They hadn't sealed it.
Not properly.
The door hung crooked on its hinges at the foot of the eastern stairwell, hidden behind a faded wall tapestry depicting Saint Helwryn slaying the serpent of heresy. A rusted sconce sat beside it, unlit. No torches were placed near. No wards.
If Thalric hadn't been restless that night—too stiff to sleep, too exhausted to read—he might've missed it altogether.
He found it by following cold air and contradiction.
The chapel was older than the estate itself. He could tell from the stonework—chisel marks uneven, mortar blackened with soot not from fire, but incense. It had once been holy. Consecrated with chants and blood and vows none of the staff now remembered how to speak.
It smelled of damp parchment and dried lavender.
He stepped inside slowly, cane tapping once against the threshold. The floor did not answer.
Rows of pews stretched forward, warped from damp and time, their cushions long gone. At the front, an altar—carved from a single block of snowstone, its edges chipped. Dust clung to everything like confession. No priest had stood here in decades.
Above the altar, a mosaic once grand—now shattered.
He stepped closer.
Where there had once been an image of the Celestial Wheel—symbol of the Twelve Aspects—there remained only fragments. A halo. A feather. Part of a scythe. The central eye had been scraped out, not broken. Deliberate. Angry.
Beneath it, a plaque in Elder Common tongue. He squinted to read it.
When divinity turned its face, we taught ourselves not to look.
A chill crawled over his spine. Not magic. Not divine.
Just memory.
He turned and scanned the pews. Dust thickened in places, swirled in others. Someone… had been here. Not recently. But not ages ago, either. Scratches along the wood suggested someone once knelt. Often.
He ran a finger along the altar's edge.
Cold. So cold, it numbed.
And then—nothing.
He closed his eyes and reached out—not with magic, not with will. Just listening.
For the first time since awakening in this world, he tried to pray.
Not to gods.
But to the shape of one.
Nothing answered.
Not even echoes.
He opened his eyes, slower now, and exhaled.
It wasn't surprising. Not truly. The gods of this world had long since vanished from common speech. Their texts scrubbed. Their symbols filed down in favor of thrones and coin. The spiritual world lay buried beneath pageantry and perfume.
Still… something about the silence pressed different here.
Deeper.
As if the gods hadn't left—they'd been exiled.
He turned to go.
Then stopped.
Carved faintly into the wall behind the altar, nearly swallowed by ivy and age, a spiral.
Simple. Elegant.
Old magic. Not divine. Not forbidden.
Just forgotten.
He traced it with his finger once, then stepped back into the corridor without a word, the rain now soft against the manor's frame, as if reluctant to disturb what he'd just awakened.