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Chapter Text

“You’ll tear open the sky just to feel something divine, and when the stars don’t answer, you’ll call it fate, not failure. And when the gates finally opened, it was not angels you found.”

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You awaken face down in the grass.

There was no wind. No birds, no voice to greet you but your own breath, shallow and foreign in your lungs, as though borrowed. The ground beneath you was cold and mushy, smelling of ash, iron and something softer, something like roses long dead in a sealed tomb.

You opened your eyes and the world that greeted you was wrong.

The trees rose tall and skeletal around you, their limbs twisted upward as if in mourning, not growth. You were in a forest suspended in eerie stillness, draped in odd colours that did not belong in the waking world—ashen greys, dull silver and that unnatural magenta colour, thick like bruised petals left rotting beneath glass. Every leaf, every petal, every blade of grass was stained some shade between these colours. You sat up slowly, trembling fingers sinking into strange grass, which was soft but wrong, more like velvet than anything living. Fog thickened low across the ground, swirling white and heavy, not like mist but milk curdled in the lungs of the forest, dense and watching.

You were cold.

Not from the weather, but from the inside out.

Cold in your bones. Cold in your mind.

There was a road ahead, if it can be called that. Ivory stone tiles decorated the ground, clean and polished, laid into the dirt with surgical precision, forming a labyrinth of path that led away in every direction, nowhere and everywhere at once, like silver veins carved from old porcelain. No moss grew between the stones. No dirt clinged.

You shivered. You looked down at your hands, as if they might explain something. They were your hands. You knew that. But whose? Who were you? Your fingers rose in frantic sequence, to your chest, your throat, your cheeks, as if memory were something you could touch. As if familiarity might hide in the dip of your collarbone, in the shape of your jaw, in a mole or a scar you once claimed as home. But there was nothing. No jewelry. No mark. No tether. Only skin that felt borrowed and a body that no longer spoke your name.

Your name.

You didn’t know your name.

The realization didn’t strike like lightning. It didn’t come like a wave. It arrived like the true absence of sound. A void blooming in your chest, black and bottomless, still as death and just as certain. You didn’t know your name. The panic arrived before memory did, as though your body remembered mourning something your mind had not yet named. It wasn’t frantic. It was surgical. A theft of breath. A quiet slaughter of certainty.  

Your lungs stuttered. Your throat narrowed.

“I don’t—” your voice cracked, barely a whisper.

You rose too fast, and the world reeled with you. The skeletal forest buckled sideways, tilting like a ship lost to a storm. Trees loomed above, their limbs twisted into shapes that shouldn’t exist, like ribs cracked open, reaching to claw the heavens. But the sky offered no anchor. No sun. No moon. Just a pale expanse without pulse or warmth, as if the gods had forgotten to finish it. The branches creaked softly, whispering warnings you couldn’t quite understand.

“Hello?” you cried out into the quiet. You tried again, voice cracking. “Please—”

The fog held the word like breath held in a stranger’s mouth.

No echo. No return.

It was not the quiet of peace, but the silence of forsaken places.

Your knees gave way, and you collapsed like breath leaving a prayer, palms cradled your face as if trying to hold yourself in. A name clawed at your throat, but there was nothing there, just a shape without sound slipping through your fingers. You were shaking now, not softly, no, but violently, as though your bones were rejecting the cage of your skin, as though your heart was pounding to be set free, desperate to escape the body it no longer recognised.

You crouched there like something newly born, knuckles dug into the alien velvet grass that didn’t bend like grass should. The air smelled like time left too long in a sealed room. Stale, and wrong . Tears stung your eyes, but before they could fall—

—you heard it.

Footsteps.

Measured. Unhurried. Close.

Each one fell into the quiet like punctuation, as if they were always meant to be written there. Then, somewhere in the white, something moved. It arrived with precision, with weight, with the patience of something that had never been hunted. It stepped from the fog as if the world itself had been waiting for you to see it. A silhouette began to form.

And when the fog thinned, you saw it—

—saw him.

A man. Or something like one. He seemed wrong in the details.

Too smooth. Too silent. Too deliberate.

He wasn’t tall. No, he did not need to be. He wore black from neck to toe. Velvet shirt tucked into tailored trousers pressed too perfectly, patent leather shoes that gleamed like mirrors and carried no sound, and over it all, a black cloak with a wide hood that swallowed most of him in shadow. And where his face should have been there was a mask, thick and ornate, sculpted from gold and lacquered black, decorated with strange symbols, like something ceremonial or holy, except it wasn’t. The mask didn’t cover his entire face, his mouth was visible through the vertical slits, his eyes and jawline were visible too, but that made him look much more haunting. It was too still. It looked fused to his skull. There were no visible straps or seams. Just polished metal where a face should be.

Only the suggestion of death dressed up like a man.

And he was looking right at you.

You gasped, your body pulling backward on instinct, feeling like a specimen pinned open on a silver tray. The uncanny man stopped just a few steps from you, tilting his head curiously. Not dramatically, not even threateningly, no, but something about the angle was unmistakably predatory, like the way a cat turns its head before it pounces.

“Did you call?” he asked.

The voice was soft, surprisingly warm, but that only made things worse. He spoke as though he were reciting something from memory, not really feeling it, mimicking a peculiar accent of the human kind. Like sound made through teeth not meant for language. You blinked, breath caught in your throat, unable to form a word.

He took another step forward. But not in threat. In curiosity.

And now he was looking down at you.

“Interesting,” he murmured.

The word wasn’t for you.

It was a finding, not a greeting.

“Who—who are you?” you managed to whisper, your voice breaking like a dropped glass.

He stepped to the side and began to walk around you in a perfect, measured arc, circling you. You turned to follow his movements, your body frozen, your limbs stuck between flight and collapse. His polished shoes whispered against the ivory stone.

“You may call me IV,” he said at last.

You stared.

That name meant nothing. It was a number. A placeholder. A cipher.

“What is this place?” you whispered, barely audible. “Why can’t I remember anything?”

He stopped walking.

“You remember how to speak,” he said. “That is not nothing.”

The words came gently, almost like kindness, but they didn’t comfort you, no, they made you shudder instead. His words felt like the patient assurance of something that knew what you were made of, because it had taken others apart.

“Don’t come closer, please—”

Your voice broke as he crouched.

The movement was seamless. It was perfectly graceful, in the same way a snake descending a tree is graceful, uninterrupted and fluid. Effortless. Boneless even. His knees bent too evenly. Like his body wasn’t governed by the same physics as yours, as though it remembered the shape of bones, but no longer needed them.

You looked up through your tears, and the gold of his mask caught the fractured light of this godless forest. It  hovered above your face now, and through the thin slits near the mouth, you saw the faintest stretch of movement. A smile, maybe. But it never touched his eyes.

His gaze held something else, something fondly clinical. The way a scientist might speak to a wounded thing in a jar. He looked at you like he pitied you. Or was it sadness? You couldn’t tell, not with the mask hiding most of him, not with those blue eyes so terribly distant, like someone watching you from underwater. But there was something undeniably melancholy in the way he watched you, as though observing something that had already begun to crumble.

“Please,” a pitiful sniff followed your plea. “Can you help me?”

IV didn’t answer immediately.

Instead, he studied you, his blue eyes guarded yet openly curious, as if weighing something important, something that would change the shape of this moment forever. You could almost hear your pulse, and the way the forest watched it throb behind your ears. It was unbearable. 

Finally, IV spoke. “Come with me, then.”

You blinked, confusion mixing with dread.

“Where?”

He didn’t respond. Instead, he tilted his head again, this time with a subtle shift of his posture that seemed amused. Still, his gaze remained fixed on you.

Every instinct screamed at you to run and to tear through the lifeless trees, to disappear into the endless fog and hope that somehow you’d find something familiar, something safe. But your feet wouldn’t move. There was nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. Only this eerie forest, this unsettling stranger, and the profound loneliness that coiled around you like a noose.

Slowly, reluctantly, you stood.

Your legs trembled beneath you, weak with a fear that burrowed down to your bones, but you forced yourself upright, swiping the back of your hand across your damp cheeks.

IV wasn’t much taller than you, but his presence loomed large in its intensity. Like a shadow cast by something monstrous and ancient, something that didn’t live in this world. His mouth still curved gently, as though he found your hesitation strangely endearing.

Without another word, he turned and began walking ahead.

His cloak trailed behind him, not dragging but floating just slightly above the fog, kissing the tiles, leaving you to follow in awkward silence. You stumbled slightly at first, your limbs still numb with dread, but quickly scrambled to match his pace. Your breath hitched as your bare feet met the polished and cold stone tiles beneath you, each step feeling like a judgment from the ground itself. So you sniffed again and quickened your steps, falling into a clumsy stride beside him, trying to match his pace.

As you moved, you glanced around desperately, trying to memorize your odd surroundings, trying to absorb. To remember. To understand. But the forest remained stubbornly unfamiliar. There was nothing here. No animals. No sky. No smell of rain, no sound of wind. Only fog, and ruin, and the haunting bloom of magenta that stained everything like a parasite. Broken fountains lined the path, silent and dry, ancient ruins crumbled quietly in every direction and the shattered remnants of statues. Their marble bodies leaned in uncanny angles, some frozen mid-prayer, others mid-scream.

“Where are you taking me?” you finally dared to ask, voice trembling.

IV hummed quietly, almost thoughtful. “Somewhere safe.”

He offered no further explanation.

You tried to ignore the creeping sensation that something watched you from the fog, eyes you couldn’t see yet felt acutely. Shadows flickered at the edge of your vision, shapes danced and dissolved in the mist, making you flinch more often than you’d admit. It was impossible to shake the feeling that this forest observed you with hungry curiosity.

Eventually, the trees began to fall away and the forest opened into a clearing so large the fog couldn’t even hold it all. It spilled into it like milk into a bowl, veiling the edges of the world until distance itself became meaningless. At its heart stood an massive cathedral, so immense and surreal that your breath caught sharply in your throat. Ancient stones rose high and stark, entwined with thick vines of grey and vivid magenta. It rose out of the earth like the skeleton of a god. Towering spires reached upward, sharp and ambitious, piercing the ashen sky as if attempting to breach the heavens themselves. Its glass windows were stained, but not with saints. They shimmered faintly despite the oppressive gloom, and banners of deep green and faded beige, embroidered with intricate symbols in tarnished gold thread, hung still.

You halted, awe and terror mixing uncomfortably in your chest.

You didn’t even see the top of the building.

It stretched so impossibly high that the spires disappeared into the fog, swallowed whole by the pale sky. It felt less like a structure and more like a monument to something the world had chosen to forget, something ancient, sacred, and wrong.

IV had stopped walking.

“What is this place?” you whispered

He turned back toward the cathedral, his voice calm and steady, filled with quiet reverence and a hint of something deeper, darker. As if he had brought others before.

He held your stare for a long moment. Then, without turning back to face you fully, he said, “This is where you will belong. If my brothers agree.”

You repeated the word under your breath, frowning faintly.

“Your… brothers?”

With those words, he resumed walking, leaving you with no choice but to follow, your heart aching with uncertainty. Like slipping beneath water and not knowing how deep it goes. Each step toward those towering doors felt like descending into an unknown abyss from which you feared you might never emerge.

IV moved like this place answered to him. Like the stones beneath his feet knew his weight, like he’d walked these tiles a thousand times, and you were just another shadow behind him. The entrance loomed higher the closer you came, until they weren’t doors but gates, massive slabs of carved black wood, etched with runes you could not read.

They opened before he could touch them.

It was worse inside.

The cathedral was impossibly vast. Cold and hollow, as though built by something that had only ever imagined humanity, but had never loved it.

The air inside was heavy and thick with the scent of wax, old wood, and something coppery beneath, a metallic tang, like blood held too long in a chalice. The walls were tall, constructed of dark stone and from them hung rows of banners in emerald greens, stitched with more of those strange symbols. Candles burned in impossible quantities. Hundreds. Maybe thousands. Pools of melted wax stained the floors in ribbons of ivory. Their flames danced in patterns that felt intentional, like they were reacting to your heartbeat. Enormous staircases curved in directions that defied logic, vanishing into alcoves and narrow corridors you hadn’t noticed a moment before. Marble columns lined the nave like the ribs of some old beast. Wilted petals littered the floor, silvers and dull lilacs, and their smell was overpowering.

Your head turned and turned but nothing stuck. You couldn’t even recall where the doors had been now. The halls branched endlessly, spiralling staircases and empty alcoves and yawning arches that led to nowhere. You saw statues, some with missing limbs, others with bleeding eyes. Most had no clear faces. Their expressions had been worn away by time, leaving only smooth blank stone where their mouths and noses should have been. You passed a hallway where a black fountain stood still in the dark, its surface smooth as glass. 

You didn’t know where you were.

You didn’t know if you could ever leave.

You followed blindly, each step sounding like it didn’t belong here.

Finally, IV brought you to a chamber that made your breath catch. A great hall opened before you, its vaulted ceiling stretching into a haze of candle smoke and silence. At its center stood an enormous table carved from obsidian, long and glistening like the surface of a still lake. It was wide enough to seat thirty on either side, and every chair stood empty, save one.

At the far end of the table, seated with his back turned, was a man.

The figure wore a long emerald coat, embroidered with golden symbols you didn’t recognise. White and gold shoulder plates rose above the collar, and at his back were black feathers, not wings but something once divine, catching the candlelight like water catches the moonlight. His elegant fingers rested on the arms of a chair carved from the same dark stone as the table.

IV stopped as if halted by some unseen line.

“Vessel,” he said. “I found something.”

The figure turned deliberately, the chair’s legs sliding against stone with the whisper of altar doors opening in a forgotten church.

When Vessel stood, your throat closed.

Your heart stuttered painfully behind your ribs, because he was beautiful . But not in any way you had words for. He was beautiful in the most terrifying sense of the word. He looked like something sculpted by gods who had never seen a human up close. Like something made in worship of a shape they’d only dreamed of. The kind of beauty that made you ache just to witness, like a god pretending to be flesh.

He wore a mask like IV did, but entirely different. It was white, with lines of green and gold that swirled in precise patterns, perfectly clean, so pristine it looked unreal, too perfect, like it had never been touched by dust or decay. But then you saw them. Six vertical slits. Eyes. Six black eyes, no whites, no irises, just glossy pools of darkness, watching you. Each one darker than black, as if they opened into some endless depth where stars had once gone to die. They moved in eerie unison, blinking once, slowly, then not again.

Tears stung again, hot and unwelcome. Your lips parted, your throat dry and tight. There was no air in the room. None that you could breathe. Something inside you recoiled, screamed, at the knowledge that he was nothing like you.

He stepped forward.

His chest was bare beneath the open coat, painted entirely black, the pigment deep and matte like charred obsidian. Gold chains draped across him delicately, shoulders, ribs, collarbones, like ceremonial jewelry placed on the dead. His arms were equally adorned in ink. 

His mouth, exposed beneath the mask, curled into a slow, precise smile.

“What a curious thing,” Vessel said, and his voice—

Gods.

His voice was the most alluring sound you’d ever heard, making your knees weak. Rich and warm, deep and smooth, like honey poured over something burning. Every word measured, placed exactly where it belonged. His accent curved each vowel like silk stretched too tight. You didn’t realise your heart was racing until it hurt.

IV stood beside you, ink kissed hands folded behind his back as Vessel abandoned the books he’d been reading and moved into the centre of the room, his black eyes never once leaving you. His golden chains shifted slightly as he moved.

And then he turned, addressing IV over his shoulder.

“Why did you bring it here?” he asked. The softness in his voice didn’t blunt the sharpness of his meaning. “We agreed that we were done with humans.”

IV didn’t blink.

“I thought,” he confessed, “perhaps it was time we tried again.”

Vessel exhaled a breath you could feel, something almost like a laugh. He crossed his arms over his chest, muscles flexing under the black paint and gold chains. Those six eyes blinked again. Not together this time, two at a time, diagonally. It made your stomach twist. He stared at IV in silence, as if considering whether to laugh or scold. Then he did laugh. A delightful sound, that shook the chandelier high above, though nothing moved.

You blinked, rapidly, your eyes burning.

“And you’ll be the one to convince the others, then?” Vessel asked.

IV nodded once. “If you agree.”

Vessel tilted his head, considering. His eyes turned to you again.

“I do,” he said after a moment. “But this time you take responsibility for the outcome.”

“Understood,” IV replied, his voice light. “I’ll fetch the others.”

Then he turned away with the grace of something no longer tethered to human urgency, like a shadow returning to its source.

“Wait—” your voice cracked before you even knew you’d spoken. “Please—”

But IV did not pause.

He vanished into the corridor you’d entered through together. The flickering light behind him danced faintly, then went still. You watched him go until there was nothing but absence and a breath you didn’t know you were holding escaped you. 

Reluctantly, you turned back.

Vessel was still watching you.

That same small, knowing smile curved his lips. Too precise to be human. It didn’t warm his face, it wore his face instead, covering it like a veil, a performance he had decided to put on, something donned rather than felt. For a seemingly endless moment, the two of you stared at one another in painful silence. The cold sweat at the nape of your neck bloomed with every ragged breath. You took a step back and Vessel’s smile grew wider.

“Do you remember your name, love?”

The term made your skin crawl. It felt theatrical, it was too soft, too intimate, too practiced. As though he had said it a thousand times before and never meant it once.

Your breathing was fast, erratic. You shook your head frantically, arms folding tightly around yourself as if your own limbs could protect you from what he was.

“What—what are you?”

His eyes, all six, blinked slowly.

He didn’t answer. Instead, he leaned back against the chair he had once occupied, crossing his ankles like this was nothing more than a conversation with a guest. His posture said nothing and everything. Your heart nearly tripped over itself as you began to panic.

“Where am I? What is this place? Why—” Your lips trembled as you pressed further. “—why can’t I remember anything?”

You didn’t mean to sound as desperate as you did.

But it was already too late to pretend.

“There may be another time to talk,” Vessel said, almost kindly. “But not now.”

You swallowed the lump in your throat. “Why?”

“My brothers are coming,” he exhaled through his nose. “And they are not fond of your kind. Especially III. So be still, won’t you? He tends to overreact.”

You tried to ask again, but the sound that left your throat was barely a whisper.

“What do you mean—?”

Vessel raised one elegant hand, index finger pressing to his lips in a gesture of silence.

Then he motioned toward one of the many empty chairs.

“Sit.”

You didn’t obey. You couldn’t. Instead, you took a step back. Just one. But it made your heel clip the wall behind you. The weight of the cathedral pressed down against your shoulders. Every cell in your body told you not to trust him, not to lower your guard.

That’s when you saw them.

One was about your height, built like a statue carved for mourning with terrifying precision. His mask was red and black, with the permanent carved frown of a weeping statue. There was no mouth, no expression, just that eternal grimace and those tired eyes. His piercing blue eyes glowed with frost and fury from behind the slits. The rest of him was all black fabric. A dark hoodie was pulled halfway up beneath a vest, and every movement he made was deliberate, efficient. His approach made no sound. Not one.

He felt like judgment given form.

But then—

The second figure staggered in like a thought unraveling.

He moved like something animated by string, too tall, too angular, his frame unnaturally thin, all sharp elbows and spiderlike knees as though his body had been stretched by cruel hands.  The air shifted, turned heavier, as though his fury had a gravity of its own. The slender figure wore a long coat, deep blood red, which swayed behind him like a second spine. His mask, similar in form to IV’s, caught the candlelight and fractured it violently across the room. His white hair hung in wild tufts, falling over the sharp edges of his mask, tangled like thread in a butcher’s hands. His mouth, visible through a jagged tear in the metal, curled in a feral snarl.

And the moment he saw you—

He exploded.

“What the fuck is that?” he spat, finger stabbing the air toward you with such vehemence it felt like a blade aimed at your throat. Jagged lines split the gleaming surface of his mask like veins, as though the mask itself were trying to escape the face beneath.

He did not move like a man.

He paced like a pendulum swung too wide.

“No,” he growled, hands slicing through the air as he turned on Vessel with an accusing glare. “No, no, no. I’m not doing this again. You piece of—I’m not —” he choked on his own fury. “I won’t do this shit. Not after last time.”

“Calm down, III,” Vessel said smoothly. “You’ll frighten our guest.”

“Calm down?” III bellowed. “It’s a human. I can fucking smell it.”

His mask turned sharply to IV.

III took three more steps as if pulled by strings.

“Why is it still breathing, brother?” His accent was harsh, rough around the edges in the way broken glass could be considered art, making you flinch. “We agreed. We fucking agreed to kill every human that shows up. That was the pact and you agreed.”

IV exhaled quietly through his nose, unbothered, standing tall beside Vessel.

“She didn’t come here like the others,” he explained.

“Doesn’t fucking matter!” III was stalking now, circling the obsidian table in uncoordinated strides. His limbs bent too far. His spine curled too deep. Like a puppet dropped in motion and still trying to dance. The coat behind him swept the air like a wing torn from something mythic. “We should eat it,” he hissed, eyes flashing behind the glint of his mask. “Let’s just carve it open and see what’s inside. Flesh always tells the truth.”

You gasped, hands balling into fists so tightly your nails dug moons into your palms. Instinct pulled you back, back, back—

—but the wall was there.

IV rolled his eyes, the motion oddly human.

“You always say that.”

“And one day I will ,” III stopped in front of you, abruptly close. His height towered over you now. His head tilted, hair falling sideways, the wild strands sticking to the edge of his mask. You could almost feel his breath through the mouth of the mask. “I should tear it open. Spill it on the floor. Let’s see what’s inside. Let’s see what makes this one worth breaking the rules. So scream for me, yeah? You lot love to scream.”

Tears blurred your vision as you whimpered.

Vessel didn’t look at him. “She’s not yours to dismantle, III.”

“I don’t take orders from you,” III snarled at him like a dog.

“No,” Vessel said softly. “You always fail to listen.”

You shook. Violently. Your heart tried to beat itself to death inside your ribs. And then—

“Enough.”

The voice cut through the rising tension like a blade forged in silence. It belonged to the third arrival, the one who had entered alongside III but not said a word until now.

II.

You hadn’t heard him step next to you. You hadn’t seen him approach. He was simply there and the space he occupied stole the air from your lungs. He regarded you like a problem on a table, a mistake already halfway to being corrected. His eyes, blue glacial lakes, swept over you with the indifference of a doctor examining an open wound that didn’t belong to anyone. His presence chilled the marrow in your bones. Your knees buckled inward slightly as you shrank into the wall, trying to make yourself smaller, make yourself unworthy of notice.

“Bringing another human here was foolish,” II said coolly, turning to IV. “You should’ve left it where you found it.”

You squeezed your eyes shut.

II didn’t speak with disdain or cruelty. He didn’t raise his voice like III or lace it with theater like Vessel. He simply named the truth it was, plain and clinical, and in doing so, reduced you to a thing. A misstep.

A loose thread to be trimmed.

“I—” your voice was a splinter in your throat. “I don’t understand—please—I just want to go home—don’t hurt me, please—”

You peeked through your wet eyelashes, gaze falling upon the man who had just condemned you. But he wasn’t really a man, was he? His clothes smelled like salt and iron and something eerily similar to blood and dust. You wanted to vanish. Evaporate. Be anywhere else. But there was no else . No somewhere else. Just this godless place.

And these creatures craving blood.

A breath hitched in your chest. Then another. Then another. And the tears came, hot and ugly. You couldn’t stop them. They streaked your face in aching lines, washing nothing away. Your mouth opened in a sob, some wounded thing caught between instinct and despair.

III groaned so loud it scraped the air. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, not this again—”

Your sobs earned a tilt of the head from II.

Not sympathy. Not even interest. No. His gaze sharpened with quiet disappointment, as if your reaction confirmed something he’d long suspected. Something unworthy.

“She’s clearly not ready,” he said, voice flat, stripped of emotion.

Vessel, still reclined against the chair like he’d been sculpted there, hummed. A thoughtful sound that curled around the space like smoke. He stepped forward slowly, not with urgency, but with the deliberate grace of something that had already seen this play out.

“None of us were ready,” he murmured. “Yet we were chosen.”

III scoffed violently, as if the words offended the very marrow of his bones. “Don’t start with that chosen bollocks again,” He threw up a hand in disgust, whirling in a circle like the force of his anger couldn’t be contained by stillness. “We all agreed. We are done. This thing is a mistake. That’s all it is. A fucking weakness on IV’s part. A lapse. And I’m telling you right now, I’ll fix it. I’ll fix it permanently. Let me just snap it’s fucking neck.”

II even didn’t bother to look at him.

“What should we do with it?” he turned to Vessel instead.

“Keep her,” Vessel said as though the answer had already been decided.

But II’s head shook immediately, sharply.

“That is not wise.”

“We’ve ignored Sleep’s will to extend the family long enough, and now she’s here. Clearly a warning. Or a message. That means something. ”

“Don’t be a poet,” II muttered.

“Don’t be a coward, then,” Vessel replied, not unkindly. “Some gods inherit children, Sleep creates them and to be chosen is to be consumed. Or have you forgotten, brother?”

IIII groaned, hands rising to tangle in his hair as he turned to face the wall, slamming a palm against the cold stone. “It only means IV is still a sentimental bastard.”

IV’s posture didn’t shift, but his voice cut through the room like a blade.

“Better than being a fucking psycho.”

The word landed like a slap, and III laughed. A loud, guttural sound, cruel and bright like shattered glass in sunlight. “Oh, you wound me, brother.”

The voices swelled like a violent tide, crashing, clashing.

You shrank further into the space behind you, trying to make yourself small, invisible. Your tears carved rivers down your cheeks, uncontrolled, salt on raw skin, and in your horror you realised you were sobbing like a child, hiccuping, curling in on yourself, your body betraying you in every possible way. The tension in the room was a living thing, a monster stalking its own tail, and every time one of them opened their mouth, it sank another claw into your ribs.

III turned on you again, eyes flaring behind his mask.

“Fuck this. I’ll snap it's neck. Put it out of its misery.”

Your body seized.

You saw it in your mind. His hands, sudden and precise. The pop of vertebrae. Your eyes wide, unblinking. Death in a cathedral of gods. But before he could move Vessel stepped into III’s path and said, almost lazily, like he was asking someone not to knock over a glass.

“I’d prefer if you didn’t do that.”

III paused.

“Of course you would,” he growled, shoving past him and pacing furiously down the length of the hall. “You’d rather talk. You’d rather hope. You’d rather pretend this ends differently this time. That she’ll be different. She won’t. None of them are.”

And then they all turned. All four of them.

Their eyes on you.

You sobbed again.

The weight of their attention was unbearable. Something primal cracked inside you, and you opened your mouth, voice shaking like a thread caught in wind. “I just want to go home,” you begged. “Please. I don’t remember anything. I don’t—I don’t even know my name—”

II exhaled sharply. Not exasperated. Not kind.

Just done. Tired.

“You were not given a name,” he said flatly.

You blinked. Your vision swam.

“What—” your voice trembled. “What does that mean?”

It was Vessel who answered, not II.

His voice was gentle again. Too gentle.

“It means,” he said, walking slowly toward you, “that you’re in the right place, love.”

You shook your head violently, trying to claw your way back into your own body, burying your face in your hands like you could shut the world out by sheer force of will.

But there was no god to hear you here.

The room seemed to sway around you.

You were suffocating. Drowning even. The air was molasses. The light too sharp.

Everything wrong. Everything wrong.

Everything wrong .

And somewhere above you, high in the vaulted dark where no candle dared shine something began to whisper your name. A name you had not yet learned. But the cathedral knew it. And in that moment, a new kind of fear took root.

Not the fear of death.

But the fear of being kept alive.

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“There are some who burn down the temple not to punish the gods, but to feel the warmth of something holy just once.”

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Chapter Text

Chapter Text

“Beneath every altar, there is a wound. And someone always walks into it willingly.”

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IV was true to his word.

After Vessel’s rigid dismissal, he guided you through every crevice, every hallway and every suffocatingly ornate chamber of their cathedral with the detached grace of someone who had walked these ruins for far too long and somehow learned to love them.

IV walked ahead with calculated casualness, hands clasped loosely behind his back. His strides were measured and purposeful, guiding you like an apathetic shepherd, offering glances, remarks, and half-truths like breadcrumbs in a forest where no birds sang. Your hair dried quickly in the oppressive grey daylight, casting an eerie, lifeless glow on everything it touched. And now, in the eternal hush of nothingness, every detail stood starkly before your eyes.

The cathedral was infinitely worse when you weren’t running through it in blind panic. Now, walking slowly behind IV, you noticed everything.

The glass windows didn’t show saints or martyrs. They showed them, the vessels and figures too tall for human bone, grotesque and elongated creatures with bodies twisted in impossible shapes. You paused involuntarily before one of them, an enormous pane cracked through the centre like a wound. You saw a being whose ribs curled outward like wings, whose eyes were stitched shut with red thread. IV slowed just slightly, a smirk audible in his voice.

“Don’t stare too long,” he murmured, not unkindly.

You jerked your gaze away, eyes burning with the afterimage of that unspeakable figure. But the statues were worse. They lined all the hallways, set in alcoves shadowed and deep, marble and granite limbs draped in lengthy robes carved with meticulous detail. You never asked IV what they were, you were too afraid of the truth. The one near the spiral staircase had a face like a child’s mask stretched too thin. When you turned your head, only for a moment, you thought, no, you knew, its hand had moved. Only slightly.

But it had moved.

“This way,” IV murmured, always with that velvety tone.

As though everything were vaguely beneath him.

Even your fear.

He showed you the cloister garden first, a space lush with unnatural growth, hidden behind a dried and crumbling fountain. Through the towering arched windows, you caught a fleeting glimpse of II. He was hunched low, his painted fingers stained black with soil, buried in the earth as though he meant to climb inside it, his robes gathered tightly around him. Your heart twisted in your chest. II didn’t look up, yet his cold presence pressed upon you like a hand at the base of your skull, forcing you to avert your gaze swiftly. Or maybe he hadn’t moved at all. Maybe it was only your fear. But it sat in your stomach like a stone. IV had told you that none of them were allowed in that part of the garden, except Vessel, of course. But truth be told, you didn’t mind that IV didn’t linger there longer than necessary.

Next, IV brought you to a hidden distillery close to the gardens, half-buried in the earth, thick with sickly sweet aromas. The heavy scent clung to your throat, nearly choking you.

“This is where II makes all his little projects,” IV said as you stepped inside. “Useful, sure, but you’d think he was trying to raise the dead the way he obsesses over this shit.”

You didn’t recognize a single thing inside.

The air clung to your tongue like decay, thick with honey and blood, fungal decay slicking your teeth. Sweetness curdled by something wrong. Jars lined the walls, stuffed with slick liquids, lye, bruised pigments, unnameable extracts that caught the light like spoiled jewels. IV said nothing, only watched you with amusement, like he was waiting to see how long you’d last. And you turned away fast, hand over your mouth, swallowing down the nausea that rose sharp and sudden.

You didn’t breathe again until the door clicked shut behind you.

The library came after that.

It was enormous, a yawning chamber filled with shadows and dust. Books lined every inch of the shelves, which stretched upward into choking dark. Some books had titles in a language that looked like runes, others had no names at all. Scrolls wrapped in red twine were stacked like corpses in niches along the wall.

IV rested a hand on one of the ladders, but didn’t climb.

“Don’t open anything,” he warned gently. “Not unless one of us is with you.”

You nodded numbly.

The living quarters you passed through were enormous and lavish, full of velvet drapes, beds larger than tombs, rooms big enough to swallow cities, baths like private oceans. You passed a chamber with a black floor and mirrors on the ceiling. Another had nothing but paintings of faceless women, all painted upside down. A massive hall followed, a vast pool carved into its centre, filled with water like eerily still ink. The opposite end of the room was swallowed by darkness so deep your eyes strained and failed to find the walls. No candles lined that part, as if the shadows themselves were hungry enough to consume even light.

You hurried from that place quickly, pulse thrumming uneasily.

The kitchen was next. Warm, quiet, and filled with strange spices that burned slowly over low coals. Pots and pans hung from hooks, still, like metallic fruits. IV passed through without stopping, his blue gaze indifferent, explaining that the cathedral’s daily needs were sparse, almost ceremonial. He gestured to a small blacksmith’s alcove tucked into a narrow chamber, tools gleaming darkly. A forge sat cold, but the anvil bore fresh dents. He didn’t linger there, something tense flickered in his stance, though you didn’t dare ask.

“Each of us has duties,” IV explained, leading you down hidden staircases, tight corridors, and secret passages. “But we’re free in other aspects. Freedom, such as it is.”

You followed him in silence, the stone narrowing around you with each turn, ceiling dropping low enough to make you duck. The torchlight cast his shadow long and strange on the curved walls, flickering with the rhythm of your steps.

After a beat, you asked softly, “And what about your duties?”

IV’s hurried stride didn’t falter, but he tilted his head just enough to let you know he’d heard. “Mine?” he echoed vaguely, almost like it amused him. “Well. Things change. We get tired of the same old tasks. Switch things up. Keeps it interesting. But some roles stick.” He held up his fingers as he counted them off. “II’s always been the gardener. His pride and joy, that cursed shit. Vessel leads the rituals. Naturally. And III brings the offerings.”

You flinched at that word. “Offerings?”

The word fell like a stone down the stairwell, and the sound of hurried footsteps above didn’t help the chill already snaking down your spine.

IV glanced over his shoulder.

“I’ll show you later,” he said lightly. “It’ll make more sense when you see it.”

Your stomach twisted, something primal in you recoiling. But you said nothing. It wasn’t lost on you that IV had dodged the question. You walked a little slower, watching the back of his head. He’d listed the others. But not himself. You wondered why.

The seemingly endless staircase bent left. He pushed open a crooked wooden door, holding it for you with a slight bow of his head.

“Ladies first,” he said with mock politeness.

You stepped through, your pulse throbbing in your neck, and tried not to think about the things no one wanted to say aloud in this place.

The door opened into an open terrace, a lookout with views over the endless dead land. You stepped out cautiously, your footsteps muffled by the thin dust coating the stone tiles beneath. Your gaze swept outward and a heavy quietness stole your breath away. You approached the edge, pressing trembling fingers against the icy marble railing. It was smooth, polished, but felt brittle somehow, like bones beneath skin grown thin with age.

There was only grey fog out there, infinite in its stillness, stretching over dead landscapes you wished you’d never laid eyes upon. Below you the forest stretched outward in every direction like an ocean turned to wood. Ruins stood scattered throughout, crumbled, half swallowed by choking ivy and strange magenta flowers. The jagged mountains that rose beyond were raw, black teeth that punctured the eternal clouds.

A sudden unease pressed behind your sternum, winding tight around your heart.

“What’s out there?” you asked IV, your voice barely more than a whisper.

He stepped closer, his presence filling the silence beside you. He leaned casually against the railing, unbothered by the dreadful vastness stretching below, his masked face tilted toward the endless horizon.

“Nothing that’ll have you,” he answered simply.

You glanced sideways at him, unable to mask your anxiety.

Your heartbeat quickened, curiosity weaving together with fear. “Is it true, what Vessel said? That there are other... creatures out there? In the forest?”

IV nodded slowly, his eyes fixed on something far beyond your vision. His posture remained relaxed, but tension rippled subtly beneath the careful elegance of his stance. “There are. But you shouldn’t worry yourself. They won’t dare approach the cathedral.”

Your stomach twisted sharply. “Why not?”

A flicker of amusement ghosted through IV’s posture.

“Because III taught them better, a long time ago.”

His voice had gone softer, darker around the edges.

You did not dare press him further because the implication was clear enough. You didn’t want to know how that lesson had been delivered, nor how harshly. You turned your gaze back to the landscape, and for a long, heavy moment, silence pooled thick between you both.

You wrapped your arms around yourself tighter, shivering, the cold beginning to seep deep into your bones, numbing but bracing. “How long have you been here?”

“Too long,” he murmured, almost to himself. “Time doesn’t mean much here.”

You turned away, staring at the grey vines creeping silently along the wall. Something in you wanted to touch them, to feel their cold certainty beneath your fingertips. However, you held yourself back, too afraid of what might happen. Everything here was uncertain, even plants seemed untrustworthy.

Instead, you asked another question.

“Did Vessel bring you here?” you asked finally, voice almost swallowed by the quiet.

“Not exactly,” IV said. “We all came differently.”

You waited, expecting more. However, he offered nothing else, his blue gaze still fixed on the horizon as if it might change shape if he stared long enough. After a while, IV pushed himself away from the railing, standing straight once more.

“Come on,” he murmured, an odd gentleness woven beneath the careful indifference. “We’re not done yet. You’ll want to see this next bit.”

You followed obediently as he guided you back through the staircase, leaving the fog-choked wilderness behind you. IV led you down another winding corridor, a wide hallway lined with polished golden mirrors, your reflection fractured and distorted into something monstrous at every step. You kept your gaze lowered, careful not to linger on any image too long, fearful of seeing something staring back at you that wasn’t quite yourself. Then IV pushed open another door, heavier, adorned in polished black wood carved with disturbing symbols. You stepped inside hesitantly and froze in immediate regret.

It was a chapel.

It bled devotion from its walls in an oppressive wave, a dreadful reverence that gripped your lungs tight. The air was thick with smoke, acrid incense burning slow and unnaturally sweet, mingling with copper and decay. Silk hung draped from high ceilings in rich, dark colours, woven with threads that shimmered in the candlelight. Flowers were scattered everywhere, monstrous blooms with petals that curled and reached like tongues, teeth, or begging fingers. The pulpit rose high at the centre, carved as an open mouth, dark wood glistening as if saliva lingered there. The altar cloth was soaked in black stains that could only be blood, thick and dried to a crust, dribbling slowly into ceremonial golden bowls. Candle flames encircled the room like watchful eyes, dancing in an unseen draft, illuminating grotesque statues along the walls, depictions of sacrifice and devotion that twisted your stomach.

But worst of all was above.

Above you, sprawled across the vaulted ceiling like a wound torn into heaven, was a painting. Sleep, if that was what the vessels dared call it, loomed in vivid and skinless glory. A divine monstrosity built from sinew, exposed muscle, shattered bone, and stars arranged like tumors. Its limbs spilled in every direction, not separate from the human bodies it clutched but fused with them, faces screaming, mouths locked open, their spines arched in something between rapture and execution. Its countless eyes were wide and wet and watching, orbiting across wings that were less feather than flesh, flayed open like offerings. It wasn’t something to be adored.

It was painted to remind you, there is no mercy in being seen by a god like this.

Your head began to ache fiercely, the same pressure you had felt before the voices spoke. You felt it throb in your teeth, in your stomach. It breathed in rhythm with your heartbeat, as if the two of you were tethered. As if your body were a prayer it had already begun to answer. You braced yourself, your body tightening, expecting that chorus of whispers, but nothing came. Only IV’s indifferent presence beside you, breathing softly, unaffected by the crushing weight of his god’s painted gaze.

“This is where we worship,” he said, voice reverent but edged with faint bitterness, looking up at the fresco. “Breathtaking, isn’t He?”

You couldn’t answer. Your throat closed around any words you might have forced out.

“Come,” IV murmured, breaking the trance. His hand hovered near your shoulder, guiding you toward a hidden stairwell in the chapel’s corner. “There’s more below.”

You didn’t have it in you to resist him.

It felt as if something had reached down your throat and plucked the breath straight from your lungs, hollowing you with every step. So you obeyed as IV led you downward. The stairwell narrowed with every step, stone closing in like ribs around a heart, the air thickening into something cold and wet and watchful. Every surface slick with dampness, rot, and time. Your breath came in shallow gasps, heartbeat a frantic drumbeat against the silence, echoing off the stone like prey announcing itself.

And then you saw it.

A chamber what seemed like a slaughterhouse. Hooks hanged from the ceiling, some empty, some not. Flesh long dried into twisted remnants of what might’ve once been human, or not quite. Tables lined the chamber, each one spattered and rusted, gleaming with tools too cruel to be called instruments. Your eyes darted from one detail to the next, unable to settle, unable to accept. The stone was stained deep with old blood, and the drains cut jagged lines into the floor, winding like veins, stained dark from whatever flowed down them. You could almost hear the echoes of cries that must have bounced off the low ceiling, screams that sank into the stones, trapped there, festering until the end of time. 

You stumbled backward, turning away sharply, breath ragged.

Your nails dug painfully into your skin, forcing yourself not to cry, not to scream. You stared at IV, your eyes burning with tears you had thought were already spent. His stance was casual, posture easy, head tilted, not like he pitied you, but like he was watching you unravel just as he expected you would.

As if this, too, was part of your becoming, as Vessel had called it.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “You’ll be part of the worship. Not the victim of it.”

The playful sarcasm that had laced his voice moments ago was now entirely absent.

