The morning came grey and dry, but the damp had already found its way into everything we owned. My cassock was cold at the cuffs. The satchel Caleb had packed the night before sat on the kitchen table, its leather darkened with moisture, the buckles stiff. He was awake before me again. This time he stood at the table, not by the window, and he had already laid out our tools in neat rows. A coil of rope. Two mechanical candles. A small tin of matches. The hand axe with the blackened edge. The spare rounds for Genesis, wrapped in oilcloth. He was counting them under his breath when I came in. "You're not sleeping," I said. He didn't look up. "Neither are you." "Fair." I took a cup of water and drank. It still tasted of the sea. Everything in Crawmoor tasted of the sea now, even the bread. "Did you hear it again?" he asked. "Briefly. Near dawn." He nodded. "It stopped when the light touched the cliff. Like it didn't want to be seen." "It doesn't need to be seen." We ate standing. There was no fire, and the cold had settled into the walls the way cold settles into stone that has forgotten the sun. When we were done, I buttoned my coat and checked Genesis. The cylinder was full. The weight was familiar. "Leave the bottle," I said. Caleb looked toward the hearth. The bottle from Zeke still stood where we had left it, the black-gold layer flat along the glass. "I wasn't going to bring it." "Good." "Father." I looked at him. "What if we go down and it's not there?" he asked. "Not the sound. Not the choir. What if it's something else?" "Then we'll deal with something else." He didn't smile. He only lifted the satchel and hung it over his shoulder. We stepped outside into a village that had stopped pretending. No one called. No one watched from the windows. The doors were shut, and the road was empty. The only movement came from the fog, slow and white, sliding between the houses like water finding the lowest ground. Saint Aldric's stood at the top of the climb, and it looked older than it had the day before. The stones were black with moisture. The west door was still open, but only a little, enough to let the smell out. We went inside without speaking. The church swallowed the light. The windows were grey and high, and the air inside was heavy with salt and old wax. The pews leaned as they had before. The floor was still wet in the aisle. The cross above the altar still hung straight, too straight, as if the building itself had stopped trying to bend it toward the sea. But the sound was different now. It didn't come from the walls. It came from below. Not a note. A rhythm. It was low and steady, like a pulse moving through water, or a door opening and closing in a place too deep to see. It rose and fell, and then it stopped, and the silence was worse. Caleb lit one of the mechanical candles. The flame was small and blue at the center, then white. It threw our shadows up the columns. "The crypt is behind the altar," I said. "I remember." He did. He had either been reading my notes again, or he had learned to read old churches. We walked the length of the nave, our boots making no sound on the soft stone. Behind the altar, a narrow stair went down into blackness. The door that had once sealed it stood ajar, rotted away from its hinges. I drew Genesis. "Stay close," I said. "I know." The stairs were wet. Each step had worn a hollow in the middle, and the walls were close enough to touch on both sides. The air thickened as we went down, until it was no longer air but something wet and heavy that clung to the back of the throat. The mechanical candle sizzled. The flame bent once, twice, as if something moved in the dark below. Then we were in the crypt. The chamber was low and wide, its ceiling held by squat pillars that glistened with black moss. Water stood on the floor, shallow and black, rippling around our boots. Old coffins lined the walls, some open, some broken, some missing their lids entirely. The stone inside them was not bare. Caleb raised the light. Scratches covered the walls. Not words. Not symbols. Long grooves, some deep enough to fit a finger. They ran in curves, like water had carved them, but water did not carve in patterns. "Father," Caleb whispered. I followed his gaze. At the far end of the chamber, near a collapsed section of wall, lay the remains of the two exorcists. Not their bodies. Their things. A cracked brass candle, identical to the one Caleb carried. A length of rope, cut clean. A torn grey coat, still buttoned, still shaped like a man's shoulder, but empty. And beside it, a single boot, the leather soft with rot. No blood. No bones. No sign of what had taken them. Caleb let out a breath. "It's like the tower keepers." "Yes." He crouched, not touching anything. "They didn't die down here, did they?" "I don't know." "They weren't dragged." He pointed at the dust and damp. "No marks. No stains. Just... gone." I said nothing. The sound began again, closer now. It came from the wall behind the coffins, not from any opening I could see, but through the stone itself. It was no longer a pulse. It was singing. Not one voice. Many. The sound was wet and