From the ruin of the altar, the Darkness answers. What emerges is not a god, but a living absence—an intelligence of void and stars that drinks meaning itself. The priest recoils, the nun exults, and the children stand transfixed as the underworld finally reveals the thing it has been waiting to become.

In the choking darkness of the underworld, a broken priest and a fanatic nun advance through the catacombs, their torch cutting a wound of fire through rot and skulls. In her arms, the child becomes both offering and omen, while behind them the shadows of the damned stretch toward something that has begun to wake.