She doesn't come back.

  None of them come back.

  We wait. All of us. The hours stretch into what might be a day, might be longer. No way to tell time here. Sarah's fever gets worse. The heat radiates from her skin, the water in her body fighting something it can't defeat. The twins don't move or speak, barely seem to breathe. Daniel stares at the wall.

  The corner where the counting girl used to sit is empty now. Silent.

  Her voice keeps playing in my head. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

  Somewhere in this building, they're doing things to her. Things that will either kill her or break what little is left.

  Back pressed against the cold stone, waiting for my turn.

  They come for me the next morning.

  Two guards. And behind them, a woman.

  Pale blue dress. Delicate, clean and pressed, utterly wrong for this place of stone and blood. Her face is the kind you'd trust to watch your children. Never suspect.

  "Come," she says. "He wants to see you."

  Daniel watches me go. His face is pale.

  "Fight," he whispers. "Whatever they do. As long as you can."

  They lead me through corridors I try to memorize.

  Left turn. Twelve steps. Right turn. Spiral stairs going up. Each detail filed away. Cataloged. Stored for when I need it. The analytical part of me is working now. Survival. Escape routes. Geography of my prison.

  But not just memorizing. Testing.

  A deliberate stumble, just a small trip. The guard on my right reaches to steady me, and his grip tells me everything. Strong but slow. Reflexes dulled, probably from years of handling prisoners who never fight back. He expects compliance. That's a weakness.

  The guard on my left doesn't even look. Attention elsewhere. Another weakness.

  Both noted.

  Old building, stones worn smooth by centuries of feet, walls bearing marks that might be water damage or might be worse. Salt crusts in the corners. The smell of brine everywhere, like the sea is trying to reclaim this place.

  Three windows on this level, too small to climb through, but they tell me we're above ground now. Seven doors, six locked, one hanging slightly ajar. Just these two guards, which means they're either confident or understaffed.

  Symbols carved into doorframes. Scratched into walls. Painted in dried blood. Or rust, perhaps. Swirling shapes that make my eyes water when I try to look at them directly. They almost seem to move. Breathe.

  My ribs ache. The pressure is stronger now—my body is responding to these symbols. Recognizing them. Answering a call I can't hear.

  Force myself to study them anyway. To find the pattern. Every language has rules. Even this one. Learn the rules, maybe learn to break them.

  The ritual chamber is full of candles.

  Hundreds of them. Candles cover every surface, crowd every corner. The space fills with honey-colored light and the thick smell of burning wax. Shadows move and jump, making the room feel alive.

  And at the center—a stone table.

  Instant recognition. The stains. The shape. Channels carved into its surface, leading to drains at the corners. The way candlelight catches on its surface, revealing layers that no amount of scrubbing could ever remove.

  Where they take the children. The counting girl came here.

  "Ah." A voice from the shadows. Soft, gentle, the voice of bedtime stories and warm milk. "There she is. Let me look at you."

  A figure emerges.

  Ancient. So old that age has stopped meaning anything. Weathered like a cliff face. Gray robes, stained with things I don't want to identify. His hands tremble with anticipation.

  And his eyes. Fog-colored and hungry.

  "Leave us," he tells the guards. "I wish to speak with her alone."

  The door closes.

  We're alone.

  "Sit." A gesture to a chair, plain wood, positioned across from another chair where he settles with the careful movements of a man whose body is failing but whose mind remains sharp. "We have much to discuss."

  Standing instead. Center of the candlelit room, arms wrapped around myself, holding his eyes.

  "Who are you?"

  "Straight to business, then. I do appreciate that in a young person." A smile, worse than his hunger. Grandfatherly. Warm. At odds with everything about this place. "My name is Thaddeus Marsh. I am the priest of this congregation. And you, Eleanor Winchester, are the most interesting offering we've had in quite some time."

  Offering.

  "Offering to what?"

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  "Now that is a question." He settles back in his chair, studying me with those pale eyes. "There is an entity in the ocean. Older than the continents. Than life itself. We call it the Deep One, though that is not its name. It has no name. Names are human things, and it is as far beyond human as we are beyond insects."

  "A god. You worship a god."

  "No." A shake of his head, and disappointment crosses his face. A teacher correcting a promising student. "Gods care about worship. Grant prayers. The Deep One does not care about us. It has never cared. It exists in a way we cannot comprehend, and it does not require our worship."

  "Then why—" A gesture at the room. The candles. The table. "Why all this?"

  "Because it does require something." Leaning forward, his eyes suddenly clear, burning with conviction. "The Deep One sleeps. Has slept for eons. But sometimes, when the tide is right, when certain preparations are made, it stirs. It notices. Then there is a connection. A door."

  "A door to what?"

  "Change. Power beyond what you can imagine." His voice drops, reverent. "The ritual isn't about killing you. It's about transformation. Opening something inside you that has been closed since humanity first crawled out of the water and forgot where it came from."

  The counting girl. Her blank eyes. Her endless rhythm.

  "Transform me into what?"

  "Most offerings fail. The connection is too much for them. The door opens, and they see what's on the other side, and they break. Their minds shatter. Their bodies follow." He almost sounds regretful. "But the ones who don't break, they become something else. Connected. Changed. They carry a piece of the Deep One inside them."

  "How many have survived?"

  Silence. Long enough that I wondered if he'd answer at all.

  Marsh's expression tightens.

  "None," he admits. "In sixty years of service to the Deep One. Not one offering has survived the ritual intact."

  "Sixty years." Letting that sink in. "Sixty years of murdering children, and your god has never once given you what you want. Has never acknowledged your existence in any meaningful way."

