Colm collects his pay at the Ardglass Guild for escorting a farmer's goat. He gets eleven copper instead of the posted fifteen, because the farmer docked him four after the goat ate Colm's hat and got a stomachache. While he's at the counter, he overhears a tipsy woman named Mags talking about her friend Tobin's discovery: a new dungeon in the north end of Moonlight Grove that isn't in the log book. Tobin's familiar went all the way through without trouble, and he's reporting it to the Guild tomorrow. Colm memorizes the directions, past the charcoal pits to a rock split down the middle, and runs back to camp.

By Guild law, no one can go into a dungeon until the Guild rates it, but the first party inside gets the best loot. At camp, the rest of the party is out: Hedda and Pell are at a bar playing dice, and Tess is with a man she just met. Only Agnes, the party's healer and a nun of Althea, is there, hanging Colm's laundry. He pitches going in tonight, before the dungeon is reported. …

Colm and Agnes teleport to the north end of Moonlight Grove at dusk. The jump makes Colm sick, as teleporting always does, and he turns down Agnes's offer of a healing spell. The scroll drops them right where he wrote: past the charcoal pits, at a rock split down the middle with a tall metal door set inside the split. The door is covered in carvings of circles inside circles. Colm finds it strangely calming to look at.

Agnes notices a half-circle of dead, bare dirt in front of the door that gives off a faint sweet smell. She reminds Colm of his promise to turn back if anything looked wrong. He argues that the other party's familiar came out fine. She answers, "Familiars don't breathe," and he has no comeback. He agrees to turn around. Then they face the dark woods with no scroll and half a day's walk home, and he talks his way into "just one touch" to see if the door is locked.

When he touches the door, it shudders and pours out pale purple smoke that smells of the same sweetness. C…