Finn followed the missing men back to their homes while James held the shrine.
The houses told the same story, but the wives did not.
Finn found work tools abandoned mid-task: a plane left in a half-finished cut, boots by the door with the laces still tied, and a meal gone cold and furred over on the table.
None of it looked like a man who had packed, planned, and chosen to leave. It looked like someone had stood up in the middle of his life and walked out.
The strongest clue waited in the home of the most recent man to vanish.
His wife let Finn in because she was too tired to refuse. When he asked whether her husband had received anything from the Saintess, she went quiet before pulling a folded strip of cloth from the pocket of a coat hanging by the door.
The cloth had once been red, but now it had darkened almost to black. Stitched into it, small and neat, was the curved cross from the shrine.
