The highway out of the city stretched like a gray ribbon under a sky the color of old pewter.
Isla sat in the passenger seat of Tim’s car—a stubbornly maintained, ten-year-old sedan that smelled faintly of coffee and pine air freshener—with her knees pulled up and Abuela’s notebook open on her lap.
Cael rode in the back, somehow managing to look both cramped and predatory even in human form.
He’d protested the seating arrangement at first.
“I should be in front,” he’d said. “Watching. Guarding.”
“You’re six foot plus of ancient homicide,” Tim had replied. “You’d give every cop on the highway a heart attack. Back seat.”
Now, an hour into the drive, Cael had one arm draped across the back of the seat, his gaze fixed on the window.
He watched the landscape with an intensity that made Isla’s chest ache.
It was all new to him.
Highways.
Billboards.
Rolling fields cut by power lines.
He frowned at a wind farm as they passed.
“What are those?” he asked.
“Wind turbines,” Isla said. “They capture wind and turn it into electricity.”
He snorted.
“Dragons did that first,” he said. “We just used the wind to turn mountains.”
“Of course you did,” she said.
He tilted his head, studying the giant white blades.
“They are… elegant,” he admitted.
Tim glanced in the rearview mirror.
“Try not to flirt with the infrastructure,” he said. “It’s weird.”
Cael’s lips twitched.
“Jealous?” he asked.
Tim snorted.
“At a windmill?” he said. “Not yet.”
The banter eased some of the tension in Isla’s shoulders.
She turned another page in Abuela’s notebook.
An ink sketch of a crumbling archway stared up at her.
*La Boca Del Mundo,* the caption read in neat script.
Beneath it: *Do not shout into it. It shouts back.*
She smiled faintly.
“Anything useful?” Tim asked, nodding at the notebook.
“Depends on your definition of useful,” she said. “Abuela says the sisters who built the convent believed the ground there was thin. Closer to God. Or something like Him. They thought their prayers would travel faster.”
“Shortcut to heaven,” Tim said. “Convenient.”
“Also dangerous,” Cael murmured. “Thin places… cut both ways.”
“She talks about a well,” Isla went on. “Deep. Cold. No one could find the bottom. The villagers called it La Garganta. The Throat. She says after the fire, they filled it with stones. But sometimes, at night, you could still hear water. Or… other things.”
“Other things,” Jay’s disembodied voice crackled through the Bluetooth speaker.
Isla jolted.
“I thought you weren’t coming,” she said.
“Physically, no,” Jay said. “Emotionally, I’m very present. Also electronically. I bugged Tim’s car. Hi.”
Tim sighed.
“Boundaries, Jay,” he said.
“I make no promises,” Jay replied. “Also, FYI, Leona just asked me to pull records on ‘unusual seismic events in regional religious sites.’ So, you know. Clock’s ticking.”
Isla’s stomach dropped.
“She suspects La Boca?” she asked.
“Not specifically,” Jay said. “Yet. She’s casting a wide net. But if she finds your Abuela’s parish records, she might.”
“Then we need to be done before she gets there,” Tim said.
“Define ‘done,’” Isla muttered.
Cael’s hand tightened on the back of her seat.
“We do not give it everything,” he said. “We… taste. Tap. Lure. See how it responds. If it tries to… climb, we slam the door.”
“And if it doesn’t,” Tim said.
“Then we know we need a bigger rock,” Cael said.
Isla closed her eyes briefly.
“Stop talking about rocks,” she said. “You’re making me miss the museum.”
“You’ll see your saints again,” Cael murmured. “If we do not die.”
“Helpful,” she said.
He leaned forward slightly, his breath warm near her ear.
“Isla,” he said softly. “If you… wish to turn back at any point, say so. I will find another way. Alone.”
She turned her head.
Their faces were close.
Too close.
“You keep saying that,” she said. “As if it’s true.”
His gaze darkened.
“It is,” he said.
“No,” she said quietly. “It’s not. Because whatever happens out there, it still ripples back here. To the cracks. To the hoard. To me. To… everyone. There *is* no ‘alone’ anymore. Not for you. Not for me. Not for this.”
