Time had lost all meaning in that place. Ash couldn't tell if he'd been suspended there for hours or days—hunger and thirst should have consumed him, but his body felt strangely detached, as if the normal rules of existence had been suspended along with his physical form. The only constant was fear, raw and consuming, that gnawed at what remained of his sanity.
He wept often. Silent tears that traced cold paths down his cheeks before dripping into the filth below. The chamber reeked of decay and something else—something sweet and cloying that made his stomach turn even in his numbed state. Human waste, old blood, and the unmistakable stench of death layered the air so thickly it felt solid.
But it was the things that moved through the darkness that truly terrified him.
They came and went with mechanical precision, these creatures that wore the shape of men but carried no trace of life within them. Their movements were wrong—too fluid, too purposeful, lacking the small imperfections that marked living beings. The temperature dropped noticeably when they passed close enough, as if warmth fled from their presence.
Their skin was the colour of old parchment left too long in damp places, stretched tight over bones that seemed too angular to be human. Where eyes should have been, only smooth depressions remained, yet somehow they navigated the chamber with perfect awareness. Their fingers ended in nails grown long and yellow, clicking against stone as they moved. The absence where mouths should have been was most disturbing—just more of that pale, seamless flesh.
Daily, they brought new captives. Children, mostly children, were carried unconscious or semiconscious, dragged. Boys and girls who looked to be around Ash's age, though in the dim light it was difficult to be certain. They were also crucified as him.
The strangest part was that none of them seemed to weaken. No food or water passed their lips, yet somehow, they endured. Ash could feel nothing below his neck, no sensation of ropes or chains, no awareness of his own body—but his capacity for consciousness remained sharp and terrible.
During certain intervals, something changed in the creatures' behaviour. They would stop their methodical movements and kneel in unison, their eyeless faces turned toward some unseen presence. From the smooth flesh where their mouths should have been, crimson tears would seep, tracking down their cheeks like trails of liquid sorrow. In these moments, a sound would rise from the depths below—a chorus of voices so distant and distorted that the words, if there were words, remained incomprehensible. The melody, if it could be called that, spoke of grief so profound it seemed to emanate from the stones themselves.
Ash learned to dread these moments. The sound burrowed into his mind, planting seeds of despair that bloomed into visions of things he couldn't name but instinctively feared. During the chorus, the air itself seemed to thicken, pressing against his consciousness like a physical weight.
Then came the day when movement began.
Four of the pale creatures approached him with the same mechanical purpose they brought to all their tasks. But instead of the usual inspection or arrangement of new arrivals, they began to detach him.
Around him, the same process was taking place. Dozens of children were being freed from their suspended torment, only to be transferred to new restraints. Four of the creatures lifted each cross, moving with the coordinated efficiency of a machine designed for this specific purpose.
They began to walk.
The narrow corridor that had seemed to define the limits of their prison gradually widened as other passages joined theirs. With each convergence, their procession grew larger. Ash could hear the rhythmic shuffle of countless feet, the creak of wood under weight, and the soft sounds of barely conscious children being carried toward some unknown destination.
The temperature began to rise.
At first, it was merely noticeable—a gradual warming that might have been welcome if the circumstances had been different. But as they descended deeper into whatever structure contained them, the heat became oppressive. The stone walls around them began to emit a faint luminescence, a dull red-orange glow that pulsed with disturbing regularity.
With the light came sound. A rhythm that seemed to emanate from the walls themselves, like a massive heartbeat echoing through stone and earth. Over this base pulse, other sounds layered—a melody that was neither music nor speech but something that bypassed rational thought entirely and spoke directly to the primitive parts of the mind that recognized predators in the dark.
Ash's pain, which had been a constant but manageable presence, began to intensify. The cross seemed to grow heavier, pressing down on his already battered body with increasing force. His head pounded in time with the wall's pulse, and his vision began to blur around the edges.
Then the corridor opened into vastness.
The hall that received their procession defied immediate comprehension. Ash's mind struggled to process the scale of what lay before him—a space so large that a thousand people could have stood comfortably within it, yet designed with such malevolent purpose that comfort was clearly the furthest thing from its creators' intentions.
The architecture suggested the interior of some enormous creature's mouth. The walls curved inward with organic smoothness, ribbed with what might have been bone or simply stone carved to resemble it. The overall effect was of being swallowed, of passing down the throat of something vast and hungry.
Heat radiated from every surface. The air shimmered with it, making distant details waver like mirages. Ash could feel sweat beading on his forehead, the first physical sensation he'd experienced clearly since his capture.
The ceiling stretched impossibly high above them, supported by pillars that were works of art and horror in equal measure. Each column was carved from what appeared to be a single massive stone, shaped into writhing masses of bodies—human and inhuman forms twisted together in eternal struggle. The figures seemed to strain upward with desperate strength, as if the entire weight of the ceiling rested on their collective effort. Their faces, where faces could be distinguished from the chaotic mass, were contorted with expressions of agony and determination.
But it was the ceiling itself that proved most disturbing. Painted across its surface were murals that seemed to move when observed directly. The imagery was alien and complex, depicting beings and events that Ash's mind refused to properly process. Looking at them for more than a few seconds caused his eyes to water and sting, as if the images themselves were somehow toxic to human perception.
From ceiling to floor, a massive structure dominated the center of the hall. It pulsed with rhythmic motion, a heart-like organ the size of a building that beat with wet, organic sounds. Vessels spread from it across the floor like arteries, connecting to smaller receptacles arranged in concentric circles around the central mass.
The floor itself was a nightmare of practical horror. Hundreds of basin-shaped depressions had been carved into the stone, each one filled with a thick, dark liquid that might have been oil or something far worse. The substance moved with its own current, flowing in patterns that followed no physical law Ash could recognize.
