The moment the ancient whisper rose from the fissure
Elizabeth…
every flame in the chapel went out.
Not sputtered.
Not dimmed.
Snuffed out.
As if a giant unseen hand pressed darkness into every corner of the room.
The survivors screamed.
Ana buried her face in Elise's chest.
Jace clung to the broken edge of a pew, trembling.
Lucas pulled Elizabeth against him so hard she felt his heartbeat hammering through his ribs.
"Stay with me," he breathed, voice cracking.
But Elizabeth wasn't listening to the room.
Not to the screams, the falling dust, the groaning wood.
She was listening to something else.
Something beneath the world.
Something awakening.
From the fissure, a faint gold shimmer pulsed like the slow blinking of an ancient eye.
The air shifted heavy, warm, and unbearably sad.
Elizabeth inhaled sharply.
"It's trying to rise."
Lucas tightened his arms. "No. We're leaving. We're leaving right now."
But the ground rumbled beneath them
long, low, deliberate
like the earth itself had begun to take its first breath in centuries.
The crack widened another inch.
Then another.
Stone peeled away like skin.
Air sucked downward, then burst upward again in a cold gust.
Elise shouted over the chaos, "Lucas! The walls they're cracking!"
She was right.
The chapel walls shuddered, fractures spiderwebbing from the windows to the rafters.
Dust poured from above like falling ash.
"We're running out of time!" Elise cried.
Lucas moved to drag Elizabeth with him
but she froze.
Her head snapped toward the fissure.
Her pupils shrank.
"Lucas…" she whispered.
"Elizabeth, don't look.."
"It's… seeing me."
Lucas felt her body stiffen, as if an invisible gaze pinned her in place.
"Elizabeth!" He cupped her face, pulling her away from the fissure. "Look at me. ONLY me."
But her eyes darted back.
She was trembling so hard that Lucas barely kept her upright.
From the fissure, that gold glow pulsed again.
A rhythm like a slow heartbeat.
Then a second pulse.
Stronger.
Higher.
Closer.
Elizabeth whispered, "It's waking."
Lucas forced her face toward him again. "We go NOW…"
He didn't finish.
Because suddenly
the chapel floor heaved.
Not shook.
Not trembled.
Heaved
as if something massive pressed upward from below, lifting the stone floor like a thin sheet.
Survivors lost their footing.
A pew toppled and slid toward the fissure.
A beam cracked loud enough to split the air.
Lucas gripped Elizabeth tighter. "MOVE!"
He pushed her toward the entrance, guiding her around the widening cracks.
Elise grabbed Ana and Jace, helping them scramble over fallen debris.
But before they could reach the doorway
the fissure exploded with light.
A blinding gold burst filled the chapel, throwing them to their knees.
Heat washed over them.
Then cold.
Then nothing
only trembling light flickering in the smoke.
Lucas shielded Elizabeth with his body as debris rained down.
When the light dimmed, the fissure had changed.
It was no longer a thin crack.
No longer a wound.
It was an opening
deep, wide, breathing.
Lucas looked into it
and for a second, he saw movement.
A shifting silhouette.
Not a body.
Not an arm.
Something vast and glimmering beneath layers of stone.
He felt nausea twist in his stomach.
Whatever was down there…
It wasn't meant to be seen.
"Don't look," Elizabeth whispered, grabbing his arm. "Lucas, don't look at it."
He turned away instantly.
Her voice was shaking.
"You can't understand what it shows. You'll drown in it."
"Then why can YOU see it?" Lucas demanded.
Elizabeth swallowed, eyes glistening.
"I don't know."
From the fissure, a low chime echoed
soft, melodic, like a fragment of music played underwater.
Elizabeth staggered.
Lucas caught her. "What now?!"
She clutched her chest.
"It's remembering something… something it lost."
"What is it?!"
"A sky," she whispered. "A sky it hasn't seen in… in hundreds of years."
Lucas froze.
His heart began to race.
"Elizabeth… how do you know that?"
Her voice dropped to a terrified whisper:
"Because it's showing me."
The ground pulsed again.
And again.
Faster.
The fissure brightened, shimmering like sunlight through shallow water.
A soft glow rose, spreading beneath the chapel like dawn touching the world's underside.
Elise cried out.
"The floor's lifting!"
And she was right
The chapel was rising.
The stones beneath them shifted upward, as if the entire building was being lifted by invisible hands.
Walls groaned.
Dust poured in sheets.
Survivors screamed.
Elizabeth saw a vision
not with her eyes, but inside her mind:
A massive cavern.
Collapsed pillars.
Ancient murals melted by time.
An ocean of stone crushing down.
Something buried beneath centuries of ruin
something once luminous
trapped in a darkness it never chose.
She gasped, tears streaking her face.
Lucas held her tightly. "What is it showing you?! Elizabeth TALK to me!"
"It's… it's suffering," she choked. "For so long. Lucas, it wasn't meant to be buried."
"Elizabeth stop.."
"It wants to rise."
The fissure throbbed with a blinding pulse
and the chapel shook violently.
Lucas looked at the ceiling, then at the walls.
They weren't going to hold.
"Elise!" he shouted. "Get the children out!"
"I CAN'T!" Elise cried, pointing at the entrance.
Lucas looked
and his blood went cold.
The chapel doors had sunk inward.
Twisted.
Sealed shut by the shifting ground.
They were trapped.
Elizabeth's breath shattered.
"It's closing us in."
Lucas grabbed her shoulders.
"Elizabeth listen to me whatever it wants YOU are not giving yourself to it."
Her eyes filled with tears.
"I'm not choosing, Lucas… it's choosing."
He shook her, desperate.
"NO. You stay with me. You STAY."
The fissure pulsed brighter, trembling like a heartbeat trying to break through bone.
The light reached for her
thin tendrils curling upward, shimmering, wavering, pleading.
Elizabeth took a step back, terrified.
"I didn't mean for this
I didn't ask for this
Lucas, I can't.."
A final pulse shuddered through the chapel.
Then
the glow changed.
It dimmed.
Faltered.
Collapsed inward.
Like a candle flickering in the last breath of night.
Elizabeth froze.
"It's weakening," she whispered.
Lucas tightened his hand around hers. "Good. Good we can still run."
But she shook her head slowly.
"No… Lucas… it's not weakening."
He frowned. "Then what.."
Her voice cracked in horror.
"It's preparing."
Lucas's breath left him.
"For what?"
Elizabeth stared into the trembling fissure, her voice barely a breath:
"For the surface."
The entire chapel lurched.
A massive, deafening groan rose from below
the sound of ancient earth splitting apart.
And then
a column of gold light erupted upward,
ripping stone, shattering pews, flooding the room with blinding radiance.
Survivors screamed.
Lucas shielded Elizabeth.
Elizabeth reached for him
but something unseen tugged at her
something gentle,
ancient,
inescapable
pulling her toward the light.
"Lucas..!" she screamed.
He grabbed her waist, pulling her back
but she was being lifted
not by force
but by recognition.
The light curled around her like a questioning hand.
And in the roaring, trembling glow,
a whisper echoed from the depths:
Elizabeth…
Come see.
Elizabeth's eyes widened in terror.
Her feet lifted an inch off the ground.
Lucas tightened his arms around her
but the light grew brighter
and the trembling presence beneath the earth began to rise.