The chapel no longer groaned. It listened.

  Neno stepped past the threshold, and the air changed. Not colder—just more aware.

  Outside, the sky was a sick color—gray bled dry, without sun, without night. The buildings hunched in unnatural postures, leaning into each other like gossiping silhouettes. Their windows were black. Not dark—black, as though light had never entered them.

  He turned to look behind him.

  There was no door. No chapel.

  Just a seamless wall of stone.

  His throat tightened. His fingers clenched the parchment. The ink pulsed softly, like a heart under the page.

  Do not run. It already knows where you will go.

  He tried to remember which way he had come. He couldn’t. He wasn’t even sure he had come from anywhere.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  He chose a direction.

  The street was narrow. It felt wrong. The stones beneath his boots gave ever so slightly, as though he walked on something just beneath the surface.

  As he passed a broken lamppost, he noticed his reflection in the glass—except it wasn’t his.

  The man staring back at him wore his face, but there was ink trailing from his mouth. His eyes were hollow.

  Neno froze. The reflection smiled.

  Then it whispered, without moving its lips:

  "You’ve walked this before. Just not like this."

  He turned away. Kept walking. Didn’t look back.

  At the next corner, a staircase had appeared. Stone. Descending into shadow. It hadn’t been there a moment ago.

  The Gospel in his hand warmed.

  He stepped toward it.

  But the air around it shifted—welcoming and wrong. Something in his chest tightened, as though a string had been pulled taut behind his heart.

  No sound came from the stairwell. Not silence—absence.

  He stepped back. Slowly.

  The Gospel bled a new line.

  It is not lost. It is waiting to be found.

  He turned away from the staircase and took another path.

  When he glanced back—the stairs were gone.

  The street behind him had vanished.

  Only blank walls remained.

  He stood still for a long time, listening to the city breathe.

  It had not trapped him. Not yet.

  It was guiding him.

  And it was being patient.