IV watched your reaction intently, his masked face angled slightly downward. It was as if he was waiting, daring you to break the silence first, maybe to protest or to challenge him. Your heart thundered painfully against your ribcage, each beat too loud, each breath too shallow. The hooks swayed faintly overhead, despite the absence of any wind. They moved with the gentle creak of rusted metal, like pendulums marking out an awful, inevitable countdown.

You tried to swallow, but it felt like choking.

“I—I won’t,” you whispered. “I won’t be part of this.”

IV’s voice emerged smooth, too calm, edged with a dangerous patience.

“You speak as though you have a choice.”

“I do,” you said immediately, desperation clawing up your throat again. “I won’t let you—”

He stepped forward, cutting off your protests without so much as a glance.

The movement was fluid, inhuman, like something that had once learned to mimic walking. Your body betrayed you, lips snapping shut, hands rising instinctively to shield your face, as if you already knew that pleading wouldn’t matter here. Hot tears slipped down your cheeks before you felt them and when you finally looked back at IV he wasn’t smiling. The mocking lilt, the playful cruelty, all of it had vanished. What stood before you now wore his shape, but not his voice. And whatever it was, it wasn’t pretending anymore.

“Sleep does not ask, He commands. And His commandments are written in blood, etched into bones, whispered into dreams. You might refuse us, but you cannot refuse Him.”

You became sickeningly aware of the space between you, how little of it there was, and how stupid you’d been to ever think he was the mildest of the four.

In that moment, you feared IV more than you’d ever feared III. At least with III, terror had a face, a snarl, a shape you could brace against. But IV? He performed. You could see it clearly now, how easily he could reach for one of those tools and ruin you with the grace of an actor. No effort. No hesitation. Just a flick of his wrist, and you’d be undone.

IV tilted his head, the mask catching what little light the slaughterhouse allowed, the edges of it glinting like polished ivory. The gentleness of his gesture felt like mockery now, a cruelty in his posture. He spoke again, softer now, as if coaxing a wounded animal from a trap.

“You fear this place because you believe you don’t belong here. But your fear betrays you. It knows you better than you know yourself. Fear understands where you truly belong.”

You shook your head, sharply this time.

“No. You can’t—you can’t convince me with your lies.”

“They’re not lies,” IV said simply, evenly. “Lies are comforting and they promise safety. And I offer no such comforts, love. Only the truth.”

You swallowed hard, the pain catching like glass in your throat. You couldn’t look at him so you turned your eyes to the floor instead, to the stains that told stories in dried rust and ruin. He was right about one thing. There was no comfort to be found in this murderous place. Not in IV’s manipulative performance, not in Vessel’s choking serenity, not in the starved silence that clung to II, and certainly not in the grinning hysteria that wore III like a mask.

But that didn’t mean he was right about you.

“I’m not—” you began, choking on the heat in your throat. “I—I won’t let any of you turn me into… whatever it is you’ve all become. I—I won’t—” Your voice died, betraying the fury you tried to hold still. Your fists clenched so tightly your nails bit deep into your palms, sharp enough to draw blood. “I’m not joining your cult.”

He paused, the silence settling again like ash after fire.

After what felt like an eternity, IV stepped away from you, his movements smooth, unhurried. He turned his attention to the instruments laid out along the table, fingers skimming the edges of the blades. He moved among them with reverence, fingertips gliding across steel as though greeting old friends. Your vision blurred, panic tightening your chest as you took another step back. Then he spoke again. His voice drifted back to you, lighter now, conversational again, though underpinned with a chilling sincerity.

“You misunderstand,” he said, lifting one of the blades, turning it slowly between his fingers as if appraising its worth. Or maybe yours. “Becoming a vessel isn’t a punishment. It’s mercy. A release from the agony of being completely insignificant.” He glanced at you then, and his voice softened, like a hand brushing hair from your face. Almost tender. Almost kind. “Here, you won’t age. You’ll never be sick again. Never be alone again. You’ll have us, a family that never leaves you, not even in death. And a purpose that never fades. Tell me, what greater kindness could any god offer you than that? Isn’t that what your kind wants in the end? An eternity spent belonging. To Sleep. To us. What could be more merciful than that?”

IV watched you through the mask with a stillness that made your skin crawl, a surgical gaze that peeled you open without ever laying a hand on you. And suddenly, you understood. Why he brought you here. Why the charm had drained from his voice. And why in this room, of all places. This was a performance. A trap disguised as kindness, to show you what waited if you disobeyed. He had led you here to corner you until the only thing left to offer was consent.

You wiped your tears with the back of your hand, the tremor in your fingers betraying you. He was a cunning creature, far more than you’d let yourself believe.

And now you were alone, underground, and utterly at his mercy.

But not defeated. Not yet.

“I’d rather die than belong to something like you.”

IV didn’t answer right away. Instead, he put the blade down with unnerving care, the metal kissing the table with a surgical ring. Amusement crept back into his posture as he hummed, like your defiance was a child’s tantrum he’d seen a thousand times before.

“You only think death is kinder because you’ve never truly seen it,” IV said, almost lovingly. “You can’t possibly understand what it is because humanity still clings to the idea that it’s an escape. But Sleep showed us the truth. Death isn’t peace. It’s erasure. It’s your name never spoken again. Your skin never touched again. Your voice unraveling into silence until even silence forgets you were ever there.” He tilted his head once again, as if pitying you. “That is death, love. Not pain. Not rest. Just absence. A void so vast and blind it won’t even remember you were ever born. And that is far more terrifying than us.”

Your breath hitched, coming faster now, panic rising like bile.

Your eyes darted across the room, grasping for an exit, a distraction, anything that might save you from the slow, sinking truth threading through his words. But there was nowhere to run. No mercy, no comfort, only shadows that crept towards you like hands.

And IV, terrifying in his grace, herding you into surrender without ever raising his voice. He didn’t need to. He already had you cornered.

Still, despite everything, you heard yourself speak.

Because you had to.

“But why?” you demanded weakly. “Why me?”

“Why does a storm choose a tree to strike?” he echoed, as if violence was not a choice, but a law written into the marrow of gods. “Because it can. Because it must.”

“That’s not a reason,” you whispered back. 

“It’s the only one there ever is.”

His tone was final, edged in resignation.

You stood there trembling, your body no longer yours, eyes wide, lips parted, tears dried. His words echoed too closely to Vessel’s, like the same god whispered through a different mouth.

IV observed you quietly, and after a moment, he seemed satisfied, as though he’d confirmed something crucial for himself. He stepped past you toward the stairwell.

“Come,” he said, “We’ve lingered here long enough.”

Your feet moved without your permission, trailing after him reluctantly, ascending the stairs behind his unhurried pace. The slaughterhouse’s oppressive darkness receded slowly, and as you emerged once more into the relative brightness of the chapel, you felt strangely lighter, only because the room below had been so impossibly heavy.

Even the odd chapel, with its grotesque ceiling painting of Sleep, seemed almost welcoming by comparison, the candles flickering gently in their sconces. IV stopped at the centre of the chapel’s nave, turning back to you slowly.

“You’ll understand, in time, we’re not the monsters you think you should fear. We worship because we were made to, because Sleep demands it.” He took a step closer, as if offering comfort with a knife behind his back. “To live without devotion is to rot in place. To vanish, unheard and unloved. You fear it now, but eventually, you’ll see that there is beauty in giving yourself over to something greater than your fear.”

You didn’t answer this time. You couldn’t.

Your lips parted, but no sound emerged. Instead, your body answered for you. You staggered sideways, knees unlocking beneath you as you sank to the edge of the nearest stone bench, hands trembling in your lap. You looked down but your fingers didn’t feel like yours.

You sat directly beneath the mural of Sleep, that vast and vicious canopy of divinity, unable to move. The ceiling seemed lower, the grotesque limbs of Sleep reaching further downward. The chapel felt colder now, colder than it had before the descent, colder than the room below, colder than the things IV said to you in a voice that pretentious kindness. Your skin crawled where his presence had lingered, like the memory of a fever dream that wouldn’t lift.

IV didn’t move.

He only watched you from behind that mask, its smooth surface unreadable. The glint of candlelight danced along the edges of his silhouette, as if the light had no choice but to cling to him, reluctant to leave his presence.

“You’ll feel worse before it gets better,” he said at last. “That’s how all change begins.”

Your throat tightened again, your body folding in on itself. But before you could reply, before you could even gather the breath to argue, something shifted behind you. You turned before you meant to, neck snapping toward the noise, prey recognising the footsteps of a predator. At first, there was only the wall. Old stone, stained with centuries of soot and candle smoke. Then the wall shifted. A hidden door groaned open behind a tapestry that depicted something screaming, something with too many hands, and he stepped through.

III.

His spiderlike frame emerged like a nightmare congealing into flesh, dragging behind him a corpse that could not possibly be real. The thing III dragged was wrong in every conceivable way. Its body serpentine and wet, slick with blood, viscera and something that shimmered like oil. Its arms jutted from its sides at jagged angles, jointed like an insect’s, ending in cruel, bladed digits. III’s long fingers curled tightly around one of the beast’s mangled limbs, blood soaking his already torn black shirt. His grin was too wide, too easy, his breath huffing out in sharp bursts of amusement as he tugged the carcass along the chapel floor.

Your stomach turned violently.

The creature’s head was worst.

Elongated, sleek like a viper’s skull, horned and crowned with rot, split down the middle. Two tongues dangling limp from each half of its slack maw. Dead eyes glossy and unblinking, staring in different directions as if trying to flee each other.

You pressed a hand to your neck, feeling your pulse scream in your throat, the taste of vomit rising hot behind your teeth. Your entire body was locked in place, eyes fixed on the monster sprawled at III’s feet, its slick limbs twitching faintly even in death.

Beside you, IV sighed, nonchalant. “You found it, then.”

“Course I did,” III said, licking blood from his lower lip, the gesture careless. “She wandered straight into me. Stupid fucking thing didn’t even make me sweat.”

He kicked the carcass cruelly, and it made a wet, meaty thump against the chapel floor and it made you whimper, an involuntary noise low in your throat, quiet but raw.

You clutched your stomach, your fingers curling into the fabric of your shirt as nausea overwhelmed you. You couldn’t breathe through your nose, not with the iron stink of the thing in the air, not with the blood already beginning to dry into the cracks between the stones.

III’s gaze found you then.

You flinched.

“Crying again?” he sneered. “Did you piss yourself too, human?”

His voice rang with mockery, but something underneath it clawed at your memory. Your eyes were locked on him, wide and burning, your breath coming in short, painful bursts.

IV chuckled beside you.

“I showed her your workshop,” he said smoothly. “Gave her the tour.”

III snorted. “You what? Without me?” He dropped the beast with a wet thump and turned to you, arms spread in mock disappointment. “And how was the tour, little lamb?”

You didn’t respond.

Your eyes bounced between him and the horror on the floor. Sweat gathered on your temples, clung to your spine. The nausea surged again and you bent forward slightly, swallowing hard.

“I think she enjoyed it,” IV mused, watching you struggle not to vomit.

“Definitely looks like she did,” III doubled down. “Looks like she’s about to do a little prayer on that bench there. Real devotion, that.”

Their laughter came like knives dipped in honey.

It began with IV, a hollow sound, amused and unsympathetic. He leaned his hip against the stone bench you sat on, his arms crossed as he observed you with detachment. His laughter was controlled, almost elegant. And III, by contrast, cackled like a mad dog. His whole body moved with it, spine arched and hands twitching in jagged ecstasy. It was the same laugh he’d offered last time, when he told you, just as easily, just as cheerfully, that he wanted to eat you. 

It was so vastly different from Vessel’s voice.

So different from the way he had looked at you, the sound of his words like the summer rain on stained glass, soothing even when you didn’t understand a word. Vessel’s voice had been a spell, because even when he scolded you there had been something alluring in him. And you missed it with a desperation that hollowed your lungs.

It was a cruel thing, their laughter.

You were seated, but you felt as though you’d been shoved to your knees. It made you feel pathetic and small, a specimen on a slide that wriggled too much. Something not just beneath them, but worth humiliating. So you forced your voice to work, even though it rasped from a throat made tight by nausea and shame.

“What—what is that thing?”

IV didn’t look at you right away.

He was still smiling but he made a small gesture with his fingers toward the sprawled corpse as if he was bored by the whole affair. “You asked me what lived in the forest,” he said with a smoothness that felt entirely rehearsed. “Now you’ve seen one. So eyes on, darling.”

“Yeah, consider yourself educated,” III said, kicking the dead thing once more for emphasis. “Forest’s full of them. Ugly cunts. But this one’s finally mine.”

He crouched beside the corpse like a child beside a toy he had cruelly dismantled. III grabbed the monster’s slick, horned head with a firm grip, jerking it up toward you like a trophy. You saw the slice then. Clean. Symmetrical. Bisecting the skull in a perfect line from the crown down to where its chin should’ve been, held together only by pulp and glistening tendon. Its jaws lolled, twin tongues flopping uselessly. Its mouth split wider, slack and soft like decayed fruit, and III forced it open further, his fingers sinking into soft tissue.

“See, I split it right down the middle,” he said with pride, tapping the gash with two fingers. “Perfect symmetry, yeah? Right between the eyes. Fucking beautiful, isn’t it?”

Your entire body revolted.

“Oh come now,” III mocked, tilting his head.

The taste of bile flooded your mouth and you doubled over, teeth clenched, throat burning. But then IV’s hand clamped tightly around your upper arm.

“Do not vomit in the chapel,” he said sharply, dragging you upright.

He reached down and seized your arm. His grip wasn’t violent, but it wasn’t gentle either. It was commanding, the kind of grip that reminded you exactly how powerless you were. You recoiled instinctively, wrenching away from his touch, stumbling toward the door where he had first led you into this place. Your hand slapped against the stone wall for balance, breath rasping in your ears. His touch burned, left a phantom imprint on your skin that you scrubbed at frantically, even though it was no longer there.

You didn’t dare meet his eyes.

Behind you, the scene continued as if you weren’t there.

IV stepped forward, taking hold of one of the beast’s insectoid legs. “Come on, then,” he said to III, not looking at you. “Let’s bring it down before it rots.”

III grunted as he grabbed the opposite end. “Shame it died easy,” he muttered, as if speaking to the corpse itself. “Thought I’d have to work for it. Disappointing.”

Together, they began to drag the creature out.

The massive thing lurched across the chapel floor with a horrid scrape-thump, scrape-thump, scrape-thump, black blood smearing behind it in long arterial ribbons. IV and III spoke as they moved, voices melting together into casual banter, talking about the hunt, the way the creature had screamed when it saw the blade, how long it took to die, III mimicking the sound once, sending fresh chills down your spine. Their words slipped around you like cold water.

They didn’t look at you.

Didn’t ask if you were coming.

They had already taken what they wanted from you.

Your attention. Your silence. Your fear.

So you did the only thing you could. You stumbled out of the chapel alone, pushing through the heavy doors, hands trembling, the edges of your vision blurring. You didn’t stop walking until the mural of Sleep was out of sight. The god who watched you from the ceiling with too many eyes, whose limbs curled in the shadows above your head. You thought if you threw up here, if you desecrated this space with your body’s weakness, something would punish you for it. So you pressed your hand to your mouth and walked blindly into the corridor beyond, the laughter still echoing behind you.

And you walked, walked, walked, until your stomach unknotted just enough to remind you how violently alone you really were.

You wondered if this was how you’d begin to lose yourself.

With your name unspoken.

Forgotten even by your own lips.

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“To descend is not to fall. It is to be invited downward, step by step, until your name forgets how to leave your mouth.”

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

“Cross your heart and seal it tight, hope the god won’t come tonight.”

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Sleep was not sleep anymore—

—it was a battle.

Your eyelids were heavy, tethered to exhaustion, yet your mind refused to yield to rest. The sheets, twisted and damp beneath your body, clung to your limbs as if afraid to lose you to whatever lay beneath the bed, in the corners, in the shadows.

Somehow, the voices were worse when you were tired. As if they knew you were sleepy, feeding hungrily on your half-consciousness, coiling whispers around your dreams like snakes nesting in cold stone. You felt them tighten, pulse, telling you things until your ears throbbed with them.

“Good vessels obey,” they hissed. “Be a good sister. Obey.”

You tried to suffocate the whispers beneath thick layers of cloth and darkness. You pulled the covers up and over your head, breathing into the stale warmth, hoping childishly and desperately, that your feeble barrier might shield you from the monsters. But the whispers found you there too, slithering in with your ragged breaths.

“You should do as you’re told,” they crooned in tandem, sweet and gentle as poison. “Drink the blood if offered. It will help you see more clearly. You must not fear.”

Eventually, exhaustion dragged you beneath the whispering waves of a dream, slipping under like a corpse dragged beneath the tide, but even there, escape was impossible.

You dreamed of that vast, black pool that IV had shown you, inky water stretching into oblivion.

In your dream, you were swimming desperately toward something unseen, your limbs aching, your chest heaving, the dark water tasting of iron, bottomless and hauntingly still. The ceiling above was a high dome, lit only by fractured beams of sinister candlelight. Something whispered from below, tugged at your ankles with fingers sharp as teeth, until you were dragged beneath, lungs burning with water and darkness. You screamed beneath the surface, but the pool swallowed your cries, folded them into the black—

You awoke with a gasp, chest rising sharply.

Your eyes flew open, blurred with tears and lingering sleep, and immediately you screamed. Because there, hovering mere inches above your face, two impossibly blue eyes watched you.

In blind panic, you bolted upward, but your forehead collided painfully against the sharp chin of the mask staring down at you. Stars burst behind your eyes as you whimpered, recoiling in pain and shock. A deep laugh echoed through the room, jittery and half-mad.

“Are you fucking insane?” you shrieked, clutching your throbbing forehead as you squinted through tears, recognizing III’s masked face and crazy laughter. “What—why the hell are you staring at me while I sleep? Like some kind of—of creep? Who the fuck does that?”

He shook his head with mock disappointment, blue eyes glittering like frost in the pale glow that crept through the windows. You clutched the blankets close, heart hammering violently beneath your ribs, as if the thin fabric might offer some protection from the monster now lounging casually by your bedside.

“Good morning,” III crooned, rolling his jaw lazily, rubbing the point of his chin where your skull had collided with it. “Sleep well?”

You swallowed hard, ignoring his mockery.

“What do you want?”

“Vessel said we should leave you alone, let you rest,” III paused, leaning against your bedpost as though your distress was merely an amusing inconvenience. “But me—” he gestured toward himself, placing one painted hand to his chest, eyes twinkling dangerously beneath the mask, “—I’ve never listened well.”

You nearly hissed that you already fucking knew that, however, the weak insult died on your tongue before it could be born. Instead, your voice shook with forced detachment as you murmured, “You’re not supposed to be here.”

III crouched at the foot of your bed, impossibly long limbs folding gracefully but unnaturally, like a mantis settling to devour its prey.

“Oh, you,” he cooeed, his long fingers grazing close to your ankles, forcing you to jerk your legs back instinctively. His voice dropped to a mocking whisper, as if confiding a treasured secret, “let me tell you something. None of us are supposed to be here.”

A cold chill twisted down your spine, threading through veins already brittle with exhaustion. Shaking your head furiously, you raised a trembling hand to point at the door.

“Get out,” you commanded harshly. However, when he did not move, you nearly screamed again, voice splintering with frustration, “III, get the fuck out!”

But he only tilted his head, the bones in his neck cracking softly beneath painted skin, his eyes alight with twisted amusement.

“Make me,” he said, challenging you openly, excitement simmering beneath the dark timbre of his voice.

Your stare met his defiantly, though the strength behind it felt hollow.

“Get. Out.”

He didn’t flinch. Didn’t even halt.

Instead, his mask tilted inquisitively once more, studying you intently, as though searching for something hidden deep within your trembling defiance. An uncomfortable silence stretched taut between you, filled only by the soft, uneven breaths escaping your lips. III stared at you, unmoving. It gave you goosebumps.

“I have an idea,” he declared suddenly, tone shifting once again, cheerful now, as if he had just remembered something delightful.

You struggled to keep pace with the whiplash rhythm of his presence. There was no pattern to him. No rules to follow. His eyes never changed. They remained vacant, like windows into a mind that no longer mirrored anything human. Whatever thoughts turned behind them, they were unreachable. You couldn’t predict what he wanted. You weren’t even sure he knew.

And that was what made your skin crawl.

“Just leave,” you breathed, nearly begging, shrinking further into the mattress, but he ignored you, his enthusiasm almost childlike in its unsettling intensity.

He continued as though you had not spoken at all, leaning forward until the space between you felt impossibly thin, “We should play a game, you and me.”

“What kind of game?” you asked warily, fingers tightening painfully into the blanket.

He edged closer, crawling beside you with unnerving grace, limbs folding too smoothly, body seeming to contort in ways no human frame should. He crouched there like a nightmare come to life, hands dangling carelessly over his knees, like a marionette waiting for strings.

“We should make a pact,” he murmured conspiratorially. “If I ask something of you, you’ll do it. And in exchange, I’ll grant anything you ask of me. If I ask you a question, and you answer honestly, I’ll answer yours just as honestly.”

You studied him warily, heart aching with mistrust.

“What’s in it for you?” you asked finally.

His sinister chuckle sent spiders crawling down your spine.

“You know, I’ve always wanted a sister,” he admitted so genuinely and so absurdly that you nearly laughed. Memories surged forth bitterly, the aggressive way he had demanded you to be killed, to be discarded, to be eaten. Sister? Yeah, right. But you bit back the venomous retort, instead staring openly at the madness laid plainly between the two of you. He just watched you, his blue eyes wide, his voice dripping with macabre delight. “And, apparently, you’re getting closer to being one.”

“I thought you wanted to eat me, brother,” you muttered bitterly, face twisting with disgust.

He shrugged carelessly.

“The two aren’t mutually exclusive,” he declared with dark amusement. “It only makes the family dynamic more interesting, right?”

The absurdity, the monstrous cruelty, the playful malice, tore a sound from your throat before you could swallow it back. It escaped in a sharp snort, cutting through the oppressive silence.

“You’re a fucking psycho,” you spat defiantly, the words edged with poison, raw and honest and perhaps the bravest thing you’d said since arriving in this nightmare.

“Perhaps,” he whispered, as though your insult had only enticed him further. You only stared at him, heart torn between fear and a strange, inexplicable curiosity. “So, are you in, sister?”

You watched him warily, every nerve within you thrumming with suspicion. There was something deeply unsettling about the way III occupied space. Each of his sharp movements seemed exaggerated, too precise. The dim room swallowed his long shadow as it stretched across the aged stone walls, flickering and distorted in the faint candlelight. Every instinct screamed at you to remain cautious, to never trust him, to never forget what he was, chaos given form, violence masquerading as grace.

The silence stretched like a drawn blade, interrupted only by your uneven breathing, yours ragged and frightened, his edged with anticipation. The room felt airless, claustrophobic, your chest rose and fell painfully, desperate for air that wouldn’t taste of fear.

“Why would I ever trust you?” you breathed finally.

III regarded you quietly, fingers drumming a restless rhythm against his thigh. He was clearly growing impatient, getting bored with the facade of persuasion.

“You should already know that you can’t trust anything you see in this place,” he murmured, voice slipping effortlessly into his strange, playful tone. He chuckled then, a sudden, childlike sound that made the hairs on your neck stand up. He leaned forward slightly, fingers pressing against the tips of his ears, pushing them forward comically. “You can’t trust what you hear. You can’t even trust what you think you remember, because this place, this whole bloody land is complete fucking madness.”

You stared at him in silence.

The damn irony of those words spoken by someone as clearly unhinged as III was almost laughable. Yet you bit back your retort, swallowing down the acidic disbelief. You needed to listen, as II had oh so wisely declared the day before, no matter how much III’s words twisted your stomach.

“You’ll learn, eventually, that the only ones we can truly trust here are each other. And me—” III straightened suddenly, proudly pointing both thumbs toward his chest. “I won’t lie to you, little lamb. Unless, of course, lying serves my interests.”

You observed him, legs slowly pulling up until you were sitting properly on the bed, trying to read through the confusing maze of his honesty and manipulation.

Oddly, though, something in his transparency, in his blatant selfishness, felt strangely refreshing. More genuine, at least, than IV’s carefully crafted facade yesterday, when he’d softly claimed he’d never offer lies. At least III openly admitted his selfishness. Still, the seed of doubt lingered. Perhaps this was just another layer to his deceit, a clever blend of truth and lie designed precisely to trick you.

But maybe, you realized with desperation, you could use this to your advantage.

They were patient things, ancient and watchful, predators that smiled as they waited for you to kneel of your own accord. And you knew that the moment you trusted them was the moment you’d stop being you. But gathering information and building a temporary alliance with the most unpredictable creature here might not hurt you. You could always betray him first if it came to it, couldn’t you? Lie to him, trick him back, reclaim just a little control.

Because monsters don’t always bare their teeth. Sometimes, they offer comfort first. You should learn how to wear a mask of your own, learn their rhythm, match their smiles. And maybe if you played their game well enough, they might never see it coming until your teeth were already in their throat. That tiny, dangerous thought encouraged you to finally nod.

Reluctant, wary, but nodding nonetheless.

III laughed then.

It erupted from him as if he’d witnessed something perfectly delightful, cruelly amusing. He clapped his hands together, the sharp sound echoing sharply through the quiet room.

“Good girl,” he cooed, eyes wide and bright with excitement.

In a blur of motion that seemed impossibly fast, he stepped toward your bedside table. You watched in alarm as he picked up a small cup that sat atop it, filled with something dark and oily, shimmering strangely in the muted candlelight, something you could swear hadn’t been there before you fell asleep. The liquid within was thick, disturbingly black, like ink or oil, viscous as congealed blood.

Your gaze narrowed, suspicion flaring sharply.

“What the hell is that?”

He glanced back at you.

“Is that your question, pet?”

You hesitated.

Was it worth wasting your question for that?

It was highly unlikely that III would poison you, if he’d truly wanted you dead, you’d already be lifeless on the cold floor. But still, your mind raced, wondering exactly what he had planned. Why would he want you to drink something like that if not to bring death?

The thought festered in your mind like rot beneath the skin. Maybe this was how he planned to be rid of you. A death that left no blood, no screaming, just your body folded neatly where they’d find it, cold and still. No struggle. No proof. No punishment.

But if it wasn’t meant to kill you then what was it meant to do?

You licked your bottom lip nervously, shivering slightly.

Still, some fragile part of you wanted to believe, wanted to hope that he wouldn’t cheat in his own game. That there were rules in hell too. Even for an abomination like him. Moreover, a question bloomed in your mind like something sick and flowering, something desperate and weak, pulsing beneath your ribs with an ache that bordered on hunger. A question that begged to be asked. A question that might tear something open. And maybe, it was worth swallowing whatever poison waited in that glass. Because what if drinking that thing, whatever the hell it was, meant hearing the truth, just once?

Finally, with shaking hands, you took the glass from him and cautiously sniffed its contents. It had no scent at all, neutral and unnervingly clean.

Suddenly, a memory surfaced, stopping your breath.

The voices.

You’d nearly forgotten them in the haze of sleepless horror, but now the memory returned with dreadful clarity. A whisper, coiled in the folds of sleep, pressed like fingers against your skull. A voice that had slithered into your dreams just before you slipped under.

“Drink the blood if offered. It will help you see more clearly.”

Your mouth went dry. Your heart stumbled.

You hadn’t understood them then, thought it just another echo in the cathedral’s endless maze of nightmares. But now it clawed at your spine with dreadful clarity. Was this it? Was this the blood they meant? But how could they have known? How could they have seen this moment before it happened? Unless it was never your dream to begin with. Unless something else had been dreaming through you. And if it was a sign then what would it mean to disobey?

Or worse, what would it mean to obey?

“You swear this won’t kill me?” you whispered quietly, voice quivering despite your attempt to steady it, eyes flickering anxiously up toward III who loomed over you like a scarecrow.

He hummed, the sound achingly quiet, impossibly gentle. And his voice, when he spoke, was velvet-soft and honey-sweet, yet edged with that familiar and unsettling hunger that seemed permanently etched into every word he uttered.

“Cross my heart,” he murmured, tracing a delicate, invisible line over his chest with one long finger, eyes gleaming, “and hope to die.”

You fucking piece of shit, you thought with a deep sigh.

You held your breath a second longer before closing your eyes tightly, tipping your head back, and drinking the strange liquid in one bitter gulp. Immediately, you gagged, because it coated your throat thickly and viscously, sliding downward, heavy and sickly sweet. However, you forced it down despite your body’s instinctive protest, coughing and choking as the taste lingered horribly.

III burst out laughing at your misery, the sound loud and joyous, delighting shamelessly in your discomfort. He snatched the cup from your trembling fingers, peering inside to make certain you’d emptied it completely.

“Fucking perfect,” he muttered, dangerously playful again. “What do you want in return?”

You fought back a wave of nausea, forcing words out between coughs. “Help me escape,” you commanded hoarsely. “Or tell me how to leave.”

For a long moment, III just stared at you.

The empty glass dangled from his slender fingers like a broken promise, thin and delicate, already too late to take back. It swung gently, catching the low light, a pendulum marking the moment your pact was sealed. Your heart thudded against your ribs like it wanted out, just as nausea bloomed low in your gut, sour and immediate.

But it was his silence that struck deepest.

The way he looked at you, unblinking and fixed, felt surgical. Like he wasn’t seeing you, but something unfolding inside you. And in that silence, in the stillness between two heartbeats, you saw it. Just for a breath. A flicker behind his eyes. Not amusement. Not cruelty.

Something that looked almost like fear.

But the illusion snapped as quickly as it came.

His eyes rolled skyward in exaggerated disappointment, the moment shattering with a breath, like glass underfoot. He exhaled with a scoff, head shaking as though you had let him down.

“How fucking braindead can you be?” III spat bitterly, exasperation etched clearly into his voice. “You really still don’t get it, do you? You can’t leave. We already told you that.”

You glared back, defiant despite your fear.

He waved one of his painted hands at you lazily, a flick of his wrist like swatting a fly, as though your desperation was dust to be brushed aside.

“Ask for something else.”

“No,” you insisted stubbornly, your voice raw from the effort, your throat still thick with oil. “You promised, III. Anything in return, right? And this is what I want.”

He groaned, visibly irritated now.

It shook his entire body in one smooth arc as he bent forward, face in his free hand. Then he stood straight again and shoved the empty glass into his pocket with such force that made the fabric rustle violently, nearly tearing the seam. 

“Gods, are you really this fucking stupid?” he sneered. “Do you really think if anyone could leave this place, I’d still be bloody here? 

The words spat out of him like spoiled meat.

You flinched at the venom in his voice but didn’t retreat. Your eyes locked onto his, refusing to blink, your whole body stiff with rage. You didn’t know if he was lying or not, his face was too practiced, too unhinged to decipher, but something in your chest couldn’t really accept the finality of that answer. Not yet. Not like this.

“This is what I want,” you repeated, more force behind the words now, as if they could pierce the cathedral walls themselves.

“Goddamn idiot, you—” he began, but stopped himself halfway through, dragging his fingers down the length of his mask with a slow exhale. “...Yeah sure,” III muttered dryly, sarcasm dripping heavily from his voice. “You know what? If I ever find a way out of this hellhole, I’ll drag you along, you daft fucking muppet.”

A small part of you, a desperate and hopeful part, believed him. Perhaps it was because of the flash you’d seen behind his eyes, that brief flicker of something raw and genuine like fear, you couldn’t be certain, but it was there. At least, you desperately wanted it to be. Still, the doubt lingered, coiling painfully within your chest.

You turned abruptly toward the cracked mirror, your reflection staring back with empty eyes, cheeks hollow and sick. The black substance had stained your lips darkly, making them look bruised, infected. You lifted a hand, quickly wiping it away, nausea bubbling hotly at the back of your throat once again.

III’s mood shifted suddenly, and he grinned again.

“You and I will have so much fun together,” he declared, eyes dancing eagerly. He wiggled his fingers playfully. “But this stays between us, pet. Our dirty little secret, alright?”

“Why?” you asked sharply.

Suspicion surged through you, dread mingling uncomfortably with regret, just as III groaned again, head rolling back with exaggerated annoyance. 

“Because our brothers are so fucking boring,” he complained loudly. “We’ve been stuck here together for so fucking long there’s nothing new about them. There’s no fun left, no mystery. I always know what they’re thinking, always know what they’ll do next. Oh, but you—” he was genuinely excited again, eyes glittering madly, “—you’re fun, aren’t you, pet?”

You couldn’t respond, your mind tangled and uncertain, the weight of your choice pressing heavy upon you.

Suddenly, your throat burned fiercely, an intense sensation igniting painfully deep inside. You blinked rapidly, vision blurring slightly, your limbs heavy with fatigue that crashed into you without warning. Panic sparked bright and frantic, your heart thundering in your chest as you struggled against the sudden urge to succumb to sleep.

“Fucking finally,” he muttered approvingly.

III’s facade of cheerfulness dropped, revealing an expressionless mask that chilled your blood.

“What—” you managed to gasp, eyelids fighting to remain open.

“Remember,” he murmured darkly, “this is between you and me. One last game. For old times’ sake, alright?”

Old times’ sake—?

Before you could respond, before you could even comprehend fully the depth of your mistake, he moved swiftly toward the door, his movements impossibly fluid and silent, slipping out and shutting it behind him with a sharp, final click.

You whined miserably, vision swimming as you rubbed your eyes desperately, fighting in vain against the overwhelming desire to sleep. Your muscles betrayed you, limbs heavy and useless as you collapsed back onto the bed, sleep clawing greedily at the edges of your consciousness.

And then you drifted, falling helplessly into sleep.

In your dreams, you were swimming again.

Or floating. Or drowning.

It was hard to tell anymore.

The impossibly dark water lapped against your shoulders, cold and thick as the blood that you had drank. You drifted through the void as if time no longer touched you. There was no sky, no ground, only the endless stretch of black water beneath and above, the dome above now disappeared, the water swallowing you whole. You could not feel your body. Only the ache of memory clinging to your skin like frost.

You were back in that pool.

And you were swimming toward the darkness again, pulled forward by something you didn’t understand. The void ahead of you shimmered with the promise of answers, of silence, of an ending.

But then—

You looked back.

And your heart stopped.

Someone was standing in the doorway.

That massive, looming arch where once you had stood with IV. You blinked water from your eyes, but the shape remained.

It was the angel.

The wingless angel.

The one from the rosacea window. From the cold marble statue. He stood upright at the door, impossibly tall, impossibly still, watching you. Even here, in the dream, his carved features were obscured, but the pressure of his gaze crushed the air from your lungs. You nearly choked, horror rising in your chest as your gaze dropped to the corpse cradled in his arms. You opened your mouth to scream, but it filled instantly with the choking darkness, silencing your cry of terror, desperate to see the woman’s face clearly.

Then something seized your ankle, strong fingers wrapping around your flesh, yanking you beneath the surface.

You struggled, panic burning raw and fierce within your chest, clawing desperately toward the surface. But the more you fought, the deeper you sank, water pressing in from every side. Pressure built in your skull, the water tightening around your neck like a noose. You reached out toward the angel, desperate—

—but he didn’t move.

He didn’t even blink.

Just before the suffocating blackness claimed you entirely, just before your vision faded to darkness, your frantic eyes caught sight of the dead woman’s face clearly—

—and it was yours.

Then you woke up.

Your limbs felt thick, sluggish, trapped within the cocoon of sleep that refused to fully release you. The memory of your nightmare still clung to your ribs, each breath tasting faintly of that black water, the shadowy undertow tugging softly at your edges.

“Finally,” a familiar voice murmured from somewhere close, like silk drawn slowly across stone, saying it with the same tone of voice as III had said the exact same word.

You snapped your head toward the sound, as your vision struggled to clear through lingering drowsiness. For a moment, the world blurred beyond recognition, a smear of muted colours, dim candlelight, heavy shadows, and fractured glass.

Then, slowly, details sharpened into clarity.

IV.

He lounged gracefully in the cushioned armchair beside the bookshelf, one leg crossed over the other leisurely, slender fingers tapping gently against the gilded armrest. The dark suit he wore sparkled subtly, catching fragments of candlelight as if woven from threads of the night itself. He watched you intently, eyes glittering from behind the mask, seemingly entertained by the spectacle you presented, tangled in bedsheets and confusion.

“You nearly slept through an entire day,” he continued almost conversationally, as if remarking on nothing more notable than the weather. He stood fluidly, effortlessly unfolding his frame from the chair, his every movement a ballet of controlled elegance.

His footsteps whispered across the plush rug, carrying him closer. However, he paused beside your bed, head tilted slightly, observing you with genuine, curious contemplation.

You stared up at him, lips parted slightly.

“Sometimes,” he mused, voice oddly gentle, “I forget how fragile humans truly are.”

There was no bite in his tone. No cruelty buried between the syllables. The words were not mocking, nor did they drip with superiority. You blinked rapidly, trying to sit up straighter, muscles heavy with the last vestiges of sleep and whatever else might have been lingering in your veins. Your mouth still tasted faintly of that drink, the way rain might taste in a grave.

“Where—” you cleared your throat, irritation prickling beneath your skin. “Where is III?”

IV stiffened subtly, a reaction barely perceptible beneath his practiced composure.

“III?” he echoed, soft amusement curling around each letter. You could feel his smile hidden beneath his mask. “Why would you be searching for him?”

The fog within your skull began to clear rapidly now, memories from before sleep surfacing sharply, crashing down like a wave breaking against rock. III’s insults, that sinister cup filled with blood, the promise he had made you, a promise you still didn’t know if he would fulfill. Fear prickled at the base of your spine.

You swallowed dryly and lied.

“I just—” you lowered your eyes to your fingers. “I just had a dream. About him, I mean. That’s all.”

“Ah,” IV breathed after a pause that lingered a heartbeat too long. But his tone had changed. Clipped now. As if he hadn’t quite decided whether he believed you or not. “Good. Dreams can serve as guidance at times.”

He studied you carefully, those masked eyes lingering just a breath too long. Then he turned away smoothly, as if whatever curiosity you’d inspired had already faded into boredom.

“I’ll prepare a bath for you,” he said softly, slipping back into that gentle, rehearsed kindness. “Then I’ll wait outside. Vessel has made you something to eat.”

You didn’t argue.

You knew it was pointless.

Instead, you repeated yesterday’s careful rituals, bathing in your clothes, feeling the hot water cling to your skin, selecting a fresh, simple outfit from the wardrobe. IV waited patiently in the shadows outside the door, his silhouette framed against flickering candlelight. When you finally emerged, he fell into step beside you, guiding you once more down labyrinthine halls.

Your eyes kept flicking to the wingless angel.

It haunted you at the end of the corridor, now unmistakably present, etched in glass or carved from marble. Its empty gaze felt heavy, accusatory and alive. You waited breathlessly for it to move, heart skipping whenever your gaze caught on those broken wings, those blind eyes that felt capable of seeing through every lie you told yourself.

Trying to sound casual, you turned to IV.

“Who is that?” you asked, voice barely more than breath. “The angel, I mean.”

IV’s head tilted just slightly.

He shrugged delicately, effortlessly elegant.

“Just a statue. Not anyone in particular.”

You felt the lie deep in your bones, a certainty that burned with sudden fury. Anger bubbled within your chest, bitter and acidic. You turned your face away, humming beneath your breath to disguise the tremble of wrath and fear.

Liar. Liar. Liar.

In the great hall, Vessel sat as he had sat before, serene, composed and unnervingly still. He occupied the same chair, his posture so regal you almost forgot how beautiful he looked. His mask glinted in the low candlelight, six eyes watching you without blinking, a gentle smile poised effortlessly upon his lips. He inclined his head gracefully as you took your seat across from him, IV hovering silently nearby.

“Hello, love,” Vessel greeted you softly.

You didn’t answer.

You sat down wordlessly at the long stone table, the food already waiting in front of you, fruits that gleamed like wax, bread blackened at the crust, and a cup of clear water so still and shimmering it looked like glass. The surface caught the light and fractured it, like oil. Or blood. Your lips moved instinctively, tongue pressing thoughtfully against the roof of your mouth, tasting some phantom bitterness. Then, slowly, you realised something peculiar.

You weren’t hungry.

Nor thirsty.

Your body felt strangely refreshed, energised even, despite IV’s earlier assertion that you had slept nearly a full day with nothing in your stomach. You huffed quietly, confusion curling in your gut but still, you forced yourself to taste the bread. You broke off a corner, the texture oddly damp, and you chewed slowly, staring down into your lap.

Then IV, with his usual dry glee, said, “She searched for III when she woke up.”

Vessel’s six eyes narrowed ever so slightly, amusement flickering through them, as he echoed softly, “III? Why were you searching for him, beloved?”

The repetition felt deliberate, rehearsed somehow, their amusement carefully choreographed between them. You felt trapped beneath their scrutiny, their gazes sharp and probing. Instead of answering immediately, you lifted the water, taking a careful sip to buy yourself time. Its oily texture lingered unpleasantly as you put it back.

