The first vine tore free from Eleanor's forearm with a sound like parchment ripping, taking strips of her bark-flesh with it in wet, fibrous strands. Blood—thick and dark as mulberry wine—welled in the grooves left behind, pooling in the whorls of her skin before dripping onto the chapel floor. Each drop hissed as it struck the bone tiles, sending up curls of smoke that smelled of burning hair and forgotten birthdays.
Mira's hymn stuttered as the vines threading through her body went suddenly taut. Her head snapped up, black eyes reflecting the chapel's shuddering walls as they pulsed like a living throat preparing to swallow them whole. The teeth in the windows chattered wildly, their enamel cracking under the strain of some unseen pressure.
The crow launched itself from Eleanor's shoulder with a raucous cry, its wings beating against the thickening air as it circled the nave. "Faster!" it shrieked, its voice splintering into a dozen different tones—some human, some not. "Before it takes root!"
Eleanor's shears trembled in her grip, their blades now blackened as if dipped in ink. She could feel the chapel's truth worming its way into her marrow—the awful understanding that this place had never been a sanctuary. It was a mouth. A hungry, gaping maw that had been chewing on their suffering since the first stone was laid.
The second cut came harder.
She sliced through a vine as thick as her wrist, its surface studded with tiny, tooth-like thorns. The moment the shears bit deep, the chapel screamed—a sound so vast it seemed to come from the earth itself. The walls peeled back like scorched skin, revealing the wet, glistening tissue beneath—veined with pulsing roots that throbbed in time with Eleanor's own frantic heartbeat.
Mira collapsed forward, her body folding like a discarded marionette as the vines retracted from her mouth in slick, writhing coils. They left behind something small and shining on her tongue—a single pearl, its surface etched with a name Eleanor didn't recognize.
"Yours," Mira gasped, her voice raw. "From the first garden."
The crow dove, snatching the pearl in its beak before Eleanor could react. It perched on the altar, cocking its head as it studied the tiny sphere clutched in its talons. Then—with deliberate slowness—it swallowed the pearl whole.
The effect was instantaneous.
The crow's feathers molted in a single, shuddering burst, revealing the slick, pink flesh beneath. Its beak split down the middle, peeling back to reveal rows of tiny, needle-like teeth. And when it spoke again, the voice that emerged was horribly, unmistakably human.
"Hello, Eleanor," it said—and the cadence was her own, plucked straight from her childhood. "Did you really think you could cut us out?"
Outside, the orchard erupted in a chorus of wails as every transformed villager turned toward the chapel in unison. The butcher's oak tore its roots from the earth with a sound like snapping bone. The midwife's swarm of bees coalesced into a screaming face. And beneath it all, the ground split open—not in anger, but in welcome.
The first pale fingers breached the soil as the forgotten children began to climb.