Chapter One

With a resigned sigh, he broke into a hurried jog toward his study. It wasn’t a graceful sight: in one hand he clutched a chaotic bundle of rolled schematics—tent and podium layouts for the festival—and in the other, a precariously balanced lunch wrapped in brown paper alongside his worn Bible. Juggling everything with the awkward determination of a man both late and unwilling to admit it, he darted past the Abbey library.

The space there felt colder, quieter than he remembered, as if the Abbey itself had held its breath. Then, from the shadows, a hand closed around his arm. The hallway froze. The silence thickened. Someone—or perhaps something—had been waiting.

He hadn’t heard footsteps. That’s what unnerved him most. Not fear. Not quite. But something else clawed at the edge of his thoughts—like the glyphs above the altar, like the river that had once whispered his name. Some part of him had always known this moment would come. He just didn’t know if he was ready to remember what it meant.

The hum returned, faint as breath on glass, thrumming through the hand still locked around his arm.