“I had a dream,” you said. “About him.”

“What kind of dream?” Vessel asked softly, voice velvety yet edged subtly with curiosity.

You hesitated a heartbeat before holding his stare, courage flaring briefly beneath your ribs. “I dreamt that he killed me.”

Vessel’s smile deepened. 

He chuckled, shaking his head gently as though your words amused him in a tender, almost affectionate way. His smile stretched wide, just enough to flash his sharp canines again, like a wolf mimicking kindness.

“Oh, love. He couldn’t hurt you, not while I’m here.”

“Yeah, right,” you muttered, bitterness spilling quietly past your lips.

You pushed the plate away slightly, appetite fading completely.

IV raised a brow.

“That’s all?” he asked.

You nodded. “I don’t really feel like eating.”

You didn’t miss the quick and fleeting glance exchanged between Vessel and IV, their silent conversation occurring in that brief flicker of candlelight.

Then Vessel folded his hands in front of him.

“If you’d like,” he said smoothly, “you may join me in the library today.” He motioned to IV with a tilt of his chin. “IV has other duties.”

Relief washed through your chest, so strong, you nearly laughed aloud. Truth was, you didn’t want to spend another day with IV. Not after what had happened in the chapel.

“Sure,” you hummed, your voice barely audible.

You took one last sip of the glass in front of you and stood, your chair scraping softly against the marble floor. You felt their eyes follow you as you stepped away, the soles of your shoes silent against the cathedral stone.

But your mind wasn’t in the great hall anymore.

It was back in that room. With the black pool. With the wingless angel. The black, still water like glass. Like ink. Like the space between stars. It lingered in your thoughts like a bruise, dark and tender, pulsing behind every other memory.

And the angel. That eyeless creature carved from broken divinity, arms full of death, towering and silent as the end of the world. You couldn’t stop wondering what waited beneath that water, what eyes watched you from beneath its glassy surface, what teeth lingered just beyond the veil.

A chill rippled up your spine at the thought.

A shiver no fire could melt.

But other questions gnawed at you too—biting and relentless.

The voices. The ones that had slithered into your skull like vines through cracked stone. How had they known? They told you that blood would be offered, and they were right. You didn’t know what kind of blood he had made you swallow. The texture still haunted your tongue, the strange heat that bloomed in your throat like a sickness disguised as desire.

And he’d watched you the whole time, his face delighted, like a child watching a candle burn all the way down to its wick. And what he’d said before he vanished, what had he meant by that? You never really knew what game meant to a creature like him. With something so uncanny, so unhinged, anything could be a game.

Even you.

Your gaze drifted toward the corridor ahead, heart beating louder in your chest now, thoughts threatening to spill out like water at the rim of a glass. You clutched your hands together tightly to keep them in. To keep from turning around and screaming.

Maybe it was a good thing that you had to be in the library today. Fortunate, even. If Vessel was busy writing, if he had his head down, then maybe, just maybe, you could snoop around a little. Because if they refused to give you what you wanted then the books might.

There were too many questions.

Too many secrets.

Everything about this place was layered and false, like gauze wrapped over a rotting wound. The silence here was never real. The dreams bled into reality. And the truth, if it existed at all, was buried beneath blood, rituals and veiled eyes.

But finally, you were beginning to learn.

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“One for sorrow, two for sin, three to let the god begin. Four you’ll beg, and five you’ll pray, six won’t live to see the day.”

Chapter Text

“To be chosen is to be tested. And to be tested is to bleed.”

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The library opened up before you like the throat of some slumbering beast. It was impossibly vast, a temple of the written word swallowed by shadows and time. Books lined every inch of the towering walls, their collective spines forming odd mosaics of colour. Ladders leaned against the shelves, rising into choking heights. Many of the books bore titles etched in runes you couldn’t read, others had no titles at all, like eyes that blinked slowly shut at your approach. Countless scrolls wrapped in red twine were stacked in niches like corpses prepared for burial, their frayed ends curled like ugly dried tongues. 

Your eyes scanned slowly across endless rows.

This chamber, unlike the rest of the cathedral, carried a certain warmth. Modest and strange, but warmth still.

Gigantic rosacea windows opened high into the curved stone walls, letting in grey light that fell like veils across the shelves. The glass was coloured in bleeding blues, sick greens, sepia reds, the depictions mostly grotesque or bewildering, battles between beasts and angels, men birthing insects, and too many eyes pressed into uncanny faces where no eyes belonged. Your nose scrunched involuntarily at the visceral images, however, you pressed your lips together, refusing to voice your distaste.

But even so, this part of the building, you thought, seemed the most normal. That was a startling thought, considering everything you had already endured here. Here, at least, the madness wore softer shoes.

Vessel’s steps echoed softly ahead of you.

He led you into a secluded corner that, for this place, could only be described as quite cozy. An alcove of armchairs upholstered in worn dark green velvet, golden embroidery faded with age and touch. The cushions sagged as if they had borne years of silence. A desk carved from black wood dominated the space, black as oil and just as smooth. Vessel pulled out the chair in front of the desk and turned to you with a soft smile.

“This is where I usually work.”

You blinked at him in response, unsure of what to say.

He stepped to the side slightly, his smile unwavering.

“You’re welcome to join me here anytime, love. We could talk or work together, if you like,” his painted hand gestured loosely to the surrounding shelves. “You are also free to explore. This library is as much yours now as it is ours. However—” He raised a single finger, voice light but firm, “—do not open any books without showing them to one of us first. Some don’t like being disturbed.” He sat down then, hands folding with unnatural precision. “I’d be glad to suggest some interesting reads, if you wish.”

You shook your head gently.

The thought of sitting beside him for a whole day felt too intimate, too close. You rolled your tongue against the inside of your cheek, a small, nervous gesture.

“I’d rather look around on my own,” you said.

Vessel tilted his head, an amused hum buzzing at the back of his throat. He studied you for a beat too long, then nodded. “Very well. But if you need anything,” he tapped the side of his head, “I have rather extraordinary hearing. Just call for me.”

“Okay,” you whispered.

Barely a breath, barely a sound.

Then you slipped between the towering shelves. You could feel his knowing gaze lingering on your back for a moment longer than necessary, like the warmth of a candle just before it snuffs itself out.

He had known you would disobey him. You had seen it in his eyes. As if the whole thing had been a test dressed as a warning, and your failure had already been folded into his plan. But you didn’t want to dwell on what that meant. Not when, for once, you had a chance to do something for yourself. So you turned your back on Vessel without hesitation, walking away with quick steps.

You moved deeper into the library.

The chandeliers above gave off an amber light too dim to reach the corners of the room, but just enough to give your wandering the illusion of safety. You weren’t exactly sure what you were looking for. The history of this place, perhaps, some records of how it came to be. Or a religious scripture, something that could tell you more about Sleep. Maybe something even more ambitious about the black blood or your dreams. Or perhaps you wanted to find them in the pages. The vessels. Anything to give you some sense of bearing.

You ignored the books with no titles, because the first one you had dared to open, a beautiful thing bound in leather, began shaking violently in your hands like a dying animal, twitching and jerking until you slammed it to the ground with a panicked gasp.

You left it on the floor, refusing to touch it again.

And then there were the ones written in that strange, twisting script, foreign to you yet oddly familiar. You tried to open one which had a silk cover that shimmered like rain, but the inside offered nothing but runes, crawling and twitching across the pages like worms burrowing into your mind. You snapped it shut with a frustrated sigh.

One down. A thousand to go.

For nearly an hour, you wandered.

Eventually, after your wandering had looped into itself and your legs were growing tired, you found it, a narrow section of one shelf. Books with titles in your own tongue.

You scanned the spines hungrily.

One book caught your eye immediately. Vore. You flipped it open. It was about a man so consumed and obsessed with the desire to be eaten by his lover that he began slowly offering himself in pieces, cutting off fingers and cooking them into her meals. The man saw it as a devotion of body, mind and soul until there was nothing left to give. You closed it with a grimace, heart pounding.

There was another book titled Luminous Flora of the Ashlands. It catalogued glowing plants, ones that fed on memory instead of soil but they could supposedly cure any sickness. Some of them were described in obsessive detail, petals like tiny hands, roots that wept when cut, leaves like breathing skin. You placed it beside you on a low stool and reached for the next.

A book bound in pale pink velvet, like a child’s diary. Feathered Host. Inside was the story of a young woman who kept sentient flamingos in her garden, dark creatures with eyes like rubies and voices like crystal chimes. They watched over her, protected her and sang to her newborn child. But the woman broke a promise, what kind, the book never said. And when she did, the birds turned on her. The final pages described her wailing as the flamingos carried her baby away and dropped the child into the sea described only as endless. Her screams never echoed back. You shivered and placed it back on the shelf like it might bite.

That’s when you found it.

A plain and thin notebook. Bound in dark, matte leather, fraying slightly at the edges. No title and no author. You opened it cautiously, expecting nonsense or blankness. Instead, you found poetry. You blinked, stunned. The script was fine, elegant, neat. And there were dozens more like it. Row after row of identical covers, notebooks lined up like offerings, nearly invisible among the more extravagant bindings. All poetry. Hundreds of them.

You remembered what II had said to you in the garden. 

‘He fills the library with endless diaries, poems, and songs. He claims it helps him remember. Pages and pages of things no one but him will ever read.’

Vessel.

These were his.

The poetry no one read.

You felt it immediately. Each word felt like a drop in your chest. The lines flowed in strange, sad rhythm, carrying you somewhere far beneath language. It was grief disguised as love, or maybe the other way around. The words seemed to breathe the same way he did. Lived on the same strange wavelength.

You sat beside the shelf, thumbing through one of the notebooks, eyes settling on a poem titled High Water. You read it silently but greedily, without blinking. You didn’t even notice that you were holding your breath until it ended.

‘When the mouth of infinity buries its teeth in me, I’ll smile through the agony for you. And I know you still bear the weight of your own existence and you’ll never bear the weight of two.’

Your fingers moved without thought, tracing over the words as if to memorise them through touch. Something inside you ached, the kind that left bruises without skin. You couldn’t help the low hum that left your throat as you placed the notebook beside you on the stool with a promise made to no one but yourself that you’d return to it.

Yes. You would read more later.

But not now.

You moved deeper into the bookshelf’s contents, dragging a finger across the bindings as you searched for something useful, something true. Then your hand landed on a heavy and jagged book bound in some strange, dark metal. Its title was etched in iron, The Teeth of God. The weight of it unsettled you before you even opened it. No chapters. No dialogue. Just a single monologue stretched across too many pages, sprawling thoughts about death, the meaning of life and divinity, as if written by someone who had once been human and no longer was.

Your eyes snagged on a passage halfway down the page.

‘Life without death knows no form, no boundary. Without death and our finite nature, it would be stripped of all meaning. Left to wander as little more than endlessly rotating gears in the quiet engine of a cold hell. But we do not die because it gives our lives meaning. We die because this is the way of all things, and in the end, is that not all we are?’

You stared at the passage, unmoving.

Somewhere in the distance, a floorboard creaked.

The sharp, sudden sound sliced through the silence and startled you enough to jolt your body backwards. You dropped the metallic book with a clatter that made your skin crawl and it fell straight onto your foot. You hissed through clenched teeth and sat backward onto the stone floor, cradling your bruised toes with a wince.

“Shit,” you cursed bitterly.

You sat there for a short moment, foot throbbing in protest, before your eyes caught a flicker of colour, something utterly wrong against the palette of the room. It peeked from beneath the bottom lip of the nearest shelf, as if it had been shoved there in haste, as if it didn’t belong. Your brows knitted in curiosity. Pain forgotten, you leaned forward, getting on all fours like a child searching for a lost toy, your shirt riding up as your stomach met the cold stone.

A cat’s head.

Not a real one, thank whatever god might still have jurisdiction over this place. It was folded from coloured paper, someone had even drawn whiskers and eyes on it. The ink had smudged slightly, as if handled too often. You huffed softly. Something about it made your stomach twist with unease.

But then, there was something else. Just beyond the origami cat, pressed deeper under the shelf, something black and rectangular, wedged halfway behind a stone bracket. You reached further, arm stretching. Your fingers scrabbled awkwardly but finally you pulled it out, brushing away dust with your sleeve.

You sat back quickly, heart thudding.

At first glance, it seemed like another of Vessel’s notebooks, plain and unmarked. But when you cracked it open, the contents hit you like cold water to the face.

It was a diary.

“What the—” you whispered.

The ink was hurried, filled with silly margin doodles, blots, and curling question marks. You turned pages with shaking hands, mouth dry, breath caught. This was not Vessel’s. This was a human’s. A woman, if her phrasing was any indication. And she had written this diary before you had arrived. Trapped, like you. Lost, like you.

Your eyes scanned the pages greedily, flipping through them hurriedly. Your fingers stumbled upon pressed petals between pages and a hairpin carved from bone, that fell into your lap. It must have served as a marker, you thought as you pocketed it.

And sketches—oh, there were sketches.

Dozens of them.

The vessels, drawn in pencil or charcoal, delicate and fluid. One of IV sat in an armchair, one long leg crossed over the other, his head tilted. Another of III lying in the grass, eyes closed, looking almost peaceful. But Vessel appeared the most. The arch of his back. His hands. His rings. His mask. His smile. Over and over and over again. Smiling at nothing. Smiling at her. Whoever she had been, she had drawn him obsessively. You noticed, with a strange throb in your chest, that there were none of II. None at all. It seemed that this woman had shared your unease of the coldest vessel.

You turned to the beginning, forcing your hands to steady.

Vessel said writing things down might help me remember. Said I should record my thoughts, my feelings, anything that could anchor me. When I told him I didn’t have anything to write about, he said that I should just write the truth. So I’ll try. He’s always writing something, so I suppose he knows what he’s talking about. Maybe it’s therapeutic for him. Maybe it will be for me, too. Who knows.

I don’t know how long I’ve been here. Everything melts together. I thought I could keep count at first, but no. I think, if I had to guess, it’s been two months. I’ve stopped eating altogether, which is weird. My hair’s not growing, either.

You flipped the page ravenously.

IV is a real showman. I don’t trust him. Everything about him feels like theatre. Like smoke and mirrors and just enough honesty to keep you guessing. He only plays nice when he wants something. III is the same in that sense. One moment he’s laughing, the next he’s watching me like he wants to peel the skin from my face. I think he would, if it amused him. I try not to be alone with II. He doesn’t feel human. I avoid him. Whatever. He hates me too anyway. So no harm done, right?

But Vessel…

He’s different. He’s gentle, in his own way. He really sees me and talks to me like I matter. He’s the only one who feels almost human. He even wrote a song for me. Said it came to him in a dream. Called me Eden. Said I was the garden he’d always longed to return to. I think he cares about me.

You nearly laughed.

How naive. How deluded.

You scowled down at the page, but your hands wouldn’t stop turning it. You wanted to judge her, but you couldn’t. You were the one reading a dead woman’s thoughts anyway.

They won’t tell me about the others. The ones who came before me. Vessel says the past isn’t helpful. But III let it slip once, when he was bored, or maybe trying to scare me. Said that one jumped from the highest spire. One starved herself to death. One went into the dungeons and never came back.

I don’t know if it’s true. I don’t want it to be.

You shivered. Every word crept under your skin like a splinter, cold and sharp. And then you reached the passage that made your hands go numb.

Vessel asked me to join them in their rituals.

He says I could finally become one of them, a vessel of Sleep. He says then we’d be family. But I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what I want. Sometimes I think I do want to be like them. But I also like who I am. I like that Vessel likes who I am.

I think he loves me. Maybe not in the way I want him to. Maybe not in a way that’s even real. Or perhaps I’ve lost my mind entirely. That’s just as likely. I don’t know if he’ll ever read this. I don’t even know if I want him to. But I’m writing it down anyway, because he told me to. And I love him. Fuck it, I really do. I hate myself for it but it’s true. I’m in love with him. And maybe that makes me an idiot. Maybe it makes me his next offering. But it doesn’t change the fact that I’d still choose him. Every time. And that’s the scariest part of all.

But…

You had to stop reading.

The words had begun to swell like wounds in your throat, bleeding beneath your ribs where you couldn’t reach. You clutched the diary, its skin warm from your hands, trembling against your palm as if it, too, were alive. It was not just what you had read, it was what it meant. The possibility. Because if Vessel had truly loved someone once, if he had named her Eden, if he had written for her, then that must have meant something. Then there had to be something left inside him. Some broken human thread that hadn’t rotted away with time or devotion.

Or maybe not.

Perhaps it was just another performance like the dozens he played every day with you and the others. Maybe he had been merely pretending, a liar masquerading as a poet, tricking her into surrendering her humanity to Sleep. You didn’t know what to believe anymore. But you knew one thing with a cold, aching certainty—

—this notebook was not meant to be found.

Panic surged through your veins, hot and urgent.

With a quick glance around the deserted library aisle, you tucked the diary beneath your loose shirt, its spine pressing warmly against your skin as though it had a heartbeat of its own. You needed to read it properly. You inhaled deeply, forcing the sick wave of emotion down as you stood. You brushed the dust from your knees, knuckles pale with pressure. And then, just as you steadied your breath, you heard a voice drift through the shadows.

“Beloved?”

It was his.

Your heart skipped violently.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

“I’m here,” you called awkwardly.

Vessel emerged from between the bookshelves like a shadow given life. He looked at you as he always did, with a smile too kind for what it masked. His six eyes shimmered softly in the candlelight, twin reflections in each one of them that felt both divine and predatory. He tilted his head slowly, eyes sliding past your nervous expression toward the stack of books resting on the stool. Your stomach twisted as you felt the diary pressing against your spine. However, Vessel didn’t scold you. Instead, he extended something towards you.

A book.

“I know you said you weren’t interested in my recommendations,” he muttered softly, “but I thought this one might interest you.”

You stared at the dark green cover. God Of The Gaps, it read in curling gold letters. An empty eye stared back at you from the centre of the ‘O’.

“IV told me you’d asked about the statue,” Vessel continued casually as he leaned against the nearest shelf. His posture was effortless, too casual for a creature carved of myth, too familiar for something godlike. “The one near your room.”

Your throat tightened.

“I—yeah, I did.”

For a moment, he did not respond, the silence between you stretching into something fragile, crystalline, ready to shatter at the slightest provocation. 

“You seem fascinated by him,” Vessel said finally, his voice quiet, yet edged with something strange, a glint hidden behind silk. His six eyes roamed your face intently, as though tracing a map of your thoughts. You shifted uncomfortably beneath the weight of his gaze.

“Who is that angel? I mean, really?”

“He is a character from an old myth,” Vessel began carefully, his eyes locked onto your face with unnerving intensity, “Though, strictly speaking, he was not really an angel.” His smooth voice sharpened slightly, clearly disliking the word, though using it anyway for your benefit. “He was human, once.”

Your eyes widened as you opened the book in your hands almost unconsciously. And there, on the first page, lay an illustration of an impossible paradise, something pulled straight from the deepest, most sacred dreams of mankind. Breathtaking mountains and gardens bloomed beneath a sapphire sky, waterfalls cascading into crystal pools. Majestic emerald trees stood guard around marble pantheons and golden temples. It was what heaven might look like if it existed. It was more radiant than any reality you had ever known. 

Vessel leaned closer, his elegant figure looming softly over you as he studied the illustration alongside you, his voice drifting gently into your ears, hypnotic as a lullaby.

“This is Arcadia,” he echoed your unspoken awe. “It was a realm where humans and the old gods lived in harmony. Peace, or at least something close to it.”

Your fingers brushed over the painted landscape, yearning suddenly for something you never had, something humanity itself had perhaps lost forever.

“And the angel?”

“Your angel—” He almost sneered the word, a muscle ticking in his jaw beneath the painted skin, “—was a musician from the Veridian family. He dedicated his entire existence to one of the old gods. Worshipped Him like none before had done.” Vessel paused, his tone darkening slightly. “And eventually, the god noticed. Took an interest.”

He inclined his head slightly.

“The god became entranced by the musician’s devotion. To flatter Himself, the god attempted to transform his musician into a deity, His equal in eternity. But the gods,—” Vessel’s voice fell into something softer, almost vulnerable, “—well, they cannot love like humans do. Their passions are much darker. Crueler, raw with power, violent by nature. Incapable of kindness, incapable of empathy, a noble intention lost entirely to obsession and possessiveness.”

You glanced upwards, catching the shadows pooling in the hollows of Vessel’s mask, and felt an unsettling pang within your chest.

“What happened to him?”

Vessel’s mouth tightened slightly.

“The god failed. He twisted the musician into something incomplete, an unfinished toy, not fully human, not fully divine. And the god was ashamed of his creation, angry that His fellow deities might discover His weakness, but still, He could not bear to destroy the musician. Instead, the god locked him away for eternity, tormenting him endlessly with the empty promise of a love He was fundamentally incapable of giving.”

You closed the book, a dull ache settling in your bones.

“That’s—that’s horrible,” you whispered.

Vessel chuckled suddenly, shattering the fragile melancholy.

“It’s merely a bedtime story for children, love,” he said dismissively. “But at least now you know who your mysterious angel was.”

You hummed softly in response, the bitterness lingering thick and sticky on your tongue.

You couldn’t help but see the parallel. It echoed the woman’s words from the diary, her misguided belief that Vessel’s affection for her had been genuine. But now, with his voice fresh in your ears, the god’s twisted love in the story felt cruelly familiar to his. Vessel, similar to the god who had charmed and trapped the musician, had played out the very same script with Eden. A god who would never truly love, just pretend long enough to ensnare.

Wasn’t that the same thing? 

Your eyes hardened as you stared at him.

“Thank you for the story,” you muttered.

The false gratitude tasted like ash in your mouth.

He merely shrugged, casually leaning back against the shelf. Then his smile returned, a spider spinning silk around prey, his eyes sparkling with genuine amusement, nodding toward the open notebook you’d foolishly left beside you.

“I see you’ve found my work.”

Embarrassment flared hot across your cheeks, a shameful warmth that made you avert your eyes to the floor. “I—” You swallowed, tongue dry. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all. You could even burn them if it pleased you,” he said smoothly, stepping forward, as he reached out to touch the edge of a book on the shelf just beside your head, as if the offer was casual, as easy as breathing. Yet there was a weight to it, a hidden meaning just beyond your reach. You couldn’t tell if he was joking or not, and that uncertainty only deepened your discomfort. Your heart thundered at Vessel’s nearness, his presence suffocatingly gentle.

“I’d rather not,” you admitted finally, reluctantly meeting his gaze again. “But—I mean, is it okay if I take some books to my room?”

“You are free to do whatever you wish, love.”

Your heart clenched.

You really wanted to believe him. You ached to trust the softness in his voice, to lean into the warmth that flickered in his eyes when he looked at you like you were something precious. For a moment, he looked almost human. Otherworldly. Devastating. Close enough to touch. And in that moment, you understood why you couldn’t judge Eden. Because the truth was, it would be so easy to fall in love with him. Too easy. Even knowing what he was. But maybe that was the most dangerous part. Because nothing that beautiful comes without a price. And that was exactly what made it feel like a lie.

You shivered slightly, trying not to show your fear, forcing a smile that felt as fragile as glass.

“Thank you,” you murmured again, the words scraping rawly against your throat. The act of gratitude felt wrong, yet you had to play the game. Pretend to trust, pretend to surrender, even as your heart hardened with each passing second. Vessel straightened gracefully, motioning toward the corridor that stretched towards his corner.

“Would you like to join me then?” he asked, his voice soft and inviting.

He really wanted you to trust him.

It bled through the seams of his poise. Through the gentle slope of his voice, through the way he tilted his head just slightly to meet your gaze as though trying to align with you. He had mastered the art of kindness, but there was something desperate beneath it all. A hunger not of flesh, but of understanding. A need to be seen.

To be forgiven, perhaps.

And maybe in another life, another world, you might have. But you knew better now. So, you swallowed your hesitation, feeling it stick in your throat like a shard of glass, and you shook your head.

“I’d rather read on my own now.”

Vessel didn’t flinch.

He only nodded, slowly, his expression unchanged.

“Of course,” he said, voice lilting with a quiet resignation as he stepped away from you. His silhouette stretched as he moved, casting a long shadow across the stone floor, distorting his elegance into something jagged. “If you have any more questions,” he added, without turning back, “you know you can always come to me.”

You hummed noncommittally. “Well, your brothers haven’t been too keen on answering my questions. So I might not have much of a choice.”

That made him pause. He tilted his head slightly over his shoulder, just enough that you could see the faint pull at the corner of his mouth. “Each vessel is different,” he said calmly. “We carry different burdens. Come from different origins.” His long fingers danced at his sides as he spoke, as if reciting a well-known verse. “But in the end, we serve the same will.”

Your eyes narrowed.

There it was again.

That sick devotion.

You stared at him, heart pacing faster, suddenly emboldened now by the secrecy that the diary still whispered against your back.

“What about the others?” you asked suddenly, voice firmer and sharper. “The other humans who were here before me. What will did they serve?”

The question froze the air.

Just for a second.

You watched as his body tensed, the line of his shoulders going rigid, as if your question had struck a chord in some buried chamber of him. He stepped further away from you, and it was almost theatrical, the way the distance grew, his silence speaking more than any words ever could. You could almost feel it. The retreat. Not just of his body, but of something else.

Something behind the mask.

“They served a purpose,” Vessel said eventually, his tone flat and polished. “All of them did. But unfortunately, they were unable to serve Sleep as He wished.”

That was all you were meant to get.

But you didn’t stop there.

Your mouth pressed into a line, your palms clammy against the cold cover of the book still clutched in your hands. “And do you think that’s the mark of a gracious god? To demand a purpose, and then condemn them when that purpose isn’t fulfilled?”

You watched him carefully. Watched the smile remain on his face but his right hand twitched. Small. Barely there. A ripple in the silk. But you saw it. The flames in the sconces shivered, their shadows scattering like startled birds across the stone walls.

The silence was so heavy it made your ears ring.

“I suppose we have a different concept of grace, love,” he said at last, folding his arms slowly across his chest as if to still the restlessness of his hands. His voice was like soft velvet again, but it was measured. His words no longer warmed you. They fell like snow onto stone. “One that you may not yet understand.”

You held his gaze. 

“Yeah, IV told me all about your fucked up idea of grace.”

Vessel didn’t react, but the tips of his fingers curled into the sleeves of his robe.

“He said that death is the worst punishment you can give a human,” you went on, tasting the weight of your own boldness as you stared between his central pair of dark eyes. “So tell me, Vessel, how’s your god graceful, if he condemned the other humans before me to oblivion just for failing to please him? Was that your god’s love?”

You could hear your own heartbeat in your ears.

“You think grace is a gentle thing,” Vessel muttered, his voice low and steady, like something recited. “But even the sea is graceful when it drowns you. Even fire dances while it devours. Grace isn’t kindness, beloved. It’s inevitability.”

He took a slow breath. Not for calm, no, there was no tension in him. But as if preparing to say something that cost more than he cared to admit.

“Sleep’s grace does not comfort,” he continued. “It burns away the self until what remains is worthy. Would you rather He had saved them? Would you rather they stayed here, broken and mad, unable to carry what was asked of them, suffering until nothing human remained? Not every human is meant to bear the role of a vessel. Not all survive the change.”

A pause. Just long enough for you to start breathing again. His gaze faltered for the first time, just briefly, before it returned to you, sharp as a blade drawn too close.

“Some asked for death,” he said, quieter now. “Some begged for it. Others shattered in ways no ritual, no offering, no faith could mend, in ways that made them dangerous to themselves. To us. But believe me when I say, we did what we could. I did what I could.”

His voice had gone strange.

Not angry. Not remorseful. But something suspended between warning and prayer. His eyes stayed on you, heavy with something unreadable. And whether it was guilt or justification, or something far worse, you couldn’t say.

“So you tell me, what is that, then, if not mercy?”

Something cold and hollow settled in your stomach as he finished. And you stood there, heart hammering like it wanted to burst out of your ribs. Every part of you screamed to be still, to keep silent, to lower your eyes like the other humans must have done before you.

But their ghosts were loud in your chest.

“Then wouldn’t it be more graceful,” you asked, “if Sleep asked nothing of them except their devotion? Wouldn’t that have been enough? Did your god have to take their humanity, too? Their lives? Did he have to take everything from them? Everything from you?”

But Vessel didn’t answer.

Not with words. Not even with his eyes. He simply stood there, perfectly still and unreadable, as if you’d asked something unspeakable, something that didn’t fit within the doctrine at all. Something he didn’t dare confront. And in that quiet, you realised, you had struck something true. But you didn’t know whether to feel victorious or terrified.

You swallowed.

“I think,” you whispered softly, “you mistake submission for peace.”

Vessel lowered his arms, the twitching in his fingers falling still, as if the will to gesture had drained from him. He stood utterly motionless, and yet something in him shifted. The way he looked at you now, it was strange and unsettling. Not with anger. Not even disappointment. But like he was seeing you for the first time.

You didn’t know what else to say.

Your defiance flickered, still burning, but flickering, like a candle in the wake of a cold wind. You could feel it. The shift. It made you wonder, just for a breath, what he had been before this place, before their god. Before the mask. Before the eyes. Was there ever a man beneath all of it? And if there was, was he still in there? Or had Sleep taken him, too?

Vessel tilted his head slowly, as if listening to something only he could hear. Then, without warning, he spoke, his voice soft, yet startling in its sincerity.

“I’m truly glad you’re here.”

The words caught you off guard, more than any threat ever could.

The words should have been comforting. But they weren’t. He continued, almost dreamlike, as if confessing a secret aloud for the first time. “II thinks it’ll all play out the same. That this is just another circle, another mistake in the making.” His eyes, all six, met yours again, and something deep, too deep, moved behind them. “But I know better, beloved. I know you’re the one we’ve all been waiting for. All this time.”

The air thickened around you, like the walls themselves were listening.

You stood frozen, heart thudding in your chest like it wanted to escape, but Vessel didn’t wait for your answer. There was no farewell. No explanation.

Without another word, he turned and walked away, his footsteps echoing like punctuation at the end of something you couldn’t name. And you were left staring after him, your throat dry, your thoughts fraying at the edges. You frowned, dropping your gaze, unsure if it was from shame or exhaustion.

You didn’t stop him. You couldn’t. There were no words big enough to carry what tangled inside your chest. So you let him go. And you stood there, still clutching the book, the silence around you thick as a fog that wouldn’t lift.

The diary at your back pulsed like a second spine.

The words in your chest rattled like teeth.

You didn’t know what kind of god Sleep truly was. But you were starting to think you knew what kind of creature Vessel was. And despite everything, you wanted to believe him.

Even when you knew better.

Even as you watched him disappear again.

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“If you love me, let me bleed. If you trust me, sharpen me.”

Chapter Text

“In the end, we kneel not to gods, nor to lovers, but to the enemy who knows us best, and still destroys us.”

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You didn’t sleep.

Not really.

You stayed awake nearly all the hours you were supposed to spend sleeping, laying in the bed they had given you, the candle beside you melting itself crooked as the hours dragged past.

Eden’s journal was stretched open across your lap, its spine bent and worn from overuse. You knew her looping handwriting better than your own by now, the smudged fingerprints and the silly doodles at the corners of the paper, the tremors in her pen when her thoughts spiraled. You’d committed her words to memory, dissected her tone and stripped it down, the way her affection for Vessel bled through her sentences like a slow leak.

She’d written so much about him.

About what kind of books he liked, what kind of music he played on strange instruments he’d cobbled together, and how he would teach her softly, correcting her mistakes with that careful hush of his voice you knew too well. Sometimes she’d write paragraphs on Vessel’s favourite things, or the way his six eyes crinkled when he smiled at her. Sometimes she’d talk about the songs he wrote, the poems he’d read aloud to her in the courtyard.

And yet for all her gushing entries, the diary didn’t give you what you needed. It felt grotesquely intimate. As if you were spying on her. But survival, you reminded yourself, was more important than her dignity.

Eden was gone.

You were not.

And she hadn’t been consistent at all. Not in the ways that mattered. Her entries never told you how it ended. No passage where the thread snapped. No descent into madness. No record of final days or revelations of betrayal. No decision to flee, or surrender, or vanish. The last few pages were no different than the rest.

Just an entry like any other, ending with:

Then nothing.

As if she had dissolved between the lines.

Vanished inside her own story.

You read until your eyes burned, until the candle leaned sideways and your breath became a soft, steady rhythm.

However, one entry refused to leave you. The only entry that made your skin crawl in the deepest, most visceral way. It stayed curled in the corner of your vision. You knew it by heart now. Every cursed line. The longest thing she’d ever written. The only thing that felt like a scream beneath all the worship. You held your breath as you opened that page again, candlelight flickering across the diary’s spine.

‘I’ve never seen Vessel so angry as he was today.

I spent my day with IV, as usual, helping him with his ‘duties.’ Nothing special. Nothing I haven’t done a hundred times before. But IV got carried away. That’s the only way I can explain it.

He asked me to drink his blood. Just like that. Said he wanted to prove something. That I should let him show how much he wants me. That I should accept him. That it would only be fair. He said it with a look I can’t describe. I laughed at first because I thought he was joking. But he wasn’t. It’s not the first time, either. That he got carried away, I mean. By now, I’m used to turning him down, I guess. I think it’s always been a kind of sick game with them.

Ever since I got close to Vessel, the others have been… weird. Like they feel it, somehow. Like being with Vessel is the same as being with all of them. Like I am theirs. A shared property. They won’t stop touching me and they keep trying to be alone with me. I don’t understand it. I try not to freak out about it because Vessel said that it’s normal. That I should give them time. That they’re adjusting. But adjusting to what?

I wish I didn’t love him so much.

You took a shaky breath as you continued to read.

Today was different. When I told Vessel what happened, he snapped. I didn’t even know he could shout like that. Especially not at IV. I honestly thought something might shatter. Vessel spoke in a language I didn’t understand. II had to hold him back. Yes, that’s how bad it got.

But the worst part? The part I can’t get out of my head? Is that when III tried to touch me days ago, Vessel did nothing. He didn’t even blink. But this? IV offering me his blood? That was somehow too far. What the fuck does that mean? It made me sick. All of it. It still makes me sick, writing it. But I can’t stop thinking about it. What does drinking someone’s blood mean to them? And why didn’t Vessel offer me his blood, if it’s such a big deal?

Maybe I’ve misunderstood something. Maybe love here doesn’t mean what I thought. Maybe it never did. I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.

I think I’m going to keep my distance for a few days. Until they settle and I can think straight again. I can’t breathe when all of them are around. I don’t know what’s happening to them. To me. But something’s changing. I can feel it.

I just want them to leave me alone…’

You blew out the candle with a trembling breath, watching the smoke curl up like a spirit in retreat, soft and silver. The moment the flame died, the silence crawled back in, hungry and thick. Your chest rose and fell like a dying tide, shallow, uneven, and too loud in the quiet of the walls. You felt your heart punching at your ribs like it, too, wanted out. Out of this room, out of this body, out of this place where every secret felt like a blade pressed to your throat.

Your head throbbed behind your eyes.

The bone hairpin and the thin journal were quickly tucked behind the cracked mirror of your vanity, slipped between glass and stone. But hiding it didn’t make you feel safer. Only more hunted. However, you had to protect it. Had to protect yourself. Whatever Eden hadn’t lived long enough to write down, you would.

If the vessels didn’t kill you first.

Or their miserable god.

Your reflection splintered in the mirror’s fractured surface, a dozen pairs of your eyes staring back at you, none of them the same. You looked at yourself as though trying to see what had changed. You studied yourself in the mirror after you’d first read Eden’s entry, too. However, you didn’t look different. You didn’t feel different either, not truly. You still looked human. A pair of cracked lips. A smear of soot on your sleeve. A breath that still fogged the mirror.

But something was off. You weren’t thirsty anymore. Not like you should have been. Not hungry, not parched. And that was strange. But then again, Eden wrote that the exact same thing had happened to her, even without the blood. Then why had Vessel lost his mind when IV offered it to her? And the worst of it, you’d already done it. The thing she never had.

You’d already drunk the blood.

The nausea returned like a second heartbeat, writhing beneath your skin as you pressed your palm to your stomach, as if that would change the past. As if you could somehow squeeze it back out, pretending it never happened.

You remembered the way III had watched you. The taste of it on your tongue. The warmth, strange and slow and unnatural, that had crept through your limbs in its aftermath.

You crawled into bed, but sleep didn’t come easily. The moment your head hit the pillow, the voices returned, pressing and murmuring, heavy behind your eyes like a swarm.

“You were born to drown in an endless sea.”

“All this glory you did not earn…”

“Drink the blood when it is offered.”

“The vessels ache to crawl back to Eden.”

You clenched your jaw and threw a pillow over your head, trying to pretend your body wasn’t shaking. You whimpered without sound, curling tighter beneath the heavy blanket.

And in the eternal darkness of your dreams, you drowned again. You were dropped back into the black pool, the one without an end. The one where the wingless angel waited, mouth open in silent song. You screamed through the water that filled your mouth but he only stared with hollow reverence as he cradled the corpse of the girl again, her limbs dangling, head twisted backward, her hair tangled with seaweed. You tried to scream to tell him you knew what he was, who he was, but the water surged in, flooding your throat, drowning the words before they could ever be born. You sank and sank and sank—

And then a voice pulled you back.

“Get up.”

You flinched before you registered it.

IV’s voice wasn’t as jarring as III’s, and at least he wasn’t standing over you or watching you sleep like some starved animal, but it still carved through the dream like a blade.

You sat up slowly, your neck aching, your mouth dry.

“Come on now,” IV was at the door, one hand on the frame, the other waving absently behind him. “Rise and shine, darling. Vessel’s summoning the family, wants to share something with all of us. It’s ever so special.”

You rubbed the sleep from your eyes, blinking at him as he lingered. He had already prepared a bath for you, as was routine by now, the scent of herbs and ash curling up from the surface.

You said nothing as he stepped out, closing the door behind him without another word.

You bathed in silence.

You felt it deep in your marrow, you needed to act. You couldn’t keep floating between their whims like driftwood. You couldn’t keep reacting. You had to plan. You had to extract what they were hiding. Piece by piece. Lie by lie. Because if you wanted to survive, if you wanted to escape, you needed to know everything. You needed to pull the strings behind each mask, learn what made each of them tick, how they lied, and when they hesitated.

You would not die here.

And the only way forward was through.

You needed to do something without letting them know what you’d found. You couldn’t tell them about Eden. And if she was right, if the blood meant something deeper, some covenant you didn’t yet understand yet, then you needed to stay quiet about that, too.

But you could try something else.

You dressed yourself slowly and brushed your hair, deep in thought. And then you made your decision. You reached behind the mirror, fingers closing around bone. You stared at it, heart pounding. It was simple but delicate, unremarkable to anyone who hadn’t known of Eden. So you twisted your hair up and slid the pin through it. You couldn’t say why you did it. Maybe it was curiosity. Maybe it was defiance. Maybe you just wanted to see who would notice.

It was a risky plan.

Not clever, not safe, not kind to your nerves but it was the only weapon you had. And now, as you closed the door behind you, IV was staring at it as though it were whispering secrets only he could hear. His head tilted as he watched you, shoulders going still.

“Where did you find that?” he asked, far too casual, like he was commenting on the weather. But you heard it. The stammer beneath the act, the slight tremble in the accent.

Your throat tightened. It took brutal effort not to let your fingers tremble, to keep your posture loose. You shrugged with false ease, looking anywhere but directly at him.

“It was behind the vanity table,” you muttered. “Maybe someone dropped it.”

His eyes didn’t leave your face.

“Why? Is it yours?” you asked.

His lips curled behind the mask into something that might have been a smirk or a sneer, perhaps something stitched together between the two.

“II will be happy.”

Your brow creased. “What does it have to do with him?”

But he didn’t answer.

Of course he didn’t.

IV had already begun walking, the conversation discarded like it’d never even happened. You followed him in silence, the echo of his polished shoes haunting the corridor ahead of you. You glanced at his back, watching the sharp lines of his shoulders, the way his spine moved like it was coiled around something wrong. You didn’t ask again. You knew you wouldn’t get a straight answer anyway.

Definitely not from him.

The great hall had the stillness of a theatre just before curtain rise. Light spilled in from the stained glass in yellow and red and bruised plum. And just as IV had said, they were all there.

The four of them.

Just like the day you arrived.

Vessel sat at the head of the table in his usual place, his forehead pressed against the steeple of his clasped hands. His mask was tilted downward. He seemed deep in thought, or perhaps tired of thinking. To his right, II sat like a statue carved in judgement, posture perfect, spine straight. His glacier eyes of his followed you the moment you stepped in, and did not falter. III lounged on the wide sill of the farthest window like a gargoyle, one leg swinging with idle rhythm, the other bent up to his chest, the toe of his boot tapping gently against the wall with a rhythmic, absentminded tap-tap-tap. He stared through the fogged windowpane at nothing in particular, bored humming rising from his throat.