He studied her for a long moment.
“Your grandmother was right,” he said finally.
“About what?” she asked.
“Her granddaughter being stubborn,” he said.
She huffed a laugh.
“Genetic curse,” she said.
He smiled.
Tim cleared his throat pointedly.
“Eyes on the road, please,” he said.
She jerked her gaze forward, cheeks heating.
He was right.
The urban sprawl had thinned into patchy suburbs, then into open fields and stands of trees.
Now the land began to rise, the highway curling into low hills.
A green sign whipped past.
*Exit 27 – Halford / Lake Reyes.*
Isla blinked.
“Lake Reyes,” she read.
“Huh,” Tim said. “Didn’t know you had a lake.”
“I don’t,” she said. “My parents would have mentioned that.”
Cael leaned forward.
“Names echo,” he said. “You would be surprised how often old words slide into new maps.”
She traced the letters in the air.
Reyes.
Kings.
Dragons.
“Fate has a sense of humor,” she muttered.
***
They turned off the highway onto a two-lane road lined with trees aflame in autumn color.
Orange.
Red.
Gold.
The sky had cleared to a thin, pale blue.
Wind rattled leaves against the car windows like fingers.
“Welcome to nowhere,” Jay said in their ears. “Population: poor planning and one cursed convent.”
“Remind me why we gave you an open mic,” Tim said.
“Because without me this would be a brooding staring contest,” Jay replied. “Also, because I’m your eyes on the other end. Leona just left the museum. Heading to a downtown meeting. You’ve got at least three hours before she could even *think* about following you. More if traffic sucks.”
“Copy,” Tim said.
The town of Halford appeared suddenly: a cluster of low buildings, a gas station, a diner with a peeling sign, a church with a steeple that had seen better paint.
They filled up the car.
Tim bought coffee that tasted like burned cardboard.
Isla ducked into the diner bathroom and splashed water on her face, staring at her reflection.
“You look like someone about to do something monumentally stupid,” she told herself.
Her reflection did not disagree.
When she came back out, she found Cael standing by the snack aisle, staring at a rack of brightly colored bags.
“Chips,” he said when she approached. “Why are there so many flavors of… salt?”
“Because humanity is a doomed experiment,” she said.
He picked up a bag.
“Flamin’ Hot,” he read. “Promises.”
“Absolutely not,” she said, grabbing it and putting it back. “The last thing we need is you discovering spicy processed cheese powder.”
He arched a brow.
“You think I cannot handle your… Flamin’ Hot?” he asked.
“I think the fire marshal can’t,” she said.
His mouth curved.
“You deprive me of so many experiences,” he said.
“You’re welcome,” she replied.
They left the town behind and turned onto a narrow road that wound into the hills.
Trees closed in on either side.
The asphalt cracked, patches of gravel crunching under the tires.
“Another mile, then take the right fork,” Jay’s voice guided.
“Trailhead parking lot,” he added. “Should be empty this time of year.”
“Should,” Isla echoed.
The lot was, in fact, empty.
A faded wooden sign read *Halford Ridge Trail – 2.3 miles.*
Smaller, in peeling paint: *Old Convent Ruins – 1.8 miles.*
Isla’s stomach clenched.
“Abuela was here,” she whispered.
Cael inhaled deeply.
“She was,” he said. “Her scent lingers. Faint. Old. But… there.”
Isla’s throat tightened.
“Of course you can smell my dead grandmother,” she muttered. “Why not.”
Tim killed the engine.
The silence that followed was… deep.
No traffic hum.
No city drone.
Just wind in the trees and the faint tick of cooling metal.
“Okay,” Tim said. “Last chance to turn this into an actual hike.”
“No refunds,” Jay said cheerfully.
Isla unclipped her seatbelt.
“Let’s go talk to the Mouth of the World,” she said.
***
The trail was narrow and rocky.
Maples and oaks arched overhead, their leaves a patchwork of color.
The air was cool, damp with the promise of rain.