Surrounding this central area, tiers of stone seating rose toward the walls like the galleries of some perverse amphitheater. As their procession entered the hall, those seats began to fill with figures in dark robes. Their faces were hidden behind masks that gleamed with patterns of red light, symbols that hurt to look at directly.
One by one, the crosses were lowered into the basin-shaped receptacles. The dark liquid was thick enough to support the weight, but as Ash's cross was positioned, he felt the substance seeping through his clothes, coating his skin with an oily film that burned like acid while somehow failing to damage.
His mind felt increasingly foggy, thoughts scattered whenever he tried to focus on his situation. The heat, the pulsing light, the overwhelming wrongness of everything around him—it all combined to create a state of consciousness that was part terror, part delirium.
The hall continued to fill. More processions arrived through other entrances, carrying more crosses, more children. The galleries above were filled with more robed watchers. The organic heartbeat grew louder, more insistent, until it seemed to synchronise with Ash's own pulse.
Then the drums began.
The sound was massive, resonant, seeming to rise from the very stones around them. Under its driving beat, several of the robed figures descended from their elevated positions and approached the central altar.
Their movements were ceremonial, practised, each step placed with the precision of long ritual. As they drew closer to the pulsing heart-structure.
Whatever was about to happen, it had been planned for a very long time.
The ceremony was beginning.
One of the robed figures stepped forward to the central platform. Taller than the others, its mask was shaped like a human face stretched into a permanent expression of mute agony—mouth agape, yet no sound emerging from it. The glowing symbols across its mask pulsed slowly, in time with the monstrous heart behind it.
The figure raised a hand, and the drums fell silent. In the stillness, only the pulsing of the heart and the low, ceaseless hum of the hymn remained.
Then it spoke.
Its voice was wrong. Not deep, not high—just wrong. Like something impersonating a human. It was flat and toneless, yet somehow every syllable hammered against Ash's mind with nauseating weight.
"We were not born to crawl beneath the sky like cattle. We were meant to breach the skin of this world and taste what lies beyond the membrane of reason. But the womb of this false existence is thick. It resists. It forgets."
The figure turned slowly, addressing the full crowd—the robed figures in the gallery, the helpless children suspended like sacrifices in tubs of slow-burning oil.
"We remember. We offer remembrance through flesh, through pain, through purity uncorrupted by years and thought. These children, unformed, unspoiled, are the keys. Bone and blood, burnt and broken, are the prayers that open His eye."
The audience remained deathly silent. No cheers. No chants. Just breathless, reverent stillness.
"When his eye opens, we shall not ask for mercy. We shall not beg for salvation. We offer Him nothing but truth. And from His awakening will come the unravelling of the lie we call life. It is not death we call down. It is clarity."
With a final gesture, the speaker turned and placed both hands against the heaving surface of the heart. The flesh split at its touch—not torn, but peeled, as though eager to comply.
A gout of dark, arterial blood erupted forth.
It poured like a wave across the altar and into the basins surrounding it. The thick, oil-like liquid already around Ash mixed with the dark red flood, churning and bubbling.
The hymn rose into a fevered pitch, now sung in a language no human mouth should have formed. The robed watchers began to sway in their seats. Some trembled, others convulsed. A few let out animalistic howls that echoed through the chamber like the screams of something halfway between human and beast.
Then the burning began.
Ash barely registered the moment it started. The oily fluid beneath him had grown hot before—but now it surged with unnatural heat, crawling under his skin, setting every nerve alight. It was not fire in the traditional sense. His flesh did not blacken or blister. Instead, it peeled away slowly and meticulously as if something intelligent were unravelling him fibre by fibre.
He screamed.
They all did.
A cacophony of agony filled the chamber as each child—dozens, perhaps hundreds—was immolated not by flame, but by ritual. The burning was spiritual as much as physical, a terrible fusion of body and soul being torn down to their most basic essence.
Ash's mind fractured.
He saw things.
Not visions. Not hallucinations. Truths. Rotting cities stand beneath skies of boiling blood. Oceans inverted into endless skies. A sun that blinked like an eye and wept children made of teeth. He saw the masked figures unmasked—revealed not as demons or monsters, but as humans who had traded their faces for silence, their minds for memory, and their hope for access to a knowledge that should never have existed.
And then... in the centre of it all, it began to form.
A mass of sinew and bone, writhing and churning in the air, the altar formed from the pooled agony of the sacrifices. It did not emerge—it coalesced. An amalgamation of filth, of discarded organs and screaming mouths and twitching limbs, built without symmetry or sense. Eyes opened across its surface—too many eyes, blinking independently, weeping black fluid. It pulsed in time with the heart that had birthed it.
The robed figures fell to their knees. Some tore at their own flesh in ecstasy. Others offered up their masks like offerings to the newborn horror.
And the hymn climaxed.
It wasn't a sound anymore—it was pressure. A wave of force and awareness that smashed against Ash's consciousness like a tidal wave. His thoughts, his memories, and his self were peeled back, examined, and judged.
He felt something reach into him.
Something cold.
Something vast.
It wasn't malicious. It wasn't kind. It simply was—a presence so alien, so all-encompassing, that emotion and identity became meaningless concepts in its wake. It wasn't evil. It was a function. And in that final moment, Ash understood one thing:
This thing was not being worshipped.
It had been imprisoned.
And they had just set it free.
A final scream tore itself from his throat, raw and cracked, as his body dissolved into the churning chaos. And in that last instant before blackness claimed him, he saw the impossible—
The creature is smiling.
Not with a mouth. Not with a face. But with the totality of its form. A grin formed from thousands of unblinking eyes.
Then darkness.