The chapel wasn't stone. It was bone and hide, stitched by salt-priests long dead. Its walls swayed like breath when wind passed wrong, and even the rats didn't nest near its base. No soldier lingered near it unless ordered. No flame stayed lit inside for long.
Tarn approached alone, the symbol burned into his mind. Three teeth. A broken ring. A closed eye.
The flap opened before he reached it.
A woman stood there — no older than him, but ancient in posture. Her robe bore the ash-ring of Mourning Saint Alden, but the cut was wrong. Too loose at the sleeves. Stained along the wrists.
"You've tracked mud into our shadow," she said. Her voice wasn't harsh, but it left no room.
"I was summoned."
"No. You were offered. Entering means consent."
"To what?"
She stepped aside. "To being seen."
He entered.
The air bit colder inside. Candles wept instead of burned. In the center of the room, a basin of relic-water reflected no light.
"Remove your boots."
Tarn hesitated. His soles were rotted leather, sewn with piss-thread and regret.
She waited.
He obeyed.
"Your name is not known," she said. "Yet it echoes. Why?"
Tarn stared at the basin. "I carried a writ. It was signed."
"That's a deed. Not a name."
Silence.
She stepped behind him. Something warm pressed to the base of his skull. A thumb? A relic? He couldn't tell.
"You've walked with a ghost," she said, almost gently. "And ghosts do not go unpaid."
"I'm not cursed."
"All men are cursed. But only a few bear receipts."
She circled to face him. Her eyes were pale — not blind, but nearing. She held a strip of linen.
"Let me bind the sight," she said. "Just for a moment."
Tarn didn't move.
The linen wrapped his eyes. Tight. Dry. When it touched his skin, he smelled river silt and old blood.
Then darkness.
Then a voice, not hers:
"Did you think the stone forgot who bled upon it first?"
Tarn gasped. The basin hissed. Cold slammed up his spine like a reversed prayer.
He tore off the linen.
The chapel was empty.
The maiden was gone.
Only the basin remained, and beside it, folded cloth — new linen. Marked with three teeth, a broken ring, and a closed eye.
He left it there.
But the echo followed.