The passage beneath the ruined chapel did not lead downward. That was the first wrong thing Sera noticed after the village swallowed them.
The stairway under the well had descended into the tomb like a throat taking in breath. This passage angled sideways through the earth, narrow and low, with walls cut from the same pale stone as the tomb below. The air smelled of rain at first, carried in by their bodies and clothes, but the deeper they moved, the more another scent rose beneath it. Dried flowers. Old smoke. Sealed dust. Something faintly sweet that made Sera think of funeral cloth stored too long inside a wooden chest.
Behind them, the village roared.
Council horns cried above ground, their thin notes distorted by stone until they sounded like insects trapped in glass. Hooves struck
