. Not quite a smile.

  With a sigh of relief, I set down my pack. It had been biting into my shoulders all the way up the pilgrim path.

  I pulled out a bundle of supplies and handed it to her. "Here."

  Evelyn's eyes flicked over the contents. Efficient. Measuring.

  "Extra rations," I said. "Water. Cloth. A small ntern and some oil. Enough to st a few days if you have to stay out of sight. You can't camp with us. If they see you..."

  "I know," she said, more sharply than necessary. Then she exhaled and added, quieter, "I know."

  She tucked the supplies into her own bag, movements quick and practiced.

  "They made it abundantly clear I wasn't welcome here," she scoffed. "Not allowed to set foot inside," she said, mocking Ard's tone. "So I won't. I'll stay out of sight."

  "What about Doug and Dougs?" I asked.

  Evelyn nodded. "They've been briefed. While we're in here, they'll continue to track the Bishop's movements. Who comes and goes. Who sends him letters. Who's getting paid by whom."

  She paused to take a swig of water from the waterskin.

  "In the meantime, I'll keep an eye on the padins," she said, wiping her mouth. "We'll be watching the watchers, so to speak. From all different angles."

  A small scrape cut suddenly through the darkness.

  My head snapped toward it.

  When I turned back, Evelyn was already gone.

  No cloak sweep. No dramatic disappearance.

  Just absence. As if she had been folded into the dark itself.

  "Miss Cire?"

  Tomás' voice came from behind me, cautious.

  I turned slowly.

  He stood a few paces away, ntern held high. His posture was careful. Respectful. His eyes flicked past me, searching the shadows without knowing what he was searching for.

  "Sir Ard found a suitable pce to camp," Tomás said. "He asked me to escort you there."

  "Of course," I said, and forced my face into neutrality.

  Tomás hesitated. "Is everything all right?"

  "Yes," I said. "I'm fine. Just a little dizzy from the ride down."

  He nodded, accepting the excuse, then gestured with the ntern. "This way please."

  I fell into step beside him.

  As we walked, I gnced back once.

  The elevator ptform sat behind us like a pale scar in the dark, runes still glowing faintly, still offering the promise of escape.

  And somewhere in the ruins beyond it, Evelyn was moving unseen.

  I turned forward again and followed Tomás toward the light and the others, toward the pce we would call camp, and the deeper dark we would have to enter from there.