Chapter 8 · The Door Her Mother Left Behind

The stone ceiling was cracking.

Rin heard it before she saw it—a low groan that vibrated through her teeth, then a snap like knuckles breaking. She looked up. A jagged black line split the archway above them, dust sifting down in lazy spirals.

Kael was already moving. He grabbed her wrist and yanked her back three steps, his grip tight enough to bruise. The beam didn't fall yet. It hung there, trembling, like it was deciding.

"We need to leave," he said. His voice was flat. Controlled. The kind of calm that meant he was one second from not being calm at all.

Rin pulled her wrist free. "Not without opening that."

She pointed at the door. It was small, almost too small to notice, set into the far wall of the collapsed shrine. The wood was old, warped, the kind that should've rotted through decades ago. But it hadn't. And carved into the frame, so faint she'd almost missed it, was her mother's mark—three lines crossing at angles that meant safe house in the old courier code.

Kael looked at the door. Then at the ceiling. Then at her.

"You're serious."

"She left it here for a reason.