Yuri did not sleep again. He sat upright in the small chamber behind the chapel nave, clutching the wool blanket around him like a shroud. I watched him as dawn broke pale and sickly over the mountains. His eyes were dull, wet around the edges, but not from weeping. He looked hollowed.
The mark on his brow had darkened overnight, the edges flaring out into hairline veins like ink spreading through paper. I saw movement beneath it. A twitch, like a worm beneath the skin.
He caught me staring.
"Tell me, Father," he said hoarsely, "what is this thing?"
So I told him.
Not all of it, but enough to sicken the soul.
"There are things buried beneath these mountains, Yuri. Not on the earth, but in time. Old things, older than the Church, older than the Empire. When Rome first sent missionaries north, they found more than wolves in the woods."
I opened the Codex Leonhardus, its pages cracking with damp and age.
"The sigil on your head 'Vermis Dei' translates to 'The Worm of God'. Not a worm in the dirt, but one that tunnels through memory. Through the soul. A thing that feeds on grief, on regret. It takes voices, makes them beautiful, familiar, irresistible. It calls not to the body, but to the wound inside."
Yuri shivered.
"It has no shape of its own," I continued. "It appears as what you've lost. And if you answer it, it marks you. Invite you. You do not follow it to your death, Yuri. You follow it into yourself, and you never come back out."
He looked at me then with a horrid comprehension, like a man who had remembered drowning.
Then he gagged.
I stepped forward, but too late.
Yuri lurched forward and vomited violently onto the chapel floor. What came out was not bile.
It was rats.
Small, hairless things. Wet and blind. Their tails tangled like worms in a nest. They scattered across the stone, squealing, biting, crawling toward the crucifix above the altar like they knew it should not be there.
Then he screamed.
His body convulsed, limbs cracking at unnatural angles. From his mouth came a sound like a hornet's nest and a choir singing backward. His chest ballooned, his ribs straining beneath the skin, then burst.
They poured from him.
Rats. By the dozens. No, hundreds. Red-eyed, black-backed. His flesh collapsed like a hollow sack as they tore their way free from belly, throat, eyes. One crawled from the sigil on his brow. I ran.
I made it for Kolgerson's barn, barefoot, soaked in blood, not mine. I don't know how long I sat in the hay. The horses had fled. The snow howled outside.
Then
BANG.
The barn doors slammed once. Then again. Then silence.
I did not breathe.
Then I heard him. My father.
"Bene," came his voice. Calm. Familiar. "Come now. Enough hiding. We're waiting. Supper's hot, and your mother made that beetroot stew you used to love."
I trembled.
"You'll catch your death out there. Come, son. Just this once."
And then I was walking.
I do not remember choosing to stand. But the barn doors opened, and I stepped into a night that had gone utterly still. No wind. No sound. Just snow.
I followed the sound of his voice.
Through the pine. Past the stone with the rune. To the place no one goes.
Behind the veil of frozen moss, a waterfall, hidden and still. And behind it
A cave.
I entered.
There was light. Candlelight, though no flame burned. Just a glow that hummed like breath. And a table. Laid with cloth, dishes, silver cutlery once belonging to my mother.
They were all there.
My family. Mother. Sister. Cousins. My father at the head.
They smiled. Even those without heads.
Katica sat armless, her neck open to bone, smiling with lips she no longer had.
"Come, sit," said my father. "You're just in time."
A dish was placed before me. Covered in a polished silver dome.
I lifted the lid.
Inside was Yuri's severed head.
His eyes were gone. His mouth hung open, and from it spilled writhing rats, twitching, squealing. Blood pooled in the dish, thick as tar. One of the rats looked at me and whispered in my voice:
"Why didn't you stop it?"
I screamed. But then I felt the back of my skull cave in with a sudden crack.
Darkness.
I woke at dawn.
Sitting on a bench near the chapel, breath steaming in the Alpine air. My whole body. The snow is undisturbed.
Yuri sat beside me.
His clothes are clean. His face serene. No sign of the mark.
He was watching the mountains.
The silence between us lasted a long time.
Then, without turning, he asked:
"Father… why do you have the mark now?"
I ran to the chapel.
I lit every candle. I burned sage. I poured every vial of holy water until the floor stank of iron and smoke. Then I checked the mirror.
And there it was.
Just above my brow. Faint, but growing.
The Worm has turned its gaze.
God help me.