The Breach

History three

⸻

Scene – Post-Breach, Primordial Evil Whisper

The night pressed down around them, thick and silent except for the faint smoke curling from the sealed breach. Clement wiped soot from his hands, eyes drawn to the valley below.

“You’ve been coming through here a long time,” he said softly. “Why Moonvale?”

Roy’s gaze lingered on the shadowed streets, voice low and cautious. “Long ago, when the world was whole—Pangea—the earth cracked. A fissure tore open, jagged and endless. It didn’t just split the land… it leaked something from beneath. Something that had no form, no shape, no thought… just hunger. It poured into the soil, into the air, into the valley itself. Evil before names became a cage we live in. Evil before it could be contained.”

Clement shivered. “And the fracture… it never healed?”

Roy’s eyes darkened. “No. What’s left of it is Moonvale. The land hums with it, calls to certain creatures first—wolves, mostly. Humans came later, blind to what waits beneath. But the valley remembers… and sometimes, when it can, it whispers.”

A cold wind rattled a broken window far below, carrying a faint sigh, as if the valley itself were listening.

⸻

The valley held its breath after Roy’s words, the broken window’s sigh fading into silence.

Grace stepped forward, her eyes still fixed on the place where the breach had been sealed. “No,” she said quietly. “Not yet.”

Clement turned to her, brow furrowed. “The breach is closed.”

Grace shook her head. “It’s patched. That’s all. If we want it to hold, really hold… we can’t just lock it from here. We have to cross over. Secure it from the other side. Bind the enchantment into the heart of the fissure itself.”

Roy’s jaw tightened. “That means stepping into hell. Into the place it comes from.”

A silence fell over them, heavier than before. The valley seemed to lean closer, listening, waiting.

⸻

The last thread of smoke thinned and vanished. Grace kept her eyes on the sealed seam.

Father Clement nodded, already reaching for the brass token in his pocket. “Then we prepare a tether. Repetition, a fixed rhythm, something that doesn’t break. We go in on a count and we come out on the same count.”

Roy’s head snapped toward him. “Counts don’t hold over there.”

Clement met his stare. “Ritual does. Ceremony fixes memory. If we keep the pattern—prayer, breath, beat—we can return on the same line we entered.”

Roy shook his head, jaw tight. “You’re talking like it’s a room with a door. It isn’t. It slides. You’ll take ten steps and the ground will swear you took none. Your breath won’t sound like breath. Your metronome will turn into something with teeth.” He tapped the earth with his boot. “I’ve seen men tie ropes and come back with knots that weren’t theirs.”

Clement’s voice stayed calm, stubborn. “Then we make a better rope. Consecrated wire. The token etched with the cycle. A tone that never varies—pure frequency. We anchor it to the altar here and keep it singing.”

Roy’s eyes darkened. “Sound warps first. Smell lies second. Third is time. You think you’ll be clever and leave breadcrumbs? It eats breadcrumbs. It eats the idea of breadcrumbs.”

Clement stepped closer. “So your answer is to leave it half-done and hope it sleeps?”

“My answer is we don’t step unless we accept we might not step back,” Roy said. “Some doors aren’t doors. They’re mouths.”

Silence. The valley seemed to lean in.

Grace finally spoke, steady, cutting through. “You’re both right.” She pointed to Clement’s token. “Pattern to keep the mind from unspooling.” Then to Roy. “And teeth, so we respect what we’re walking into.”

She glanced at the sealed seam. “We braid both. A line of consecrated wire threaded with wolf hair and bell-iron. We mark every tenth beat with a cut on the line—blood remembers when numbers fail. If the sound twists, the pattern lives in the flesh. If the path shifts, the wire brings us pain before it brings us lost.”

Roy looked at the ground, then at Clement. “If it bites the line clean?”

“Then we know it never wanted us back,” Grace said. “And we go anyway—because leaving it like this is how it learns our names.”

Clement closed his hand around the token. “We prepare the braid,” he said. “Tonight.”

Roy exhaled through his teeth. “Then we prepare to be swallowed and spit out wrong.”

No one argued with the wind when it rattled the broken window again. It sounded like something counting.

⸻

The silence stretched, the broken window rattling once more before settling back into stillness. Grace knelt beside the sealed seam, fingertips brushing the cooling stone.

“Chalk won’t hold,” she said quietly. “Not against what’s in there. Symbols this close to the fracture need permanence. Paint. A brush. Something that won’t fade when the air turns wrong.”

Clement frowned. “You mean to write inside Hell itself.”

Grace nodded. “Yes. Five minutes. That’s all I’d need to set the anchors. But someone will have to keep me alive while I work.”

Roy barked a humorless laugh. “Paint a picture while the dark tries to eat us? Not much of a plan.”

Her gaze didn’t waver. “It’s the only one that works. A door that shuts halfway just teaches what’s waiting how to push harder next time.”

Clement’s hand moved to the brass token, thumb tracing its grooves. “Five minutes is long in that place.”

Grace looked at them both, voice steady. “Then you’d better decide who’s watching the door and who’s watching my back.”

The valley’s wind stirred again, low and restless as if the breach itself was listening.

⸻