Isla’s boots crunched on fallen leaves.
Her breath puffed.
She’d stuffed Abuela’s notebook into her backpack, along with water, a first-aid kit, a flashlight, a coil of rope that would probably be symbolic if they actually needed it, and a small vial of holy water her mother had given her once “just in case.”
She’d never thought “just in case” would look like… this.
Tim walked a half-step ahead, scanning the trees like they might produce a mugger.
Cael moved like he belonged here.
Even in human skin, his stride had a predator’s looseness.
His eyes flicked from rock to branch to shadow with an attention that made Isla’s chest ache all over again.
He’d been buried for centuries.
He’d woken to concrete and fluorescent lights.
Now, under open sky and real trees, he seemed… more himself.
“Smells different,” he said quietly. “Alive. Wet. Less… steel.”
“Welcome to not-city,” Isla said. “We have trees and existential dread instead of cabs and existential dread.”
He huffed a laugh.
They walked in silence for a while.
Birds called.
A squirrel scolded them from a branch.
The trail climbed.
Isla’s thighs burned.
Her concussion throbbed in faint protest.
“You okay?” Tim asked, glancing back.
“I’ve had worse,” she said automatically, then winced.
He rolled his eyes.
“You know that doesn’t actually answer the question,” he said.
“I’m fine,” she amended. “Promise. If I start seeing double, I’ll let you know. Unless there are two of you and one of you is saying something stupid. Then I’ll assume it’s you.”
His mouth quirked.
They crested a small rise.
The trees thinned.
The air changed.
Isla felt it before she saw it.
A… thinning.
A hum.
Like the floor of the museum had felt the first time she’d touched the scale.
Her thumb flared.
They stepped into a clearing.
The convent ruins crouched ahead.
Low stone walls, half-collapsed.
An archway that had once been grand and now framed the sky.
Tufts of grass grew between stones blackened by old fire.
The clearing around it was… wrong.
The trees stopped a few yards away, as if politely declining to come closer.
The ground was bare rock, pale and worn smooth.
No moss.
No weeds.
No fallen leaves.
As if the earth itself had decided this spot was off-limits.
“La Boca Del Mundo,” Isla whispered.
Her voice sounded small.
Cael inhaled deeply.
His pupils slit.
“Yes,” he said.
Tim exhaled slowly.
“Definitely creepy,” he said. “On a scale of one to ‘we should leave,’ I’m at ‘why are we here again?’”
“To poke it,” Isla said faintly.
“To redirect it,” Cael corrected.
Jay’s voice crackled in her ear.
“Signal’s weak,” he said. “But I can still hear you. How’s Mordor?”
“Nine out of ten on the ‘don’t camp here’ scale,” Isla said.
“Love that for you,” Jay said. “Leona’s still in the city. She’s sniffing around the cathedral sensors now. You’ve got at least an hour, probably two, before she even looks at regional anomalies.”
“Copy,” Tim said. “We’ll try not to break reality before then.”
“I would prefer you did not break it at all,” Jay said. “Call me if the sky turns purple.”
The line crackled, then steadied.
Isla stepped cautiously closer to the ruins.
Every instinct in her screamed *back.*
Her feet kept moving.
She reached the edge of the bare rock.
Stopped.
“A line,” Cael said softly.
He stood beside her, eyes half-lidded, as if listening to something she couldn’t hear.
“The trees will not cross,” he said. “Animals, either. They know.”
“That’s… not ominous,” Tim muttered.
Cael took a step forward onto the bare stone.
His boots made no sound.
The air rippled.
Isla’s stomach lurched.
He turned back, hand out.
“Come,” he said.
Her heart pounded.
“You know,” she said, trying for flippant and failing, “when I imagined holding hands with a guy in a ruined church, this wasn’t quite the vibe.”
“What was the vibe?” he asked.
“Less blood ritual, more… making out,” she blurted.
Heat rushed to her face.
Tim made a strangled noise.
Cael’s eyes darkened.
“We can… add that later,” he said.
Her brain short-circuited for a second.
“Focus,” she croaked.
