"C-Caelen… Caelen—watch out—!"
The priest's serene, saint-like smile didn't falter.
If anything, it deepened—mocking.
Then the chamber split with a sound like a mountain snapping in half.
Its massive stone hands, locked for who knew how many centuries in a prayer pose, moved. Fingers longer than spears uncurled, joints grinding and shedding layers of dust.
The motion was too fast. For something that size, it shouldn't have been able to move like that.
In the same breath, the massive rosary it held—a chain of stone beads, each the size of Eli's torso—whipped outward in a violent arc.
The links screamed as they cut through the air, a blur of weight and speed, before slamming into the ground with an earth-splittingBOOM right where they had been standing.
Stone exploded upward. Dust blasted into Eli's face like sandpaper in a storm, stinging his eyes and filling his mouth with grit.
"Shit—!"
