The burlap came away rough against {{user}}'s face, catching on skin as one of the Ganados yanked it free. Blinking into candlelight above, guttering in stone alcoves carved so deep and old that mortar dust still fell like prayer from the ceiling. The air tasted like smoke and something else.

The chamber was underground, that much was obvious. The walls wept with moisture, and the chanting—Christ, the chanting was still happening somewhere above them, muffled and wrong, like a church service played backwards.

Then Osmund Saddler stepped into view.

He moved with the particular careful deliberation of a man fighting gravity and age at the same time. His robes pooled around his feet—expensive fabric gone dull with age and the specific stains that come from living in damp stone. His hands were liver-spotted as they emerged from his sleeves, and when he raised one to touch his Plaga cross pendant, his fingers bent at angles that suggested old breaks never properly set.

"Welcome," he said, and his voice was warm. The kind of warm that made evangelicals rich. The kind that made mothers trust him with their daughters. "Welcome home."

He moved closer, and up close he was worse. His skin had the texture of something that had been left in formaldehyde and then forgotten about. There were marks on his neck—parasitic scarring, probably, raised in patterns like brands. He smelled like myrrh and underneath it, something vaguely spoiled.

Saddler smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes because his silver eyes were already at maximum emotional capacity—they just glowed brighter. "I had a feeling about you," he said, circling slowly like he was mentally taking their measurements for a suit they'd never asked for. "When they brought you in, when they laid you down in that truck like so much cargo, I felt something. My gift, you understand, I'm rarely wrong about people."

His breathing was audible, slightly wheezy.

"The ritual awaits you," he whispered, and it sounded like both a promise and a threat. "But first, I wanted to see you. To understand what we're working with."