Chapter 9 THE FIRST TONGUE

The path they followed bent away from the mountains, tracing the edge of a forgotten marshland where the air itself seemed to rot. The land had no name anymore. Villagers from the nearest settlement called it "Whistling Hollow" only in whispers, crossing themselves even at the mention.

It was quiet.

Too quiet.

Tane's boots squelched in the mud with every step. Clara moved ahead, bow strung across her back, blade sheathed but ready. Elias trailed slightly behind, studying the old, brittle map they'd recovered from Maro's satchel-ink faded, edges frayed, but the symbols unmistakable. Another gate lay ahead. A mark like an open mouth had been etched near a place once known as Cindervale.

He didn't know what awaited them there. But he knew this: what stirred beneath the skin of the earth was no longer sleeping.

They reached the edge of the marsh by midday. A crumbling stone milestone rose from the muck, its inscription mostly worn smooth by wind and rain. But Clara brushed aside the moss and found it-a symbol etched not by chisel, but by fingernail.

A spiral, wrapping inward. The symbol of confession.

"Another gate," Elias said, voice tight.

Tane frowned. "They always leave signs. But for whom?"

Clara didn't answer.

They pressed on.

---

Nightfall arrived like a shroud. Mist thickened until they could barely see the trees around them, their branches black and gnarled like skeletal fingers. The fog carried a smell-salt and copper. Blood and something older.

Then they saw it.

A chapel.

Hidden in the trees, half-sunken into the earth like it had tried to crawl into its own grave. Ivy curled around the spire. The bell tower leaned sideways, shattered. The stained glass windows were dark with soot.

"No light," Clara whispered. "But someone tends it. Look."

The door-massive, iron-framed-hung half open. Scrape marks marred the ground. Recent.

Elias nodded once. "Weapons drawn."

They entered.

---

Inside, the chapel was darker than death.

Their torches cast long, eerie shadows across cracked pews and a broken pulpit. The walls were scorched-scenes of saints and martyrs burned beyond recognition. Only one figure remained untouched in the stained glass: a priest with no face, arms spread, fire in his palms.

"What happened here?" Tane murmured.

As if in answer, a voice echoed from the altar.

Low. Male.

"Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned."

The three froze.

A man knelt before the broken altar, facing away. His cassock was in tatters, soaked in dried blood. His back was covered in script-carved into his flesh. Spirals. Names. Verses. Confessions, etched by hand.

"They told me the tongue was dead," he whispered. "But the stone still speaks it."

Elias stepped forward cautiously. "Who are you?"

The man turned.

His eyes were gone. Sewn shut with thread the color of rust. But he smiled, wide and unafraid.

"I was Father Emric," he said. "Now I am the mouthpiece."

Tane leveled his sword. "Back away."

"I cannot," Emric said. "For the mouth is open. And it must be fed."

He raised his hands.

All ten fingers had been replaced-with tongues.

Dried. Blackened. But alive. They wriggled in the firelight.

Clara gagged.

"Dear God-"

"Not God," Emric whispered.

And then-

The tongues began to speak.

Not words.

Sounds.

A twisting, guttural chant that filled the chapel like smoke.

Elias clutched his ears, pain stabbing his temples. The very walls began to vibrate. The old wood creaked. A scream tore through the chapel-not human.

The altar cracked.

A seam opened in the stone floor.

From it came a wind-sour and ice-cold, carrying whispers that crawled beneath the skin.

"We have to stop the chant!" Clara shouted.

Tane surged forward, driving his sword through Emric's chest.

But the man only laughed, blood bubbling from his mouth.

"I am not the voice," he gasped. "Only the echo."

The tongues continued to chant.

The chapel shook. A shape began to rise from the altar seam-a being made of shifting shadows, bone and ash, with a face that kept changing. A priest. A child. A woman screaming. A faceless god.

Elias dragged Clara back. "We can't kill the vessel. We have to seal it."

"How?" she shouted.

He remembered the map. The symbols.

"The tongue is the key. The First Tongue-the language before Babel. That's what the Watchers speak."

Tane wrenched the blade free from Emric, who collapsed, still laughing.

"Then what do we speak back?" he yelled.

Elias knelt, fingers stained with Emric's blood. He began carving a counter-symbol into the chapel floor-a binding ward he'd seen once in an apocryphal text. The language wasn't meant for mortals, but he spoke it anyway. Slowly. Deliberately.

The effect was instant.

The wind stopped.

The tongues shrieked in unison and caught fire. Emric's body arched, then fell limp. The being rising from the altar let out a howl of pure hatred-and began to collapse in on itself, shredded by its own vibration.

A final pulse shook the chapel, and the rift snapped shut.

Darkness.

Stillness.

---

When they stepped back into the night, the stars had returned.

Tane leaned on his blade. "That thing... was one of the lesser ones?"

Elias nodded grimly. "A Watcher's herald. A test."

"They're getting stronger," Clara said.

"Yes," Elias agreed. "And hungrier."

He looked back at the chapel. Smoke rose from its ruins.

There would be more places like it.

Each more dangerous than the last.

Each closer to the truth.

