Chapter 3: The Blood Ledger

Jonah returned that night. Alone. With a shovel.

The rain had stopped just before midnight, but the trees still wept. Water dripped from leaves and branches like the last breath of something old. The path to the hill was slick, half-erased by mud. Fog curled between roots like sleeping cats, low to the ground, refusing to rise.

He said nothing as he walked. The shovel clinked against the stone markers. A crow followed him from the chapel roof to the edge of the clearing, then vanished without sound.

The grave looked untouched.

Too untouched.

The soil was pristine, the mound rounded and settled as if it had been there for years, not hours. No footprints. No dragging marks. No trace of the twelve robed men who had stood around it. It was as if Veil had been buried by the sky itself.

Jonah stepped closer. Knees shaking. He pressed his palm to the mound.

Still warm.

He fell to his knees and began to dig.

The shovel struck earth like a war drum. Over and over and over. He tore through wet soil, through layers of salt, through the final crust of stone and clay packed too tightly to be natural. His hands blistered. Bled. He kept digging.

By the time the moon reached its apex, he was shoulder-deep in the grave.

That's when the earth changed.

It stopped being dirt.

The color darkened—grey, then black, then a deep red-brown like dried blood. The soil became dense, pulsing faintly beneath his fingers, as if something beneath was breathing. Not air. Not life. Memory.

Jonah paused, breath ragged. He could hear it now. Not loud—but close.

A slow inhale.

A slower exhale.

Not from beneath. From all around.

The hill was breathing.

The forest leaned inward. The trees shifted. The wind pulled away like a child retreating from something too sharp.

He dug faster.

The shovel hit wood.

Jonah froze.

The coffin sat at an angle, tilted ever so slightly, as if the earth hadn't wanted to hold it. He brushed away the last layer of mud with trembling hands. His fingers found the lid.

No nails. No rope. Just the faint etching of an old sigil carved into the top—a spiral within a spiral, an eye that never opened.

He braced himself and pushed.

It moved too easily.

The coffin creaked as it opened, the hinges moaning like a voice from deep water.

Inside, there was no body.

No blood. No trace of her.

Just a folded piece of paper, resting where Veil's chest should've been.

Jonah stared at it. Every part of him screamed not to touch it. The ink on the ledger had burned him—this could be worse. This could unmake him.

He touched it anyway.

The paper was dry. Smooth. Perfectly white, untouched by water or dirt.

There was one word written on it.

Clean. Centered.

Soon.

Jonah sat back in the mud. His arms hung limp at his sides. The shovel had fallen beside him. The fog pressed closer. He read the word again, lips moving silently.

Soon.

Not a warning. Not a promise.

A schedule.

The trees groaned around him, bending as if bowing.

And the coffin...

It was sealed.

From the inside.

He ran his fingers along the edge of the lid, where a line of dark resin or sap had hardened, forming a perfect seal. No marks of opening. No signs of struggle. No nails. No ropes. Just that spiral, and that word.

Jonah scrambled out of the grave like a man escaping a sinking ship. He clawed his way to the top, mud caked into his skin, and looked back one last time.

The paper hadn't moved.

But he could feel something watching.

Not her.

He didn't believe it at first, but the longer he stood there, the more certain he became.

Whatever had left that word in the coffin—whatever had sealed it from within—it wasn't Veil.

Or not just Veil.

Something else had been in there.

Or still was.

He stumbled home before dawn, walking in the shadows between torchlights, trying not to breathe too loudly. The village was silent. Windows shuttered. Chimneys cold.

His mother stood in the doorway when he arrived.

She said nothing.

Just looked at him. Looked through him.

He knew then that she'd felt it, too.

The change.

Something had gone wrong.

Or maybe everything had gone exactly as it was meant to—and that was worse.

He didn't sleep.

He sat by the fire with the shovel across his lap, the paper clutched in one hand, turning it over again and again as if a second word might appear.

It never did.

But he began to hear things.

Not voices. Not at first.

Scratching.

Soft.

In the walls.

In the soil.

Under the floorboards.

It sounded like roots growing.

Too fast. Too deep.

Like they were searching for something.

The next morning, the chapel bell shifted in its tower.

It did not ring.

But it moved.

And no wind touched it.