The mid1920s Dublin slums smolder with
unresolved tensions. A widow, Eileen, tends to
her son while working as a laundress. Her
husband, a republican printer, died in 1921
during a botched ambush. She keeps his old
ledger, filled with coded notes and a faded map
of the city’s underground waterways.
In 1923, a man arrives at her door—Seamus, a
former comrade turned enemy. He claims the
ledger holds proof of a secret deal between her
husband and a shadowy figure who promised
protection in exchange for a family heirloom.
The heirloom, a silver cross, is now missing
from her home.
Eileen discovers the cross hidden beneath the
floorboards of her late father’s cottage in
County Kildare. When she touches it, the ground
trembles. The soil shifts, revealing a stone
doorway leading into the earth. She descends,
finding a subterranean chamber where the air
hums with ancient energy. A carved tree stands
at the center, its roots entwined with iron
chains.
Seamus follows. He reveals he was once part of
the same cell as her husband. The pact was to
bind the family to the land, but the price was
blood. The cross was a key to seal the boundary
between the living and the dead. Now, with the
seal broken, the spirits of those killed in the
war are rising.
Eileen’s son, Liam, begins sleepwalking, drawn
to the forest where the first rebels were buried.
He speaks in a voice not his own, warning of a
coming storm. The land reacts—crops fail,
livestock die, and the river runs red. Eileen
must choose: return the cross and risk losing
her son to the other side, or let the spirits
roam free and face the wrath of the living.
She returns the cross, but the ritual requires a
sacrifice. Seamus offers himself, believing he
is the true heir. The ground swallows him. The
land stills. Eileen and Liam return to Dublin,
the past sealed—but the weight of what they’ve
seen lingers in the silence between them.