He smiled faintly.
“Yes,” he said. “Focus.”
She took his hand.
Heat flared up her arm.
The scar on her thumb burned.
Her foot crossed the line between leaf-litter and bare stone.
The world… shuddered.
It was like stepping into a different layer of air.
Thicker.
Denser.
Buzzing.
Her vision swam.
For a heartbeat, she saw double: the convent ruins as they were now—broken, blackened—and as they had been.
Whole walls.
A roof.
Whitewashed plaster.
Women in habits moving through the courtyard, their voices a faint murmur like bees.
Then it snapped back.
Just ruins.
Just stone.
Her breath came fast.
“Isla?” Tim called from behind her. “You okay?”
“Define—” she began, then stopped.
The ground under her feet thrummed.
Cael’s hand tightened on hers.
“Stay,” he said.
“Wasn’t planning on sprinting,” she said.
He let go reluctantly.
Walked toward the center of the ruins.
The air got… thicker.
Every step he took echoed twice.
Once in sound.
Once in… other.
He stopped at what had once been the convent’s heart.
A sunken circle of stone.
Abuela’s sketch had shown it.
*La Garganta,* she’d written. *They filled it, but the stones still listen.*
Now, piled rocks filled the well’s mouth.
Grey.
Weathered.
Some with faint carvings.
Crosses.
Fish.
Waves.
Water.
Isla’s tongue tasted metal.
Cael knelt.
Laid his palm on the stones.
Closed his eyes.
His breath went slow and deep.
The runes along his ribs glowed faintly through his shirt.
Tim hovered at the edge of the cleared ground, hand near the small of his back where his gun usually sat.
He’d left it behind this time.
Somehow, bullets felt… irrelevant here.
“You sure about this?” he asked quietly.
“No,” Isla said.
“Okay,” he said. “Good enough.”
She crouched a few feet from Cael, close enough that if he flew backward, she could—what? Catch him? She was not a fool.
But proximity made her feel less useless.
“Tell us what to do,” she said.
Cael opened his eyes.
They glowed faintly gold.
“We wake it,” he said. “A little. Enough that it looks here. Smells here. Wonders. While it wonders, we… tie it. Not fully. Just… a tether. So when it pulls, it pulls this land, not yours.”
“Can it tell the difference?” Tim asked.
“Yes,” Cael said. “It… tastes. Stone. Blood. History.”
“Great,” Isla muttered. “We’re seasoning reality.”
“How do we… wake it?” she asked.
He stood.
Rolled his shoulders.
Closed his eyes again.
“First,” he said, “we… ask.”
He began to speak.
Not English.
Not Spanish.
Something older.
Harsh and rolling.
It thrummed in her chest more than in her ears.
The air around the stones shivered.
The hairs on her arms rose.
She caught snatches, somehow, in her mind’s ear.
Not translation.
Resonance.
*Old one. Edge-hunger. Crack-thing. Hear me.*
Wind picked up, teasing his hair.
Leaves at the edge of the clearing rattled but did not fall onto the bare stone.
Tim’s hand clenched.
“Should we… kneel or something?” he muttered.
“I don’t know,” Isla whispered. “Abuela’s notes didn’t include a choreography.”
Cael’s chant shifted.
Softened.
He turned his face up to the blank sky.
“Now,” he said without opening his eyes, “blood.”
Her stomach flipped.
“How much?” she asked tightly.
He held out his hand.
“Match mine,” he said.
Before she could protest, he bit his palm.
Sharply.
Blood welled.
Dark.
Rich.
He let it fall onto the stones.
Each drop hissed faintly.
Isla swallowed hard.
Pulled the small Swiss Army knife from her pocket.
Tim made a strangled sound.
“Absolutely not,” he said.
She looked at him.
“If we don’t,” she said quietly, “we’re just… watching.”
His jaw worked.
He cursed under his breath.
“This is a terrible idea,” he said.
“I know,” she said.
He held out his hand.
She blinked.
“Tim—” she began.
“We share the stupid,” he said. “If you’re bleeding on a cursed rock, so am I.”
