Alex and Mira exchange the briefest possible glance — the kind that contains an entire marriage negotiation — and follow. Vesna moves through the dark with the confidence of someone who has never once considered that darkness might be an obstacle. She produces a torch from her coat pocket without breaking stride, illuminating a low passage behind the altar that smells of cold earth and something that might be borscht. Alex has to crouch. Mira, fractionally shorter, does not, and she acknowledges this fact with zero expression. The passage ends at a second door, older than the chapel by the look of it, which Vesna unlocks with a key produced from somewhere inside her coat. Beyond it: warm amber light, the smell of woodsmoke, and a room that — given the outside dimensions of the chapel — should not exist at all. A pot simmers on a small iron stove. There are two chairs, as if she was expecting company.