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Cass inhales. The scream that comes out of her isn’t wild anymore. It’s aimed. The sound doesn’t scatter. It lands.

“SELAH!”

The name lands wrong in the room—too alive, too heavy. The mold along the beams darkens, as if bruising. One of the candles gutters and goes out, leaving behind a smear of smoke that smells like burnt fat.

Ah. There you are.

Cass’s voice doesn’t fracture this time. It holds—raw and furious and laced with something dangerous. Love, yes. But also command. The body knows when it’s being used as a conduit. It resists at first. Then it learns to carry the weight.

The Hollowborn feel it. I feel them hesitate. That’s not happened before.

Not here. Not close. But present—like animals circling a fire they remember burning them once.

Interesting.

“Again,” I murmur, softer now.

Cass’s breath catches. Blood bubbles at the corner of her mouth.

“No,” she whispers. “Please⁠—”

I crouch in front of her and press two fingers into the hollow at the base of her throat. Her pulse jumps against my skin, frantic and hot. Fever is coming. That will help.

“She hears you,” I tell her. “But she’s not coming to save you.”

Her eyes flood.

“She’s coming to choose,” I continue. “And that’s holier.”

The radio squeals and I stand and draw the blade.

It’s not clean. Cleanliness is a modern obsession. The blade has been used, sharpened, used again until the metal carries a dull warmth even before it touches skin. When I press it to the stone floor, the sound it makes is wrong—too wet, too intimate.

Scripture opens reluctantly.

I carve slowly, breathing with the cuts, letting each symbol swell and fill with blood runoff until the words blur into one another. The circle I draw is imperfect by design. Perfection creates closure. We want permeability. Closed systems don’t receive revelation.

When I place my palm inside it, the stone answers.

Not with light.

With heat.

Cass convulses, a sharp cry tearing loose as something moves through her that doesn’t belong to flesh alone. Her body arches, ropes biting deeper, the smell of copper and rot blooming rich and undeniable.

The acolyte gasps.

“Hold her,” I say.

They do. Bare hands. No gloves. Touch is instruction.

I whisper the old words—the ones we never wrote down because writing makes people think they can change meaning. As I speak, the room thickens. The mold along the walls splits and weeps clear fluid that runs like tears into the dirt. The air tastes like pennies left too long on the tongue.

Cass screams again. Not Selah’s name this time. Something else. Something wordless. Somewhere far away, the woods go quiet.

The Hollowborn don’t come.

They listen.