low, as if the choir had swallowed seawater and learned to sing without surfacing. It rose in the dark, and the candle flame bent toward it. Caleb stood. "We should move." "Yes." We moved toward the center of the crypt, where the ceiling was highest and the water was shallowest. I wanted room. Not to fight, not yet. To see. Then the first one came. It came out of the water without sound. One moment the black surface was still. The next, something was rising from it, shedding water in thin rivulets, and the thing that stood before us was not a dog. It had the shape of a dog, but the skin was grey and smooth like an eel, and there were too many legs, six of them, thin and jointed at the wrong angles. Its head was low, and its mouth opened sideways. Genesis was already up. The shot was a flat clap in the wet stone, and the crypt swallowed it whole. The thing's head snapped back, and it fell into the water with a heavy splash. The black water frothed once, then stilled. "Move!" I said. Caleb didn't need telling. He was already backing toward the far arch, the candle held high. "What the hell was that?" "Not now." We reached the wider space beyond the pillars. The water was shallower here, barely covering the stones. But the singing had not stopped. It had risen, and now it came from everywhere, from the walls, from the water, from the mouths of the broken coffins. Then two more came. One dropped from the ceiling, a grey mass of feathers and wet skin that landed with a sound like old rope hitting stone. It had wings, but they were wrong, too long, too many, and where its breast should have been, a pale human face stared out, mouth open in a silent note. The other came from behind a pillar. It moved like a goat, but its fur had fallen away in patches, and short fins rose from its ribs. Its eyes were set too high, and its hooves made small sounds in the water, like stones dropped from a great height. I fired again. The goat-thing staggered, but did not fall. The bullet tore through its shoulder, and black fluid sprayed across the stone. It screamed, and the sound was not an animal's. Caleb was beside me, breathing hard but not wild. "They're not stopping," he said. "I know." The bird-thing lunged. Caleb threw himself sideways, and the creature hit the pillar instead. Stone dust rained down. He rolled, came up fast, and swung the metal candle into the side of its head. The flame guttered, but the iron connected, and the thing let out a hiss like steam escaping a pipe. He didn't run. He moved, always a little to the side, trying to keep the pillar between him and the goat-thing. But I could see the fear in him now, not the calm kind, the kind that makes a man's hands too quick and his eyes too wide. He was not the boy from Blackwood anymore, but he was not a soldier either. The goat-thing came for him, and he did something clever. He dropped into a crouch, scooped a handful of wet grit from the floor, and threw it into the thing's face. It shrieked, shaking its head, and Caleb used that moment to shift his position, putting his back not to the wall, but to the open space where I could fire. "Good," I said, and I shot the bird-thing twice more. It fell. This time it did not thrash. I put one more round into the pale face in its chest, and it lay still in the black water. The goat-thing recovered. It came at Caleb again, faster now, and he moved to meet it, maybe too fast. He tried to sidestep, but his boot slid on the wet stone, and the motion turned into a stumble. He caught himself on a pillar, breath tearing out of him. The goat-thing charged. "Left!" I shouted. He went left. His feet found the dark patch of stone near the far wall, the one I had seen earlier, where the joints were wide and the water ran through like veins. He didn't notice. He was too busy looking at the goat, too busy trying to stay alive. He threw another handful of wet sand and stone into its eyes. The goat-thing veered, and Caleb stepped back once more, trying to give himself room. The floor broke. I saw it before he did. The stone under his boot dipped, then cracked, and the whole section sagged toward the black. Caleb's arms went out. His face turned to me, not calm, not tactical, only surprised. "Father—" He didn't finish. The floor split, and he went down sideways into the new dark. Before he disappeared, I saw him throw the satchel. It arced through the air and landed hard at my feet, buckles cracking against the stone. Then he was gone. The goat-thing went with him, tumbling into the hole with a shriek that rose and then cut off, swallowed by the deep. I stood at the edge, heart hammering, Genesis still in my hand. "Caleb!" Nothing. Then, from far below, thin and strange, his voice came back. "I'm fine!" The words echoed too long, or not long enough. I couldn't tell. I started forward, but the floor groaned, and I stopped. Then the singing began again, lower than before, and a few small stones broke away from the edge and fell into the black. "Caleb?" I called again. No answer. Only the dark, and the water, and the sound of something below that was not him breathing.

Chapter 26: As the Stone Split