You hesitated in the arched doorway, your shoulder grazing IV’s as he moved past you. You caught the brief twitch in his arm when his eyes flicked toward your hair again.

Vessel was the first to move.

His gaze found you with its usual tenderness, but this time, it was salted with sorrow, a low rasp of breath slipping between his fingers before he looked directly at you. 

“Good morning, love,” he said softly.

It was always ‘love’ with him.

III snorted softly, the swing of his leg speeding up. 

“You look like shit,” he remarked, the words sweetly mocking. “Rough night?”

You said nothing.

IV took his seat without ceremony, folding into the chair opposite II with a quiet exhale, his fingers drumming once against the table before falling still.

“So,” he said flatly, without preamble, “what did you want to tell us, Ves?”

Vessel turned to you first.

He gestured toward the seat nearest to IV, toward a plate of food, something steaming in a small clay bowl and dry bread torn into perfect pieces. Your eyes scanned them one by one, like moving across the stations of some unholy cross. Gods, you wanted to spit at it, wanted to throw it all to the floor and tell them that you weren’t their housepet that needed to be fed. Defiance tasted bitter on your tongue, but curiosity, that cursed sickness, burned hotter.

So you sat down.

You stared down at the food, brows drawn low in a frown, and took a small bite. Not because you needed to. Not because you wanted to. But because Vessel expected it. You didn’t have to look up to know he was watching you. Habits die harder than most people.

“I had a dream,” Vessel said suddenly.

You nearly scoffed.

That didn’t sound unusual. He seemed to dream more often than he breathed. But something shifted in the air. You caught it before you fully understood it. As if the room had inhaled all at once and held its breath. The sudden and complete attention of every masked face turned toward him. II’s posture remained unflinching, but you saw his fingers curl fractionally on the table’s edge. III’s leg stopped swinging, his body going eerily still.

“What sort of dream?” IV asked immediately.

“Was it from Sleep?” II interrupted him.

You blinked, stunned by the simultaneity, reaching for your glass of water without thinking. You sipped just to keep your hands busy. You didn’t realise your grip had shivered until you heard the trembling clack of the cup against the table.

Vessel only nodded.

“He wishes for a ritual,” he said. “We’ve been given a week to prepare.”

The flickering shadows danced heavier now in the candlelight. A subtle breathlessness passed between the four of them. You watched the transformation like a sickness spreading, surprise first, then that hideous thing that came after. Anticipation.

Then Vessel turned his eyes on you.

“He also asked for you.”

Your eyes widened.

“Not as participant. Not yet,” he continued. “Only as observer.”

Vessel’s words echoed in the enormous hall, their weight heavier than the chandelier creaking above your head. The dim light flickered over their masks, over your trembling skin, licking shadows up the walls like a quiet omen. You stared, like a deer hunted and cornered, the air sucked out of your lungs as all four of them turned towards you.

And then—

“So soon?” IV’s voice was dry and tense.

His mask tilted just enough to betray the frown beneath, a sharp crease drawn behind the slits where his mouth might have been, where warmth might have once lived. But there was none now. Just a rigidness in his shoulders, as if he was bracing for something.

Vessel only nodded, like gravity had caught hold of his chin and wouldn’t let go. His eyes, for once, didn’t glimmer with the usual cryptic gleam of divine purpose. No mystery. No riddles. No pretty words to soften the blow.

A whisper fell from your lips before your mind even caught up.

 “No.”

You hated the weakness in it. The wetness on your tongue. The betrayal of your own throat, aching with fear. You kept your chin lifted, kept your eyes on them as best you could. Then, like the crack of an old wooden beam breaking under pressure, you shook your head, sudden and childish, enough that your vision swam. Your hands instinctively retreated into your lap beneath the table, fingers folding inward on themselves.

Eden’s words blurred in your mind, each one heavy as stone. You knew from her diary how everything began to unravel for her the moment the ritual was spoken aloud. And though the vessels had never confessed its true nature to her, you didn’t need their explanations. Some part of you already knew, and you wanted no part in it.

“No—no, no, I told you—I won’t—” Your voice collapsed into breath. “—I won’t do that,” you repeated, voice cracking at the edges. “You know I won’t.”

“It’s not your choice,” II snapped. The words were cold steel, quick and sharp and entirely without mercy.

“Of course it is,” you bit back, eyes narrowing like a blade being drawn. Your eyes found II’s through the mask slit, unflinching. “You don’t own me. I already said no, and I meant it. I’m not joining your fucking cult. Not now. Not ever.”

The words didn’t sound brave as they left your mouth.

They sounded raw. Panicked.

III slipped from the windowsill like a shadow detaching from its source. His coat whispered around him, hands deep in his pockets as he began to pace, silent, for once, silent in that eerie way animals go when they sense thunder long before the sky gives up its secrets. And Vessel, always the diplomat, always the poet, bowed his head and sighed, the sound deep and soft, like the creak of an old cathedral pew, as though it carried centuries in its weight.

“I agree with you,” he said, gently. “It is too soon. Far too soon.”

The words slid cold into your marrow, but you refused to look away.

“I didn’t know,” he went on, “that it would be asked so soon. I would’ve waited. I wanted to wait. But—” He looked at you, and it was unbearable. “But it was Sleep’s request.”

“So what?” you asked, your voice shaking harder now, trembling as if it might shatter under the weight of the conversation. “You’re going to force me? Strap me down like—”

“No one will force you,” Vessel said quickly, then slower, gentler. “But He wants you there, beloved.”

“So what?” you repeated shakily as you leaned forward. “I don’t care about your rituals, or your worship, or this whole goddamn—” You motioned at their masks. “—performance. You already know I won’t kneel to your god. I told you. So unless you plan to kill me—”

“Don’t give us ideas,” II muttered, almost too quiet to hear.

Your chest rose and fell hard, but you didn’t back down.

“Go on then,” you snapped. “That’s what you’ve wanted since day one, isn’t it? To kill me. Or throw me back into that fucking forest and let it finish the job for you. Oh, you’d love that, wouldn’t you, II? To have the excuse.”

II’s hands flexed against the table, painted knuckles whitening against the dark obsidian.

“Watch your mouth, human. You’ve got no idea what I could do to you. What we could do. You think this is suffering? You haven’t seen anything yet. You keep pushing, you’ll find out what pain really means and you’ll regret opening your mouth at all.”

“I already know,” you shot back, voice shaking but sharp. “Every second I’ve been stuck here with you lot has been pain. So just do it already. Even death would be better than this twisted game you play. You—Gods, you talk about devotion and grace and mercy, but the truth is you’re all just pathetic cowards hiding behind masks.”

II leaned closer, voice dropping into something lower, uglier. “You think you’ve got a choice? That your miserable and childish defiance means anything? That it changes a damn thing? You’re already His. That’s the truth. Whether you crawl to Him willingly or screaming, you’re His. You never had a choice.”

The words sank in like knives. Your voice cracked as you answered, but you made sure it cut. “Then your god’s just as pathetic as you are. If he’s really that powerful, why the fuck does he need me to play along? Why does he need anything from me at all? Huh, sounds like your almighty god’s nothing but a parasite, just like you.”

The silence after that was brutal and heavy, ready to split apart.

The air between you and II was a knife left out in the frost.

You did not dare break your gaze from him, not even when your lungs began to ache from the breath you didn’t to release. Hatred, pure and untempered, burned steady and bright in you. Those eyes of his were as merciless as the god he served. There was no fire in them, no heat to match yours. Just the distant precision of a creature long since ground down to obedience, carved hollow by years of kneeling in the same shadow, his will pressed flat under the heel of another’s design. It turned your stomach to water. You imagined the marrow in his bones had been scraped clean long ago, replaced with chains.

And you hated him for it.

It made you sick.

From the side, IV gave a grunt.

“Careful,” he muttered, so soft it might have been for himself.

It was the kind of warning that lives in the throat of a hunting dog when something is edging toward trouble. You couldn’t tell if it was a warning for II, or for you. Other than that, he too held his tongue, unusually restrained. 

You realised then, there was truly no lesser evil here. No safer place to stand. They were all rotten. Just in different flavours. Four corners of a trap you had already walked into, and now there was no way out that didn’t run through teeth.

III’s pacing slowed.

Then stopped.

He stood right behind your chair.

You didn’t need to turn to know he was close. You could almost feel him, the strange heat of his presence, like standing with your skin too near to a flame. He was always hard to read, his madness like shifting water that never let you see its depth. But something in him had shifted now. As if something in him had gone still because the game was no longer fun.

The hair prickled on the back of your neck.

You caught the faintest movement in your peripheral vision. It was Vessel, opening his mouth to speak. Perhaps to cut through the tension, or to make some peace before the room cracked down the middle. But before he could speak—

A sound ripped through the silence.

A laugh burst from III like a shard of glass snapping beneath pressure, a joyful, childlike sound that didn’t belong here, didn’t belong anywhere in this conversation. The wrongness of it prickled down your spine. And before you could recoil, your hair fell into your face. The movement of his hands had been so quick you hadn’t even seen them until the weight left your head.

You whipped around, your chair scraping harshly against the floor.

In his hand, between long fingers, III held the hairpin.

“Oh, would you look at that,” he chuckled, spinning it between his thumb and forefinger, the jewelry sharp enough to catch and tear flesh if pressed too hard. You brushed the fallen hair out from your face, your breath caught somewhere between anger and unease.

The others were looking too, the attention in the room shifting with the slow gravity of a tide. Vessel’s head tilted, his eyes blinking slowly as he studied the thing in III’s hand.

“What is that?” he asked evenly. His voice was calm, but there was a shadow in it, an edge of something harder than curiosity.

“Fucking hell,” IV muttered under his breath, one hand dragging down the length of his chin. His fingers pressed so hard it was almost as though he wanted to grind the expression off his own masked face, to keep the grin from blooming. But you saw it anyway, stretching unseen beneath his mask. And then you noticed, he wasn’t looking at III.

He was looking at II.

Your gaze followed his.

II was still as stone, posture straight but there was something. A crack in the armour, hairline thin but there. His throat bobbed, a swallow so faint you might have missed it if you hadn’t been staring.

III stepped to him, too close, holding the hairpin up with all the teasing delight of a child dangling a stolen sweet before an older sibling. He brought it so near to II’s face you thought, for a moment, he might actually drive it into his eye just to see what would happen. II didn’t move. He didn’t give III the satisfaction. But the shadows at the corners of his mask felt tighter now, heavier, as though a noose had been drawn one loop closer.

“Recognise it, brother?” III sang softly.

II didn’t answer.

Vessel’s eyes, those six glassy, depthless orbs, shifted between you and II, taking his time as though weighing the air itself.

“Where did you find that, beloved?”

The question was smooth but it pressed down on you with the weight of an ocean. Shadows clung to the corners, as if they too were leaning in to hear what you would say next.

The sharp turn in the conversation cracked your fury clean in half. One breath ago you’d branded them and their god parasites, and now their attention had snapped to the hairpin. They stared at it as though it carried the key to some terrible secret you weren’t meant to touch.

“I, uhm, I found it in my room,” you repeated the lie you had already told IV, your voice clipped and cool enough to hide the tension that gnawed at the back of your throat. “It was behind the vanity. Someone must’ve dropped it, surely.”

IV’s snort came sharp.

“Surely,” he echoed sarcastically, letting the word hang like a shard of glass between you. His chin was propped on his fist, his head tilted slightly as though he were a king amused by the antics of a jester, his eyes never leaving yours.

Your gaze met his across the flickering space. 

And then III chuckled.

The sound was sudden, high, childlike. His laughter always sounded wrong, unmoored from the body that carried it. He held the hairpin like a dart, his fingers wrapped around it with careless grace. He aimed it at Vessel’s face, his arm cocking as if for the throw.

Your heart seized.

You felt your breath hitch before you could stop it, eyes going wide. For one quick beat of the world you thought he’d fling it, drive the pin into one of those six unblinking eyes. But he didn’t. He only dropped it. The pin clattered onto the table before Vessel, skittering across the obsidian until it rested at the edge of his sleeve.

Then, as if that moment had been nothing, III turned his body back toward you, his boots whispering over the stone.

Vessel lifted the pin delicately, holding it up before his face. The way he studied it, you might have thought it was some relic dug from the bones of a saint, not a simple ornament.

You swallowed, the sound loud in your own ears.

“Who did it belong to?”

III wiggled his fingers at you, a parody of something spectral.

“To a girl that II fancied. He made it for her.”

Your gaze snapped to II.

Disbelief tightened your chest as you searched the stillness of his mask. A jolt of shock bled across your face, your pulse hammering so hard you swore it might give you away. And then, before you could stop yourself, you huffed, the sound cutting its own path between your lips. Your nails dug into your palms, the pain grounding you as you grimaced up at III.

“Really funny, III.”

“For once, he’s not joking,” IV muttered, his tone flat, almost bored now. His chin still rested on his fist, but his eyes were on II again, watching him with an expression you couldn’t quite name, something like amusement wrapped in a slow, curling satisfaction.

You blinked at II.

Could it really be true?

That II, of all of them, had fancied Eden while she was with Vessel? The diary clearly stated that III and IV were circling her too, each in their own twisted way, but II? Cold and merciless II? It was almost impossible to picture. Only moments ago, he’d threatened to hurt you until you begged, and now you were supposed to believe that he’d once been tender, gifting something shaped by his own hands to a woman who loathed him? The thought was grotesque, almost laughable, yet pitiful too. 

You let your mouth curl into a sneer.

“Then keep it,” you mumbled. “I don’t want it anyway.”

II didn’t speak. Not a flicker of reaction, not a twitch in his jaw. For a breathless moment, you thought he would. That he’d shove it into his pocket without looking, without saying a word, as if burying it deep would erase the memory carved into its metal edges.

But he didn’t move. Not right away.

Vessel and II shared a glance.

Whatever passed between them in that moment wasn’t meant for you, but you felt it anyway, the thick, unsaid thing that lived in the air between their eyes. And then II reached forward. His hand took the pin from Vessel’s, but not with confidence. Not with ownership. He twirled it between his fingers, almost absently, as though it were nothing more than a stick of wood. But it wasn’t the easy, fluid movement you’d seen when he spun the gardening tool, this was awkward, stilted, like the object burned him.

But not enough to drop it.

Vessel cleared his throat. 

“Perhaps,” he said softly, “we should postpone this conversation until everyone has calmed.” His words were not truly a suggestion, nor were they peace. Only a pause. When his gaze met yours, it was steady, unreadable, and yet you felt the unpleasant press of intent behind it. “There is another thing I would ask from you. And from II.”

“From II?” III cut in, rocking on his heels, his voice rising in mocking surprise. But Vessel simply ignored him.

His dark eyes did not leave yours as he spoke.

“I would like II to teach you how to tend the garden. And to show you the outer skirts of the cathedral.”

For a moment, you thought you had misheard him.

“What?” your voice cracked, higher than you intended.

You could hardly believe it.

Your body revolted at the suggestion, as though the words themselves had poisoned the air. The ritual for Sleep that you had so vehemently resisted seemed suddenly no worse, no less unbearable, than the horror of spending time with him.

With II.

“You want her with II?” IV asked, disbelief cutting through his voice in a way that sounded close to laughter. “Why not send her with III? Let him prance her about the grounds if she’s to see the outer parts. Makes more sense, right?”

You turned your head sharply toward Vessel, expecting him to answer. But it was II who stepped in first.

“I don’t want her in the garden,” he cut in, his arms folding across his chest like a barricade. The hairpin that III had unearthed earlier had disappeared, hidden in some unseen pocket of their uncanny world, but the tension it had awakened still quivered between them.

“It was your brilliant idea to keep her here,” II continued, voice as cold and flat as stone, the words aimed toward Vessel and IV both. “Don’t put her on me. If one of you thinks it worth wasting time on her, then you waste it.”

You felt your lips part, fire rising already to your tongue. Empathy for him, what little, faint ember of it you had ever entertained, snuffed itself out in that instant. You wanted to bite, to spit, to tell him that he was the last creature in the whole goddamn world you’d ever choose to keep company with. The mere thought of him teaching you anything soured your blood. But Vessel’s hand cut the air, silencing the swell before it could break.

“I would not ask this of any of you,” he said evenly, “if it were not important.”

His gaze moved with purpose, not to you, but between them, between his brothers. There was weight in it, something unspoken yet deliberate.

“We have waited long,” he went on, his voice resonant, almost mournful. “So long for Sleep to speak again. To reveal Himself, to ask of us a ritual. And now He has. We must not waste this chance. Not now, not when she is here. Not when Sleep has laid a plan before us.”

You frowned at him, your eyes narrowing in a plea you didn’t want to admit to, asking for the smallest fragment of his mercy. You wanted him to look at you, to understand, to change his mind.

But Vessel did not return your gaze. He turned his six eyes upon II instead, his patience stretched but not broken, his silence heavy with expectation. And for a long moment, there was nothing but the sound of the candles whispering as they burned.

Then II sighed.

It came out ragged, fractured, a tired and frustrated sound that belonged to a creature who had already lived this argument a hundred times, like he was exhaling a lifetime of disappointment in one single sound. His mouth moved, the words too low for you to catch, some incomprehensible mutter that sounded like resignation scraped thin.

“Fine,” he said at last. “I’ll do what I can.”

Your chest burned, fury tearing through you in waves. Every part of you screamed at the clear injustice of it.

And yet Vessel nodded once, as if that weary concession pleased him. “Then it is settled. We will speak of the ritual another time, after I have spoken with her privately.”

“So you truly don’t care about what I want,” you snapped, rising heat sharpening every syllable. III whistled low behind you, a sharp tune, amused, as though he’d been waiting for this but you ignored him.

You pushed your palms against the edge of the table and stood, the chair behind you groaning back in protest as its legs scraped against the flagstones. You leaned forward, your eyes pinning Vessel into his chair, as if you could hold him there by will alone.

Vessel did not move.

But he felt it. You knew he did.

The way your anger turned direction.

“Do you really want to put me through all of that shit,” you demanded, your words trembling on the edge of breaking, “just because your god demanded it? Even when you told me in the library—” your voice cracked, your throat stinging, “—that not all humans survive the change?” Your voice was a blade now, each syllable cut from the marrow of your anger. “Do you fucking enjoy it, Vessel? Watching humans suffer? Do you enjoy seeing them die for him? Tell me, does it fucking please you?”

The words landed like stones in still water, sending invisible ripples through the hall.

And for the first time, Vessel faltered.

His head lifted slowly, his six eyes catching the light like the facets of an insect. And his jaw twitched, it was subtle, but it was there, a pulse of tension. It clearly took everything in him not to react. Then he sighed once again. Not weary, not gentle, but heavy, as though the exhale were meant to carry away more than air, meant to carry away what he would never allow himself to say.

“Have patience,” he said gently. “Please.”

But patience had long since rotted in you.

“No,” you whispered.

The sting came hot to your eyes, sharper than you wanted, cutting through the wall of anger you had built to shield yourself. You blinked hard, but the tears betrayed you, shining in your lashes. Somehow, your rage was unraveling into something worse.

Disappointment.

“You’re just like him,” you said, your voice breaking, low and raw. “Just like the god you serve.”

The word god you spat like sour fruit.

You refused to sit at their table any longer, to let their eyes cage you in place, all feeding from you like wolves kept too long on a leash. You heard IV move in your periphery, the shift of his shoes against the flagstones, a half step as though to follow.

“Don’t,” you screamed. “Don’t you dare. I don’t need your help.”

Your words cracked like thunder through the hall.

“I’ll find my own way, without any of you.”

The door loomed before you, heavy wood bound with black iron. You reached it with every step a march, blood burning hot through your veins like a fever. Your hand struck the iron handle, yanking, pulling, trying to slam it with the weight of your fury but it was too old, too thick, too heavy. It resisted, groaning against its own hinges, unwilling to be cast into silence so easily. The weight mocked you, slow and stubborn, as though the cathedral itself refused to let you leave in the violence you deserved.

A groan left your throat, frustration clawing up and out as you forced it shut. Not with the slam you wanted, but with a grinding shudder. You could feel their stares through the wood, pressing against your spine like nails hammered too deep. But you did not look back.

And then you were gone.

Out into the corridor.

The sound of your breathing filled the stone passageway, ragged and hot, spilling into the silence like blood onto snow.

You didn’t know where this fury came from, only that it burned through you like something ancient, something already lived. It felt familiar, as if you and the vessels had been here before, locked in this same fight, circling the same wound. Maybe it was Eden’s diary whispering in your skull, reminding you of what they truly wanted from you. Maybe it was just the truth you refused to swallow. Either way, you knew one thing with certainty, whatever they demanded, you would never give in.

Not to them.

Not to Sleep.

───────── ౨ৎ ─────────

“And when the dust settles, you find yourself praying not for victory, but for another war.”

Chapter Text

“The wolf does not bite once. It chews forever.”

───────── ౨ৎ ─────────

The morning crept in without any light.

It never did, not here, not in any way that could be called dawn, only that same pale hush pressed against the cathedral’s high windows, grey pooling in the glass like dirty water. There was no honeyed spill across the stone, no gentle warmth creeping over your skin to wake you. You hated that. But you hated the garden more, and that was saying something.

It lay behind the south transept like a wound that wouldn’t close. No birdsong and no soil you’d trust beneath fingernails, only those venomous, wretched plants threading themselves through arcades of dead trellis, their leaves too sharp, too slick, too eager to stick to your fingers. The ground was neither soil nor sand, only a grey particulate that yielded underfoot like old paper and stained the hems of your garments like soot, as though you had been climbing chimneys in your sleep. Each step smudged you darker. Each breath scraped like a cough you couldn’t reach. And where a normal garden might have had worms and bugs, this one had thin threads of something black that recoiled if you accidentally touched them.

Above it all, II’s glacier gaze followed you, as sharp as the dried thorns you clipped, barking cold and clinical orders whenever you faltered, cutting your mistakes with the same precision as the shears in your hand.

Yet you knew, even in your loathing, that II was trying. Trying to be patient. Trying to teach. And though you despised him for everything else, you could not deny that in this, he was capable. A good teacher, if one were blind to his cruelty. You would never say it out loud, not after what he had said to you yesterday, not after his threat that still throbbed like a bruise along the ribs of your mind. But still, he told you everything more than once, showed you how he did things and even endured your temper because, just for today, he had hidden his. It seemed even a monster can be patient when it serves his purpose.

And today it served his.

You were bent over a disgusting plant, the thorns glinting like teeth, your fingers straining against the weight of the shears. The blades met with a dull, reluctant click around a gigantic spike that seemed to resent being removed. Bitter sap beaded at the cut, smelling faintly of iron and something sweet you didn’t trust.

“Angle,” II said.

“What?”

“Your cut,” He tipped his chin, deadpan. If his gaze had weather, it would always be the day before snow. “Hold at thirty. Don’t lift your elbows, that’s why you tire. And for the love of Sleep, cut in order. You already missed a cane.”

“I saw it,” you lied, and reached to take it with the tips of the shears, careful as you adjusted your hold, taking his advice but refusing to let him see that his correction spared you pain. He was an infuriatingly good teacher and an even better observer, which only made you despise him more.

“Don’t,” II said, sharper now. “Step in or leave it.”

“Step in and get shredded?”

“Step in,” he repeated, and that was the end of what language could change. And you obeyed.

You stood up from your stool, slid forward, aimed and cut. He did not say good, but the absence of rebuke seemed to function like praise.

He sat the way he always did. His posture was rigid but strangely at ease, arms crossed, head tilted down in constant observation. One of his knees bounced from time to time, making you grind your teeth. He had chosen the fountain’s ledge for his throne today, a wide ring of stone at the centre like a heart cut from an animal without a name. The basin was empty, its hollowed bowl cradling a drift of dead leaves and dust.

“Don’t touch the spikes,” II said, crisply—

—again.

“Oh, you don’t say,” you deadpanned. “Don’t touch the bloody venomous spikes, yeah?” you muttered in a mocking imitation of his accent, low under your breath but sharp with offense.

The task was mindnumbing in its dullness. It gnawed at patience you did not have to spare. The rhythm of cutting away dead weight should have given the sort of simple relief that repetitive work sometimes gives. This did not. Still, the motion rooted your temper to the earth for a few seconds at a time, and perhaps that was the point.

“I’ve told you about a hundred times today,” he drawled.

“And I’ve told you that I’m not braindead,” you muttered, adjusting your grip on the shears before he could correct you again. “Give me a little credit, alright?”

“Yet your hand always slips,” II said dryly. “As if it’s got a death wish of its own.”

You huffed at the stupidity of your own muscles, trying to ignore how the comment hit too close to home. Maybe your hand did have a death wish. Maybe it had more sense than you.

You set your shoulders, set your jaw, and kept going. You told yourself you didn’t care. Told yourself his eyes didn’t make you nervous. But your body betrayed you with the stiff line of your spine and with the shallow pace of your breath. You could feel yourself fidgeting, hardening into the work, as though that could keep him out.

No wonder, last night, you had fantasised about barricading your door and never coming out ever again. When you had finally crawled back to your room after the great hall had finished swallowing your argument whole, in your stubborn and childish offense, you had dragged the bedside table to the door, pushing it until the legs squealed and planted. You didn’t want any more surprise visitors.

You hadn’t even opened the door when Vessel came, as he promised, to talk some sense into you. His knock was gentle, his voice gentler, something like regret braided through the words as he asked you to speak with him. But you didn’t answer. Instead, you had sat still on the bed, counting your breaths as if they were coins you couldn’t afford to spend.

You didn’t want to see his eyes again, didn’t want to drown in them, couldn’t stomach the thought of staring back into them and being pulled under by his words. Not after what he had asked of you, especially not after that confession in the library, that some people don’t even survive the thing he was getting ready to sanctify, the thing he wanted you to walk into willingly. And he had the audacity to ask for patience again when he knew, he fucking knew that you had none left to give him.

Gods, you never should’ve expected anything from him. Expectations were a fool’s currency, and disappointment the only return, always the goddamn price for putting faith in saints you never chose. And yet you couldn’t stop circling the same question, because even after all that, you still wondered what Eden had seen in him, what anyone could see in him to make all the pain worth bearing, to justify enduring so many terrible things for so long.

Maybe her diary had rotted you deeper than you’d ever admit. Maybe her love for him had infected you, tricked you into believing that Vessel could ever be worthy of your faith.

Pathetic. How fucking pathetic of you. Were you still hoping? Still holding your breath for a saviour? Someone to storm through this nightmare and pull you out of its jaws? You remembered Eden’s last entry too clearly, the way her ink bled with longing. ‘I want him to save me. And I want to save him from Sleep, too.’

Maybe that was your curse, too.

That you would always wait. Always hope. Always reach out for a saviour who would never come, even if you knew the truth. That in this place, there were no rescuers, no guardians, no helping hands. Only liars, predators and monsters. And if you dared to forget that, even for a moment, you would be erased just like poor Eden was.

“Cut in order,” II reminded you.

The sound of his monotone voice dragged you back from your wandering thoughts, and frustration rose in you like fire licking the edge of dry paper. It was the same heat you had felt yesterday, the same choking mix of anger and helplessness.

You rolled your eyes so hard you thought they might pitch right into the basin.

“I know,” you muttered through your bared teeth, but you obeyed, hands moving left to right, top to bottom, as he had drilled into you.

You felt like you hadn’t rested in a week.

You hadn’t slept at all last night, not really. Every time your eyes closed, something stirred in the walls. Never words you could repeat, never anything you could pin down, only a pressure sliding into your skull, a hunger gnawing from the inside out. And it wasn’t yours. You knew it wasn’t yours. It was exhausting, being pulled under again and again, dragged back to that cursed pool as if the dream had claws hooked into your ribs. Each night the same drowning, each night the same silence blooming in your chest where air should be. Yesterday, you didn’t even fight it. You let the dream have you. Let the water swallow you whole. Let yourself sink like a stone into its dark throat.

And in the morning, II knocked clinically. Not too loud, not too long. An interval that implied you would obey. And you did.

Just like you obeyed now.

But what choice did you have, really?

II hadn’t uttered a single word about yesterday’s argument, but oh, you hadn’t forgotten. You remembered too vividly the way he had promised pain, the way he had said it like fact rather than threat. Like inevitability. You didn’t know them well enough yet to test their patience, but you already knew them better than to test their capabilities. IV had conjured water from thin air as easily as drawing a veil from a bride. III had dragged that dead serpent into the chapel as if it weighed nothing at all. And II, on the very first day, had wanted you cast back into the forest’s teeth, without hesitation, without pity. So in a way, II was right. They were capable of things you didn’t understand. Not yet.

And fear lived in what you didn’t understand.

The shears sang. Choose, cut, flick—

“V,” II said suddenly.

Your head snapped back so fast your neck clicked.

“Don’t call me that,” you demanded.

His knee stopped bouncing.

For a slip of a second those blue eyes were unreadable, stripped to plain exhaustion. You had always thought of his fatigue as part of his cruelty, the tiredness of a monster who cannot be bothered to pretend at gentleness. But now you wondered, for the first time, what kind of weight had ground that weariness into him, and why it had never let him go. He tipped his chin downward, as if you were something soon to be dissected.

“What do you want me to call you, then?”

“Nothing,” you said, too fast, childish, a sulk in the mouth. You turned back to the plant as if it could shield you from embarrassment. “Don’t call me anything.”

“Do you prefer love? Or pet?”

II’s words carried that faint edge of sarcasm, dry and almost mocking, the kind that made the ridiculous nicknames the others had thrown at you sound even more absurd. So you wrinkled your nose and went back to your work, like you weren’t obligated to dignify a question asked like that. The shears bit into the next thorn a little harder than necessary.

Then, to your surprise, he cleared his throat.

“Maybe,” II said in that same restrained tone, “we got off on the wrong foot, you and I.”

The shears trembled in your grip.

You were grateful he couldn’t see your face, grateful your back and hunched shoulders made a wall he would have to pay to look over. Your eyes found the fountain in your periphery and fixed there for balance, like a sailor pegging the horizon to keep the bile down.

“Maybe?” you echoed.

You wanted it to sting but it came out thinner than you liked, causing him to huff. It wasn’t a laugh, nor a snarl, air pushed through his nose as if something in him remembered the use of humour and had decided against it. And II didn’t take the bait and his knee didn’t resume to its rhythm. That metronome, for once, was done telling you how wrong you were.

“Are you trying to apologise for yesterday or something?” you asked, however, the smugness you aimed for died halfway across your tongue. II gave you nothing for three breaths. On the fourth, he spoke, plain as the flat of a palm.

“I shouldn’t have threatened you.”

You shot him a look, suspicion cutting sharp across your features. You twisted on the stool and set the shears down with a clack that sounded louder than it was, elbows sinking onto your legs, pressing through the fabric into your thighs. II had mirrored you. Elbows on his knees, hands shifting. Steepled, then flat, then folded again. He watched you with the same precision he gave the plants, as if every flicker of your face was just another weed waiting to be plucked out by the root.

You knew better than to take any of it at face value. If he had brought you something as rare as an apology, it wasn’t whole, wasn’t honest. It was cut down, trimmed, dressed up like meat for the table. And you already knew there would still be bone underneath.

“Yeah,” you agreed, your voice so thin it almost didn’t make it to him. “You shouldn’t have.”

You worked your tongue against your lower teeth.

“Perhaps,” you added, forcing the word through your throat, “I shouldn’t have called you a… you know, a parasite.” A prickle ran up the back of your neck, your body’s telltale warning when it told you that you’ve lied.

However, you realised that this was an opportunity you couldn’t afford to waste, a chance to study him, to learn something you could use. II didn’t strike you as the kind of creature who apologized often, and that made this rare moment as dangerous as it was valuable. Your head started spinning, whether this sudden push for common ground was a door or a trap. Your skin prickled with unease even as your thoughts whirled, desperate to twist the situation into your advantage. 

You licked your lower lip, moistening the word you were about to say. “You know,” you said, measuring each word as though it might cut you, “Vessel told me you think I’m just another mistake. That this… thing with me will play out the same as it did with the others. With the humans before me, I mean. Is that true?”

II rested his chin on the backs of his hands, fingers interlaced.

He didn’t blink. “Yes.”

“So… that means I’m also going to die,” you pressed, straightforward, because his plainness demanded it of you in return. “Right? That’s what you think basically.”

His gaze slid away. “Your odds would be much better if you just agreed to the ritual.”

“My odds,” you repeated slowly, as if testing an unfamiliar blade.

Suddenly, you became extra conscious of your hands again, how empty they were without the shears, how the uneasiness in your fingers had nowhere to go. You set your palms against the tops of your knees and felt the subtle shake working through the muscles there.

“That’s not the same thing as saying I’ll live,” you mumbled bitterly.

“No,” he answered, his voice strangely tender.

It unsettled you how easily he could set down an answer like a brick and then step back from it, as if the structure were obvious and you were at fault for not seeing the wall it belonged to. You found the shears by touch and turned them once in your hand, metal clicking.

“Why the apology, then?” you asked. “If I’m dead weight to you, why bother?”

II held your gaze and let the moment sit until the light itself seemed to crease from the weight of it. “Because threatening you was unnecessary and—” the next word arrived after a delay, as if dragged through a tight place. “—cruel.”

You tilted your head. “That bothers you?”

He sighed. “It should.”

It should. Not it does.

His answer disturbed you more than you cared to admit, but you pushed it to the back of your mind, saving the overthinking for later.

“And the ritual?” You found your voice gentler by accident. “Does that bother you, II?”

The fatigue in his eyes seemed to deepen.

“Sleep hasn’t asked for a ritual in years,” II sounded detached, but too precise to be careless, like he’d practiced the truth before handing it over to you. His knee began to bounce again. “I highly suggest you to participate,” His tone was still flat, but the word suggest was enough to unsettle you. He’d never suggested anything before, only commanded, only judged.

II went on.

“Sleep’s never once allowed anyone to sit in on worship as just an observer. Not once, not ever. So maybe Vessel’s right about this. Maybe it means Sleep’s got a plan, not just for us, but for you. You can take it as a test, or a chance, whichever way you like, but you’d be a fool not to see what it truly means.” His gaze was steady, unblinking, as if daring you to argue. “And if you ask me, it wouldn’t hurt to be on His good side. Don’t spit on the first sign of favour you’ve been given. Playing along won’t cost you half as much as refusing and pleasing Him a bit wouldn’t hurt your chances here,” His pause came sharp as the click of the shears. “Wouldn’t hurt your ego either, for that matter.” He added the last words dryly, clipped with an irony you weren’t used to hearing from him.

You stilled.

You had never heard II like this, never heard anything resembling life spark inside his voice. It frightened you. It wasn’t that he sounded kind, not exactly, nor was there softness in his advice. It was that he sounded hopeful, as if some marrow deep conviction had cracked just enough to let a sliver of light bleed through, as if he himself wanted to believe what he said.

“Say I refused,” you said after a while, and discovered your voice shaking, not with fear, but with the effort of holding the conversation. “What do you reckon my odds are then?”

II didn’t answer immediately.

“Poor,” he said at last. “Worse than they need to be.”

Your lungs felt tight, as if the air itself had narrowed, like a gambler cornering his dealer.

“And if I agreed? What then?”

“Then,” he mused, “you increase the number of moves left to you.”

You hummed faintly, the sound caught between disbelief and exhaustion, unsure if you could trust him, unsure if you could trust anything. You remembered the sour sickness that seemed to live in his chest, devotion that poisoned him like iron filings in his blood. If a monster like him even had a heart, it was one corroded beyond all recognition. And yet, you couldn’t quite dismiss the trace of hope you’d heard earlier in his voice. You couldn’t help but wonder what that might mean for you, and the thought sat heavy in your chest. You nodded and turned back, letting the conversation die there.

The rest of midday passed without another word between you.

The silence wasn’t exactly kind, but it wasn’t unbearable either. II didn’t push, didn’t argue, didn’t try to manipulate you, just carried on with that familiar cold edge about him. The only interruptions came when he corrected you. He didn’t lean on you like Vessel, didn’t tease you like III or IV. II just let you work which was dull in its monotony, but in a strange way, you almost appreciated the space he gave you. It was odd. Still, you knew better than to mistake his quiet for kindness. It was simply another move he hadn’t revealed yet.

At last, II straightened, stretching the stiffness from his neck. “Alright, you’ve worked enough,” he said, flat but not unkind. “Up.”

You didn’t need any convincing. You pushed yourself up from the stool, stretching out your stiff back until it cracked with a wince. II didn’t waste a second. He nodded at the spot you’d just left and sat down in your place without so much as a glance your way. The shears looked almost too small for his hands. II leaned back over the thorns, already snipping away with that same mechanical patience what you were used to from him.

You lingered for a breath, the weight of his words still pressing at your ribs. You opened your mouth, searching for something that might sound true, but every word rang empty and fake before it even left your tongue. So instead you shut it, biting down on silence, pressing your lips into a thin line. And you left him there without another word, sitting like a gargoyle on his chosen perch, plants bowing before his blades.

You had played your cards right with II, at least for today. Lying to them was easier than you ever expected, so much easier than it had any right to be. Maybe because none of them ever asked for all of you. They only wanted fragments, a sliver of trust, a drop of blood, a teeny tiny bite to swallow. Perhaps, it was less challenging to lie when you were already being served up in pieces.

Still, you were left with questions.

Questions about the worship. About what they truly wanted of you. About what it would cost. And if you wanted to win anything here, you had to raise the stakes.

So you did not return to your room. Not yet. Not when there was one among the vessels who made a game of truths and favours. III was a dangerous lunatic, yes, but too impulsive, too loud in his violence to ever be truly mysterious. II and Vessel were the epitomes of control, one a locked jaw, the other a locked book, and IV was too caught up in his own righteousness, too bound to his role to ever hand you anything worth keeping. Which left only III. You needed to talk to him anyway after what had happened between the two of you, so why waste time putting it off, when the ritual was already breathing down your neck?

You found the chapel after a bit of clueless wandering.

The pressure behind your eyes returned the moment you stepped inside, as if the mural above had become a hand on your skull, tilting your face upward, forcing you to witness Sleep, His countless eyes, His grasping limbs, the promise that once they caught you, they would never let you go. But you refused to obey. Chin down, gaze fixed low, you stepped through the ruin of flowers, dried petals crumbling to ash beneath your shoes. Candle wax clung to the flagstones like pale scars, snapping under your weight. 

The stair yawned before you, narrow and gaping like a throat. You hesitated at the lip of it. II had said III often spent his time in the forest, prowling and hunting, so maybe he wasn’t even here. But you had to try. So you descended.

The first thing you heard was not his voice, but a sound. Wet and rhythmic. Slicing, cracking, tearing. It crawled up your skin in goosebumps, each beat a reminder that you could still run, that you could turn and flee before he saw you. But the steps carried you down anyway, as if pulled by a gravity you couldn’t name.

At the bottom, candlelight flared dim and sour. And there he was. III was crouched over his table, the glow spilling across him in a halo that made him look holy in shape but demonic in truth. His silhouette was too bent, too eager, spiderlike in the way he leaned over his deed. His sleeves were rolled back to the elbow, veins and tendons pulled taut, his blade working with quick, precise delight. Before him lay some birdlike creature, black feathers iridescent with a hue of magenta, its ruby eyes already gone glassy. Cold sweat trembled along the line of III’s slender throat as he worked, butchering it piece by piece, stripping it bare of feathers, of skin, of flesh. Black blood poured down the table’s side, funneled neatly into wide bellied vases, filling them with the bird’s dark slick. Every drop, collected.

The urge to bolt was sudden and strong. Run back up the stairs, out through the chapel, shut yourself into your room, drag the table against the door again and never open it again.

But III had already seen you.

“Well, well, well,” he sang, high and delighted, as if you’d brought him cake. “Must be doing something right if you’re choosing my company over the sweethearts upstairs.”

Regret seared you even before you could speak. But you had come this far, and there was no turning back now.

You stepped closer to III, hesitant, nose scrunched against the stench of rot, every muscle tensed. His clothes were already ruined with stains of inklike blood, deep black soaking into the fabric like decay spreading in water.

“No pleasantries? Tsk. And here I thought we were building something,” III crouched, fingers sinking into the bird’s ruined ribs with a wet, tearing squelch that turned your stomach. His mask tilted down toward you. “What can I do for you, pet? Shouldn’t you be curled up somewhere, crying your eyes out?”

You kept your face still. Or tried to.

“What are you doing?” you asked, uneasy.

III huffed as if you’d asked a rhetorical question. “Every sacrifice demands blood. That’s how worship works, you muppet. Thought you’d have figured that out by now.”

“Charming,” you muttered, the word landing dull.

