She opens the stone door that leads into the wine cellar. Reaching back, she takes your hand and pulls you into the dark. For the first time in years, you feel like a child. You get a death grip on her hand as she leads you down, one step at a time. A few times you stumble, but she’s there, braced to keep you upright. Sightless, your other senses start to sharpen. There’s a smell like cinnamon. Your mother’s fragrance. Occasionally, your arm rubs against the bracelet of obsidian symbols that always dangles on her wrist. The air is damp.

But it’s the sound that sends a chill down your spine.

Rising up from the very stones, you can hear a distant howl. It sounds like it’s coming from another world. Mother’s grip on your hand tightens, as if she senses your desire to run. She keeps hold of your hand and leads you through a section of the house you never knew existed.

After several more passages, she stops and lights a candle. She sets the light in your trembling hands and kneels. Squinting, you finally see the obsidian knife she’s carrying. She speaks in a whisper. “This way is now yours to travel.”

Your eyes widen as she slips the sharp point over her palm. Blood drips down to the eager stones. Blood sacrifice is common among your people. How often have you seen gods and their vessels walking the streets or crowded around their temples? It isn’t uncommon, but you’ve never heard Mother or Father talk of the gods as anything more than allies. Before you can figure out what’s happening or what all of this means, the stones at your feet groan to life.

The floor—blank just a moment before—blooms with pattern and color.

You nearly drop the candle as your mother moves back to your side. Both of you watch invisible hands finish their ancient pattern. Fractured light shivers over the symbols; then the circle coughs smoke into the air. You watch as the floor vanishes and reveals a secret passage. Mother leads you down it with an undeniable sureness. She has walked this path before.

You also have the sense that the air has gone silent. Just seconds before, it must have been filled with noise, but now the quiet has taken its place, and the quiet is somehow louder than any noise could ever be. You follow her until your candle casts its light on an altar.

A figure waits beyond: The Madness.