Her eyes stung.
She bit his palm first.
Quick.
Her own next.
The pain was sharp.
Immediate.
Human.
A relief compared to the diffuse ache of cosmic dread.
She stepped forward, heart hammering, and let their blood fall beside Cael’s.
Three circles.
Three colors.
Three temperatures.
The stones drank.
The ground hummed.
The world… tilted.
She gasped.
It was like the crack in the coal room, but… sideways.
Not a vertical break.
A horizontal pull.
Gravity… shifted.
For a second, she had the terrifying sensation that if she stepped wrong, she’d slide right off the world and into some dark in-between.
“Hold,” Cael snarled.
His voice came not just to her ears but to her bones.
She focused on his hand.
On Tim’s.
On the feel of their arms brushing hers.
On the faint, stubborn hum of the hoard in the back of her head.
“Mine,” Cael said—not at her, not at the thing, but at the *connection.*
At the path.
He wrapped dragon-magic around their blood like a net.
The crack-thing noticed.
It slid along the new line.
Curious.
Hungry.
*Here,* Cael called to it. *Here, not there. Stone for you. Not city. Not people. Old bones. No screaming.*
He was… bargaining.
The thought horrified and fascinated her.
Would it work?
Could something so alien understand the difference?
The ground shook.
Not much.
Just enough to rattle the stacked stones.
Dust puffed up.
Isla’s knees wobbled.
She swayed.
Tim’s arm shot out, bracing her.
His other hand never left the hilt of the hunting knife at his belt.
As if that would do anything.
The air thickened.
Cold seeped up from the rocks, despite the warmth of the blood.
A… taste… crawled along her teeth.
Like old coins left in stagnant water.
The crack-thing pressed against the new path.
Tested it.
It brushed her mind.
For a horrifying instant, she saw—
—space between atoms—
—worlds stacked like plates—
—her own face, reflected in a hundred funhouse mirrors, each one slightly… off—
Then the scar on her thumb blazed.
The hoard roared.
Cael snarled.
“Not her,” he growled. “Stone. Take stone.”
The thing recoiled.
It wasn’t afraid.
But it recognized… heat.
Pain.
It slithered around the bright thread of her scar and sank its teeth into the new line instead.
Into La Boca Del Mundo.
The ground lurched.
Rocks cracked.
Something deep below… split.
Isla cried out.
Her legs gave.
She hit the stone on her knees, palms scraping.
Tim went down beside her, swearing.
Cael staggered.
For a second, his human skin… slipped.
Scales rippled along his arms.
His eyes flashed pure gold.
He slammed his hand down on the stones.
“Stay,” he roared.
The command vibrated through the air.
Not just to the crack-thing.
To the land.
To the very idea of *here.*
The shaking eased.
The cold pressed.
Then… receded.
Not entirely.
A faint, steady pull remained.
A new hum.
Quieter than the one under the museum.
Different flavor.
Younger.
Hungrier.
Leashed.
Barely.
Cael panted.
Sweat slicked his temples.
Blood dripped from his nose.
He wiped it away with the back of his hand, leaving a smear.
Tim sucked in a ragged breath.
“Is it…?” he began.
Cael closed his eyes.
Reaching.
Sensing.
Isla held her breath.
Finally, he opened them.
Met her gaze.
“It knows this place now,” he said. “When it wants to… chew, it will look here first.”
“First,” she echoed.
“Instead of only under your city,” he said.
Relief and dread warred in her chest.
“That’s… something,” Tim said.
Isla laughed.
It came out hysterical.
“We just… tied an ancient hunger to a ruined convent,” she said. “We are absolutely going to hell.”
“My kind do not have that concept,” Cael said. “Just… consequences.”
“Same thing,” she said.
He smiled grimly.
“Then yes,” he said. “We are going to hell.”
The ground under them thrummed.
Not in protest.
In… acknowledgment.
The land knew.
The rocks knew.
The crack-thing knew.
They had changed the story.
Now they had to live with it.
If they lived.
***
End of Chapter 17.
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