Chapter 3 THE HALLOW BENEATH.

The tunnels were real.

That was the first thing I learned the next morning, just after dawn, When aunt helena handed me a key and told me to follow the old creek bed behind the church.

"You'll find a rusted hatch covered by brush," she said. "That map your mother drew,it's not fantasy. But if you go down there, you better be ready not to come back the same."

She didn't say anything else. She didn't have to.

Some truths come at a cost.

Jerry insisted on coming with me. I didn't protest. Not because I wanted him there, but because I wasn't stupid. If the Ember Circle had gone to these lengths to stay hidden, they wouldn't hesitate to protect their secrets with something worse than silence.

The creek bed was overgrown, choked with weeds and brittle brambles. When we finally found the hatch, I knew it immediately, half-buried, the metal hinges rusted and twisted with vines. A small flame symbol was scorched into the surface, nearly invisible unless you were looking.

Jerry crouched and wiped his hand across it. "They branded the entrance."

"Like a warning."

"Or a promise," he muttered.

The key turned with a reluctant groan.

We pulled the hatch open and stared down into darkness. A ladder led into a narrow shaft carved of stone and damp earth, the air wafting upward cold and strange, carrying the faint scent of sulfur and old smoke.

I turned on my flashlight.

"Let's go," I said.

The tunnels were older than I expected, hand-cut stone, earth walls, some sections reinforced with beams that looked centuries old. Symbols lined the walls. Some drawn in chalk. Others etched with a knife. All variations of fire, eyes, and circles within circles.

The deeper we went, the colder it got. The walls seemed to close in, the damp pressing against our skin. Our footsteps echoed, magnified, as though the tunnel wanted to remember each intruder.

Jerry walked beside me, his light flicking across the narrow path. "I thought I'd be more scared," he said.

"You're scared," I replied.

He didn't argue.

We reached a chamber about twenty feet down. The walls opened into a small underground room-what looked like a meeting place. At its center stood a stone altar stained black. Along the wall, wooden shelves held melted candles, empty jars, and a rusted tin box.

I opened it.

Inside were dozens of small pins-each shaped like a flame.

I felt my throat tighten.

"They were made for initiates," Jerry said quietly.

"How do you know that?"

"Because I saw one on Rowan. The night she died."

I looked up at him.

"She never told me what it was for," he continued. But she wore it clipped to her school bag. I thought it was a charm. A joke. I didn't know

"You didn't want to know."

He swallowed. "Maybe not."

My flashlight flicked toward the back wall. Something glinted.

A mirror.

Cracked, half-buried behind a pile of old crates. As I brushed the dust away, words came into view, written in what looked like dried blood:

We see the watcher. We silence the voice.

I backed away slowly.

"They knew someone was watching."

"And they punished them," Jerry said.

There was a noise then-a soft shuffle, like movement behind the stone walls. My skin went cold.

We turned.

Silence.

But the air felt different now-pressured. Like something had woken up.

The beam of my flashlight trembled as I swept it across the walls. The markings were everywhere, layered over each other in places, like generations had left their warnings.

I reached for my phone to take a photo of the scene, but it slipped from my hand. As I crouched to retrieve it, the light landed on something just beneath a stack of crates.

A notebook.

I pulled it out. The cover was stained, pages curled, but the name written on the first page stopped my breath.

Rowan Vale.

Jerry leaned over my shoulder. "That's her handwriting."

I opened it slowly.

Most of it was unreadable-water-damaged, smeared. But one page near the center remained intact.

"I saw the ceremony. I wasn't supposed to. They made the fire look like an accident. But it wasn't. They burned the others first. One by one. And when it was my turn, I ran. I think they saw me."

"If anyone finds this-go to the mausoleum. The one without a name."

I stared at the words. They felt hot in my hands.

"She was running for her life," I whispered. "She made it down here."

"And tried to leave a trail," Jerry said. "To warn someone."

"To warn me."

We sat for a few minutes in silence, surrounded by the remnants of something ancient and evil. My hand gripped the notebook tightly, a lifeline across a decade of silence. For the first time, Rowan's voice reached me again. Raw. Desperate.

I traced the letters of her name with my thumb.

"She was brave," I said softly.

"She was," Jerry agreed. "She always was."

He looked at me, and for a moment, the walls of the past seemed to thin between us. There was something in his expression I hadn't seen since we were kids-grief, yes, but also regret. And maybe hope.

Then the air shifted again.

A cold gust moved through the tunnel, flickering our lights. Something behind us creaked.

I turned sharply. Nothing.

Still, the message had been clear. Time to leave.

We climbed out into a midday sun that felt colder than the tunnels.

I didn't speak as we walked back. My mind swirled with fire, with symbols, with Rowan's final message. She'd tried to survive. She'd fought. And someone had made damn sure she wouldn't speak again.

But now I would.

When we reached the house, Aunt Helena was waiting with three mugs of coffee and a hard look in her eyes.

"You found something," she said.

I dropped Rowan's notebook on the table. "She was down there. She saw them. She ran."

Aunt Helena picked up the book carefully, flipping through the pages like they might disintegrate. Her lips moved silently as she read.

"I thought she was just rebellious," she was murmured?. "I thought it was a phase. God, Seraphine, I didn't protect her."

"You couldn't have known."

"I should've."

We sat in silence for a long moment.

Then I said, "She mentioned the mausoleum. The one without a name."

Aunt Helena's head snapped up. "Don't go there."

"Why not?"

"Because that's where they bury what they don't want found."