Your lip curled before you could stop it, disgust souring your mouth. You turned away as if to save yourself from the splayed corpse but kept III in your sight, watching him through your lashes, waiting for him to slip. You studied the tilt of his shoulders, the rhythm of his hands, the way the candlelight played sharp along his mask, thoughts spinning so fast you could hear their scrape in your skull.

The height difference between the two of you sent a shiver down your spine. And just like last time, when you’d stood here with IV, the thought struck you, how simple it would be for him to open your throat. A flick and you’d be gone before you could even gasp. The image clung, acute as the blade he toyed with, but you forced it down. You had to. You couldn’t afford to linger on your own fear, not when there were far more important things at stake.

You didn’t know how to start.

How to prise something real out of him without giving yourself away, how to lure honesty from him without accidentally making yourself his entertainment. Truths were coin here, so was time you didn’t have to waste. You remembered the pact he had dangled before you last time, his sick little game of truths and favours. A game he had made sure you couldn’t win without bleeding somewhere for it. And now, four questions gnawed at the back of your throat.

Four questions, four different prices.

One about the ritual that Vessel and II had kept circling you toward, herding you like wolves, what it truly demanded of you, and what it might strip away if you agreed. One about the black blood III had forced between your teeth, slick and choking, its taste still ghosting your tongue, what it was, and what it had already done to you. One about that cursed pool that dragged you under in your sleep, the voices whispering of an endless sea, promising you belonged to it, and why it would not let you go. And one about Eden, whose name clung to the walls like mould, whose shadow bled through every silence, what she had done wrong, and how you might avoid being ground to dust the same way.

Each question was a blade waiting to be drawn. 

And you weren’t sure there was enough left in you to pay even one.

III must have sensed your struggle, because he snickered. “You know that I absolutely love spending time with you,” he said, sarcasm dripping from the syllables. “But I’ve got a bit on, so—” he made a hurry up motion with his free hand, “—shall we get it over with?”

Your jaw clenched.

He was rushing you, pushing you into the corner of your own hesitation. You opened your mouth to ask about the ritual. You meant to. But then III twisted the knife deeper, right through the joint he wanted, and the corpse rewarded him. A gush of blood leapt free like it had been waiting to escape. You jerked back, instinctive, but too late. It was already on your wrist, hot and heavy, as if eager to map your skin. You smeared it across your knuckles trying to wipe it off, but that only spread the stain. Your eyes stuck to it. The memory bled through before you could stop it, the taste of iron gone rotten. Had it been his? Had it belonged to some beast dragged from the woods? Or—?

You swallowed hard and chose.

“Why—why did you make me drink your blood?” you asked, trying to load the question with weight enough to force two truths at once.

You couldn’t see his smile, not really, but you felt it seeping off him like a fever, wicked and eager, hungry for the moment you’d flinch. The blade tilted with his wrist, the point drifting until it found you. It hovered there, aimed straight at your chest as if he were some cruel god singling you out with one careless finger. His head cocked to the side in that maddening way of his, studying you as though deciding where best to cut first.

“Did you tell the others?” he asked, voice like dark honey, taunting. “About that little sip?”

Your tongue stuck to the roof of your mouth for a second. Then you shook your head firmly.

“Why did you do it?”

III stared down at you for a long moment, his eyes catching the dull gleam. For a breath, you thought he might simply laugh and leave you with nothing. But then—

Your breath froze as you realised what he was doing. “Wait—”

Instead of pointing the blade at you, he turned it inward. Your eyes went wide, horror spiking through you. With one smooth drag, III drew the edge across his own palm. The sound of it, flesh parting soft as a wet cloth, was unbearable, but his smile was worse. His breathing didn’t falter. III watched the blood spill down his wrist like it was something holy, like the pain was a private joke only he understood.

You stumbled back a step, heart kicking into your throat. “What the fuck are you doing?”

III only laughed, crazy and jagged, the sound bouncing off the chamber’s stone as he held his bleeding hand out toward you, palm up.

“You know the rules,” he purred. “My honesty comes at a price.”

You stared at his hand, then at to his masked face. “Are you—” your voice cracked, sick and high as you realised what he wanted, “No, fuck no, you can’t be serious, III.”

His head tilted, delighted by your dread. “Do you want the truth or not?”

Your stomach twisted. Nausea roared up your throat, your whole body recoiling. Instinctively, you dragged your trembling fingers across your lips, as though the blood already stained them. The taste haunted you, even imagined, the memory of it, the heaviness in your belly from the last time. You stared at him. He didn’t move. The power was in the waiting. And the quiet drip-drip-drip of his blood marked the time.

Your mind thrashed with possibilities. You told yourself it was worth it. That truth was worth more than dignity, worth more than the sour bile flooding your mouth. You reminded yourself that nothing terrible had happened last time, not physically, at least. But your body betrayed you, gagging already at the thought. Gods, you really had to do this, hadn’t you?

So you stepped forward.

You seized his wrist, your nails biting into his painted skin with your anger, your revulsion, your helplessness. His hand was slick and warm, pulse beating steady against your skin. He didn’t flinch, didn’t resist as you pressed your mouth to his palm. Your tongue dragged across the cut, slow, trembling, tasting the warm tang.

When you pulled back, shoving his hand away with a choked sob, bile rose hot in your throat. You gagged, sleeve dragging rough across your mouth, tears stinging your eyes as you forced yourself to swallow it, to choke it down, your whole body shaking.

III made a sound, half thrilled, half stunned. “Good gods. Didn’t think you’d actually do it,” he groaned, almost admiring, glancing down at the smear across his hand, flexing his fingers. “Are you a fucking animal? Not that I’d mind.”

“Now talk, you bastard,” you snapped, your voice cracked and weak, soaked in tears.

He began to whistle as he bent back to his work, casual, tuneless, like nothing had happened. Like you hadn’t just crawled lower for him than you ever thought you would. But you saw it, the slight tremor in his hands now. The knife wasn’t quite as steady as before. Something in him had shifted, whether it was hunger, thrill, or something far older and darker, you couldn’t tell. And you weren’t sure you wanted to.

“Drinking the blood of a vessel does many things,” he mused, his tone almost casual now, but the sick excitement in it never wavered. He set the joint of the corpse neatly into his palm and snapped the wing free with a clean, practiced twist. “Fewer you’ll like than you think. More you’ll need than you’ll ever deserve. It opens doors you won’t even fucking see until they’re slamming in your face. And it shuts others, ones you’d be wiser never to step through at all.” He smirked faintly, shaking the ruined wing in his hand. “Convenient, isn’t it?”

You still scrubbed at your mouth with your sleeve, even though there was nothing left to wipe away, only that phantom warmth that clung to the back of your tongue.

“But I’ve a goal, you see,” III went on, voice switching from idle to firm. “I made you drink my blood so you wouldn’t go falling for Vessel straight out the gate.”

“What?” Your heart came up high and hard in your throat as you blinked up at him, like you could clear the sentence from your vision. “Why would I do that? Why would I fall in love with a—with him. With a monster.”

III laughed, a nasty sound that went all through you like grit. “I heard that exact line before. Dozens of times.” He pitched his voice higher, mocking in a way that made your skin crawl, ‘Oh, III, why would I ever—’ He let it drop back to himself. “Always ends the same.”

“Ends how?” You tried to make your curiosity sound harmless, airy. “What do you mean by that? Did one of the others—” you flattened the throb in your words with your tongue, “—did one of the humans fall in love with him or something?”

You already knew. But you wanted to hear him say it. You wanted the shape of the truth in someone else’s mouth.

III clicked his tongue as the knife rested along his fingers like a second thought. “That story will cost more than a lick of my blood, pet.”

Your throat tightened to a thread.

“What do you want for it?”

III turned towards you like a curtain being drawn back on a stage you hadn’t even known you were standing on. There was ceremony in it, a sick kind of theatre, and when his eyes found you, they carried a smirk that wasn’t human at all. It was the smile of a wolf lingering over a lamb already bound for the altar. Your skin prickled, heat and chill all at once. He didn’t even blink. Not once. Just stared, drinking you in, the knife spinning lazy between his long fingers, glinting in and out of the candlelight. And in the silence, you felt the weight of his attention as something more than sight, like his hands were hands already pressing against your throat, testing where the pulse beat quickest.

“Eden’s diary,” he said. “Give it to me and I’ll tell you the whole story.”

Everything in you went into a hushed, inconvenient panic. Your fingers started trembling at a pitch you couldn’t see, so you hid them behind your back.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you lied.

Gods. It was a dreadful lie, starved of breath on the way out.

III laughed. Properly this time. Manic and pleased and far too loud for the stone, filling every corner until it felt like the room itself was laughing with him. The sound came at you first, then the creature himself followed, stepping in, closing the gap with the heavy inevitability of a storm front rolling across a field. The air shifted, heat pushing into your lungs like smoke. Your breath faltered, stammered before you caught it again, shallow and unsure. III was too close now, so close the heat of him pressed against your skin without even touching you, your body already bracing for contact that hadn’t come.

Then the knife rose, lazy in his grip, but the precision of the motion betrayed it. The tip found your chin as if it had been meant for you from the beginning, as if your flesh had always been waiting for that blade. III balanced it there with an otherworldly grace, his other hand loose at his side, head cocked at an angle that was both curious and cruel.

“Don’t take me for a fool, pet,” he breathed. “I see your little tricks. You’re clever enough to tempt answers out of our daft brothers, I’ll give you that, blinded, the lot of them, so fucking blinded they’ve forgotten where Eden kept her hairpin. Oh, but you see, I’m not one who lets things slip away. It’s not in my nature.”

The blade drifted, its point dipping and lifting in time with his words, punctuation you could feel vibrating through your collarbones. Your throat betrayed you with a swallow you hadn’t allowed, and the tip followed, kissing the soft flesh there like it knew the shape of your pulse. The barest pressure was enough to eclipse everything else, the room, the air, even your own sense of self. Cold sweat slid from your temples as the chamber tilted, the world narrowing to steel and skin, while you fought to steady your breathing.

III’s eyes were so close, so consuming, you thought if you leaned forward even an inch you’d vanish into them. And you felt yourself teetering on that brink of bright blue, one breath away from drowning in his ethereal violence.

You tallied your exits. There weren’t many. Play dumb and let him gorge on it, push back and risk snapping the frame, or turn and run and serve him your spine like meat on a platter. And you already knew, bravery only salted the meal for a monster like III. The air pressed tight in your lungs as the choices collapsed in on themselves.

So you nodded.

“Okay,” you breathed, barely audible, licking your lower lip, “Tell me the story and I’ll give you the diary. But… why do you even want it?”

“Oh, simple,” III said, the grin bending his voice into something feral. You could hear it more than see it. The knife slid lower, grazing the geography of your chest with a touch so light it felt like filth, obscene in its suggestion. Your breath snagged, throat tight. “I really don’t want Vessel to have it,” he went on, almost purring, the words curling close enough to warm your skin. “He spent an awfully long time sniffing after that little book.” A pleased hum settled in his chest. “Be a shame to let him succeed now.”

Your lip curled. “That’s pathetic and—”

The knife tapped your breastbone before you could finish. Not enough to pierce, just enough to make your whole body jolt like it had. His grin widened, teeth catching the light behind the mask as though the room existed only to mirror his delight.

“Careful,” he murmured. “Spit’s wasted when it drips down your chin. Best to swallow it. Or better, let me.”

Your stomach turned hard. “You’re disgusting.”

He hummed. “Say it slower. Sounds almost sweet when you say it.”

“So this is just a game to you? All of it?” you muttered, every syllable careful, as though you were testing rotten floorboards, searching for a place that might not collapse beneath you. You tried to keep your tone nonchalant, but your heart beating against the blade betrayed you, loud enough you swore he could hear it. “Still—” your breath hitched, but you forced the word out anyway,“—you’re awfully invested in Vessel’s love life. Strange hobby. Especially since—” your mouth went dry, but you bit it out, reckless now “—Eden seemed to think you were rather fond of her, too. I mean, all that touching and sketching and sniffing after her like a fucking dog, must have been quite obvious, really. Isn’t that right, III? Are you still bitter about that? Jealous of your own brother—”

III’s reaction was faster than thought.

His hand slammed into your face, grabbing your jaw with such force you heard the grind of your own teeth. Pain spidered hot across your skull, white spots bursting across your vision. His bloodied palm crushed the soft column of your throat, right where the blade had hovered seconds ago. For one horrific heartbeat you were certain that he’d rip your jaw clean off your skull, snap it loose the way he’d snapped the bird’s wing without hesitation.

But he didn’t. Not yet.

III yanked you forward instead, snapping your neck forward, your skin almost splitting from the pressure. His breath poured through the slits in hot bursts as he held you like prey pinned to the floor, your own pulse a trapped animal thrashing against his palm.

“I’m doing this,” he hissed, voice low enough to scrape bone, hot enough to sear your skin. He leaned closer, so close the words spilled straight into your mouth like poison. “To keep all of us safe. Even you.” His thumb pressed harder into the hinge of your throat, cutting your breath, daring you to choke. “You ungrateful little shit.”

“III—” you gasped as your hands clutched his wrist out of instinct, needing to push, to fight. But he didn’t flinch. He didn’t even seem to notice. His strength was so absolute it was as if your resistance barely existed at all.

“You’ve noticed too, haven’t you?” III cooed. “Vessel. He’s not like the rest of us. First thing Sleep ever spat out in this shape, the fucking golden boy, and that jealous cunt of a god fucked him up by design.”

The knife slammed into the table and it tore through the room, metal shrieking through wood, through stone, through your blood, singing the shape of his rage.

“Vessel’s unfinished,” III spat, his grip forcing your jaw open until your teeth ground against themselves. “Half deity, half human. And it rots him. Makes him less. But Sleep—” the word tore out of him with venom, older than anger, heavier than hate, “—Sleep fucking adores him for it. He’s the broken toy, the pet on a leash.” His mask pressed closer until you swore the edge cut your cheek, his laughter a dry, jagged rasp with no humour, no joy, only teeth. “He never let go of the man he used to be. Sleep never hollowed him out the way He should have. And now here you are. Another trial. Another chance to fix the mistake. Another pretty little test to see if Vessel finally cracks under whatever past still gnaws at him.”

III shook your jaw forcefully.

“I’m not letting you ruin this,” he hissed, low and lethal. “Not after all the shit we’ve crawled through just to survive. I’ll tear your throat out myself before I let you tip the balance again. Don’t doubt it.” His eyes were blazing blue and brutal as he spat the rest into you like a curse. “And while I’m at it, I’ll even try to keep your sorry fucking arse alive. Because I want my family safe from Sleep. I want this cursed cycle shattered, burned out of us. I want rid of this endless fucking madness.” His words hit like blows, each one harder, sharper. “I want peace, for once in this godsdamn eternity. And gods above and Sleep below, I’ll pulp your bones into dust before I let you stand in the way of it. Do you understand me?”

By the time his words bled dry, you were crying.

You hadn’t even felt it begin, one second your vision blurred, the next your tears streaked hot and helpless down your cheeks, soaking into his palm. Your grip loosened around his wrist, slipping away as though even your body had given up. You stared up at him with wide, glassy eyes, your chest tight, every breath a whimper caught in your throat. You must’ve looked like the thing he wanted you to be, like you truly were the lamb he always named you.

An offering, throat bared, waiting for the knife.

Then his grip shifted.

III exhaled hard through clenched teeth and with that impatient sigh he lifted both his hands to hold your face. The same hands that had nearly crushed bone now dragged roughly across your wet cheeks, smearing tears with a parody of tenderness. His thumbs dug just enough to sting, wiping the evidence of your weakness away as though it offended him.

III leaned in until the hard edge of his mask pressed against your temple. “You’ll thank me one day,” he whispered, not cruel but reverent, the way priests talk to their gods. “Even if I have to break you into pieces to make it so.”

For a fleeting second, you thought III might lean closer, press his forehead to yours, or worse, kiss you through that mask. But instead he shoved you back, sharp and careless, pushing you away like an object that had outlived its use.

You dragged air into your lungs like someone hauled back from a riptide, throat raw and chest aching as if water still clung to the inside of you. Instinct pulled your hand upward, pressing against your neck, tracing the throb, making sure the seams of you still held. Horror didn’t come as a scream this time.

III had already turned his back.

As if you’d been no more than a passing amusement. Both hands wrapped around the knife’s hilt and tore it from the table. Metal shrieked sharp through the chamber, the sound needling into your teeth. He turned the blade slowly, tilting it to catch the dim light, inspecting it for flaws like a musician checking a cherished instrument, one he’d played too hard, but would happily play again.

“Run along, little sister,” he murmured. “Ritual’s almost here.” He paused. The candlelight laid a thin gold on the cut of his palm. When he spoke again, his voice went quiet, easy in a way that crawled under your skin. “Let’s see how much of you is left when it’s over.”

───────── ౨ৎ ─────────

“Some exits are only new throats. That is how the wolf eats.”

Chapter Text

“The lamb does not fear the altar until it sees its own reflection in the blade. And a gaze that begs for mercy only sharpens the knife.”

───────── ౨ৎ ─────────

The ritual had been inching toward you like damp rising up a wall.

You could feel it in your bones like a storm that had already gathered at the horizon, the kind that bent trees before the first drop of rain ever touched earth. It was pathetic, really, the way you sat at the vanity table as if tidiness could keep a god out of your blood. Every brushstroke through your tangled hair dragged the certainty closer, pulled it taut across your scalp until it stung.

The walls were in a mood about it.

They had been murmuring all day, giggling if you listened closely. They took turns with your given name, sang it, sighed it, chanted it like a nursery rhyme that soured in the last line. “Oh, V, soon you’ll have your own gorgeous mask,” they promised, coaxing and cruel. “Serve Him well, V. Kneel. Obey, and Sleep rewards. Obey, and you will not drown.”

One week had slipped through your fingers painfully fast. Time here was a trickster, bending itself around the cathedral until you felt caught in a net you could never tear. Every day was devoured by tasks you hadn’t asked for, lessons you didn’t want to learn.

II had you in the garden without any pity, until your shoulders burned and your hands reeked of bitter rust. Whether he’d taken Vessel’s request to heart or truly believed the nonsense he’d told you, that Sleep had a plan for each of them, even you, you couldn’t say. But he drilled it into you with the patience of a long winter, methodical, relentless, no mercy for shortcuts, no reward for obedience. You even ended up making soap with him in the distillery, fighting the urge to gag from the stench thick enough to turn your stomach inside out. He carried eternity in his bones, and he cruelly wielded it against you, teaching with a precision you hated him for. Gods, you despised how good he was at it. You despised more that II never said good job, but never let you repeat the same mistake twice. Working with him was fucking exhausting, humiliating, bruising in its monotony, but at least it filled the hours and gave your mind a place to run that wasn’t down into darker holes.

After that, you were sometimes handed off to IV, who had his own way of cheering you up, mostly by grinding your nerves down to damn dust. He cracked morbid jokes with that smug brightness that never reached his eyes, chuckling behind the mask like a painter hiding wine stains beneath the underpainting. Every word of his was too polished, too performative, and it set all your teeth on edge. Working with him had its own kind of torture, doing laundry and chapel decorations, sharpening all kinds of blades and more endless petty chores that scraped the hours raw. Excruciating not for their difficulty, but for their dullness.

Vessel kept you in the library while he worked, his voice droning through scripture and fragments like a slow tide, not explaining so much as battering, as though your soul could be beaten into readiness.

Preparation, he called it. Spiritual preparation. His phrase, not yours.

You were still angry with him, and that made the hours drag with their own kind of weight. He read to you in a voice that seemed to slip through your spine and settle behind your lungs, resonant and heavy in ways you didn’t want to admit. When you were sharp with him, he let it pass like weather. When your questions were unkind, he answered as if they had been asked with courtesy. When you said nothing, he left you in silence, letting you read on your own. It was strange, unnerving even, being alone with Vessel after what III had spat at you. As if his words had planted something in you, a seed of fear, or worse, recognition. So you were much sharper with Vessel than you meant to be, meaner, waiting for him to prove you wrong.

It had been days ago, but the memory still gnawed.

You remembered Vessel looking up from the scripture, his fingers pausing on the brittle edge of a page. “You’re tired,” he said simply, his voice so deep it almost shook the shelves. “Are you having such a hard time sleeping, love?”

You hadn’t even looked up from the book in your lap. “Don’t pretend you care.”

Later, he had tried again.

“If you’d let me, I could help you sleep easier.”

You snapped. “Sleep easier? With you breathing down my neck? No thanks.”

His eyes had lingered on you, something unreadable behind the mask. You remembered it too clearly, how he let the words die there, sinking into silence as though you’d pressed a knife to his throat. And then the hours went on, unbearably quiet, each of you drowning in a different kind of stubbornness. But the nights were getting worse.

Drowning, over and over and over again without an end.

Also, you had avoided III as much as you could. 

That part, at least, was quite easy, because he hardly appeared at all. He hadn’t even come for the notebook, though the promise of that deal lingered like a splinter under your bruised skin, catching every time you turned Eden’s diary. You should have been grateful for the distance, and yet his absence unsettled you almost as much as his presence ever had. What game was he playing this time? Why withdraw now?

What did it mean for you?

And always, circling in your mind like carrion birds, were the fragments he’d left you with. Words that felt like clues, shards of something larger, a picture you should have been able to see if only you could just tilt your thoughts at the right angle. But no matter how many times you had turned them over, they never aligned. The pattern refused to emerge. So you slaved through your days with the riddle lodged in your skull, a wound you couldn’t stop picking.

Nothing made sense.

Life here was every bit as fucking miserable as you felt it to be. Your jaw ached from where III had grabbed it, a dull and throbbing proof you could press with your fingers whenever you feared you had imagined it all. But a new ache had forced its way in, sitting just behind anger. The ritual of worship was no longer a distant threat. It was now. Inevitable. Unavoidable. You couldn’t slip out of it, couldn’t pretend it wasn’t coming. You had agreed to observe, and that meant you’d be in the chapel while they summoned a god into the room.

In the cracked mirror that no one had bothered to replace, you studied a face that felt less and less like yours but hollow enough to almost look familiar now. You looked bled out, shadows carved beneath your eyes, lips pale, skin leeched of colour as if this fucking world had sucked the blood straight from your veins. This place was painting you into its own palette, draining you into something grey and lifeless. You scoffed and tore your gaze away, setting the brush down with a trembling sigh.

You didn’t bother with your hair, why should you, really? You looked like shit anyway. And what did it matter if tonight you ended up dead, or worse, enslaved to an ancient deity whose only gift was eternal fucking servitude?

A knock came. Once. Then twice.

The door groaned open, and you turned in your chair to watch the culprit enter. The moment your eyes found IV, your heartbeat quickened, sudden and sharp. Vessel had already warned you about the ceremonial garb they wore during the rituals, so that you wouldn’t die of fright on the spot, but knowing wasn’t the same as seeing. Warnings are theoretical until it’s in your fucking doorway. Because IV had dressed himself into a nightmare.

IV wore robes now, dark emerald green that shimmered in the candlelight like bruised moss. His figure was wholly transformed, swallowed by the ritual’s design. Underneath, black shirt and trousers that clung close to his frame, and over his head sat something worse, a headpiece shaped like a skull, sculpted from some blasphemous golden material, its surface shining with polish. A chainmail veil of gold spilled down to cover his mouth and throat, catching the light in restless shivers. Every inch of his skin was hidden, painted black or clothed, and golden jewelry coiled around his wrists and throat and fingers like serpents.

“You look horrible,” you said, the words slipping from your lips before you could stop them, because the alternative was letting him hear your heartbeat.

“Cheers. Then we match,” he chuckled. “How are you feeling?”

You gave a stiff shrug, blowing a breath through your mouth like it might pass for an answer, and turned back to the mirror. His reflection slipped into yours, settling over your shoulder. IV loomed behind the chair, making him a permanent fixture in the glass as you dragged the brush through your hair again, more for something to do than anything else. Because if your hands went still, they’d shake, and you weren’t about to let IV see that.

For a long while, neither of you spoke.

IV only watched from above as you pulled the brush through your hair, his silence heavy, his posture unreadable. The chainmail veil turned the space around his mouth into an odd, muted halo, catching the candlelight in glints. And when he finally spoke, his voice came threaded through the tiny rings of metal.

“I’ve a proposition for you,” IV said.

His voice was somehow wrong for him, uncharacteristically flat, no theatrics, no smugness. It was the most serious you’d ever heard him. You watched him in the mirror from under your eyelashes and tipped your chin an inch, signaling, go on.

“Might sound odd at first,” he huffed. “Let me explain.”

Your thoughts ran ahead, tripping over one another to guess his motives. You felt your fingers curl in on themselves, body already tensed for whatever was about to fall from his mouth.

“I’ve something that could make the ritual easier for you to endure,” his stern tone flattened on easier, as though he distrusted the word. “Ves must’ve told you that you may hear Sleep’s voice during the worship. And that can be devastating. Shattering, even. It can break you, if you’re not familiar with it.”

You swallowed. “Wow. Great pep talk. Really putting me at ease.”

He chuckled. “Would you prefer I lie?”

“Not a chance,” you deadpanned.

IV shifted behind you as he spoke and there was a faint chime of gold. His reflection moved then and his hand came into view at the edge of your shoulder. You flinched as his fingers brushed yours and slid the hairbrush from your grip.

“What—” rose to your mouth like a reflex.

His knuckles ghosted your wrist and the words died there. He set the brush to your hair with a gentleness you would never have given him credit for. His eyes in the mirror were the colour of winter rivers, fixed on your hair as if he were memorising it. The chainmail veil whispered when he breathed, a spill of soft metallic rain. You stared at your own mouth in the mirror to make sure it stayed closed. His fingers followed the brush in patient passes, combing through the loosened strands, smoothing your hair with a touch that promised both lies and truths. And with IV you had never knew which was the wrapper and which was the gift. Maybe this was just another manipulation tactic, his way of luring you into a false sense of safety before he dropped the blade.

But you didn’t stop him.

You let him touch you.

There was something uncanny about the moments when they tried to be gentle with you. The same strangeness you had felt in the great hall, arguing with them, or when you realized how easy it was to lie to them or to read the shifts in their bodies. An alien familiarity, as if some part of this had already belonged to you. At first you told yourself it was just observation, just you picking up habits, But no. This was different. However, you shoved the thought aside for now. You’d have time to pick apart your imaginary instincts later.

Your arms folded themselves across your chest to keep the tremor out of your hands. “What is it, then? And what do you want in return?”

“In return,” IV echoed, something amused curling through the phrase as his fingers drifted to the nape of your neck, just a touch, locating where the hair divided, but there was a tremor in him he pretended not to own. “Not looking for favours, darling. I want to help you out.”

The words landed wrong in your gut, first a jolt of genuine surprise, then the sinking sense of suspicion that something was hidden beneath them, folded like a blade you hadn’t glimpsed yet. Because there was always a price. If you couldn’t see it, it only meant you hadn’t looked hard enough, nothing else.

Luckily, he spared you the search.

“If you drink my blood,” IV said, as casually as offering a cup of tea, “you may find hearing Sleep more bearable. Enough that your mind doesn’t fold in on itself.”

This time, his words didn’t hit with the shock they should have.

You just stared at his reflection, swallowing down the urge to laugh, maybe because you had run out of places to put the fear. Amazing, really, what a single fucking week with them could do to you. What escaped was a sharp snort through your nose, a vicious little sound meant as much for yourself as for him.

So you turned in your seat, just enough to meet his eyes head on, and muttered, “What is it with you lot and your blood drinking kinks?”

You caught it, the flicker in his bright eyes, the crack in his composure. For once, it was you surprising him, not the other way around. And already, you almost regretted it.

However, the question had been lodged in your throat for days, a bloody bone you couldn’t stop choking on no matter how many times you swallowed it back. And you weren’t about to keep gagging on silence, not now. Not even with that stupid promise you’d made to III, swearing you wouldn’t tell his brothers about the blood drinking. Because promises could bend, right? Words could be twisted. And the answer mattered more than a breadcrumb of truth tossed to a wolf.

Even with the revelation hanging between you, IV gathered himself in seconds. His head tilted, and with a gentle pressure he guided your crown forward again. You let him and you also let him place you exactly where he wanted you for the next stroke of the brush as he began to part your hair soothingly.

“Someone else has offered you their blood,” he said and it landed like a statement, though he dressed it as a question. The mock tenderness in his tone couldn’t quite cover the intrusion. It was prying disguised as gentleness, a hook baited in silk. And you knew then that you’d been right, that this entire performance was meant to soften you toward something you’d otherwise refuse. But whatever falseness coiled in his words hadn’t reached his hands. Oh no, his touch was steady and patient, almost featherlight, as though he was handling porcelain.

As though you might shatter.

You toyed with the silence, weighing whether to keep it or break it. But in the end, you let it go. “Yeah,” you said finally, keeping your tone vague and careful, your eyes set on him as he put the brush down and began to braid your hair. You didn’t name III though, only scattering hints like crumbs. “Didn’t exactly offer, though. He tricked me. Kind of. Twice.”

“Twice,” IV muttered the word rougher now, frustration slipping through the veil unchecked. His painted fingers stalled at the ends of your hair before finishing the braid with deliberate care. Then, without asking, he plucked a ribbon from your vanity and tied it off with a sharp tug, tight and possessive, like staking a claim. The gesture landed like a period pressed onto a sentence, final and unyielding. “Right.”

Your throat tightened.

“And how did that happen?”

“It’s a long story,” you sighed, refused to be pulled into telling it. But your eyes betrayed you anyway, flicking to the cracked edge of the mirror where the diary was wedged between stone and glass.

The hiding place felt obvious now, glaring at you like a bruise. You forced your gaze back before IV could follow it.

IV only hummed in reply. One hand tapped lightly against the back of your chair, one-two, one-two, one-two, like a heartbeat he couldn’t quite keep in his chest. Then he leaned down. You felt him more than saw him, the faint whisper of the chain links shifting in the veil, the warm weight of his attention settling on your skin.

“Does Vessel know?”

“No.” You kept it small, flat. “He—uhm, Vessel wouldn’t be happy about it, would he?”

Convenient, how truth and lie could sleep in the same bed if you let them. You left Eden out of it. You left III out of it. You left out the knowledge that according to the diary, this wasn’t the first time IV had offered his blood willingly.

“That’s an understatement,” IV chuckled, his tone dry as ash.

“But… why?” The words came rough, rasping through the suspicion and irritation you had to swallow just to force them out. IV leaned against the back of your chair with casual grace, his hand resting there with arrogant elegance. “What does it really do? What—”

“Ah, by Sleep’s hollow eyes,” IV cut you off smoothly, his otherwise melodic tone laced with clear disdain, “You drank the blood and didn’t even bother to demand an answer first. Do you realise how daft that makes you?”

The bluntness of it flushed your cheeks hot with shame. You pulled your neck in like a child, shoulders tucking defensively as your reflection in the mirror looked smaller and weaker than ever. “If you put it like that, yeah, it does sound bad. But I had a plan, alright?”

IV didn’t even humour you with a question.

His silence was sharp enough.

Instead, he sighed, long and controlled, one hand rubbing the side of his neck as if weary of explaining what he thought should be damn obvious. IV always carried himself like that, like he was rehearsing exhaustion as performance, pretending to be above you.

“Drinking the blood of a vessel does many things,” he admitted finally, his voice low, more serious now, echoing III’s words from days ago. “One is that it changes you in ways you can’t undo. It binds you, to this world, to Sleep, to us. Whether you like it or not.”

Your chest went hollow.

“It also makes the changing process a bit smoother,” IV continued, as if reciting from some dark scripture. “Adapting hurts. More than you can imagine. You’ll feel worse before it gets better, remember? But with the blood in you, the body bends quicker, less pain when the time comes. Grants you kind of a resistance against Sleep’s magic, which is bloody overwhelming, to put it mildly. His power would crush you otherwise. Tear you apart.” His voice dropped, slower now as the light shifted across the gold of his mask. “But—” He paused for a breath. “It strips away a part of your humanity. Your soul. Whatever you call it. Basically, a piece of you is gone now, tied to the vessel whose blood you drank. A tether kind of thing that makes you sensitive to their thoughts, their moods, their presence.”

By the time his words sank in, you found yourself leaning forward until your forehead nearly touched the cracked glass. Your heart pounded so hard it felt like it might split your ribs. Both hands came up, mapping your own face, tracing the edges of your cheekbones as though you might catch some shift in the bone, some fissure, some mark that betrayed what had changed. But there was nothing. No cracks. No inhuman scar to prove it. Only your own familiar skin staring back. And yet, deep inside, something screamed that it might be true, that the change had already taken root where no reflection could follow.

Fuck. You’d been looking for the wrong signs.

It explained the strange weight pressing at you lately, the way your nerves sparked when they were close, the uncanny tug beneath your skin. There was no other explanation for the way their presence moved under your skin like a fever you couldn’t sweat out. So the diary hadn’t lied. It really was the fucking blood. It had to be. Eden was right, it really was significant.

What else could make you feel like this?

Your eyes found IV’s in the mirror. “Does that mean I’m no longer fully human?”

“Yes and no. To be a vessel, you need Sleep Himself to change you,” IV reassured you dryly, tapping two fingers against the side of his head as if to show where the real shift took place. “That hasn’t happened yet. But yeah, in part, it means exactly that.” He leaned back slightly, the faintest shrug in his shoulders. “You really didn’t notice? That after drinking the blood, how you don’t need food anymore. Or water. Or how the normal human routines and bodily functions—” He trailed off, searching, then gave a short laugh. “Bloody hell, how the fuck do you even phrase that politely to a human? You know what I mean.”

You froze, the memory slamming into you all at once. Because you did know what he meant. The disgusting meals you had choked down, convinced it was this cursed fucking place that made everything taste like rot. The nights you had realized you hadn’t felt thirst at all, only dread and exhaustion. And then, slowly, how things had all just stopped.

The thought made you flinch as if struck.

Gods. You actually missed pissing now.

“And how would I know that?” you snapped suddenly, your voice louder than you intended, a desperate cut into the silence. Your chest heaved, and you gestured wildly at your reflection, at the hollowed eyes, the pale lips, the way your skin had turned colourless as chalk. “No one told me anything when I came here! I thought it was this world that made me like this—this place, sucking the life out of me! Not—” you faltered, choking, “—not that.”

You felt cornered all of a sudden.

Trapped in a cage you had walked into with your own curiosity. At least IV didn’t rise to your outburst. He only huffed, that low and dismissive sound he seemed to keep just for you, and watched you. His gaze lingered, heavy and unblinking as you leaned back into the chair, your lips turning downward, eyes lowering to your lap as defeat bled into your posture. The weight in your throat thickened. You had sworn to yourself you wouldn’t do this, that you wouldn’t bind yourself to them. And yet here you were, claimed in ways you hadn’t even understood. Already marked. Already theirs. Oh gods, you never should’ve made a deal with any of them. Your stomach twisted, a churn of disgust that burned through your chest.

Then IV moved.

His hand rose slowly, just as every muscle in your body seized as if you had been caught in a trap snapping shut. You didn’t breathe. You couldn’t. His fingertips brushed the shell of your ear first, light and almost accidental, before sliding down the line of your jaw. The touch was careful, reverent even, yet it seared through you like a brand. Your thoughts scattered to ash, leaving only the raw awareness of him, of that hand, of the terrifying tenderness in a creature who could just as easily crush bone.

Your breath caught hard, chest trembling with the effort to steady it. You stared at him in the mirror, words barely making it past your lips. “What are you doing?”

It came out thin and fragile, stripped of any bite you meant it to have, not more than a ghost of air. Because IV wasn’t rough. He wasn’t cruel. Not like III, whose grip had nearly broken your jaw. This was different, dangerously different. His hand moved with purpose, each brush of his fingertips deliberate, controlled. Gentle, yes, but not aimless. He touched you like he’d imagined it for days, perhaps longer, and only now allowed himself to close the distance.

“What’s done is done,” he murmured, his voice a low and steadying melody that soothed and unsettled in the same breath. “Focus on the ritual instead, yeah?”

Your lips pressed into a thin line.

“I want you to remember something,” he continued, quieter now, softer, as if even the walls weren’t permitted to hear. “If anything goes wrong during the worship, come to me. Alright? Whatever happens tonight, whatever you see, whatever you hear, remember this.”

His hand moved once again.

Painted fingers slid beneath your chin, tilting it upward with patient insistence until the crown of your head pressed against the chair. The gesture bared your throat completely, your pulse hammering frantic beneath his touch. You couldn’t look anywhere but up, into those brilliant blue eyes burning behind the skull mask. His fingertips traced down the length of your throat with steady, deliberate care, so light it was almost unbearable. Every inch he claimed seared hot beneath your skin, every nerve awake, your breath stuttering, uneven and shallow. Then his hand slipped even lower, following the hollow of your stretched throat to the line of your collarbone, leaving a trail that burned long after it passed. 

His gaze bore into yours and for the briefest second there was something almost human in it. Something restrained, caged tight, aching to be spoken. Something he wanted to tell you, but never would. He leaned down just enough that you felt the shadow of him close against your skin, close enough that the air between you vibrated with the weight of everything he would never say. And gods help you, you saw it.

You felt it.

“Remember, we are not the monsters you should fear.”

The veil at his mouth stirred faintly with his silent breath. His eyes never left yours, steady and consuming, and in the candle’s glow he looked otherworldly, like an angel of death clad in ritual cloth, close enough to bless, close enough to destroy, promising something that felt as dangerous as it was tempting. You couldn’t move. You couldn’t speak. The weight of it all held you rooted, eyes wide, pulse thrumming wild under your skin.

For one reckless heartbeat, you wanted to believe him. To trust him. To imagine that if Sleep tore through the chapel tonight, IV would step between you and the storm. That he would not let the god take you and devour you. That he would protect you.

But you already knew better. You knew what a cunning creature IV was. And yet, the old gods damn you, you still wanted to believe.

You parted your lips to say something, to break the strange heaviness IV had just laid across your chest with his touch, when suddenly his hand fell away from your jaw. The heat of his fingers vanished and the cold flooded back in. His head tilted sharply toward the door, his casual arrogance stripped from him in a breath, replaced with something sharper, as if a string had been tugged somewhere deep in his mind.

“What is it—” you began, but your throat closed on the last word.

Because the matter walked into view.

III appeared in the doorway like the punchline to a bad joke, dressed in the same ceremonial garb as IV. The robe hung an inch shorter on him, showing too much of the black trousers and the easy, predatory balance of his stance. He wiggled his fingers at you in a ridiculous, showy little wave when he clocked IV and you together, as though all of you were just old friends caught in some harmless mischief. Your hand rose to your jaw before you could stop it, palm pressed over the ache where he nearly snapped it days ago.

“Oh, pet,” III purred, head tilted as he took in the flush high on your cheeks. “You could’ve warned me there’d be another man in your room. But I’m not the jealous type. I never mind sharing, as long as I get the better half.”

He didn’t wait for an invitation.

III crossed the threshold with the entitlement of a storm. “Oh, have I—” he looked from you to IV, “—interrupted something?”

You opened your mouth to say no, to tell him to get the fuck out, to choke on your name, any of those would have done, but IV was faster, and somehow worse.

“Why the fuck did you make her drink your blood twice?”

The question hit like cold water.

No preface. No warning. IV cut straight into the space between the three of you like a blade through fabric and the shift was instant. III’s gaze snapped from him to you, blue narrowing a fraction, sharp with some unspoken question. Then he groaned, long and theatrical, throwing his head back before muttering something under his breath, too low for you to catch.

“Apologies, brother,” III drawled, sarcasm dripping so thick you could probably drown in it. “Didn’t mean to beat you to it. Tragic, truly. But time’s pressing, yeah?”

“Yeah, right,” IV muttered, arms folding across his chest with the kind of dryness that could turn bone to dust. “That’s you all over, isn’t it? Pure of heart. No agenda at all.”

“Oh, I do adore you,” III laughed, a jagged, wolfish sound as he drifted closer, close enough that you felt the chill of him at your shoulder. 

And just like that, between one breath and the next, the two of them had you bracketed, IV at your right shoulder, III at your left, the vanity’s wooden edge pressing against your thighs, making your stomach turn on itself. They weren’t touching you, no, but the way they stood so closely cut off all the paths your body might have taken if you had to run.

III folded himself down, slender frame bending until his mask was level with your face. Then his voice came soft, almost sweet, and it made your stomach knot.

“Miss me?”

The air shifted with it, pressure pressing in from all sides. Out of the corner of your eye, you caught IV’s hand slip beneath his veil, rubbing at his chin harder than necessary. The gesture looked casual, but the tension in it bled through like ink in water. The room felt wrong, too hot, then too cold, as if it couldn’t decide which way to lean. You hadn’t moved a muscle, but the atmosphere had changed twice already.

“You know why I’m here,” III hummed.

IV’s eyes slid to you. “Want me to leave?”

