Wanora stood silently, eyes scanning the chapel's hollow interior with a mix of weariness and suspicion. The charred edges of the stone floor beneath our feet were still warm.
She didn't say anything, but I could feel it. The judgment in her gaze.
"This was your idea," I muttered, breaking the silence. "Burning the ground. Remember?"
Wanora just glanced sideways. "And it was your idea to jump in after it started rebuilding."
We fell silent again. There was no point arguing—what mattered now was where we'd landed.
The hole had opened fast, and the last thing I remembered was darkness swallowing us. Now, we were inside a place that could only be described as a chapel… though "place of worship" was a stretch.
A single altar stood at the far end of the room. No prayers. No candles. Just an eerie silence that pressed against our ears.
We'd been here for a while. No doors. No voices. Just this place.
The altar drew our attention first. It was stone, weathered and cracked. Embedded on its surface were four symbols: a sun, a droplet, an eye, and a snake.
They weren't random.
To the left of the altar, four aged paintings lined the wall. Each one matched a symbol:
The first showed a sun, ablaze and bleeding into a crimson sky.
The second depicted an eye, wide and weeping uncontrollably.
The third, a snake, its fangs deep into a pale neck, coiled with hunger.
The last painting showed a man, thrashing in dark water, barely visible beneath the surface.
The altar and the art—they were pieces of the same design. Like a ritual frozen in time.
Apart from the rows of empty chairs—dusty, forgotten—there was little else of note. Except… the booth.
A confession booth sat tucked in the corner. Old wood, iron hinges rusted over. We opened it. Inside, a single coin lay on the seat. Wanora pocketed it without a word.
We tried the other side—the priest's side. Locked. Of course it was.
When I sat in the booth, a chill ran up my spine. The air shifted. Then a whisper, faint but constant:
"Only Death saw clearly. Only Death remains."
I didn't tell Wanora what I heard. Not yet.
And then there were the stained glass windows—five of them arched high above the altar. Light filtered through colored glass, casting symbols onto the floor. Each one bore a word:
Order
War
Famine
Death
Star
Not a random selection. They formed a pattern, a cycle maybe. Something biblical—or something worse.
Finally, there were two phrases etched into the altar itself:
"Exaudi nos."
"Et libra."
Latin. The first one I recognized: "Hear us."
The second… maybe "and deliver", or "and balance".
The whispers, the symbols, the coin, the stained glass, and the booth—everything was connected. We just didn't know how yet.
Wanora paced. I stood near the altar. The chapel wasn't giving us answers
Just then, the silence shattered.
GONG—
A bell rang out above us, deep and thunderous, echoing down through the stone like a warning.
I flinched. "What?" My head jerked upward on instinct. "Why did it ring?"
Wanora didn't move. Her eyes stayed fixed on the altar, but her voice was calm. "No idea."
Helpful as always.
"Well, that's something," I said, brushing off the rising tension. "Any ideas on what could be going on?"
Wanora finally turned to me, arms crossed. "It's a chapel," she said flatly. "Likely underground. Probably served the particular deity we are in. Until it… ate the land."
I stared. "Tell me something I don't know."
We scattered to opposite ends of the room, pushing at old chairs, checking beneath the altar, scanning the stained glass again—but nothing. No mechanisms. No traps. No stairs to salvation.
Then something changed.
"Huh…" I paused mid-step. My boot had just landed on something cold—not stone. Painted.
"Hey, Wanora."
She was beside me in seconds. Her eyes dropped to the floor, and she saw it too.
A snake.
Coiled in ink and motionless—painted onto the stone floor like it had always been there. But it hadn't. We both knew it hadn't.
"What the hell…" I knelt down, reaching out, but didn't touch it.
Wanora's voice was quiet, too quiet. "We've been poisoned."
I froze. "Huh? What do you mean?"