The entrance is hidden through the cellar. A locked door behind the wine racks. Stone stairs spiraling downward, steep and narrow, carved by hands long dead.
The rounded space is lit only by candles, blackened stubs jammed into rusted iron sconces along the walls. Their flames flicker weakly, casting shadows that move a little too much. Symbols pulse beneath them, carved onto the floor and darkened with age. Spirals. Crosses. Jagged runes in languages no longer spoken. Petroglyphs no scholar has ever seen.
The story goes that Druids once performed dark rites here. That they spilled blood, both animal and human. My father’s house wasn’t built in this location by chance. It wasplacedhere. This spot was chosen for the vault that lies underneath the mansion like a grave of secrets.
The stone is uneven beneath my feet, slick enough that I have to concentrate not to slip. Manacles hang from the walls, and the sight of them makes my stomach clench. In some places, the floor is permanently stained dark, where blood sank into the cracks. There’s no water here to wash it away. No forgiveness to rinse away the sins that occurred here, either.
Although the original vault is ancient, it’s been enlarged. Dug out with rough hand-made pickaxes and crude hammers. Tools wielded by my ancestors, the pilgrims.
The history books say they crossed an ocean in search of freedom.
But that’s a lie.
They didn’t come seeking liberty. They came to take it from others, to keep it only for themselves.
This vault is their cathedral, and I am their dark legacy.
Twelve identical men stand in a circle along the walls. Cloaked in thick gray robes, their waists cinched with coarse rope. Their hoods hang low, swallowing their faces in shadow, but I can feel their eyes on me.
All of them.Watching me.
My father is among them. Indistinguishable at first, until he steps forward and speaks. I’d know that voice anywhere. That deep baritone is as familiar as pain. I’ve heard it scream at me. Curse me. Break me down to nothing. Once, when I was small and stupid and still believed in things, I used to pray he’d speak to me gently. That he’d tell me he loved me. That he was proud.
He beat that hope out of me with every lick of his belt, his whip.
Now, as a teenager, I find myself fantasizing about the day I’ll forcehimto beg. To plead for mercy like I have so many times before.
As the High Father, he will preside over this ceremony.
“You understand what is asked,” he says to me.
I nod once, not flinching even as the blade is unsheathed. My father hands me the dagger, black-handled, gold-tipped, etched with the symbol of The Order: a cross, each bar of equal length.
“Speak the vow.”
Dream me lifts my gaze and catches a glimpse of my father’s eyes beneath the hood. Cold. Dead. Eyes of a snake. A spider.
“Nos sumus ordo. In sanguine nexuimur. In potestate surgimus. Perfectionemquaerimus.”I repeat the words automatically and translate them in my mind as I go.
We are The Order.
We bond in blood.
We rise in power.
We seek perfection.
Words I’ve heard my entire life. A twisted lullaby told to me by my father every night before I went to bed.
My father continues, saying words that have been repeated for generations, “Your offering?”
I don’t hesitate. I turn the dagger on myself and slice my right palm, deep and clean. Blood wells immediately, warm and bright in the candlelight. I step to the bowl at the center of the circle and hold my hand over it, letting the blood drip into the pool of my brothers who came before.
We will all bleed tonight.
“You are now a man. Bonded to The Order,” the High Father, my father, says, voice thick with finality. “Someday, when you are older, you will bond women, but always remember who your original bond is with. The Order is your parent, your lover, your God, as it has been since the day you were born. This is your destiny. Your purpose. Through you, the world shall be made perfect.”
The iron, glowing so hot the metal has turned white, comes without warning. That, too, is part of the lesson. Obedience is not chosen. It is taken.