You snapped your head up so fast your neck clicked. “No.”

The words left you quicker than you intended, thin and sharp with panic. Your gaze snapped to IV’s, locking on the slits of his mask, desperate to make him understand what your mouth couldn’t. Don’t leave me alone with him. The last time III had cornered you, you’d learned how many directions a jaw could bend before it broke. And you had no interest in repeating that lesson. Not tonight. Not ever.

IV saw it. You knew he did. The silence stretched, heavy as a held breath, before he shifted his weight, settling deliberately from one hip to the other. The nod was slight, but it anchored you like a lifeline.

“Hearbreaking,” III whined, theatrical as ever. “Not your favourite anymore, am I?” He didn’t bother waiting for the answer, none of you were going to give him one anyway. The jester’s mask slipped, and in its place something sharper gleamed through. His voice cut low, sudden and direct. “Right, come on, pet. Payday.”

You nodded, barely, more to convince yourself than them, your body already moving before your mind could claw it back. You shoved up from the chair, its legs dragging a low, groaning shriek across the stone that seemed to echo far too long. Your hand shot to the vanity, fingers trembling as they pressed into the thin crack where glass kissed stone, feeling for the edge you had hidden there. For a second you thought you had lost it, but then you found the corner. You slid it free, heart pounding so hard you swore they’d hear it.

IV’s spine snapped straight, as if you’d yanked a wire buried inside him. “The hell’s that?”

You extended the notebook toward III, and he snatched it without ceremony, flipping it open. Pages fluttered, bent beneath his rough handling. IV leaned in, gaze cutting down, and then—

“No fucking way,” he breathed.

His voice had dropped flat, but underneath it was something raw, something you hadn’t heard in him before. His eyes stayed glued to the page for a second too long, and when they finally ripped away, they locked on you with a force that made your stomach tighten. And for the first time, you saw something flare there that wasn’t arrogance or theatre.

“Where did you find this?” he demanded.

“In the library,” you said carefully. “When I was with Vessel.”

You stepped back from them, as if distance alone could keep their sharp edges from cutting you open, folding your arms tight across your chest. Being loomed over like a corpse waiting for the knife made your skin crawl, so you moved, slow but deliberate, crossing to your bed.

“III said he’d tell me what happened to Eden,” you finished, your voice low but steady. Your eyes never left III. He was still rifling through the diary with that restless greed, flipping page after page as if hunting for something specific, something hidden. “If I gave him the diary.”

“And why are we suddenly so trusting with him?” III sneered, and to your shock he smacked IV’s arm with the diary’s spine. “Him, of all fucking people.”

You nearly asked who the hell he meant, because there was no we between you and him, but you caught yourself, teeth sinking into your lower lip instead. You watched as IV plucked the diary from III’s fingers, calm as you like, and to your utter surprise, III let him. Just like that. No fight, no claws. IV’s shrug carried a grin you couldn’t see, only feel, the kind that made your skin bristle. He turned the pages with maddening slowness as he hummed.

“Maybe I am her favourite,” he said mildly.

“Fortunately,” you cut in quietly, “I hate all of you equally.”

IV’s gaze slid to you.

“Yeah. How fortunate,” he muttered as he flipped the diary shut with a sharp snap. His voice turned more serious as he added, “Thing is, III might’ve promised you the story. But there are reasons we keep our mouths shut. Reasons we don’t tell you things. Not because we’re trying to be the clever bastards you think we are, but because there are things we can’t say. Things He forbids us from speaking aloud.” He tapped the closed diary once against his palm. “And that story’s one of them. Trust me, Sleep isn’t kind to those who disobey. Well, not unless you fancy joining the rest of our siblings, rotting out in the forest.”

“What?” Your head whipped toward III, accusation lacing your eyes.

He only muttered a cheeky, “Oops.”

Something inside you cracked.

The anger that had been building in your chest boiled over. You were ready to scream, ready to tear the room apart with fury, but III cut in first, raising his hands in mock surrender.

“I can tell you what’s allowed. Don’t fret.”

You raised your eyebrows and mimicked III’s mocking gesture from days ago, “Hurry, then. We’ve a ritual to catch, remember?”

You were braver with IV in the room.

Or maybe you had just gotten better at faking it. The promise he had murmured minutes ago still clung to you, a phantom heat where his fingers had traced your throat, the sweet promise of protection branded into your skin. It embarrassed you now, how much you held onto it, how much you wanted it to be true. Your cheeks flushed hot, your pulse too loud in your ears. You licked your bottom lip just to give your mouth something to do, as if the smallest motion could disguise how raw you felt beneath his shadow.

“Wouldn’t Ves lose his shit if you told her?” IV’s question was casual on the surface, but the look he cut sideways at his brother carried another question, one you didn’t have the code for.

III didn’t answer right away.

He tilted his head, eyes narrowing in a way that was almost grotesque in its thoughtfulness. It unsettled you more than his laughter or violence ever had. You hated seeing it and you hated knowing that behind all the manic hunger, the impulse and the cruelty, there were still gears turning. But now you saw the flicker of something older. Something heavier.

“You promised,” you snapped, sharpening your voice once again because you could feel the moment slipping through your fingers. “You promised me, III.”

He flicked his hand at you like you were in his way.

“Yes, yes,” III’s tone was almost bored as he mumbled.

His mind wasn’t with you.

For a heartbeat, maybe longer, his mind was locked in that silent exchange with IV, a private language carved from old wounds and unfinished sentences. And the two of them, identical robes and height difference, should have looked ridiculous side by side, like reflections misaligned. But there was nothing remotely funny about it. Instead, the way their eyes held each other made you nervous. And in the air between them, you felt the weight of it, that this story was far bigger, far darker than the crumbs you had been chasing.

“What?” you demanded, glaring between them. “What are you two playing at?”

Your spine stiffened, a prickle of cold sweat crawling across your back. Their eyes lingered, passing you between them as though deciding what you were worth. You tried not to flinch, but it felt less like being seen and more like being measured.

“Eden was here long before you,” III said finally, dodging your question as if it hadn’t even brushed his ears. He shifted, shoulder sliding against the stone, then leaned back against the wall like some lazy jester pretending this wasn’t a performance. His ankles crossed, posture dripping nonchalance but it was the kind that sweated strain. You could see it in the tight set of his shoulders and the way his fingers twitched restlessly.

Across from him, IV’s hands went still. He didn’t interrupt.

The air between the three of you thinned into a wire stretched taut, humming with the weight of a story none of them wanted to carry into sound.

“It’s a fucking sappy story, really,” III murmured at last. The way he said sappy made the word feel like a slur.

Your knees buckled with the silence that scalded like boiling water. You sat down on the edge of the bed, the mattress giving under you with a soft sigh that felt disturbingly human. As if even the furniture knew the story you were about to hear carried blood in it.

“Long story short,” III began, except nothing about the way he said that promised shortness. The golden mask caught the candlelight, his blue eyes flashing beneath it like chips of winter glass. “I already told you that Ves is flawed, right? And Eden—” he gave a little hum, “—was the most annoying bitch of a human Sleep had ever dragged through these fucking gates. Daft as a brush, she was. Still, she somehow made Vessel fall for her. Which isn’t exactly a huge achievement, mind, Ves can be an annoying little bitch himself, with his moods and his music and his poetry and all that shit.” His voice dripped with venom, but there was something else in it too, a grudge you couldn’t quite name.

III tilted his head, slow as a predator catching a new angle on its prey. His stare pinned you, sharp and merciless, until you felt your lungs refuse the next breath. However, what burned in them wasn’t the usual madness, it was something heavier and older, anger that had teeth and nowhere to bite but only into you. It struck like judgement, sudden and suffocating, as though every mistake, every sin, every failure and every ruin that had ever touched this bloodstained place was carved into your skin even when you hadn’t been here then. But under his gaze, you knew with certainty that you could be the one made to pay for it.

“As I told you before, Sleep’s a jealous cunt of a god,” III tapped his mask where his mouth was underneath, his gaze still fixed on you as though to carve the words into your bones. “So when Ves told Eden that he’d defy Sleep for her, and that stupid woman believed him—” III’s voice rose, harsh and jagged, “—Sleep had enough.”

Your breath hitched.

“We are all here because of Vessel, more or less,” III said, his tone lowering again, though it shook faintly with the force of his bitterness. “He was the very first. First child Sleep made in His image. And even though he’s fucked up beyond repair, he’s still the fucking golden boy. Sleep’s darling, His fawning little musician,” III flicked his wrist as if tossing a coin into a well you couldn’t see the bottom of. “Sleep built this world for him, you know. To keep him here. A pretty little gilded cage so the poor bastard could adore Him and write Him songs for all damn eternity or whatever kinky shit He fancied. And us?” He motioned between IV and himself. “We’re the consolation prize, created only so the pet had playmates in this hellhole.” The laugh that followed had no joy in it. “A family, yeah? One you can’t ever leave.”

III’s breath came harder now, shoulders rising. His mask gleamed as he turned away, like he couldn’t bear to look at you when he said that. There was something in him then, something raw that bent close to heartbreak but just wasn’t human enough to be called that. You couldn’t name it, but you felt it like a knife pressed flat to your skin, waiting to turn.

The silence thickened until IV cleared his throat.

He stood straighter where he leaned against your vanity. “Truth is, all of us are losers in this fucked up game. Every one of us. Just as much as Vessel. I mean, he got done by an ancient deity, now chained to Him forever because Sleep failed to turn him into a god to match His own fucking ego. So—” a small lift of the shoulder, a small mercy of tone “—Vessel’s not the villain in this story, not as such.”

III shot him a glare sharp enough to cut.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” he waved IV off impatiently. “Point is, Sleep tested Vessel’s love for Eden. Made him choose between Him and her in some fucked up way. We don’t know all the juicy stuff but Vessel, in all his brilliance—” III gave an ugly laugh, “—managed to piss Him off so badly that Sleep cursed them both for all eternity.”

“What? So Eden’s not dead? She’s—what? Cursed? Where is she?”

III and IV glanced at one another once again.

There was an edge in their silence, sharp enough that you felt it slice through the air between them. You didn’t know its shape, but you knew it mattered, knew instinctively that whatever hung unsaid here was carved deep into the very marrow of their story. Was this the forbidden detail they weren’t allowed to tell you? The damn key buried in all the half truths and riddles, the piece you had been chasing like a shadow since the moment you opened your eyes in this wretched world?

Yes, this must be the very thing you had been searching for. And you knew, you won’t get that from them.

III only clicked his tongue, breaking the stillness. “That’s not the point,” he said, too quickly. “The fucking point is Eden tipped the balance. And we’ve all been paying for it since.”

“What do you mean?”

III leaned forward, gesturing with the diary now resting in IV’s hands. “Because of her, Sleep abandoned us. He abandoned all His creations and wouldn’t show Himself. Wouldn’t change anyone, but still sent humans here, letting every single one die or turn into those ugly cunts in the forest.”

Your stomach twisted violently.

“And that’s why,” he went on, voice lowering into something dark, “it’s such a big deal that He’s asked for a ritual now. After all these years. Maybe decades. Fuck knows.”

Your brows knit as you leaned forward, elbows braced hard against your knees, clutching at the weight of their words like they might crush you if you let go. And for once, you weren’t resisting, you weren’t fighting. You were listening, devouring every word like scraps tossed to a starving dog. Finally. These were the answers that had been gnawing at your skull since the first breath you drew in this place. But they came too fast, too heavy. Your mind buzzed, scrambled, fracturing under the weight of possibilities.

What had really happened to Eden, if she wasn’t dead? Where was she? Were the monsters in the forest truly human once, and if so, could they ever be dragged back into their own skin? Would you rot into a feral beast yourself if you failed to please Sleep, if He refused to hollow you out into a vessel? They spoke as though mercy was an option, but why did they leave that part unsaid? Why cut around the marrow of the truth? And why, in the middle of this sudden generosity, did they avoid that one detail, the part where they, too, had been drawn to Eden, circling her like moths even as they preached devotion to their god? Why leave that out? Why the sudden flood of honesty, why now, why all at once?

Your skull thrummed with all of it, a hundred different questions and not nearly enough air to breathe them out. You forced a breath out through your lips, sharp and controlled, just to keep yourself from unraveling on the spot. You couldn’t waste this fucking chance, not when they were offering secrets freely, not when the truth dangled right there like meat on a hook.

But could you trust them to give it to you? Or were they already weaving another trap out of your hunger, waiting for you to bite down on the lie?

“You mentioned a balance,” you forced out, your voice trembling. Your teeth found the inside of your cheek, biting hard enough to taste iron. “What does that mean?”

IV lifted his eyes from the diary, turning it slowly and lazily between his fingers like it was nothing more than a toy. “It means we belong to each other,” he said at last. “Just as much as we belong to Sleep. And now,” he added, his gaze heavy on you, “you’re part of the balance, too. That’s what Eden forgot when she fell in love with Ves.”

Your throat closed up. “Meaning?”

“Meaning we’re all tied together,” IV hummed and flicked his fingers toward III, then to the door, as if that simple gesture could drag II and Vessel into the room with you. “Every one of us. To each other. To Him. To you. It’s a knot you can’t see, can’t untie. It isn’t choice. It isn’t love. It isn’t even faith. It’s—” His eyes pinned you as he searched for the word, the silence pulling taut between you. Finally, a low laugh broke out of him, soft and humorless, rattling beneath the mask. “—It’s instinct. That’s the best word I’ve got for it.”

“An instinct,” you echoed. The words tasted wrong in your mouth. 

“Yeah,” III snorted, much calmer now, leaning back against the wall as though this part cost him nothing to say. “We’re a package deal, pet. Hard to explain. Just a tug at the back of your head. We’re individuals, but if you get close to one of us, you get close to all of us. Feel one, feel all. That’s the balance. That’s the price of being a vessel.”

Your blood ran cold.

“Everything you give to one of us, you give to all of us,” III went on, his grin wicked beneath the veil, you could feel it. “When Ves fell in love with Eden, she belonged to us all. But she picked a favourite, didn’t she? Left the rest to starve.”

“Yeah, no shit.” The words snapped off your tongue hotter than you meant, your spine flaring with heat even as sweat ran cold down your back. You remembered Eden’s diary, her fear, her trembling words about the others pressing in, circling her, closer and closer until there was no space left to breathe. You remembered how her entries grew panicked, when they tried to get close. “She was terrified, you animals. You crowded her.” You lifted your head, eyes burning. “That’s insane. No wonder she was scared out of her mind.”

III only shrugged, clearly unbothered.

“We couldn’t help it,” IV said. “That’s how we were made.”

You stood up suddenly, unable to sit any longer, pacing the small space of your room, your body buzzing like it had been waiting for an excuse to move.

“Yeah, well, that’s not how humans work!” The words tore out of you, your hands flung wide in a helpless, furious arc. “Why didn’t you just—” your voice cracked, full with frustration, “—why didn’t you turn her into a vessel, then? You clearly don’t give a damn about consent, about morality, any of it. Why didn’t you just shove your fucking blood down her throat and be done with it?”

“We wanted to,” III’s reply snapped out like a blade, fast and ugly. He rolled his eyes so hard you could hear it in his tone, pure disdain dripping through every syllable, like you had just asked the stupidest question in the world. “But she refused. Stubborn little bitch swore she’d never kneel to Sleep.” His laugh was thin, humourless, nothing but teeth. “And Vessel—” he spat the name like poison, “—Ves protected her humanity like some knight in shining fucking armour. Wouldn’t let us touch her, wouldn’t let us force her, even when it meant her certain fucking death.” He leaned forward, voice dropping to a whisper but sharp enough to still slap. “Wouldn’t let us do anything. All because he couldn’t let go of her humanity. And you know what that made her here?” His head tilted, slow, hateful. “Fucking useless.”

Her humanity.

The word stuck in your throat like a fish bone.

And suddenly it made sense, why Eden’s entries bled the way they did. The raw fear between the lines. The suffocating claustrophobia. The desperate tug-of-war between the animalistic need to survive and the human refusal to kneel. And gods, weren’t you standing in her place now? Breathing her dread, feeling the walls close in as if her story had been waiting for you to step into it, for history to repeat itself.

“Okay,” you breathed, forcing the word out as if it could steady the chaos rattling inside your skull. In and out, you told yourself, trying to anchor yourself into some kind of rhythm. You stopped pacing finally, rubbing your palms together, the sound of skin against skin loud in the cramped silence of your room.. Your head spun with everything. Eden, Vessel, the blood, the balance, Sleep itself looming like a stormcloud above all of it. Your head felt swollen with things you couldn’t yet put in their proper places.

You turned sharply, pointing your finger at III accusingly.

“Okay,” you repeated, breathing deeply. “You told me that you made me drink your blood so I wouldn’t fall in love with Vessel.” Your voice trembled on the edge of anger and disbelief. “So what—do you think he’s going to try something funny? Something I should be aware of, or whatever?”

III looked at you lazily from where he leaned against the wall, eyes glinting with amusement, as if your terror was just another game. He didn’t bother answering.

Instead, IV cut in smoothly.

“You forget he’s half deity,” IV murmured, tilting his head with that practiced condescension, the faint clink of his veil catching the candlelight. Each ring shivered faintly, like a warning. “He doesn’t need tricks. Not Ves. He thinks too much, feels too much. Loves too easily. Gets attached quicker than he should. He doesn’t have to chase anyone down. It just happens.”

Your stomach clenched as he leaned closer.

“That’s the part you don’t understand yet,” IV went on, voice quieter now, but heavier, as if it was meant to sink into you rather than just be heard. “Ves isn’t like us. His magic isn’t games, or bargains or riddles. His magic is you, that he’s a mirror. He shows exactly what humans are already dying to see. What they’re starving for. And it’s nothing you can resist.”

You swallowed hard, throat dry. “Which is?”

“Compassion,” IV said simply. “To not be alone. To be seen. That’s why it works every damn time. Because loneliness rots the mind. It breaks everyone, given enough time. It leaves them begging for anything that feels like love. And Ves gives exactly that. He makes them believe they’ve found a saviour. Someone who understands, who listens. A reason to survive another day in this fucking pit.” He tilted his head a fraction further, and his voice darkened, almost pitying. “Even if it’s not true.”

You swallowed, hard, the sound too loud in your ears.

“That’s the worst part,” IV went on, his gaze steady through the slit of the mask. “That Vessel believes it, too. He believes his own feelings are true. He thinks he’s saving you. He wants to. He always does. Ves can’t fucking admit the truth to himself, that he’s the greatest risk you’ll ever face here. He’s the only one of us who can still convince himself he isn’t dangerous. But his love isn’t separate from Sleep. It comes through Him, from Him. And whatever that god touches, He owns. Ves can’t cut himself loose, and neither can you.”

You stared at IV, pulse pounding hard enough that you felt it in your throat, in your fingertips. His words sank like hooks into your ribs.

So Vessel was a temptation not because he tried, but because he simply was. Eden had written something almost exactly the same in her diary, hadn’t she? That being with Vessel was like looking into the truest part of yourself. That it was a cruel reflection you couldn’t turn away from, like seeing your own desperate need reflected back at you with perfect clarity.

A mercy that was no mercy at all.

Maybe that was his gift, his curse, making you believe he truly cared. That when Vessel looked at you, it wasn’t just six eyes fixed in place, it was six eyes seeing, pulling the marrow out of you and holding it up to the light. That his voice didn’t just preach, it pleaded, for your sake. That his hands didn’t just guide you, they anchored you in a world that wanted you hollow.

And gods, Eden had believed it.

She believed in the warmth of his gaze, in the tenderness of his deep voice, in the weight of his hands. She had written of him as though he was her salvation, as though he really wanted to save her, as though under the mask and the monstrosity there was something human that still beat in him. But what if IV was telling the truth? What if the horror wasn’t that Vessel lied, but that he didn’t? That he truly believed in the sincerity of his own actions, believed he was saving you even as he drowned you? That his heart, if it could still be called that, was true. Because that was far worse than deception. You didn’t know which terrified you more.

Could someone so intelligent, so cunning, truly believe that he was still human enough to be saved? That he could save you too? Save anyone who crossed into this cathedral? Or was it worse than belief, was it faith that blinded him?

Your stomach turned, cold and tight, because you could feel the same thing rooting inside you now. The possibility that Eden hadn’t been weak, or foolish. That she had only been human. And that maybe you were already standing in the same reflection, unable to look away.

Your throat felt dry as you asked, “What then? Is he capable of love? Like humans do?”

The question sat between them, heavy.

IV and III looked at each other, just a flash, a shared silence that unsettled you far more than any answer could. It was too loaded, too long, too careful. You opened your mouth to push, to demand, but IV raised a finger sharply to the veil, signalling you to silence. Your face twisted in irritation. You had a retort sharp on your tongue—don’t fucking shush me—but the corridor itself moved before you could. It made the candle flames on your vanity bow toward the door as though something unseen was approaching.

Then III chuckled, feral and knowing, and your head whipped around at the sound.

“Evening, brother,” his voice was all sharp delight. “Join the party.”

You turned, eyes narrowing into daggers.

And there he was. II, standing in your doorway like a shadow carved into flesh.Your heart began its old frantic rhythm as if it wanted out of your ribcage.

“Yeah, by all means,” you said, sarcasm dripping to cover the quake in your voice. “Come in, too. Let’s just call Vessel while we’re at it, really make it a crowd. Cram the whole lot of you into my room for no fucking reason.”

III snorted, the laugh bubbling into something gleefully obscene. “Oh, I can think of a few reasons—”

You didn’t give him the satisfaction of any acknowledgment. So you just turned your back on him with a disgusted grimace, shoulders rigid, breath sharp in your nose. However, his manic laughter followed anyway, slithering after you, scraping the walls like claws on stone, as if he had crawled under your skin and made himself at home there.

II stepped inside without ceremony.

He wore the same robe as the others, the same golden skull mask, but where theirs swallowed them whole, his chest was bared beneath the emerald folds. His skin was drowned in black paint, so dark it looked less like pigment and more like the flesh itself had been scoured clean and filled with ink. But there was more beneath. Etched into that darkness, faint and cruel, curved tattoos writhed like old scars across his torso. You followed the lines before you could stop yourself, heart hammering against your ribs. When your eyes dipped too low, toward the hem of his trousers, you felt heat claw up your throat and tore your gaze away, ashamed.

His glacier eyes cut through the room, snapping from you to III, then to IV, narrowing cold as he asked, “What the fuck are you doing?”

Panic twisted sharp in your throat.

You turned sharply to IV, scanning his hands, the table, the mirror, the chair, but Eden’s diary was gone. Your chest tightened as you snapped your gaze to III, but he was still lounging as if nothing had happened. Where had they put it? How did they do that?

II spoke again, cold and precise. “Vessel sent me to fetch you. The others should already be in the chapel. Don’t you idiots have enough things to do?” As he spoke, the skull mask didn’t change, of course, but something behind it sharpened. The black paint on his chest caught the candlelight in dry planes, made him look carved out of burnt oak and iron.

III tipped his chin as if he’d just heard his entrance cue. “Yeah, that’ll be me, then,” he whistled, and turned for the corridor. However, on his way out he glanced back, the bright cut of his blue eyes taking all of you in at once, and wiggled his fingers in a lazy little wave. “See you at the ritual, pet. Here’s hoping you see another day.”

“How funny,” you muttered, and your voice didn’t carry far enough to reach him. Or maybe it did, and III just preferred the echo of himself. But being told to hope for another day was not your idea of humour. The corridor swallowed him in one gulp. The shadows took him as if he’d never been there, disappearing the same way water closes over a thrown stone.

IV pushed off your vanity with an easy, rehearsed grace. “I should probably head down as well,” he said, turning that impossible skull toward you and your heartbeat tripped again. You couldn’t help it, your gaze slid to his hands, remembering the way his fingertips had traced your jaw, the soft press under your chin tilting your face to look at him while he promised that he will keep you safe. The memory came with heat, and you hated that about yourself. When you lifted your eyes to him now, you knew your face was asking without permission. Did you really mean it? Will you keep your promise?

He tilted his head, a flash of play under the veil, and reached as if to tuck a stray hair. Instead he caught your chin lightly between finger and thumb, the lightest playful pressure of a pinch. You flinched. He must have meant the gesture as comfort, but it landed like a spark on tinder, making you more nervous, not less.

“Don’t forget what I told you,” he muttered, voice smooth as poured water. You only nodded. Words felt like a luxury you couldn’t afford without spending something you’d need later. He turned then and went after III, his robe whispering across the stone.

His footsteps made no sound at all as he left you with II.

You drew a breath that felt like lifting something heavy. Shoulders rose and fell, as if testing whether they still obeyed you, just as you flexed your fingers, one, two, three, until the ache reminded you they still belonged to you. The time had come. You were going to do this, walk into the chapel and watch them summon a god who might kill you in the act of noticing you, crush you flat without even having to try, leave behind the absence you’d always suspected was the truest shape of you in their world. And suddenly, none of it mattered. Not Eden. Not Vessel. Not the secrets festering in the bones of this place. All that remained was the sharp, brutal truth that you were about to die, and fear, thick and metallic, flooded every corner of you until it drowned out everything else.

Behind you, II watched, silent and unblinking, as you turned to your mirror for one last look. The cracked glass split you into pieces, your mouth afraid, your gaze furious, your brows twisted into something that looked almost desperate. As if someone else had slipped behind your face to see what it might do when the moment came.

“What did they tell you?” he asked suddenly, and there was a tension to it he hadn’t bothered hiding, a tight band drawn across a drum. “IV and III.”

Your throat tightened. The skull mask was expressionless, but those blue eyes were not. You glanced off them like a stone skimming a lake. “Nothing,” you said, a small lie with its own shadow of truth. Your voice was so quiet the word scraped the back of your teeth.

He stared then, the particular II stare that counted the places it could break you and chose not to, for a long breath. Finally he sighed, and the sound had the shape of a habit. Frustration and exhaustion came off him like cold, you knew it now, recognised its posture, the way it sat in his shoulders and in the set of his jaw.

“Don’t listen to them,” II warned you, his voice low, clipped, meant to cut. “They’re younger than Vessel and me. It makes them unpredictable. Reckless.” His gaze slid past you, sharp as a knife point. “They don’t know where the line is, or they don’t care. They like their games, and they play rough, especially III. I’ve seen what his games do,” He lifted a hand, let it fall again, the gesture heavy, final, like a blade dropping. “Trust them if you want. But don’t think for a second it’ll end in your favour.”

“Right,” you said, because if you said what you thought, that unpredictable had saved your life and nearly ended it in the same week, you might not stop.

It was fucking exhausting, this constant hunt for the lie. Every word they spoke carried teeth, and you never knew whether to fear the bite or the smile that came with it. You couldn’t tell who to trust, what to trust, because they all wore honesty like a second skin. Too convincing. Too perfect. It made your skull throb like it might split open under the pressure.

Who was telling the truth? Maybe none of them. Maybe all of them. Or were they all sincere in their own way, each believing the twisted story Sleep had carved into them? Perhaps they were all liars. Perhaps they were all honest. And maybe that was worse, because you couldn’t tell the difference anymore. And dear gods, the more you thought about it, the more you felt it crawling under your skin, that slow, rotting certainty that you weren’t just being deceived. You were being unmade. Driven mad one careful, earnest sentence at a time.

“Shall we?” II muttered.

Not quite a request, not quite an order, and somehow both.

───────── ౨ৎ ─────────

“The mouth of the wolf was hunger. The eyes of the lamb were sacrifice. Together, they were worship. And that, in the end, was the truest offering.”

Chapter Text

“I waited for a favour that would never come, drinking silence as though it could make me clean, hoping the god who made me hollow would offer mercy in return.”

───────── ౨ৎ ─────────

The corridor seemed longer tonight.

Not by measure, but by intention, like the cathedral had learned a new trick of geometry and wanted to try it on you to delay the inevitable. Each step beside II returned to you too slowly, echoing like coins dropped onto an empty plate. The air was heavy with incense, perfume and something metallic beneath it all, that announced itself without a name. You couldn’t place it, you could only feel it wrapping around your ribs, like a corset laced by invisible hands, each breath a negotiation with fear.

II didn’t speak.

He didn’t need to.

II’s posture kept pace the way a hound keeps a scent, unyielding, disciplined and possessed of one clear purpose. He walked with the rhythm he always walked with, but somehow, he felt colder tonight, sharper. If silence can have teeth, the one between the two of you had grown a mouthful. Frustration radiated off him like a tide, you felt it nipping at your ankles, pulling at your knees, thinner, thinner, thinner, dragging you in. His jaw was lifted, chin high, the cords of his neck taut, fingers working into fists and then not learning from it. He was angrier than usual, and for a moment you worried you had done something wrong.

You kept your gaze low but it didn’t help.

Nothing seemed to stop the memory of IV’s touch as it kept finding you. The soft graze along your ear. The reverent trail at your jaw. The featherlight pass over the hollow of your throat to the collarbone where your skin had blushed without permission. Shame bloomed low in your stomach, hot against common sense, because buried in the disgust was the small, treacherous knowledge that he had tried, however cunningly, to make you feel less afraid, and the thought steadied you exactly as much as it unsettled you.

II led you past a slit of a door that you had never noticed before. He shouldered it open, and the space beyond was no bigger than a cupboard. The dark inside felt thick, as though it had a weight, a texture you could almost touch.

“Wait here,” he commanded, and vanished inside, leaving you stranded in the corridor with your pulse stumbling over itself, each beat miscounted and frantic.

When he returned, he carried a mask.

It was heavy and oppressive, wrought in antique gold so dense it seemed made for drowning. Every inch was suffocated in detail, curling vines, floral whorls, patterns that writhed if you looked too long. Dull black jewels sat along the crown and brow, glinting faintly like the eyes of something watching from beneath deep water. The mask dropped low across the cheeks, swallowing the upper half entirely, leaving only the mouth bare.

II held it out.

You grimaced and as you took it, Vessel’s words from days ago clawing back into memory, that no one was allowed to enter Sleep’s eye bare faced. “Promise me I’ll be able to take it off when this shit is over,” you said as you glanced at him. It wasn’t courage, it was the pathetic, human instinct to bargain for an exit you already knew you couldn’t enforce.

II rolled his eyes.

Impatience leaked from him, as though you were nothing more than a dog whining at his heels. A sigh rattled in your throat. Your hands shook as you fumbled with the straps, the mask heavy and awkward, its inner edges sharp enough you feared it would cut you just for daring to wear it. II moved in then, abrupt and close, with that efficient care of his that felt less like kindness and more like handling a task. His chest, painted black, inked with those strange curling tattoos, was right in front of your eyes. His fingers worked the ties with mechanical precision as if he had done this a million times.

The mask dragged your chin forward, the weight forcing your spine into a posture that wasn’t yours. You had to hold yourself differently, as though the thing was already disciplining you, bending you into its shape. II lingered there a moment too long, close enough that you could almost count the breaths moving through him then motioned for you to follow him.

By the time you and II reached the chapel’s outer doors, the others were already there.

They stood like a painting meant to unnerve, Vessel at the center, III and IV flanking him like opposing shadows.

IV’s arms were folded neatly behind his back, posture deceptively casual, but his eyes gleamed bright and sharp behind the golden skull mask. Beside him, III hummed tunelessly, a careless noise, like a boy thrown out of a pew for fidgeting, except every note snagged at your nerves like barbed wire.

“Oh, you look much prettier with your face covered,” III cooed the moment his gaze landed on you. But you couldn’t summon the energy to snap back. Not now. Not with your stomach already coiled so tight it hurt. IV chuckled, disguising it with his fist pressed to his veil, the chainmail chiming against his knuckles like laughter caught in metal.

And then Vessel smiled at you.

That same unbearable warmth, as if your arrival was the only thing he had been waiting for. As if you completed the picture.

His robe was unchanged, flawless, as though the world itself had been woven around it and would collapse if he altered a single thread. He looked exactly the way he always did, composed, steady and radiant in his calm. Yet your skin crawled with the memory of what III and IV had told you minutes earlier, that Vessel was his own curse, half god, half man, broken by design and adored by the very thing that kept him in torment.

The thought clung sharp in your skull, but you shoved it away. You didn’t have the capacity for it now. You’d have time to overthink later, if you survived the ritual. The worship that hadn’t even begun, and already you wanted it to be over.

“Sleep will be pleased,” Vessel said, voice low and smooth as oil poured over stone. “We’re all happy you’ve decided to join us.”

III rolled his eyes but he didn’t comment.

“You have nothing to fear,” Vessel continued but the words landed like a verdict instead of a comfort. “Stay quiet. Sit tight.”

His gaze softened for the briefest heartbeat as it caught yours, too soft, too warm, like a hand placed on your throat and called reassurance. Then he turned his attention to the chapel doors, his expression already shifting into something you couldn’t name. And with the weight of all of them around you, masks and smiles and silence, the stone beneath your feet suddenly felt like the edge of a cliff.

And just like that, the nightmare began.

III went in first, because of course he did, pushing both doors wide with a violence so theatric it rattled the hinges. The shriek of metal on metal echoed down the nave, crawled back along the walls, and coiled into the muscles of your spine. IV slipped through next, his silhouette neat as a blade. You followed because your body betrayed you, legs moving when your mind screamed still. II came behind, and last of all Vessel, who closed the doors with a slow push. The sound landed with the finality of a coffin lid settling into place.

Heat struck first, thick and sudden. Hundreds of candles burned in tiers, their light collapsing into themselves until the shadows sharpened and began to crawl towards you. Wax ran down their stems, bleeding onto the altar steps, pooling like flesh melting away from bone. Incense choked the air with such sweetness until it turned sour, making your stomach twist. Your robe clung instantly to your thighs, damp heat climbing your back and settling there. Sweat traced your back, and in that one clear and ugly moment, regret cracked through your chest. Regret for stepping through the door.

Regret for still being alive.

The chapel had been dressed like a wedding prepared for no human eyes. White and green silk wound the pillars, draping down to pool at their bases, magenta flowers curling through the fabric, stiff as dried tongues. Black blood traced over the materials in deliberate strokes, precise sigils written by a hand that never seemed to shook. The altar cloths also wept black at the edges. Bowls smoked thick with salt and something sharper, acrid, like hot iron being forced to steam. Countless candles burned in gold tiers, their warm flames licking the vaulted ceiling, illuminating the mural of Sleep.

“Gods,” you whispered, barely audible.

Limbs upon limbs upon limbs.

Eyes upon eyes, stacked and spiraled, watching you in impossible symmetry. For a moment it seemed to flex, the painted flesh stirring, as though it had only been waiting for you to enter. Each eye glittered wetly, catching the light, but within their shine shadows lived that twitched at the edge of sight. You felt them lock on you, felt Him lock on you, waiting for the slip, the stumble, the mistake. Horror rendered in geometry. A thing your bones knew but your mind refused. Your chest seized, breath gone shallow, and you would have staggered backward into II if your body had remembered how to move.

And then you saw her.

You stopped so suddenly the air bruised against your cheeks. II nearly collided with you but he caught himself at the last moment, shoulder leaning away sharply to avoid you.

You knew there would be an offering.

Vessel had told you.

However, you had let yourself believe that dead meant gone, that it would only be a corpse or something. You hadn’t prepared yourself for this.

This creature was very much alive.

She, no, it, though your mouth insisted on she, was wrong in every possible direction. Too tall, as if bones had grown greedy, stacking rings long after the body was finished with itself. Limbs thinned to the point of accusation, four arms strung out like a spider stretched past cruelty. Three heads bent at dissonant angles, horns worming from her skulls like roots desperate for light but twisted in directions no tree would dare. All her faces were bound in filthy linen, pulled so tight around her eyes it made your skin ache, the cloth dark where wounds had soaked through long ago. Symbols were cut into her pale skin, brands that had once declared devotion but now sagged with despair. You recognised it because the same symbols scrawled in Vessel’s scriptures. She was chained to the wall, iron dripping rust like blood that had dried centuries ago. Her breathing was slow. Laboured. That was how you knew she was still alive.

“What is—” you whispered, but your voice failed you halfway through the second word.

“She will not harm you, love,” Vessel said behind you, almost kindly. “Sit. Do not concern yourself with the details.”

“Are you—” your voice cracked, “—are you going to kill her?”

Vessel only smiled at you. A calm, appalling tilt of lips that said nothing and everything all at once. Then he left you where you stood.

III was already at the altar, swaying in a rhythm that belonged to no human hymn, like a child rocking on his heels. IV still hadn’t looked at you. That wasn’t right. He was refusing to look at you, which was worse. However, the moment your knees buckled and the floor tilted like it meant to swallow you, it was his hand that caught you.

Fingers at your elbow, sure and steady, guiding you upright with a touch so unbearably gentle it cracked you open wider than cruelty ever could and that was what undid you. Because how dare he touch you like that while they were planning to kill that creature? The kindness of it was a blade, sliding into the part of you already dismantled by fear. But you let him hold you, until the stone bench by the altar took you in. His hands arranged you with the quiet skill of someone who had moved too many frightened things before, hands that knew how to restrain without shattering.

And when IV leaned close, the chainmail veil hissed against itself and his breath found your ear, you knew his voice wasn’t meant for the others, it was meant for you alone. “Don’t leave the chapel. Alright? Stay here, whatever happens.”

“Please, IV,” you couldn’t stop staring at the creature chained to the corner. She was moving now. Not much. Just enough. The chains had learned her shape, eaten into her. Her every shift dragged rust like blood from stone. “Please, I want to go back to my room. I don’t want this. I want to leave, please help me.” You sounded like a child bargaining with the dark, promising anything to keep the shadows from closing.

IV’s painted hand lingered on your forearm, the weight of it grounding and terrifying in the same breath. His mask tilted, the blue of his eyes fixed on yours through the slit.

“Everything will be alright,” he said at last. “Remember what I told you.”

Then he left you.

“No, please, IV,” you whined, trying to grab his arm.

But he didn’t even glance back.

IV walked away and took that false, practised warmth with him, leaving you cold and alone. He went to stand beside his brothers, the four of them arranging themselves behind the altar like they were offerings too. III slouched left, head bowed as though in mockery of prayer. IV held the middle, hands folded neat, still and severe. II stood right, every line of him pulled taut as wire about to snap. Then all of them looked at Vessel. He stood at the head of the altar, the place of a priest, of an executioner. His gaze landed on you for a second, long enough to make your stomach twist inside out. Then, at last, his masked face tilted upward to the mural above, to the mess of stretching limbs and watching eyes.

And he opened his mouth.

The sound that poured out wasn’t a voice anymore. Vessel’s voice had always been deep and melodic, sinking into you like tidewater. But this was something else. Something not meant for human lungs. The language warped him. It scoured his throat until it sounded inhuman, a guttural hymn that vibrated like stone splitting under pressure. It wasn’t words, not to you. It was something demonic sharpened into the air, the script of Sleep itself given breath.

The moment it began, the chapel changed.

The walls started murmuring again, starting with that giggle, that fucking giggle, quick and contagious, until the whole chapel carried it. The bench beneath you shuddered as though the stone itself doubted its part in this. Then came the familiar whispers. Not words at first, just motion, like air dragged too fast around your ears, like a hundred mouths pressed close. Then came the voices, layered until they became impossible to separate

“She’s too soft. No, she’s gorgeous. We’ve been waiting for you, V. Yes, crack her skull open and let the faith pour in. Oh, let her bleed. We want to wear her like skin. She’ll ruin everything. No, she’ll save everything. She’ll change everything. Break her, break her, break her.”

Your hands clawed the edge of the bench and clung like it was the lip of a cliff. You were so tired of being brave. One nail split with a brittle crack. Blood welled, smeared, then dripped between your fingers, but you didn’t register it as yours.

Vessel’s voice rolled on, deeper and darker, twisting into sounds that no body should’ve been able to hold. Each syllable churned the air until it felt heavy enough to drown in.

II moved in counterpoint with terrifying calm. He poured black blood onto the altar from a shallow bowl, then scattered salt over it, the grains catching the candlelight like tiny stars. The blood hissed and sank, vanished into the grooves, drinking it up as if the stone itself had mouth.

The candles bent inward, flames dimming as though smothered by an unseen hand. Heat bled out of the air with them. Your lungs clawed for breath, but when it came it was thin, cold and visible, moth wings fluttering just in front of your mask. Vessel’s voice tightened, turning and turning the same string of sound until it no longer belonged to anything born of lungs. It felt older than words, older than prayer, waiting for a mouth to borrow it again.

A breath passed by your ear.

It didn’t arrive from the front, where you could brace for them. It slid in from the side of your skull, just beyond the corner of your sight, soft as silk dragged across your skin, far and near at once. Too quiet to catch, too sharp to ignore. Panic detonated in your chest, and the skin between your shoulder blades tightened, straining as though it wanted eyes so you could see what was around you. Your heart slammed faster, your breath broke into little pieces, and for the first time you truly believed, that you were not going to survive this night.