  The annoyance sharpens. A sore spot, found.

  Good. Angry people talk. They reveal things they shouldn't.

  "You don't understand—"

  "Then explain it to me." Voice calm. Analytical. The scholar's daughter, asking questions. While speaking, moving slowly, casually, circling the room, examining the candles. What I'm really doing is counting. One door, no windows. Twelve feet to Marsh. His mobility: poor, he moves like his joints are rusted. Objects I could use as weapons: candlesticks, the carving knife on the table behind him, the heavy book on the shelf.

  "Explain how sixty years of failure justifies continuing. Explain how hundreds of dead children were worth... what, exactly? What have you gained?"

  For a moment, something shifts in his eyes. Vulnerable.

  "We gained moments," he murmurs. "Glimpses. Brief seconds when the door cracked open and we could feel... it. Vast and terrifyingly beautiful, pressing against the edge of our reality." A whisper now. "You can't imagine what it's like. To touch an entity that has existed since before there was light in the universe. To feel, even for an instant, that you are part of the infinite."

  "And for those moments, you murder children."

  Near his chair now. I can see the ring of keys at his waist, different from the guard's set, smaller, older. A master set, maybe. Can see the papers on his desk: schedules, names, a map with locations marked in red ink.

  And I palm the small knife from the table beside him while his attention is on my face.

  Barely a blade. A letter opener, really, tarnished silver with a handle shaped like a fish. But mine now.

  "I murder nothing." His voice hardens, unaware of what I've just taken. "I offer. I prepare. I open the doors. After that, it's between the offering and the Deep One."

  "That's a convenient distinction."

  "It is the truth." Rising from his chair, crossing to the table at the center of the room. His hand traces the channels carved into its surface, the channels that carry blood to the drains. "We are not murderers, Miss Winchester. We are priests. We serve an entity greater than ourselves, than human morality, than your childish concepts of right and wrong."

  "The children you kill might disagree."

  "The children we offer," he corrects, "are given an opportunity that most humans will never have. To touch the infinite. To be seen by what is eternal." Turning back, eyes hard. "Most fail. Most break. But the possibility. The chance. That one of them might succeed, become more than human, bridge the gap between our world and what lies beneath..."

  "Is worth any number of dead children."

  "Yes." No hesitation, no shame. "Yes, it is."

  Studying me now. The grandfatherly warmth is gone, replaced by something calculating. Predatory, like a cat watching a mouse. The real Marsh, seen for the first time. A monster wearing human skin who has convinced himself that his monstrosities serve a higher purpose.

  "You're different," he says slowly. "Most offerings beg by now. Cry. Promise anything." A tilt of his head. "But you. You're analyzing this. Cataloging it. You're trying to understand."

  "Knowledge is power."

  "Yes. It is." He smiles, and there's nothing grandfatherly about it. "That's why I think you might survive."

  The words settle between us.

  "What?"

  "I've been doing this a long time, Miss Winchester. I know the signs. The offerings who break—they came in already broken. Had nothing left to fight with." He leans in. "You have fire and rage. In abundance. I could feel it the moment you walked through that door."

  "If I survive, I'll destroy you."

  "Perhaps." He doesn't seem troubled by the possibility. "But first, you'll have to survive. And that's what makes you interesting. Most offerings are lambs. Passive. Accepting. But you..." His eyes catch the candlelight. Hunger in them. "You're a wolf pretending to be a lamb. And wolves are exactly what the Deep One likes."

  He crosses to me. Reaches out with one trembling hand and touches my face. A gentle gesture, awful in its tenderness.

  "Tomorrow," he says. "When the tide is high. We'll see what you're made of."

  No flinch. Just looking back at him and letting him see exactly what I'm thinking.

  You're going to regret this. Whatever tomorrow brings, whatever I become, you're going to regret creating me.

  He smiles, reading my thoughts.

  "Perfect," he whispers. "Oh, you are special. The Deep One is going to love you."

  They take me back to the cellar.

  But not before I see one more thing.

  A door, half-open. A room beyond, lit by candles. And in that room—

  The counting girl.

  Lying on a table. Eyes open, staring at the ceiling. Not counting anymore. Doing nothing. Just lying there, perfectly still, her expression unreadable.

  Around her, the candles gutter. Symbols on the walls seem to writhe in the light, casting shadows that move in ways shadows shouldn't move.

  And one more detail. One I almost miss.

  Her chest is moving. Barely. Almost imperceptibly.

  Alive.

  But what was inside her, what made her her, the small bright thing that had survived the counting and the rocking—gone.

  Her eyes are open, but there's nothing behind them. No recognition. Just absence. A void where a person used to be.

  This is what they do. What the ritual does. It doesn't kill you. Not right away. Just empties you. Scoops out everything that makes you human and leaves behind a shell that breathes, blinks, stares at nothing.

  The guards drag me away before I can see more.

  But the image comes with me. The counting girl. Her empty eyes. A chest that moves but holds nothing inside.

  This is what they made. This is what they'll try to make of me.

  The stone floor of the cellar when they throw me back in. Daniel's questions. Sarah's labored breathing. The twins, silent. None of it registers.

  But the knife does.

  The letter opener is cold against my thigh, hidden in the folds of my dress. Too small to fight my way out. Too dull for real damage. Mine now. A tool. A possibility.

  Into the gap in the wall, the one Daniel and I have been widening, and covered with grime. If they search me, they won't find it. If I survive what comes tomorrow, it'll be waiting.

  Her face is all I see.

  The silence where her counting used to be is all I hear.

  And another promise. Not to myself this time. To her.

  I will survive. Remember your face. And make them pay for every single one.