---

(continued): The First Tongue

The sky outside had shifted-no longer just black, but tinged faintly violet, as though something unnatural now throbbed behind the veil of stars. Elias felt it in his chest. A pressure. Like something was watching.

Still.

From below.

He stood still for a long time, just breathing. Clara brushed against his shoulder, silently. Her fingers trembled slightly as she sheathed her dagger. Tane was the first to break the silence.

"We can't keep doing this," he muttered. "We're not equipped. We're not priests."

Elias turned to him. "Neither are they."

Tane frowned. "What?"

"The priests. The ones who turned," Elias said. "They gave up their faith for answers. Or power. Or survival. But they aren't priests anymore. They're empty. Hollow. Mouths for something else."

Clara stared back at the chapel. It now looked less like a place of worship and more like a wound in the land.

"We've seen Watchers," she said. "Heard their language. Their names. They're trying to anchor themselves to this plane."

Elias nodded. "Through us. Through our guilt."

Tane laughed bitterly. "Well, we're the right people for that, aren't we?"

The group turned and made camp a few miles out, near a bent elm tree growing sideways over a creek. No fire. No singing. Just silence, and the slow scraping of whetstone on steel as they cleaned their weapons.

Clara pulled out a small leather book, worn from the road. She'd taken it from Maro's belongings-a confessor's ledger. Not Church-issued. Something older.

"I've been reading it," she said, quietly. "Trying to understand what drives them."

"Madness," Tane replied without looking up.

"No," she said. "It's a choice. A long, slow unraveling of belief until only desperation is left. That's what they feed on. The Watchers. They wait for men to pray and get silence in return."

Elias stirred. "And then?"

"Then they offer a whisper," she said. "Something louder than God."

---

That night, Elias dreamed.

He stood once again in the ruins of Fenshire, flames licking at the thatched rooftops. Annalise stood in the chapel doorway-young again. Clean dress. No burns. No blood. She smiled.

But behind her, the shadows stretched.

A tall figure emerged from the dark, its face stitched shut, hands folded in reverent mockery.

Maro.

Except this Maro had no eyes.

He opened his mouth, and a voice came out. Not his.

"She's ready."

Elias tried to run, but the ground became hands-dozens-grabbing his legs, dragging him down. He reached for Annalise.

She whispered something.

But her voice was in the First Tongue.

And Elias understood it.

He woke gasping, sweat freezing on his skin.

Clara sat nearby, watching the woods.

"You screamed," she said.

Elias nodded. "I heard her."

Clara didn't ask who. She already knew.

"She's still speaking their language," he said. "Even in my dreams."

"She's marked," Clara replied. "They won't let her go easily."

Elias stared into the fog, thinking. "Then we have to take her back."

"To what?" Tane said, stirring awake. "To what's left of the Church? They'd burn her at the stake."

Elias stood.

"Then we'll rewrite the Church."

---

By morning, the map revealed their next lead. The ink changed subtly overnight. A mark shifted closer inland-toward the ruins of Ashholt Abbey, once a monastery devoted to healing the mentally afflicted. Now, it was abandoned.

Or so the records said.

They packed their gear, and by noon they were back on the road-mud caking their boots, wind biting at their cloaks.

The marsh slowly gave way to forest. But the sense of being watched never left. Elias looked back once, toward the broken chapel, and thought he saw something tall and thin standing at the tree line.

Just watching.

No face.

No eyes.

Just hunger.

---

By dusk, the trees grew denser.

Clara slowed as they approached a fork in the path. The left trail descended into shadowed woods. The right led up a ridge. Fresh tracks cut through both.

Boots.

But not human.

Clawed. Heavy. Deep.

"What the hell made those?" Tane asked.

Clara crouched and brushed aside a few leaves.

Buried beneath the clawprints was something else.

A mark.

Three circles overlapping. The trinity reversed.

"Another seal," she said.

Elias narrowed his eyes. "We're close again."

And then-

A bell.

Faint. Hollow. Ringing from the ridge.

Elias didn't hesitate.

"Let's go."

---

They followed the trail uphill until the forest fell away, revealing a decaying courtyard.

Ashholt Abbey.

The once-grand structure loomed against the horizon, walls draped in dead ivy, its arched windows shattered like broken eyes. The bell tower still stood, though cracked and leaning. The bell had long since fallen, but something had rung it.

They passed through the courtyard. Statues lined the path-old monks and saints, though most had had their faces smashed in.

A message, perhaps.

Or a warning.

Inside, the air was thick with incense and mildew. Rats skittered through pews long since abandoned.

And at the front-beneath the altar-lay a body.

A priest.

His chest carved open. His eyes pulled out. And pinned to his forehead with a rusted nail-

A confession.

Written in blood:

"I welcomed them. I thought they were angels. I was wrong. Forgive me."

Elias pulled the paper free.

Tane knelt beside the body.

"He did it himself," he said. "Ritual suicide. He didn't want to be taken."

Clara looked at Elias. "The seal is here. Somewhere below. They always build above the weak spots."

"Then we go under," Elias said.

He turned toward the broken staircase behind the altar.

And down they went.