The rope thrummed once, twice, thrice.Each strike of the chapel bell sent cracks through the air like glass under heat.
The ground bucked. Houses sagged as if the nails had grown tired. The villagers screamed—not because they understood, but because bodies remember when the world goes wrong.
Rowan shoved Harrow toward the door. "Out—move!"
The Wardens formed a crooked wedge around the sled. Maeryn Coil dragged the toppled bell back into its crate with a curse that sounded like a prayer half-choked. "We hold the road," she barked. "Anyone who breaks formation answers to me."
The cultists had vanished into the chapel, but their echo lingered. Every ring of the bell seemed to make the shadows thicker, like tar poured into the seams of the world. Then the seams split.
The first thing to crawl out was not a man, not a beast, but the memory of both: a ribcage filled with ash, legs hinged backward, head masked by a moon broken into shards. More followed, each bearing the brand of the cult not on their skin but inside their fireless eyes. Bellborn.
Rowan's wolf-heart bared its teeth. His vampire-heart whispered calculation: Too many. Too close. Too late.
"Keep tight!" Maeryn shouted.
The Wardens met the Bellborn in the square, iron against smoke. Harrow stood trembling but held the line. Rowan spun his chain, silver searing his palms, and made it a circle no Bellborn could cross unburned. Every strike cost him skin. Every strike bought another heartbeat for someone else.
The inn went first—its timbers folding inward like a sigh. The chapel tower cracked down its spine. The bell there rang again, not struck by rope this time but by its own laughter. Dunclare was not a town anymore. It was a mouth, opening.
"Retreat!" Maeryn's voice cut through the ruin. "To the north road! Now!"
The sled lurched into motion. Bell in its crate. Survivors stumbling around it. Rowan at the rear, chain screaming, lungs burning. For every Bellborn cut down, two more seeped from the chapel's wound.
They reached the edge of the village as the sky itself bent, moonlight bleaching into red. Rowan looked back once. The whole town was collapsing inward, roofs folding like paper into a pit that had no bottom.
The chapel bell tolled one last time. Dunclare was gone.
Cliffhanger: They have escaped the village—but the road north runs straight into the river gorge, and the Bellborn are still coming.