CHAPTER 2: THE SOUND INSIDE THE COFFIN

Silence swallowed the chapel.

Even breathing felt loud.

Elena didn’t move.

Neither did anyone else.

Then it came again.

A sound so faint most people almost missed it.

Knock.

Not from outside.

From inside the coffin.

A woman in the back gasped.

Someone dropped a phone.

Mark froze completely.

“That’s impossible…” Sarah whispered.

Elena stepped back immediately.

“Do you hear it now?” she said, voice breaking. “Do you hear it?!”

Then—

Knock.

Knock.

Clearer this time.

Real.

The funeral director stumbled forward, panic breaking through his professional mask.

“Open it. Now.”

Two attendants rushed in.

Mark tried to stop them.

“Don’t—this is insane!”

But it was already too late.

The casket locks clicked.

The lid lifted slowly.

And for a moment—

No one breathed.

Emily lay inside.

Pale.

Still.

Too still.

Then a faint movement.

A twitch in her fingers.

A shallow rise in her chest.

“She’s… breathing,” someone whispered.

A medic pushed through the crowd, pressing fingers to her neck.

Then shouted:

“Pulse! Weak—but she has a pulse!”

Chaos exploded.

“Call an ambulance!”

“Move! Give her air!”

“Don’t let her close the lid!”

Elena staggered backward, shaking, tears streaming down her face.

“I told you…” she whispered. “I told you…”

As Emily was rushed out of the chapel, the room that once held a funeral…

had turned into a rescue scene.

And no one understood how the dead had almost been buried alive.

Except one stranger.