You whipped your head around, desperate, but there was no one there. No shadow, no figure, only the shiver of air parting, and yet you felt it, a cold breath brushing the nape of your neck, the intimate nearness of something you couldn’t see. Fever burned in your cheeks while ice spread through your veins, leaving you dizzy.

“We’ve seen your face before. Oh, so many faces like yours,” the walls murmured. “The sea remembers all of them. Kneel or drown. Your lungs are borrowed. Your breath is borrowed. Give it back. Your blood will taste the same as theirs.”

Your eyes snapped back to the altar just in time to see the knife.

One by one, they mirrored Vessel. Each of them lifted the same blade, each drew the same line. III was the first, careless, like he’d been waiting for this itch to bleed. IV was next, steady, almost casual, as though the pain was an old tax he had long since learned to pay without complaint. II was next, he cut as a surgeon punishes, clean and inevitable. Then came Vessel, last of all, his six eyes snapping to you, just once, sharp enough to brand you, before the blade kissed his skin and black blood welled into his palm.

And when his blood hit the stone, the world stopped.

Every candle in the chapel went out in the same breath. The darkness swallowed everything except the altar. Its candles refused to die, they changed. Their flames turned red, tongues of meat writhing on the wicks, flickering as though the air itself screamed when touched.

The whispers broke off and the chapel froze in silence so complete it pressed up under your skin like claws. It was the silence of a body holding breath, afraid to startle something bigger, hungrier, something just at the edge of sight. And in that quiet, you heard yourself, the ragged sound of your breath. You hadn’t noticed the tears until salt rolled down your lips, hot against the taste of panic. You heard your own sobs rise like they belonged to someone else, pathetic little sounds echoing back at you in the hollow black.

The silence pressed harder. It dug under your nails, into your bones, prying thought from your skull. Vessel had warned you. You knew this moment was coming, and yet your skin prickled alive with dread, your body shivering, soaked in sweat and tears.

The first bang at the chapel doors landed in your body like a fist to the ribs.

You screamed involuntarily, whipping around with wide eyes. The heavy wood shuddered on its hinges, beams groaning, iron screaming in protest. Something dragged across the far side, claws, nails or teeth, you didn’t know, you didn’t want to know.

The monsters. The things from the forest. They had come. Lured by the closeness of Sleep, drawn to the blood in the air the way sharks circle warm seas. Vessel had told you this would happen, that they couldn’t resist their creator when Sleep was summoned, even though they were banished from the cathedral grounds, even though the stones themselves hated them.

The next blow shook the doors.

And then came the voices. Not one voice. Not even a chorus. All the voices you had ever refused to hear. Children crying, high and broken. Men sobbing with their throats open. Women begging until it split in their skin. Beasts cackling in mockery of laughter, the sound twisted, stolen from people they had devoured.

“Let us in. Let us see you, V. Let us feast. Open the door. We’ve brought your mother. We’ve brought your name. Do you remember it? We will chew the marrow from your bones. Please. Please let us in. Please. We’re cold. We’re hungry. We want to feel human again.”

You clapped both hands to your mouth, choking on your own sobs. Tears flooded your palms, slick and stinging as your teeth found the heel of your hand and bit down hard, because the alternative was screaming. Screaming words you’d never reclaim otherwise, screaming in a way that might answer them, or worse, invite them in.

III was already dragging the chained creature by the time you forced your gaze back from the door. The iron scraped the stone, a rasp that lodged itself behind your face. The creature wept without tears, a low sound leaking from three mouths, raw under the bandaged linen around her eyes, so wrong it made you wish some merciful god had cut her throat centuries ago. And up close, you saw it, the carved symbols etched along her skin, scabbed over and reopened again, freshened for this moment. For this spectacle. Your stomach turned savagely on itself, you swallowed too late, bile burning your tongue.

III forced her down.

Her body struck the stone with a crack that shook the room, and still she sagged like someone who had already lost. II and IV caught her arms, pressing her shoulders hard against the altar until her chest hit the edge. III shoved one of her heads aside, her skin scraping across rock, horns screeching like teeth dragged down a plate. Her fourth arm spasmed once, a twitch of refusal, before it went slack. A prayer, maybe.

Or surrender.

You slipped off the bench without knowing you had moved. Your knees hit the floor too, the movement so hard you tasted the crack in your molars. “Please,” you gasped. To them. To the walls. To the mural above. To anyone who might listen. “Please, don’t. Please—”

But no one looked at you.

Vessel’s voice rose again, guttural and inhuman, that cursed tongue grinding into the air like metal filings poured into oil. III gripped one of her faces between his hands, jerking it to the side, lining it with perfect precision against the altar’s edge. II and IV didn’t seem to hesitate either, their grips iron, their postures statues carved for this purpose alone.

They had done this before.

They would do it again.

You screamed when the blade came down.

You didn’t hear yourself, only felt the raw tear of it down your throat, ripping you open on its way out. The cut was merciless. Amd when the knife came down again, the sound was wet. It was a cut that opened the whole chapel, flesh parting with a soft rip. Magenta blood gushed, bright and obscene, coating arms and robes. It hissed when it hit the salt, creeping along the floor. Her body convulsed once, all four arms jerking at once.

And in that instant, you hated yourself for every time you had thought any of them might be even close to human, for every flicker of softness you had imagined. It was all a nightmare. Hallucination made flesh. And for the first time you saw them without the masks of patience or play, saw them for what they truly were, bloodthirsty and merciless, born to rip this world open and wear its skin. This was them, your brothers. Willing to devour the world whole if that was what Sleep demanded.

You never hated them as much as you did then.

“Stop,” you begged, but your voice was hoarse, shredded and useless.

The head rolled.

It hit the altar with a disgusting thump, soft tissue smearing and bone splitting. III discarded the head with brutality, shoving it aside like trash. The twitching body followed, slumped and emptied, a discarded offering. And you could only cry. You cried until your breath broke in sobs, until your hands trembled against the mask that trapped your tears against your skin. 

You folded in on yourself on the chapel floor, forehead pressed to your knees, arms wrapped around your skull as if you could make yourself too small for a god to notice. Gods, how you hated them. You loathed the vessels so much your whole body hurt from it.

For a heartbeat, the world paused.

The silence felt like it might hold.

Then the voice came.

“My children,” it cooed. “My beautiful songbird.”

It didn’t fall from the rafters or rise from the altar. It split you from the inside. A nail through timber, driven deep into the thin seam between your skull and thought, where pain seemed to breed and multiply, splitting you from the inside. Unbearable pressure bloomed behind your eyes until it felt like they would burst out from their sockets.

“Have you been waiting long for me?” the voice purred, amused.

Your mind bolted, tried to escape down the tunnels of your ears, but there was nowhere left to run. You slammed your forehead into the stone bench, once and twice, again and again and again. The crack of your mask blurred with the scream inside your head. Anything to knock it loose, to get rid of it, to make it stop. Your nails scoured your own cheeks, hot and slick, as warmth ran down your lips. You desperately clawed at the mask until shards snapped off and scattered, tearing your own face raw in the process.

Your jaw flared, tendon straining, until something inside of you gave in with a hot, wet crack, like a crate splitting at its corner under too much weight. Warmth spilled down your cheeks, thick and metallic, staining your eyelashes, blurring your vision.

You couldn’t tell if it was blood, sweat or tears.

You screamed until the sound ripped itself into silence, your throat flayed. The voice laughed inside you, leaving no space for you to exist. Hands tried to catch you. A grip at your wrist. Fingers closing. Skin on skin. You didn’t know whose. Didn’t matter. There was no seeing, no hearing. The voice left no room for anything else. The grip was real, but reality itself had already come apart, drowned in that awful voice, laughing in your head.

And then the world went black.

Suddenly, you were dreaming again. Hallucinating more likely. But when your eyes unlatch from the dark, you were not in the black pool.

You were standing in the middle of an endless sea.

At first, you didn’t understand.

Your body remembered the floor, remembered gravity, the grit of stone grinding into your knees. But the chapel was gone. Your vision steadied just enough to catch the first wave as it reared, an enormous wall of green and black rushing straight for you. You shrieked again, throat tearing open once more, because your body had remembered drowning, because every fucking dream here had reeked of fucking water, and because your lungs still carried the pathetic sounds you had made on the chapel floor.

The wave struck and passed right through you.

It sheared across your skin like a breath through flame, leaving nothing but goosebumps in its wake. The sea rolled and heaved around you, endless and furious. The sky pressed heavy and low, a bruised grey deepening toward black. Thunder crawled along the bellies of the clouds, scraping, clawing and hunting for something to break. Rain fell in huge coins, weighty drops hurled by some furious god above. The massive storm soaked you instantly, stamped through your hair and hammered your shoulders until your skin flinched. When you looked down and saw your shoes planted not on the top of the waves but within them, the sea refusing to hold you but refusing to claim you, forcing you to stand inside its tantrum like you were nothing at all.

A thin, pitiful whine leaked out of you. It was bloodcurdling to stare into the abyss as the salt bit into your lungs. Every breath a sting, just as the wind hooked claws into you, trying to drag you down, sea spray burning your eyes raw. You squinted into it anyway, because there was nothing else left to do.

And that was when you saw her again.

At first the creature was only a smear above water, a trick of the distance. Then the horizon collapsed, rushing in like it had been holding her back, and she was there, standing on the waves before you as if they were stone. The beast from the chapel. The thing you had watched kneel. The horror you had watched die. Her third head was gone, cut neat where III’s blade had severed it. The absence was obscene in its tidiness, a wound so perfect it mocked the vicious act that made it. And she was watching you. You felt it through the blindfold, a sight worse than eyes, a sight that chose you whether you allowed it or not.

A mountain of water rose between the two of you and broke with the force of a river cracking soil. It came down to bury her. To bury you. The force should have broken your ribs, emptied your skull and crushed you into nothing. Instead it passed through you, through bone, through blood, left only the echo of impact as if your body had gone transparent. And when the water fell away, she was still there, watching you.

“Who are you?” you screamed, but the storm stole your voice, shredded it to ribbons before it ever left your throat. You cupped your hands to your mouth like a fool trying to aim a bullet. Thunder answered, miles wide, with a sound so loud it rattled in your bones.

You took a step and it felt like learning to walk again, but under the wrong gravity. The water both held you and didn’t, it teased support and denied mercy, like a newborn fawn on a frozen lake. You glanced down and the sea looked back. A single black pupil widening, infinite.

“Who are you?” you tried again. “Help me!”

The reply didn’t travel across the storm. It bloomed in your skull, like an infection, pressure swelling behind your eyes, a voice carving a home in the softest part of your head. “Do you wish to die here?” she asked.“Drowning in an endless sea, forgotten and abandoned?”

“What are you talking about?” you screamed. Rain slapped your face and filled your mouth as if you had begged to be drowned. Your eyelashes sagged with water, every blink stung with brine. You coughed, sea spray dragging nails down your throat. “Who are you?”

“We don’t have much time before He takes you back,” she said just as both of her heads tilted, meeting in a grotesque parody of thought. Then one of her chins lowered toward the churning black below. You followed her gaze.

And you saw it.

There was something vast and patient beneath you. A gigantic shadow without edges, spiralling slow in the infinite abyss, obedient to nothing but itself. The seawater above changed its shape in deference and waves bent their spines around it.

And you knew it was watching you.

You whined.

It slipped out before you could stop it, the sound quiet and broken, stripped of dignity. Horror climbed your spine as you stared down into the water, into that thing that coiled far below.

“What the—what is that,” you whispered, because whispers felt smaller, and in that moment you believed small sounds might make you harder to swallow.

Your hand lifted before your mind caught up, reaching for her as if touch could solve this, as if skin could build a bridge between two impossible shores. But she stayed a step beyond you. Always one step ahead. When you pressed forward, so did she, the distance fixed and cruel, like the horizon that mocks a drowning sailor. Then another wave scythed through your body, taking your breath and leaving your chest heaving empty.

“Tell me who you are,”  you gasped, voice cracking. “Now.”

She leaned towards you.“You really don’t recognise me?”

“What do you mean?” Your heart betrayed you then, stumbling in its cage made of flesh and bone, beating wrong. And beneath the thunder, beneath the storm, you heard it, that vast thing under the waves. You didn’t hear it with your ears but with marrow, with the raw pulp of your body tuned to pressure.

“I am you,” she answered just as her blindfolds turned towards you. Even without seeing her eyes you felt gutted by it, seen too fully, too wrongly. “But you are much younger than I am. I drew my first breath where you did. I died in the same chapel where you almost did. You are me,” she added with a time of quiet between the storms, “and I am you.”

“Wait,” you coughed again, choking on salt, your throat raw as if coral had sprouted there. You felt, with nauseating clarity, that you were already dead, that this was hell and you were about to meet its keeper. “Is this real? Am I not dead?” The storm hushed just long enough for you to feel ridiculous, like a child asking where the monsters go when the light is on.

She shook one head. A beat later, the other followed, like an afterthought. “Not yet.”

The silence felt heavier than thunder.

“They will never tell you this,” she continued. “But there is a way to end it. To end us.”

Your blood chilled. “Us?”

“All of our versions,” she explained, water steaming off her like glass. “All the lives we have wasted. Over and over, making the same mistake. Thinking Vessel could be saved.” Her linen bandages darkened where the sea mist touched it. “But he cannot. He never could. He never will. And if you want to live, if you want there to be no more of us, you will have to break it. Crush the cycle. Stop it before it repeats again.”

“What cycle?” you screamed, though the storm immediately began eating the sound, thinning your voice to nothing. “What the fuck are you talking about?” Anger arrived like a thick coat in winter, something you could shrug into, move in, hide behind, just as the vastness beneath shifted. You felt it before you saw it, a leviathan turning its attention, the way a ship turns on the tide, massive and inevitable, dragging the water with it.

Panic dug into your flesh like teeth.

“You’ve got me confused with Eden,” you spat as you stumbled forward, the sea now lapping higher, its grip thickening. Around your ankles it clung like mud, dragging you down, teaching you what drowning would feel like. Your foot slipped, sinking an inch. “Eden’s the cursed one,” you hissed, desperate to carve the words into the storm for her to hear, to understand. “I read her diary. I—” you sank an inch again, “—I heard her story.”

“Exactly,” she snapped, and there was bite in it now, jagged and true. “We are Eden. We are all the same.” Her voice landed like stones, marking graves you hadn’t known you had dug. “We wrote the diary. We are that cursed thing, because Sleep found it amusing to scatter us like glass. He wanted a toy to torment Vessel with. So He split us into a thousand selves, each one doomed to forget until the moment it was too late. And every time, we walked back into the jaws He set for us.”

“What?” You breathed, a word too small for your terror.

The sea shivered beneath you, and you knew it was pleased. The shape below wasn’t a single body, wasn’t finite flesh. It was the thought of many bodies moving as one, a multitude that had agreed to your destruction, to your eternal torment. The water was at your calves now, colder, thicker, unwilling to let go.

Her voice softened then, but that only made things worse. Regret, or the shadow of something older than regret, older than grief tinted her words as she spoke again. “Soon our memories will return to you,” she whispered, “Not all at once, no, He is much crueler than that. Don’t be hard on yourself for what you will see. Because they will come back in the worst moments, when you think you are safe, when you think you are loved, even. They will split you open and pour themselves back in. That’s how Sleep makes us lose our minds.”

Your breath tore shallow.

“The vessels will tell you they are only dreams,” she went on, “They will say you imagined them, that Sleep is mercy, that they are your family. But if you listen, if you believe, you will fall into the same circle we did before you. And there will be another, and another, and another. A chain of us feeding the darkness forever.” The rain struck harder as she glanced down in the depths, waterdrops punctuating her words like nails in wood. “You must break the circle by refusing to draw it. Do not repeat our mistakes. Do not trust them. They are already hollow. Already rotting. Already His. They cannot be saved, no matter how we love them, no matter how we beg for them. To try will only bind us tighter to Him.”

“Tell me then,” you begged, and after everything that had happened, begging felt like relief. It used fewer muscles than fear did, required no posture, no defiance, only collapse. The sea climbed to your knees and pinned you there. You choked on water you had not opened your mouth to invite, and still it forced its way in. “Please,” you rasped. “Tell me how. Tell me.”

“If you want to break free,” both of her heads turned from you, as if even to face you in that moment was agony. “You must kill Vessel.”

The words were so plain that your brain rejected them, spat them out like a mouthful of ash. Yet they lingered, clung, settled on your tongue until they tasted inevitable.

“You must kill him before he kills you with his love,” the creature repeated as you shivered, voice unspooling beneath thunder, beneath rain, beneath the long applause of the sea. “Before he chooses you, and before you choose him. Before the circle closes, and before Sleep can twist your devotion into a chain. Love is the blade He places in our hands and then laughs to watch us turn it inward. Every time, it is the same. Every time, we are fools.”

She paused. Or swallowed. Or perhaps you only imagined the motion, because imagining was the only tool left to you, the only crack in the pattern where choice still lived.

“Every other door opens only into the same room,” the monster went on, quieter now, almost apologetic. “Trust me, we tried them all. A thousand doors, a thousand hallways, a thousand lives. They all lead back to Him. Except the one that asks you to do what you cannot bear.”

“No.”

The word tumbled out of you.

You tried to step forward but your thigh caught, as if an invisible hand clutched you beneath the skin. You had to drag yourself free, clawing at your own leg with both hands, tugging it up like rope. When your sho broke the surface, water slapped your shin in rebuke.

“No,” you repeated, panting, flailing for argument. “That’s madness. He’s not—he’s—”

But the thought stuttered and broke apart.

The waves had grown taller without warning, their shoulders blocking the horizon. One leaned over you like a ceiling and when it fell, you went weightless for a moment. It felt like falling off a tree, the betrayal of gravity, the split second of mercy before impact. Beneath, the beast shifted, massive and curious.

“He’s not the bad one in this,” you gasped, furious with yourself for saying it, for defending a creature you barely understood, a creature who served a god that delighted in breaking people like twigs. And still, even after everything, even after watching him let his brothers slaughter this vision before you, you couldn’t believe that Vessel was wholly evil. “He—”

The storm devoured the rest.

“I know how you feel,” she said, and it scraped like confession. “Because we felt the same. We all did. We all loved him once. But he is not ours. He never was. He is the obsession of a god who would use us until the end of time. And He uses us to punish him. Look at what Sleep made of us. Vessel kills us when we are no longer human, when he can no longer bear to look at the thing we’ve become. He thinks its mercy. But that is the worst lie. Vessel is our curse.”

Salt closed over your teeth, making you fight to breathe but your lungs filled with sea spray instead, salt and storm cutting at your throat until you wheezed like a bellows collapsing.

“And do not tell them,” she pressed, each syllable dropping heavy like stones. “Do not ever tell the vessels what you know. Do not speak of the curse. If Sleep hears it come from your lips, He will kill you for breaking His game.”

“What fucking game?” you screamed, the last of your voice tearing in your throat.

“Tormenting Vessel. Punishing him for daring to love us more than Sleep.”

The endless sea seized you like a property reclaimed, swallowing your thighs, clutching with the inevitability of a debt long owed. The cold was so complete it bled another beneath it, the kind that carved statues out of living flesh. Your hands seized and your skin became marble. Raindrops fell in needles until it became weight, a blanket that buried instead of pierced.

“I can’t,” you hissed, the words splintering in your teeth. You wanted to spit them like bones, but they caught in your throat and stayed.

“You can,” one of her heads tilted, the other lagged after it, as if they had never fully learned to move in sync. “Because we already didn’t and it killed us. And we came back to tell you, to save us. To save you.”

The thing under the waves stirred.

For a moment you were certain you saw lights tracing its back. Then they weren’t lights, they were holes. Then they weren’t holes, they were eyes. And then they were nothing but the raw colour you saw when you pressed your palms too hard against your eyelids.

“Vessel is not our salvation. He is the curse made flesh,” she whispered. “He won’t mean to. He won’t even know he’s doing it. He will love you, and he will try to save you. But his love is a tide, and it will carry lies with it. His devotion will destroy your mind, fracture it until you are no longer sure who you really are. It will make you delirious. It will make you mad. That is when you must choose.”

Your mouth opened to refuse, to say no, but water entered like a trespasser claiming its room. It rushed down your throat, claiming it, as you coughed and choked, every reflex dragging you closer to drowning. Above, the storm clenched its fist and opened it again.

“Please,” you rasped, and every cell in you surrendered itself to the sea. “Please, just tell me anything else. Tell me more.”

“There isn’t more.”

Her voice was the quietest knife.

“There is only the same. Over and over and over. I am—” she faltered, and you despised it, hated her for failing you, loathed yourself for being her. “—what remains after that wrong choice. I am what waits at the end of the circle.”

She leaned closer.

“Sleep will take you back now. Remember this and pretend you do not remember anything. When the moment comes, kill Vessel. Do not hesitate. Choose us over him. Save us. For once in all our lives, choose yourself.”

The sea stood around you.

A wave taller than memory, taller than mercy, unbuttoned itself and came down. You raised your arms without meaning to, as if you were one of those people in stories who could hold the sky on their shoulders, as if bone and muscle were built for that task.

It struck you flat.

Cold became everything. A black roof slammed across your face and did not lift. For one sick instant you breathed nothing, and it felt almost like becoming something else, a creature freed of lungs and name and shape. But then your body betrayed you, remembered its function, and gasped. It drank the sea in mouthfuls, pulled saltwater into the tender chambers meant for air. Pain cleaved your chest as you kicked at nothing. Your shin cracked against something vast and unseen and your foot went numb all the way to the knee.

Above, for the length of a heartbeat, the roof of the world revealed itself. Clouds torn like old linen, the sky a bruise coloured mouth opening wide. You wanted to speak to it but you had no words left to give. The next wave did not pass through you, it claimed you just as pressure clamped a hand over your mouth. Darkness crouched on your chest. And the beast below, the vast thought that had watched you from the very beginning, opened its mouth.

The sea split its oldest story wide to make room for you.

When you regained consciousness it was an ugly climb.

Your body returned to you in stages, like an old machine dragged unwillingly back to life. First came the heat, oppressive and smothering, pressing against your skin as if you had been laid across live coals. Then came the numbness, a strange detachment from your own flesh, as though you had been sealed beneath a sheet of ice and your muscles had forgotten their orders. Finally, taste, pooling at the back of your tongue. Your breath rattled, lips slick with copper iron as your own eyelids fought you. They fluttered, giving you only flashes of shadows above and sideways, fractured pieces of a room.

A barely audible groan escaped before you knew it was yours.

Then you heard them.

Not the walls this time. Not the giggling parasites hidden in stone. No, these were voices you recognised. Voices you had learned to fear in different shades.

“That’s—” III drawled, his voice bright with mockery, “—the dumbest fucking thing you’ve ever said, Ves. Seriously. And that’s saying something.”

“You don’t understand,” Vessel answered, his voice steady and smooth, almost reverent. He was close to you, somewhere on your left side, perhaps seated beside you because the warmth of him bled through his words even in your half-conscious haze. “What else could this mean? She survived. She heard Him. No one else ever—”

“Survived?” III barked a laugh. “She looks fucking dead right now. Is that your definition of survival? You think Sleep forgave you because she’s still here? No. He’s laughing at you. At all of us. I’d call it a bloody miracle if she still had all her fucking teeth.”

“She’s breathing, isn’t she?” IV interjected, his melodic tone uncharacteristically firm, almost sharp, coming from somewhere near your feet. “No other version of her has survived hearing Him. Not one. Not after that. This is a fucking breakthrough, compared to the rest.”

III huffed. “Oh, forgive me, I forgot you’re a fucking seer now.”

“Shut it, III,” IV snapped then. “This isn’t about any of us. This is about her, about what this means. If this isn’t forgiveness, if this isn’t something changing, then what the fuck is it?”

“It means nothing,” II’s voice cut the air like a whip. The room stilled, the tension changing pitch instantly. He seemed angrier than you had ever heard him. His presence was close, too close, right at your side. “I told you,” II snarled, his voice a serrated edge. “I told you this was a bad idea. And now look. We’re sitting here again, waiting like fucking idiots, still clinging to the same bloody fantasy, waiting for her to fucking die anyway.”

“No,” Vessel cut in. “This is different.”

“Different?” II’s laugh was humourless. “No, you’ve been saying different for centuries, Ves. Every time, the same fucking excuses. Every time, the same fucking outcome. She dies. And we’re left here, hands bloody, faith empty. How many times do you want to watch it happen? How many more times do we have to go through this just because you can’t let her go?”

“This time—” Vessel began.

“No.” II cut him off, his voice cracking like thunder. “Enough. We agreed that we’d stop this. That we wouldn’t keep dragging her back into it. But no, IV had to play saviour. Had to bring her here. Had to put her in our bed. Had to gamble with all of us again. And for what? So you can have your hope? So you can keep bleeding yourself dry over someone who's already gone? Or do you miss fucking someone so much you’d risk every one of us for it?”

III snorted, a wet and ugly sound. “Listen to you, barking like some holy man. You’d’ve bent her over if she so much as looked at you twice. Too bad she fucking hated your guts. So don’t pretend you’re any fucking better.”

“Shut the fuck up,” II roared, his voice unravelling, raw with exhaustion. “You think this is a game? You think this is funny? I am tired. Do you hear me? Tired. Tired of all of it. Tired of trying to keep something alive that’s already dead. Tired of watching her face over and over and telling myself it’s real when it isn’t. Eden’s fucking gone. And this thing—” you felt his rage radiate toward you, “—this imitation isn’t her. She’s not real.”

The silence after that was ugly.

“Don’t you fucking say her name like that,” IV spat, his voice shaking with fury. “Don’t you dare. She’s lying right there, breathing—”

“It isn’t living,” II growled back, low and guttural.

“You’re such a miserable bastard,” III groaned. “Always the same line, always the pessimist. Maybe try dragging your head out your arse and finding a scrap of fucking hope for once in your pathetic life?”

“Hope?” II whirled on him, his voice breaking like iron under strain. “Hope’s what’s killing us, for fuck’s sake. Hope’s the collar around our necks, dragging us through this bullshit again and again and again!”

“Oh, that’s rich, coming from you,” III sneered. “What do you call this then? Rotting away? If you’re so bloody eager to bury her, maybe dig the hole big enough for yourself first.”

“Shut your mouth,” II warned, his tone a blade.

“You shut yours,” III barked back. “All you ever do is fucking whinge, and when she’s gone, you’ll whinge louder. At least we’ve got the balls to look at what she is instead of crying over what she isn’t.”

“What matters,” Vessel cut in, “is that she’s alive.”

“Alive for now,” II snapped back, vicious and quick. “Alive until the next time Sleep decides He wants to watch you suffer. Then what? We sit at her bedside and hold her hand while she changes into something unrecognisable? Into a fucking monster? Or until she bleeds out on the chapel floor? Again?”

“But she didn’t die,” Vessel bit out, his voice cracking with heat. “She didn’t—”

“Not yet,” II barked, losing the tight discipline he always guarded like armour. His voice climbed, jagged and raw. “Not yet but she will. And you bloody know it. You all fucking know it. You just don’t have the spine to say it.”

“Maybe we don’t want to,” IV cut in, his voice stripped of its usual lilt, quiet and dangerous now. “Maybe we’re tired too, brother, but not in the way you are. Maybe we’re sick of giving up before we’ve even tried.” His tone sharpened like broken glass. “Don’t you dare act like you were the only one who had to watch Eden die. We loved her too.”

“You’re fucking pathetic,” III muttered.

“Pathetic?” IV snapped, his voice ragged, raw. “Better pathetic than the sadistic prick you’ve turned into. You make me fucking sick, III. I don’t even recognise you anymore.”

III gave a slow, mocking clap. “Finally. Someone noticed.”

“Both of you, enough.” Vessel’s voice cracked, his control slipping. “This is not the time—”

“There is no fucking time,” II thundered, and the walls seemed to flinch with him. His voice rattled the air, unrestrained fury spilling through every word. “Don’t you get it? I’m done. I’m sick of the cycle. Sick of your fantasies, your fucking hope. I am tired. Do you hear me? I am fucking tired. Tired of living this nightmare on fucking repeat. Tired of watching her die, over and over, and pretending it’ll end differently.” His breath broke, but his words only hardened. “There’s nothing left to hope for. She’s gone. Eden is dead. And she’s not her. She’s a corpse waiting to happen, and I’m finished pretending otherwise. The sooner you stop fucking lying to yourselves, the sooner we can stop tearing ourselves apart.”

The words turned in your gut like a knife.

Eden. Dead. Not real.

You wanted to scream. To lunge at him, tear his mouth open for saying it. To tell them all that you were right here, that you knew the truth now, that you weren’t dead yet. But your eyelids weighed like gold, your body was stone, every vein set in concrete. All you could do was burn inside your skull, anger swelling hot and frantic, desperate for somewhere to go.

Your eyes cracked open, slow and unwilling, like someone else had forced them for you. The world slid at first, colours bleeding into each other, shadows wobbling on their strings just as their shapes moved around you, distorted, dreamlike. Then you noticed something. There was a bag beside your head, liquid inside it pulsing like some strange second heart. Neatly folded gauze. The chemical sting of disinfectant. And there. Scissors. Their blades closed.

Your pulse thundered, so loud you barely heard the voices. But they were there, II, IV, and III, snarling at each other by the door. Venom dripping into the walls. But Vessel was silent. You didn’t need to look to know where he was. You could feel him. Six eyes fixed on you, unblinking and patient. He was there, right beside the bed, in the chair, close enough to touch.

Your fingers twitched.

Cold steel slid into your palm like it had been waiting for you all along. The weight steadied you. Anchored you. A surge went through you, strength ragged and ugly, born of pain and fever and fury. You pushed yourself upright. Every nerve screamed, your head split open with pressure, pain rattling your skull, but you didn’t care.

You sat up.

And your furious eyes locked onto his.

Shock flickered across his face. Six eyes widening. Sorrow. Awe. Something like devotion.

You didn’t let him speak.

Your fist closed around the scissors.

And you lunged, grief and fear and rage driving the steel forward, straight for his throat.

───────── ౨ৎ ─────────

“Hell is not fire but water rising slowly, filling the chest until even breath is betrayal. And in that flood, regret is the only hand that touches you back.”

Chapter Text

“In the blur of blood and breath, I could no longer tell if I longed to kill him or to be consumed by him.”

───────── ౨ৎ ─────────

When you opened your eyes again, the silence was wrong. It was too sharp to be real. It rang in your skull like the echo of thunder, pressing in from every side until you gasped, the sound of a drowning animal surfacing too late. It felt as though you had burst from underwater, as if you had shattered a sheet of glass that had been pressed over your chest, holding you under.

Your body jolted upright.

The world immediately tilted sideways.

Pain bloomed hot and sharp behind your eyes, a vice cranking tighter with every heartbeat. White light burst behind your vision in little fireworks of agony. You reached out blindly, desperate for something real, anything that would prove to you that the dream had ended and the waking world had returned.

Hands caught yours.

Warm. Real. Calloused. Long fingers closing over yours, steady and certain, not too hard, not too soft. They let you claw, crush, hang on with the panic of someone rising from the bottom of the sea. Those hands drew you back into yourself.

And then, you heard your nickname.

“Easy, love.”

You blinked until the blur cleared and Vessel’s face swam into view. He sat at your side, one hand caught in yours, letting you squeeze, break it if you needed, while the other traced slow circles across your back, holding you in place.

“Breathe,” he murmured, his voice a low tide. “Just breathe. I’ve got you.”

Your throat burned as though it had been scraped raw. A pathetic sound tore loose from you, a humiliating whimper that betrayed you before you could swallow it back down. Your gaze fell, dragged by its own weight to your hands in your lap. But they were empty.

The scissors were gone.

Your stomach heaved, pitching as though it meant to turn itself inside out. Your head snapped around. But you were alone with Vessel. There was no IV shadowing the door. No III with his wicked grin bleeding through his mask. No II’s clipped voice tangling with theirs. The room was stripped bare of them all, hollowed clean.

No bag by your head. No glint of steel. Only absence. Yet your skin prickled with the phantom kiss of metal. You could feel them still, the blades between your clenched fingers, that cold bite refusing to fade. Panic seized your throat as your gaze darted wildly, searching for the seam where reality ended and the dream began. Confusion warped your features into a pitiful grimace, as though your own face betrayed the struggle to hold yourself together.

“Get away from me!” You snapped hysterically.

You ripped your hands from Vessel’s grasp as if burned, pushing him away by his chest with weak and shaking palms. Your lashes fell, a trembling veil shielding your eyes against what you thought must come next. A snap, a glare, a blow. A slap across your face. A hand at your throat. Perhaps a blade through your heart. Retaliation as violent as the act you had dared to commit. You prepared yourself for punishment, brutality to answer brutality.

An eye for an eye.

But it never came.

Vessel didn’t hurt you.

His features stayed calm. Only concern bled from his eyes. They gleamed softer than you remembered, dark and depthless, and not one of them held anger. Not one of them carried vengeance. Only patience. Only worry. Only quiet. The moment he felt the shift in you, he let go. He released you without resistance, leaning back with an ease that unsettled more deeply than rage ever could.

A breath break out from your lungs, a gasp you hadn’t known you were holding until it tore your throat on the way out. The rush filled your ears in a roar, like the sea tearing through a broken shell. Because something was wrong. Utterly wrong. You felt it deep in your marrow, vibrating through your bones. Where were the others? And where were the scissors from your hand? What the fuck had collapsed between then and now? It had felt real, no, more than that. You knew it was real. You had done it. You were certain. You had tried to kill Vessel. What had happened then? Why was he sitting before you in perfect calm, when only minutes ago you had lunged for his throat? How had that moment been erased as if it had never existed? What had they done to you? How had they made you forget?

What the hell was happening to your mind?

Vessel finally leaned back into the armchair beside your bed, moving slow as if worried you might shatter if startled. He studied you without blinking, his presence filling the room like a candle that refused to gutter.

“How do you feel?” he asked, voice careful.

“I—I don’t—what—I’m not—”

Your mouth opened, but only nonsense tumbled out. Scraps of syllables that refused to shape themselves into words as panic ruthlessly clawed your chest. You shook your head violently, fingers trembling as they pressed hard into your temples, as if you could dig the chaos out by force. Behind your eyes, pain bloomed in relentless pulses, like a second heartbeat, raw and blinding. What the fuck was happening to you? You couldn’t summon the courage to ask him what you truly wanted to know. The question sat coiled inside you like a venomous serpent, waiting for the time to strike. But you didn’t dare release it. Not yet.

So you chose something smaller.

Safer.

“Where—where are the others?”

Silence stretched uncomfortably.

“They had to return to their duties,” Vessel’s tone was unyielding, rehearsed, without fracture. “You’ve been asleep for a day, love. But they’ve all been waiting for you to wake.”

A day.

The word struck like a stone. You swallowed hard against the tightening in your throat. It had not felt like a day. It had felt like years, like fucking centuries layered atop each other, pressed into ash, crumbling in your hands. Entire lifetimes collapsing to nothing.

“And—” Your voice cracked on the shard of it. You cleared your throat and forced yourself to try again. “What—what happened after? After the ritual, I mean. I—I don’t remember.”

Your tone was carefully chosen, fragile on purpose, an imitation of innocence. Part truth, part mask. You really felt ruined, hollowed to the bone, dragged back from the grave of whatever nightmare had devoured you. But the innocence, that was only an act.

Because you remembered.

You remembered everything. The bitter and hot taste of your own blood, the pain searing through you, and the dream that followed like a fever. You knew what it demanded of you, what you had to do now. And just like that, the sensation returned, how it consumed you in a single breath, flooding your every vein with certainty. The decision and the movement that followed. You remembered your gaze fixing on Vessel’s throat, the elegant line of it, and how your hand poised to carve it open. Ready to end it all. Ready to kill him.

The only problem was that you had failed.

The moment slipped away, dissolving into nothing, as if erased but never forgiven. Only the consequences lingered. But why did Vessel stay silent about it? Surely they knew what you had tried to do. Or did they? Perhaps they thought it was only shock, your mind shattered by the ritual, by the weight of Sleep’s voice tearing through you. But no, the vessels weren’t that naive. They might have cherished Eden once, in their own twisted way, but their devotion to Sleep, and to themselves, was far stronger than sentiment. Far too strong to dismiss what you had done. An attempt to kill one of them.

What will happen to you now?

What will they do to you?

Vessel tilted his head, the movement delicate and deliberate. The beads on his jewelry clicked faintly against one another. A sound soft as breath yet sharp enough to pierce.

“You tried to kill yourself when you heard Him,” he murmured, the words soft, almost tender, as if he were admitting it for you. “But we reached you in time.” Vessel’s deep voice softened more, ironing over the edges like silk over steel. “II treated your wounds, and we let you rest. Hearing Sleep’s voice takes a toll on anyone, especially on a human. What you went through was no small thing, beloved. We’re proud of you.”

Your stomach clenched until it hurt. Gods, his manipulation was too seamless, too perfectly polished, like something he had rehearsed while watching you sleep.

“You may feel strange for a while,” he said, leaning closer, his dark eyes steady as though he could read the panic beneath your skin. “Dreams that feel too real. Hallucinations. Confusion, even when you’re awake. You hit your head pretty hard, love. So if anything feels wrong, if you lose track of what’s real, come to me, alright? I’ll remind you.”

Your blood turned to ice.

Exactly as she had warned you. The other version of you. Her voice still hissed in the back of your mind, warning you, that the vessels will tell you you’re seeing things, they will unmake your certainty until you break into the shape they want. Now you understood. His silence had not been mercy but calculation, a power play, a net cast wide to knot your fear into his patient hands, to twist you until your own memories felt like lies. Was that his endgame, to unthread you, stitch by stitch, until your mind betrayed you? Or worse, to wait until you were empty and useless, then kill you with the same calm that now wore the face of care?

You realised, too late, that you had been staring at him far too long. Your hands betrayed you, trembling in your lap, unable to still themselves.

Vessel blinked, his movements unbearably careful, the way one might approach a wounded animal. His voice dipped low, cloaked in velvet, drowning itself in reassurance. “Everything’s all right now. You did well.” His six eyes glimmered with a softness that scorched, too heavy, too aware. “You did very well, beloved. You’ve nothing to be afraid of anymore.”

You licked your bottom lip, forcing a small hum that might pass for agreement. A sound that tasted foreign in your own mouth. Inside, your thoughts screamed like caged birds, slamming themselves against bone. You didn’t know what to say. You didn’t know what to do. For the first time since arriving here, you weren’t frantic, or furious, or even terrified.

You were lost.

Vessel smiled then, lips parting to bare his canines, sharp as if meant to remind you what he truly was. “Let’s help you freshen up,” he murmured. “It will ease your mind.”

You didn’t resist. You couldn’t. The upper hand was his, and you knew it. So you nodded, dragging the blanket from your legs with stiff fingers, wincing as you forced yourself upright.

The movement stole your breath.

A gasp wrenched itself from your lungs as your hands shot to your skull, clutching at the pain that hammered there. That was when you felt it, something odd, but not odd enough after all that had already been done to you. Gauze bound your head in suffocating tightness. When you drew your hand back, your fingertips were smeared red, streaked with fresh blood.

“It’s all right,” Vessel soothed, his voice smooth as polished glass.

You blinked, startled, because he was already standing beside you. You hadn’t even seen him rise, hadn’t registered the sound of his movement. As if he had folded the space between you. His hand extended toward yours, steady and patient, impossible to refuse.

“I’ll help you.”

You hesitated, breath caught in your throat, but your body trembled too violently to deny him. With a grimace, you placed your shaking hand into his. He drew you up slowly, carefully, as if lifting something fragile. His touch was steady. It radiated something close to kindness. But if hands could lie, then his were liars. If hands could love, his pretended well. Still, there was something undeniable in his touch, something almost divine. For a moment, it felt as though you were being held in the palm of a god.

And you couldn’t tell if it was salvation or judgment.

He guided you toward the bathroom, his hand steady at your arm, and for a short moment you allowed yourself to be led. Then the mirror caught you in its grip.

“Gods above,” you breathed, the words breaking out before you could stop them.

Your reflection frightened you. Your lips were split and drained of colour. A bruise sprawled across your cheekbone, blooming dark and nasty like decay beneath the skin. Purple shadows mottled your jaw. The bandage around your head bled through, thin crimson seeping like ink through cloth, bright and ugly. You looked stitched back together, something that shouldn’t still be standing. At least, your blood still ran red. Human. Proof, however fragile, that you were still somehow you.

“I look—” Your voice broke, dragged low with horror. “—horrible.”

“You look beautiful,” Vessel murmured, as if it were fact.

His tone was gentle and warm, but it pressed into you like a weight you couldn’t shift. When all his six eyes dropped down to yours, dizziness seized you again, heavy in your skull. Gods. The difference in his height compared to yours made the room tilt. Your heart jolted faster, panicked, knowing that your freedom was tied to his death. You tore yourself from his grip, slipping free as if from a snare. Without a word, you stepped into the empty tub, still clothed, needing distance. The cold marble met your bare feet, and you exhaled through your nose.

