The bell

• Knell — the slow toll of a bell for a death. The parish rings one every minute now; there are always more dead.
• Passing bell — rung as a soul left the body, to say: pray now. Ours has begun calling something back instead.
• Toll — a single deliberate strike of the bell. Each toll of the night brings a worse congregation.
• Matins — the office sung at the end of the night, the first prayer of dawn. Survive to hear it.
• Vigil — a night spent awake and watching, traditionally beside the dead. In this parish, decidedly beside the dead.
• Vivos voco. Mortuos plango. Fulgura frango. — the old bell-founder's motto: I call the living, I mourn the dead, I break the storm. Church bells really were rung against lightning. Ours still is.

The offices

• Keeper — the one who keeps the bell, the yard, and the vigil. There used to be a parish. Now there is a keeper.
• Bellkeeper — Aldous's office: tend the bell, ring the hours, never let it fall silent. Steady hands, steady flame.
• Gravedigger — Sefa's office. Someone put all these dead in the ground the first time. She is prepared to do it again.
• Thurifer — the bearer of the censer in procession. Cosmas held the office; he holds it still, quick of foot and thin of wick.
• Verger — the church officer who carried the verge, a ceremonial rod, and kept order in processions. The first Tolling One kept his office too. He keeps it at the tenth toll.
• Sexton — the caretaker of church and churchyard: digger of graves, ringer of bells. His shade still walks the yard, arriving in ways a living man wouldn't.
• The Congregation — the gathered faithful of a parish. Theirs were the plague-pits and the pyres, and the night wasted nothing: at the last toll it walks — a golem pressed together from the ash of everyone who ever prayed here. The ash you sweep each dawn came from somewhere.

The rites

Eight instruments of the parish, turned to violence. Pair a rite with its matching relic and it evolves into something the church never sanctioned.

• Coffin Nails — nails forged to seal a lid. Thrown, now. Evolves into the Ninefold Seal.
• Censer — the swung vessel of burning incense; the smoke was prayer made visible. It orbits, and it burns. Evolves into Excommunion.
• Salt Ring — salt against evil is older than the church itself. A circle the dead regret crossing. Evolves into the Still Hour.
• Candle Ward — set candles standing on hallowed ground; the light itself keeps watch. Evolves into the Processional.
• Psalter — the book of psalms. Its pages fly loose now, and they cut. Evolves into the Litany.
• Knell — the bell's own voice as a weapon: a shockwave of mourning. Evolves into the Great Toll.
• Fulgura Frango — I break the storms. The bell's old duty against lightning, reversed: now it calls the bolts down. Evolves into Mortuos Plango.
• Asperges — from Asperges me: the sprinkling of holy water over the congregation. This congregation objects. Evolves into Vidi Aquam.

The materials

• The Wick — a keeper's life is a lit candle. Damage doesn't wound you; it gutters you. When the wick fails, the vigil ends.
• Vigil light — a candle lit for a soul. The slain release theirs; gather them, lay them to rest, grow stronger.
• Wax — mends a guttering wick, as wax does.
• Ash — what the night leaves behind. Swept up at dawn — or at the end — it buys the parish's slow restoration.
• Relic — in the church: the preserved remains of the holy. In the yard: eight keepsakes of the parish — an iron chain, a sexton's glove, a cracked hourglass, grave loam, a vial of tallow, a lectern fragment, a mourner's coin, a bell clapper — each lending its nature to your rites.
• Reliquary — the vessel that holds relics. The parish's stands between nights: spend ash there, and what you restore stays restored.
• Thurible — another word for the censer. Dropped whole and burning, it clears a churchyard. Briefly.