The festival

A man returns to his ancestral town to participate in a winter solstice ceremony that predates human civilization. He is led into a subterranean cavern where a flute-playing procession worships something that cannot be named. The story evokes a sense of suffocating antiquity, revealing that the protagonist's lineage is bound to forces that dwell beneath the earth. It is a grim reminder that some family reunions are best avoided.