The priest knelt in silence, head bowed before the altar’s flickering light. His fingers clutched the prayer chain—old beads worn smooth by generations of hands. His lips moved, murmuring the sacred verses of Crestric, each syllable carved into memory like scripture.

But they didn’t come easily.

The words caught. His voice faltered.

Something was wrong.

A deep, mournful sound stirred beneath the stone. Not thunder. Not wind. Not the bustle of a city slowly stitching itself back together. No—this was something else. Something inside the cathedral.

A low groan rolled beneath him, vibrating through the marble, curling up through his bones.

He froze.

The air shifted—heavier now, harder to breathe.

The tremor grew, creeping up from the floor, curling around his ribs like cold fingers. His knuckles whitened as he squeezed the beads tighter. A chill seeped into his chest, but it wasn’t the cold of winter—it was the cold of something forgotten.

Another groan followed. Deeper this time. Not just a sound but a feeling, like the cathedral itself had exhaled in pain.

The chandeliers above began to sway. Not much. But enough.

Chains creaked overhead, old iron straining.

The stained-glass windows trembled. Their perfect imagery shimmered, warping—saints’ faces twisting ever so slightly as if unsure of the roles they’d been cast in.

The great pillars moaned.

Hairline cracks crawled along the sacred murals, thin as veins, spiderwebbing through gold-leaf halos and divine etchings. The marble moaned in protest.

Then—snap.

A single shard of the vaulted ceiling sheared free, clattering against the stone floor in a burst of shattered silence.

The priest inhaled sharply.

And whispered—

“…But all the heirs have been chosen.”

As if those words could make it stop.

They didn’t.

The floor groaned again, louder. The cathedral shuddered, as though something ancient had just shifted its weight.

Sacred carvings began to flake apart. Gold leaf rained from the ceiling in thin, glittering trails. Sigils, untouched for millennia, fractured and peeled away.

His voice broke into a whisper, desperate.

“We’ve… we’ve given the world what it needs…”

And then—

Snap.

The prayer beads broke.

They spilled from his hands, bouncing across the stone, vanishing into the widening cracks beneath him. The cold reached his knees now. His spine. His breath caught in his throat.

Then it came.

The grinding.

Faint at first. Just a whisper. But unmistakable.

Metal. Old metal. Screaming against rust.

The echo of gears turning—slow, brutal, mechanical. Ancient. Forgotten. But not gone.

He froze.

No.

That sound wasn’t supposed to exist.

Those gears had been sealed. Locked. Buried in myth and ritual and time. There was nothing—nothing—that should’ve been able to make them move.

Then—footsteps.

Rushed. Panicked.

A priestess stumbled into the sanctuary, her robes clinging to her from sweat, her breath shallow and fast.

She skidded to a stop, trembling hands gripping her vestments like they might anchor her in place.

Her voice cracked.

“The forbidden tower—”

The grinding grew louder. Closer. Like something was crawling up from beneath the world.

The floor vibrated again.

She looked up at him, eyes wide, wild with fear.

“They’re moving,” she breathed. “The mechanisms. They’re… moving.”