To your surprise, he didn’t leave.

With a low hum, Vessel raised his hand. The water began to rise at once, filling the tub in a steady rush. Heat spread around you, steam curling soft against your face. He moved behind you without a sound, long fingers undoing the gauze around your head, loosening its hold. Fear flared sharp in your chest. His touch was too calm, too controlled. What if this was it, what if he forced you under the water, drowned you here in the heat and silence, your lungs filling with the nightmare that had chased you through your dreams again and again?

“What are you doing?” You whispered, body tensed taut as wire.

“Changing your bandages after you’ve bathed,” Vessel replied, voice smooth, simple, spoken with the indifference of a man commenting on the weather.

Your head snapped toward him, arms crossing your chest like a shield.

“Aren’t you going to leave?”

Vessel chuckled softly. The deep sound was beautiful and calming, infuriatingly so. He drew a chair beside the tub and lowered himself onto it with deliberate ease. His smile was small, almost serene as he watched you. “And risk you drowning?” he said. “Don’t think so.”

You stiffened as the water climbed higher, soaking through your clothes until the fabric clung mercilessly to your skin. It outlined every line, every curve, the thin material turning nearly transparent beneath the surface. Shame flared through you, heat prickling up your neck.

But his eyes didn’t stray. Not one pair. They held your face alone, never once slipping down to where the water revealed too much.

“How considerate,” you muttered. “You’d solve half your problems if you’d just let me die.”

Vessel regarded you for a long heartbeat, then let out a soft, almost amused exhale.

He said nothing.

Your voice came out brittle, like a blade worn dull, a weapon you could barely use anymore. You couldn’t fight him. Not now. Not with your head pounding, your skin clammy, your body wrung empty. Dizziness swept through you again, tilting the world until you hid your face in your hands. Warm water dripped from your fingers back into the bath, each drop a small and tender sound. Almost soothing. And somehow, despite everything, the horror of your dreams, the monster that had spoken in your voice, the phantom sting of scissors in your palm, the warmth of the water embraced you. It cradled you like a mother’s arms, whispering of safety, of rest.

And for a moment, you let it.

You let yourself drift.

Still, you listened. Every shift, every movement he made. The hush of water summoned into a bowl. The splash of a rag dipped and wrung out. The gentle twist of fabric before it touched your head. You flinched at the contact, but you let him, eyes closed and arms wrapped around yourself as if that could keep you from breaking.

For a while, the world was sound alone.

The steady drip of water. The careful strokes as Vessel cleaned your wound. The faint rustle of his robes as he leaned and moved with quiet precision. And then it struck you, the painful truth. You couldn’t remember the last time someone had touched you without hidden intent, without asking for something in return.

Your heart clenched hard in your chest.

Suddenly, Vessel leaned closer.

Heat rolled off him, his body close enough that you felt each breath ghost against your cheek. He moved slowly, like the pull of the tide, his shadow sliding over you like a shroud. Vessel hummed low in his throat, the sound deep enough to tremble through your damp skin, a melodic resonance you couldn’t shake. His mouth angled near your ear, so close you could almost feel the shape of the words before they formed. You kept your eyes shut, forcing yourself not to lean in, not to flinch, refusing to show how completely the sensation consumed you.

“When I got here,” he murmured, “I dreamt of water every night. Drowning in it. Floating in it. Being pulled under until I thought my ribs would burst. It never stopped.”

Your eyes cracked open, lashes heavy with steam.

You stared at the tub’s rim, at a jagged crack running through the coral marble like a fault line of fate. You bit the inside of your cheek until it stung, using the small pain to anchor yourself. Was he telling you this because he knew? Could Vessel see your dreams? Was he hinting at something, or was he simply casting a line, another trap thrown into the water to make you believe he shared your humanity?

II’s words slithered back into your skull.

‘If you want answers, learn to give something back.’

Maybe this was the chance, a knife offered in the dark, wrapped as a gift. It had worked on II, and on III and IV in different ways. They had all loosened and offered answers when you let them close, when you let them touch you. Perhaps it could work on Vessel too. 

If you really had to kill him to earn your freedom, you first had to make him think you were close enough to kiss. You already knew that he had loved Eden once. That he had loved you. Perhaps you could use it. Use him. Offer something insignificant enough to keep your secrets safe, but enough to make him open up. Let him believe you trusted him. Let him lean in, let him think he could touch you, that he could claim you. And when his guard dropped, when his mouth hovered inches from yours, then sink the blade into his heart.

Maybe this was the key.

Maybe this was how you ended them all, how you cut the rot out of this world. You had told them as much. They were parasites. Nothing less and nothing more. And you still believed that. They had fed on you, on your past selves, time and again, always choosing Sleep over you. They deserved suffering. They deserved to pay. Gods, you would make them. Even if you had to do things you never thought you would. Let them touch you, let them use you, fear no longer bound you. You didn’t care anymore. Because II was right, you weren’t Eden anymore. Eden was fucking gone. You were something else now, bearing the anger of every version of yourself they had sacrificed in the name of Sleep.

And this incarnation was hungry for vengeance.

You bit your lower lip until it stung, voice low and steady as you let the thought out like a promise, “I dream of water too. Mostly of the sea.”

The words tasted wrong leaving you, too honest, too near the truth.

For a seemingly endless moment, Vessel said nothing. The silence pressed down heavy, thick enough to make you wonder if you had overstepped, if you had misunderstood him, exposed yourself too far, too soon.

Then his voice came again.

“There are no seas here. No rivers. No lakes. Not naturally. This world has no great waters.”

What an odd thing to say, you thought.

A bare fact. Yet the timing, the tone and the deliberate weight of them struck you as anything but casual. Each syllable tugged like a thread, pulling you toward something hidden, daring you to follow, to unpick the meaning beneath.

Your grip around your body loosened. Your thoughts churned, restless as waves gnashing at a shore. And then, a memory broke through. You thought of the storm you had walked through in your dream. The abyss yawning black beneath your feet. The vast and curling shape in the deep, darker than anything you had ever seen.

“Maybe Sleep doesn’t like water,” you whispered.

The words slipped out no louder than the drip-drip-drip of your wet clothes bleeding into the bath. Thin and fragile words, but sharp, dangerous, vibrating in the air between you.

Vessel chuckled at that.

But it wasn’t light. It wasn’t careless. It curled through the air with something darker, pride or maybe recognition, like you had stumbled near a hidden door, and he alone held the key.

“Perhaps,” Vessel echoed, voice soft enough to shiver against your skin. Then he leaned even closer, until his breath warmed the damp curve of your jaw. “The older gods are so desperate to rise above mortals, they never notice the cages they build around themselves. Bars forged from human fear, from human desire. Their divinity becomes nothing but a frame, too narrow to move within and too fragile to escape. Ironic, right?”

You swallowed, “I don’t know if I’d call it ironic.”

“What would you call it, then?”

“Sad,” you muttered after a moment. “Or maybe just pathetic.”

Vessel chuckled low in his throat, “Mortals have always mocked the divine. And yet you still worship, still kneel, still bleed for them.”

Your lips pressed into a thin line. “Not all of us.”

“No,” he agreed softly. “Not all.”

You looked up at him then.

Water dripped from your lashes, tracing lines down your cheeks like tears you hadn’t chosen. You drew your knees tighter against your chest, a fragile barrier between you and him, but it meant nothing when he was this close. Vessel had never been so near, never close enough for you to glimpse yourself reflected back in him. And now you were multiplied, fractured into six reflections, each one warped and uncanny in his eyes. Candlelight licked over his chest, painting him in bronze and shadow, beads along his necklaces catching brief flashes of fire. He looked like something fallen from heaven, a statue carved from exhaustion, from ruin.

Like an angel exiled, wings torn from his back.

From the doorway, the bead curtain clinked softly, a small sound in the air, like a warning you were already too far past to heed.

“Speaking of gods,” you breathed, your words trembling as they slipped free, a weak attempt at control.

Your gaze wandered over him despite yourself, tracing the mask that obscured half his face, lingering on the shape of his mouth, the irresistible line of his cheekbones caught in shadow, before daring to meet his eyes again. Your heart pounded louder and faster than your breath, a rhythm you couldn’t quiet despite your efforts.

You remembered what III and IV had told you. That Vessel was an unfinished by design, half man, half deity. That Sleep had tried to sculpt him into a god, His equal. His chained lover for eternity, cursed under the weight of a fake adoration. And you also remembered the story he had once told you, the God of the Gaps. The old god and the musician. Devotion and torment. The silence strung taut between them. The pieces finally aligned, falling into place like shards of glass. Every role clear. Every line cast. All except the ending.

The solution was still missing.

Your lips parted before you could stop them. “The story you told me,” you whispered, your voice raw, a fracture of sound, “It was about you, wasn’t it?” The words hung in the steamy air, dangerous and intimate, water lapping against marble like a pulse that was not your own.

Vessel tilted his head to the side, the motion so agonisingly slow it was almost imperceptible, like the turning of the moon. But he didn’t retreat. He didn’t look away. His six eyes fixed on you, unblinking and infinite. And in their depths you saw no denial. No surprise.

Only recognition.

“What difference does it make if the musician was me?” Vessel murmured. He leaned closer, his words threading warm against your damp skin. “All gods are unfinished. All lovers, too.”

You shook your head sharply, gripping your knees tighter to your chest as if you could fold yourself into safety. “I didn’t ask for a fucking riddle, Vessel. You can make it sound poetic all you like, but that doesn’t change what you did. What you are.”

“Perhaps not,” he allowed a faint smile ghosting his lips. 

Vessel shifted then, resting an elbow on the rim of the tub as his hand lowered into the water where you sat. You tensed, breath catching as his long fingers slipped beneath the surface, shattering your reflection into fragments. Candlelight caught on his rings, glimmering faintly like small stars drowning in the water. Ripples spread outward until they touched your thighs, brushing against your skin with a gentleness far too intimate.

You should have recoiled.

You should have burned with hatred.

This was the monster who had sacrificed another version of yourself in front of your eyes, the creature who had condemned you to endless suffering simply because he couldn’t resist the pull of a god. And yet none of that reached you in this moment. All you felt was the warmth. The intention. The unbearable closeness. Because you were gone, drawn under by something you couldn’t name. His nearness wound around you like a spell, one you pretended to resist even as it coiled tighter. You told yourself you were the one manipulating him, but the longer you lingered, the more you wondered if it wasn’t already the other way around.

Instinct made you shift back an inch, but the space meant nothing. You couldn’t look away, following every motion of his hand, breath shallow and unsteady. His fingers moved through the water like something sanctified, too flawless to belong to anything mortal. Your skin prickled, goosebumps rising sharp as needles, betraying you, impossible to hide.

“Is that a yes, then?” Your voice wavered, thin as paper.

“If you want it to be.”

You gave a small, shaky laugh. “That’s not an answer.”

His reply was neither confession nor denial. But there was something in his tone, as if a truth had slipped through a crack, something you were never meant to catch. With his other hand he reached for the rag, dipping it into the basin. The water there was tinged pink, your blood unravelled and thinned, curling through it like a secret dissolving into silence.

“It’s the only one you’ll get,” he replied after a breath. “God. Man. Monster. Lover. You think the right word will give you control. It changes nothing. Does it matter what I am? Would it change the way I look at you? The way blood tastes? The way devotion hurts?”

You swallowed, lips pressing tight. “Maybe not. But it would explain a lot.”

Vessel’s hand moved through the water, slow and steady, ripples brushing against your legs. “Explanations are also just cages. Different bars, same trap. Humans like to name the things they fear, or the things they want. If you call me a god, if you call me a man, you think you’ll understand me. You think you’ll be safe. But cages lock both ways, love. Vessel leaned closer, as his hand shifted in the water, ripples kissing your thighs again, deliberate this time. “What am I, if not the reflection you choose to see?”

The thought unsettled you more than his evasions. If he was neither, what did that make him? Not human enough to be mortal, not divine enough to be eternal. Something caught in the fracture between. Something you couldn’t name.

Heat burned through your skin, as you shook your head, forcing your voice out in a whisper. “You sound like you want me to believe you’re a god.”

His smile deepened, slow, deliberate. “Or maybe I want you to decide for yourself.”

Gods. You should have spat at him.

You should have called him what he really was, a parasite in a mask, the butcher of your past selves, the tormentor of your heart. The words stuck instead, heavy and useless in your throat. A darker question gnawed at you, the one you had been too afraid to even think about. If III and IV were right, if Vessel was part god and part man, what did that mean for you? Would a blade through the heart even stop him? Would a knife even take hold? Could you kill him the way you would any human?

Your pulse skittered.

The thought sickened you and made you nervous in the same breath. What if your key to freedom lay farther away than you thought? What if the whole idea of killing him was a mirage, a trick born of their sick games? What if his silence had been a trap all along, letting you believe you had a choice where you had none? Did you even possess the power to kill something like him? Could you truly succeed? And if you did, what then? How would the others react? How would Sleep? He hadn’t stopped you the first time. When you raised the scissors, when you aimed for Vessel’s throat, the god had not struck you down. No divine hand split the sky to smite you. No punishment from above. Something had happened, yes, but no deus ex machina had ended you. So what the fuck had really happened?

The questions hummed beneath your skin, clearer and warmer than the bathwater, your teeth sinking deeper in your lower lip the longer you stared at Vessel’s beautiful hand in the water, at the faint tremor in his fingers, at the calm that cloaked him like skin. He looked so human in that moment, fragile enough to bleed, yet you couldn’t shake the fear that if you tried, you would only prove how far from human he truly was.

“There are things we’re not allowed to speak of,” he said at last.

“I know,” you murmured, nodding faintly. “III and IV told me.”

“Then why do you ask?”

“Because I want to know.”

Vessel’s gorgeous hand twitched in the water, then drifted into slow circles, ripples spreading outward in rhythmic patterns. His gaze was on you, yet not fully, they were unfocused and distant, as though his words belonged to two conversations at once. One meant for you, and another he held in silence with himself. “Knowledge doesn’t free you, beloved. It binds you. One answer breeds another question, and soon you’re trapped in the net you’ve woven. Tell me, what would you do with the truth if I handed it to you?”

You huffed quietly. “Don’t turn this on me.”

“Turn?” His smile was soft, almost kind. “Or am I only pointing out that you asked the wrong questions? You chase gods and labels when what you really want is to know me.”

Heat crawled up your throat. You wanted to spit, to curse, to call him the filth he was. Instead you forced the words out, thin and unsteady, “Bullshit. I only want the truth.”

“The truth,” he echoed low, the sound a quiet laugh against your skin. “Another gilded cage. Ask me something real. Not what I am. But what I want.”

Your breath snagged. Every instinct screamed to pull away, and yet you stayed, rooted by the pressure of him. “I don’t care what you want,” you said, venom under the calm.

“And yet you keep looking at me,” Vessel murmured.

No flicker crossed his face. No surprise. He remained still, unreadable, as though he had been expecting it, watching you with unwavering eyes. You closed your mouth and realized, with a disappointed sort of certainty, that this was going fucking nowhere. Your mind spun too fast, thoughts colliding until they tangled, burning like knotted threads. And then your gaze fell, caught on his hand. It was the smallest detail, yet it eclipsed everything else.

The black paint that covered him was softened by water, flaking where the surface kissed it. And beneath, pale skin revealed. Your stomach twisted, but you couldn’t look away. Human skin hiding beneath the performance of divinity. Skin that could bruise, skin that could bleed.

Before you thought better of it, you leaned closer.

Your hand reached for him, hesitant but deliberate. His arm stiffened instantly, muscle drawn taut beneath the sleeve. But he did not pull away. You caught his fingers, gentle and careful, and guided his palm toward you as though drawing him into confession. Droplets slid down the ridges of his wrist, over the tendons of his hand, falling back into the bath in soft echoes as your thumb brushed across the back of his hand. The paint smudged beneath your touch, flaking away, revealing more of the pale skin hidden underneath.

Your breath caught sharp in your chest.

You had always known the paint was only a disguise, a mask over their humanity. But to see it peel away under your touch, to strip it bare yourself, felt almost unbearable. Intimate in a way that felt like trespass. Your fingertips trembled as you traced him, following the edges where the paint thinned, exposing the man beneath the mask, as though peeling him open.

And all the while, Vessel let you.

You felt the shift in him at once.

His muscles coiled beneath the painted skin, tension drawn taut like a bowstring. His six eyes never left you, reflecting back every trace of your inspection. He watched you as if you were dismantling a truth he had buried long ago, layer by layer. You had touched him willingly. Freely. Maybe that was what unsettled him. Or maybe it was what unsettled you. These were the same hands that had almost certainly inflicted pain, tormented, killed. This thought alone should have sickened you, should have reminded you why you were really doing this, to draw something useful from him, some secret you might later wield against him, perhaps even use to end him. But that wasn’t what came to you now.

Instead, you saw how beautiful his hands were, the curve of bone, the strength in his fingers, the way water jeweled his skin. You drowned in the endless pull of his eyes, the velvet coil of his voice. Gods, no wonder Sleep had wanted him. No wonder a literal god had tried to sculpt him into an equal, a lover bound by eternity. Vessel was an extraordinary creature, something carved from poetry itself, beautiful and burning, dangerous and passionate. And the most impossible truth of all was that once, he had chosen Eden over Sleep.

He had chosen you over a god.

The air thickened between the two you, hot and oppressive, dense enough to choke you. And the truth between you pressed so close it nearly broke the world apart.

“Alright then. Here’s something real,” you said, a new edge of purpose cutting through your voice, another angle forming in your mind. “Why do you paint your skin? You’ve never told me.”

The words slipped from you before you could catch them. This wasn’t the question you meant to ask, not the one that burned holes through your mind, but it fell from your lips like a crack in the armour you had tried so carefully to build.

Vessel’s gaze didn’t shift from your hand where it still touched his, your wet fingers brushing faintly against the line of his wrist. His voice came slowly, each syllable measured, as though the answer had been waiting on his tongue long before you asked.

“As I told you before, gods hate being reminded how close they are to mortals. And Sleep is no different.” He lifted his head slightly, the candlelight carving his jaw in a sharp light. “He hates humans, their weakness, their ugliness, their endless hunger for more. So as devotion, we strip it away. We hide what remains of our humanity. Our skin. Our faces. Our feelings.”

At that last word, his eyes rose.

All six eyes locked onto yours at once, holding yours with unrelenting force. The weight of it struck you molten and unbearable. Like liquid metal poured across your skin, searing deeper than the bathwater, hotter than the steam curling at your ears and clinging to your lashes.

It wasn’t just a gaze. It was a hand closing around your throat without ever touching you, heat that drew you closer when every instinct screamed to pull away.

“So,” you murmured, forcing a lightness into your tone that didn’t match the wild thrum of your pulse. Your fingers moved before thought could stop them, drifting up to trace the inside of his wrist with the edge of your nails. “You can take off your masks too, then?”

His reply came without pause, but not with his usual composure. There was a strain beneath the words. “We’re forbidden.”

“So you can,” you echoed, softer, narrowing your eyes as you shifted subtly toward him. You studied his stillness, waiting for the smallest crack to show.

The silence between you seemed to bend.

Then, after a pause, he answered, “The others can.”

His gaze faltered. For a breath his eyes dipped, traitorous, to your chest, then snapped back to your face as if startled by what they had seen. And you knew then. You had him. You felt it, the thrill of finally catching him off guard coiled hot through your veins. You could almost taste it, metallic and sweet. You had found the seam in his performance and pressed.

“Why can’t you?” you pushed, your voice low, the question folded into a dare as you drew his hand closer despite the disgust rising in your throat, despite the sick excitement and revulsion coiling in your belly at the thought of him touching you.

His answer came soft, almost like a confession. “Sleep is a jealous god.” The phrase had the stale sting of a proverb you had heard from III, but from Vessel it landed older, heavier, laden with a truth that set your teeth on edge. “He doesn’t want anyone else to see our human faces. He would punish us all if any of us showed you.”

You lowered your eyes to his fingers, human beneath the flaking paint, and let yourself think. Just for a moment. You had him now. You only needed to press. So you lifted his hand closer to your face, close enough that he could close the distance himself if he wished. Close enough to test him. You told yourself it was a trick, an experiment, nothing more. But your own pulse betrayed you, quick and hot, pounding like it wanted to be heard, to be touched. You wanted to see if he would stumble again. If he would fall as he had with Eden. As he had with all the versions of you before.

Would he falter now?

Could you use it?

Vessel’s hand trembled. Slightly, but enough that you felt it all the way down to your bones. He was surprised. You had slipped past his guard. For one frantic second you panicked. Had you pushed too far too soon? Was it too bold, too obvious? Then his fingertips brushed your chin. Light as dust, a ghost of a touch. But still, a touch. His six eyes creased, softening in the candlelight, something you had never seen in Vessel before, the shadows across his features folding into something dangerously close to tenderness.

Your throat tightened. You swallowed hard against the rush of saliva on your tongue, fighting to keep yourself together, to stop the spiral of what the fuck this meant. Because beneath the sharp edge of your agenda, another truth waited, darker and far more dangerous.

“Do you remember what I told you once in the library?” you whispered, your voice rasping, thin with fear and curiosity, every word chosen to guide him where you wanted. “That I think you mistake submission for peace.”

“I remember.”

Vessel’s lips curved into a smile, his eyes softening at the edges. It was honest, you felt that much. You had finally tilted his balance. His hand lingered just above your skin, retreating, then returning, a rhythm of restraint and temptation. A silent torment etched into the space between you. Each hesitation, each drift closer, was a confession without words, a push and pull that betrayed the war inside him.

Vessel wanted to touch you. You could feel it as surely as his breath on your neck, as if your body knew him better than your mind ever could. An instinct older than memory, older than this life, rising from the centuries you had burned through. For once, that ghost of your past selves did not feel like a curse but a weapon, finally useful.

“You know,” you cooed. “I think only those who allow themselves to be caged can be kept in one. Freedom should never be taken for granted. It must always be fought for.”

He hummed low in his throat, the sound a vibration that seemed to crawl beneath your skin, lifting every hair in its path. Gods. His thumb traced your lower lip with a featherlight touch, a tender contact that sent a shiver rippling through you. You forced yourself to remain still, to keep from breaking apart beneath the weight of it, clinging to the silent chant echoing in your mind—the end justifies the means.

“And yet,” he murmured, voice close enough to breathe into you, “what is freedom worth if it endangers the ones we love? What use is it if its cost is their safety?”

Your lip trembled beneath his touch as you whispered back, “And that’s the peace you want? The kind of peace Sleep offers?”

For the first time, he seemed completely human. A frail man stripped of power, brought to his knees, yearning and pitiful, as if kneeling in worship before you, revering even the smallest stretch of your skin as something sacred, something above him. Every breath, every tremor of his touch felt like worship, a reverence too pitiful to disguise. And in that, at least, Vessel was right. He wasn’t fucking worthy of you.

Yet still, you allowed him.

Four of his eyes slid shut, leaving only the central pair open, black and endless, unblinking as they fixed on you. A terrifying mimicry of humanity. Fuck. Was he trying to appear more like a man for you? Trying to shape himself into something you could bear to look at? His thumb tugged gently at your lower lip, pulling it down to bare your teeth, forcing a horrified inhale through them. The sound betrayed you, raw and uneven. Gods above, you prayed silently, panic and desire tangling into one plea for strength.

“Freedom, as you knew it, is an illusion here,” Vessel said, voice low as silk over stone. “We are puppets on strings, all of us, tugged and made to move by the gods. Dance with the music, and you survive the tune. Cut the cords, and the gods will break you like a plaything they no longer need.”

Your chest rose and fell too fast. His fingertips trailed down gently the column of your throat, following your pulse as if measuring it. The touch was too much, intoxicating and terrifying all at once, unraveling you in a way nothing else in this godforsaken place had.

“Then perhaps the stage should burn,” your voice fell into seduction before you could reel it back. The words scorched your tongue. You leaned closer, too close, your heart a wild thing against your ribs, closing the last inches between you, the closeness a bait and a confession together and the warmth of your breath a dare. “You’re not like the others,” you whispered, letting the heat of it press at him. “Tell me—” your lips parted, eyes fixed on his central pair, dark and fathomless, “—is there a way to kill a god?”

Your heart thudded, louder than you could bear.

The air seemed to change.

It happened in an instant, the shift, sharp and merciless. Not in your favour. Not the way you had hoped. His lip twitched, the faintest curl at the corner of his mouth, and you knew. Gods, you knew. Yo had overestimated your skill, rushed your hand, overstepped, lunged too far, too fast. The question you had foolishly cast out hung in the air like a noose, and you could already feel it tightening around your throat.

He smiled. But it wasn’t warmth. It was condescending, amusement honed to a blade. The same look IV sometimes wore when he wanted to remind you of your place, how small you were, how little you truly held.

Vessel withdrew his hand from yours, unhurried and without force, yet the rejection struck like a blow, a quiet punishment more cutting than violence. Then he chuckled, low and dark, the sound threading through the steam and stone until it filled the chamber whole. He rose, slow and deliberate, and the room seemed to tilt with him. His height eclipsed the candlelight, his shadow climbing the wall behind him, stretching and swelling, until it was no longer just his form but something vaster, heavier, looming over you like a presence that could swallow you whole. A shape too immense to ever escape.

Your throat seized tight, pain blooming sharp as if the air itself had turned against you. Your face betrayed you, twisting into something raw and tense, the mask of control slipping away. The heat that had burned through your veins only moments before soured into dread, but still, your skin remembered his touch, the phantom burn seared there as if it would never fade.

“Perhaps,” Vessel said at last, his voice smooth and unhurried, carrying that lilt of amusement that made your stomach knot, “I’ve underestimated you.”

You swallowed hard, bracing for it, for his hand to close around your throat, for his palm to shove the back of your head under, the bathwater sealing over you like the lid of a grave. You waited for violence, for punishment, for the vengeance you knew was owed.

But it never came.

Instead, his words slid into the silence like a knife drawn slow. “You’re capable of doing things on your own, aren’t you?”

The softness in his tone was somehow worse.

It left the air colder, heavier, as if the cruelty was not in his violence, but in his patience. Your eyes locked on his, searing, furious, disappointed, both in him and in yourself. And just like that, your mask slipped. You couldn’t pretend any longer. Hatred bled raw through your eyes, pulling your mouth into a thin line, your fingers curling into fists. Slowly, you sank back into the water, the gesture not of surrender, but of defeat that tasted bitter on your tongue.

Without another word, he stepped back, the beads clinking faintly as he retreated toward the door. “Once you’ve bathed and changed,” he said simply, “I’ll bandage your head again.”

And just like that, Vessel was gone.

The room seemed to exhale when he left, footsteps swallowed by the corridor, leaving only the hollow echo of your failure drumming in your chest.

You let out a sharp, ragged breath as the door clicked shut. Against your will your eyes climbed to the rose window high on the far wall. The wingless angel in the stained glass stared down, painted light freezing its face into something eternal. In that stillness you imagined a sneer, mocking and knowing, as if it had watched you fumble, watched you push too soon and laugh while you bared your palm.

Your jaw clenched. Your skin still hummed with the memory of his touch, hot and filthy. You couldn’t hold it back. Your fists slammed the water, sending wet heat and ripples splattering across the mosaic. The sound was angry, childish, too loud in the quiet

Bloodlust and desire tangled in your throat until you tasted iron.

“Fuck!” you cried out, the sound tearing free and ricocheting off stone. Pain bloomed behind your eyes as shame crashed over you with it, tears pricked and then cut hot down your face. You buried your face in your hands and let yourself break.

You hated them. All of them. But the thing that hit hardest was the self-loathing, for the way his touch had unstitched you, for the filth of the feelings you couldn’t choke down. Your tears slid into trembling palms and you hated the salt, the weakness, the truth.

“I can’t take this anymore,” you sobbed into the empty room, each word a plea and a confession. “Help me. Anyone. I can’t—I can’t do this alone. Someone help me.”

The sound of your own desperation seemed obscene under the painted eyes of the angel. The silence that followed was vast and patient, as if the world itself were waiting to see what you would do next. Because no thunder answered. No god knelt.

Only the echo of your own voice.

───────── ౨ৎ ─────────

“If salvation wears canines, then perhaps damnation wears a kiss. What burns hotter, the urge to carve him open, or the ache to let him closer?”

Chapter Text

“The hand that once trembled at the touch of a rose now steadies at the weight of a blade. And you wonder if this was always the truth hiding beneath the bloom, that the rose was only a mask for the sword, and that you were always meant to wield it.”

───────── ౨ৎ ─────────

Next morning, III was the one who saw you first.

“The old gods damn me, Vessel wasn’t exaggerating,” he hummed, delighted. “You really do look like shit.”

That was the very first thing III had said when he saw you, cheerfully, almost tenderly, like he was complimenting a new haircut.

He lounged half on, half off the obsidian table in the great hall, his voice bright with mischief, his grin audible even through the mask. The sharp sound needled under your skin, pulling a vicious thought to the surface, how you fucking wanted to smash his head against the edge of the table until the mask shattered, and let the shards decide who was prettier, him or you.

Just like the rest of them, III had also shed the ceremonial robes and returned to his usual garb, loose and irreverent, forever theatrical. His red coat devoured his spiderlike frame, while a ruffled black shirt gaped a shade too low at the throat. III looked like a vampire lord fallen out of a coffin and too amused by the world to go back in.

You answered him with nothing but a flat glare, unimpressed, before lowering yourself into the chair beside IV.

The stone pressed cool against your elbow as you leaned your bandaged head into your curled fingers. Each breath felt like labour, each heartbeat bruising you from the inside. The hall’s candles climbed the black walls in honey coloured ladders, and the bitter smell of last night’s incense still clung to the mortar, refusing to fade.

You didn’t want to be here.

You didn’t want to see any of them.

But you had long since perfected the art of dragging your body where your mind refused to go.

Looking at them now turned your stomach, but not in the way it should have. Last night your dreams had been a corridor full of open doors, and behind every one, you could only see the chapel, the ritual, the severed head at their feet, black and magenta blood pooling across stone, their hands sticky with it.

Waking should have brought fear. Instead, there was only anger. Even the cathedral’s voices, when they sighed and giggled in the stones, sounded less like omens and more like distractions. Irritating. Persistent. Unworthy of your fear. You woke with unease gnawing at your bones, dread thick in your throat at the thought of facing them again. After the ritual. After watching them spill the blood of another version of yourself with unflinching hands. After the dream. After your failed attempt to bury the scissors in Vessel’s throat. And yet, it seemed they had all silently chosen the same script as him.

To pretend it had never happened.

Fine. You could play that scene too.

You could wear the mask as easily as they did. Because bless the old gods, lying had begun to feel as natural as drawing breath. Perhaps it always had. Perhaps that was the spark you had felt in yourself when Vessel sat beside the tub, the revelation that your body already knew these creatures in ways your mind didn’t. That would explain why the hatred felt so ancient, carved into the marrow of your bones. Because your hands remembered what your heart was only beginning to learn.

“Still got all your teeth?” III dropped down and hopped behind you, too pleased with himself by half. Two painted knuckles tapped against your shoulder as if knocking on a door he had already chosen to enter. He carried the scent of spiced smoke that threaded with something sweeter, similar to the scent of oranges that made your stomach twist. “Go on, pet. Open wide for your brother.”

“Fuck off, III,” you muttered without heat.

Your gaze caught on his painted fingers as they drifted across the table, casual and careless. For a brutal moment you remembered how you saw them before, his knuckles sticky with blood as he swung the blade down. You hurriedly shook your head, trying to scatter the memory like a fly. Breath hissed from your nose as you fought the urge to bury your palms against your eyes until the migraine ebbed. You not only looked like shit, but felt like one too.

III made a sound, mock wounded, sharp as vinegar masked in honey. “Come on. Give us a smile. A big one. Be a darling, yeah?”

IV, immaculate in his striped suit, didn’t bother to hide that he was watching you. He sat with an effortless grace that made the furniture look grateful to be beneath him. Sprawled, but with courtesy, knees loose, ankles crossed, the posture of a cat that has judged the room unworthy and chosen to grace it anyway. His eyes, bright blue even beneath the shadow of the mask, tracked across your face as if searching for answers to questions he didn’t speak. His stillness was more unsettling than III’s prowling.

It stripped you bare.

“How’re you feeling?” IV asked at last, voice lower than you expected, quiet enough that it brushed instead of struck.

You shrugged, lifting your free hand to your mouth before you realized what you were doing, fingertips brushing the cracked edge of your lip. You remembered Vessel’s thumb there, the memory of the touch, and yanked your hand away as if burned.

“Fine.”

IV didn’t believe you. It was plain in the way his gaze lingered, steady and weighing. But he didn’t press. Unlike III.

“Show me your teeth,” he insisted again.

You pressed your lips tight, glare sharpened into warning. He only grinned wider behind the mask, circling your chair with the persistence of an orbit, as if he believed he could summon gravity by sheer will.

“Teeth,” he crooned, relentless. “Te-eeth. Show us your—”

“Fucking hell,” you snapped, finally breaking, head whipping toward him as you bared your teeth in a snarl feral enough to make you look animal. “There. Happy?”

III made an obscene little noise of delight. In an instant his cruel hand was on your jaw, long fingers careless as hooks as he tilted your face left, then right, studying you like a butcher inspecting a cut of meat. “Miracle, that. Smacked your skull against stone like a bell. I’d have wagered you’d spit at least one out for me. A souvenir. Shame.”

“How compassionate,” you muttered through the cage of his grip.

His palm patted your cheek with the careless intimacy of a slap, an uncomfortable smack that made your bandage pull. You yanked your jaw free and groaned at him but III only grinned wider.

The bandage tugged your scalp just as your stomach tightened. The obsidian reflected the three of you at strange angles, your bruised face caught between their masks, and in the sheen of black stone, a distorted display of the hierarchy of hands. Strange, how a reflection could tell the truth more clearly than words ever would.

“Do you remember anything?” IV’s voice cut the quiet again, casual in sound, but weighted. You heard the shapes of the real questions inside it. Do you remember the scissors? Do you remember lunging at Vessel? Do you remember how close you came to killing one of them?

Your eyes met his. His gaze was bright, cutting, trying to pry into you.

“No,” you lied, smooth on the tongue though your pulse betrayed you, hammering against the skin of your throat. “Just… hearing Sleep’s voice. Then nothing.”

IV hummed in acknowledgement. Whether he believed you or not, he gave no sign. His gaze flicked from your face to the bandage at your temple, then back again. Nothing more.

“Why the fuck are you two here anyway?” you muttered, sharp with impatience, shifting your attention from him to the empty chair across the stone table, the place where II usually sat. “I’m waiting for II. Seeing his sour fucking face is enough for one morning.”

“Poor pet,” III crooned, finally collapsing into a chair with theatrical abandon, sprawling like a puppet whose strings had been cut. “Still have to slave your days away with boring fucking II even after nearly dying for our god. Cruel, cruel world.”

IV cut in before you could bite back.

“We came to see how you were,” he said simply. His elegant fingers tapped a rhythm on the obsidian table, unhurried, lazy as a cat’s tail. It felt like attention without pressure, which was its own kind of surveillance. “That’s all.”

“How touching,” you said dryly.

As if summoned, the hall’s heavy door swung open, and II entered.

His stride was measured, unyielding, each step echoing sharp against the stone. His presence filled the room like frost filling cracks in glass. He cut across the great chamber like a line drawn with a ruler, his dark robe moved without flourish, an absence of excess that read as discipline.

Your stomach clenched.

You remembered his voice, the raw edge of it when he told the other vessels to stop this madness, to let Eden’s ghost remain dead. You remembered the shadow of his figure by your bedside, closer than he had any right to stand. Your fingers trembled but you forced them flat against your thigh, the movement sharp enough to sting. From the corner of your vision, you saw IV notice. His gaze flicked briefly toward you, blue eyes brightening with suspicion, the cut of it too precise to ignore.

II didn’t greet you.

That would have implied you were a person and not a problem to be solved. He halted at the end of the table, hands clasped behind his back, and let the room adjust.

“Considering your concussion, you’re even more useless than before. Vessel and I agreed you will stay out of the garden until you’re not this weak. III and IV will assign you tasks.”

III snickered, leaning across the table. “Hah. Fuck no. I’ve no use for her. No offense, pet, but I’m handing you off to Ivy.”

IV didn’t rise to the bait. He rarely did.

II turned to him. “You’ll manage?”

Before IV could answer, you cut in.

“Where’s Vessel?”

The question left you colder than you meant it to. Your heart stuttered at the name, you hated that it did, hated the warmth hidden in its rhythm.

II’s glacier eyes found yours. He looked at you the way a man looks into a room he has no intention of entering, measuring, calculating exits, already bored. Silence stretched between you, long enough to bruise.

“Why do you ask?”

“None of your business, freak,” you shot back, huffing, and the childishness of it curdled even as it left your mouth.

Behind you, III chuckled, a vile creature stoking himself on tension the way normal people stoked themselves on tea or whatever. II, however, sighed, a sound honed sharp, impatience threaded into every breath.

“He’s occupied,” II said at last. “Left you to us. Much to our delight.”

The final words hung in the air with the brittle weight of sarcasm, his head tipping slightly to one side, a posture that felt like as if anatomy itself had been sculpted into condescension. But then, II could condescend simply by standing still, so the gesture was almost redundant.

“How funny,” you answered, dryness cutting your voice, because it was the only blade you were permitted to draw. “You all pretend you don’t want me here, but you keep bending over backwards to keep me alive.”

II’s mouth was always hidden, as unreachable as his cold fucking heart, but the faint crease at the corners of his blue eyes made you wonder, just for an ungenerous second, whether he was smiling or grinding his molars. For the first time you wished you could see his lips. 

After a pause long enough to count, his gaze slid from you to IV, who had draped himself elegantly across his chair. “Do not overwork her,” II said. “If her wound opens, tell me.”

IV inclined his head in a single nod.

Nothing more.

Then II turned on his heel and left, strides as precise as when he entered.

“Always the little ones who are the angriest,” III murmured, leaning close enough that his voice brushed your ear.

All three of you watched II’s back retreat, black clothes narrowing to a line and then to absence.

“Mean little dwarf,” you muttered, sharp and petty, because the words felt good, and because he deserved at least that much.

III barked out a laugh loud enough to rattle your ear, then clapped your shoulder so hard your vision burst white for a beat. His bony fingers dug through the thin fabric of your beige shirt into muscle and you hissed, the sound caught between pain and fury.

His touch lingered a degree too long to be accidental.

“Ouch,” you snapped, tipping your head to glare up at him with all the venom you had left. He only whistled, airy and unapologetic, and patted the hurt place still with too much force like you were a bruised apple he intended to eat anyway.

“By your own measure,” he mused, voice lilting with cruelty, “considering you’re the same height as our beloved gargoyle, you’re a mean little dwarf too.”

IV’s quiet huff slipped free, amusement curling at the edge of his voice.

“Meaner, probably,” he added lazily.

“Right,” you rolled your eyes, standing, swaying once before your knees recalled their duties. “You freaks have been locked up with him for decades and I’m the mean one. Sure.”

“Oh, I wish it had been decades,” III sighed dramatically, straightening as you stood from your chair. “Feels more like centuries. Endless bloody centuries.”

You sighed, the room tilting and righting itself around you like a boat that despised the sea. You tipped your chin up to meet III’s height and the smugness that came with it. “Explains why you can’t handle the company of a woman. No practice.”

“The fuck’s that supposed to mean?” His hand went to his chest in mock scandal as you slid away from him, gravitating toward IV instead. It felt good to annoy him, a spark of temper that felt like oxygen after a breathless moment.

The three of you left the hall and entered the cathedral’s throat, narrow corridors where candle flames leaned toward your passing, eager as dogs when they recognise footsteps.

“It means,” you tossed over your shoulder, “you treat me like an animal. You treated Eden—” the name snagged and tore as it came out, a word wrapped in barbed wire you had decided to swallow, “—the same. No wonder no sane woman wants to join your murderous cult.”

Something in III’s gait changed.

One step later, his hand closed around your ponytail in a sharp tug. The corridor bristled. Not a yank, just a fist at the base of your skull, halting you as if you belonged to him. You yelped, more from surprise than pain, the world around you collapsing to the closeness of the gesture. The corridor bristled with silence.

IV’s huff cut the air as he turned back.

“Careful,” IV said, too lazy for real concern, too sharp to ignore. “Tear her stitches and II will pitch a fit. I’ve no interest in listening to him.”

“Oh, let him,” III murmured, but he eased his grip all the same, releasing your hair as though unclipping a leash he would much rather keep tight. But he didn’t step back. Oh no, III leaned in closer, the grin behind his mask flashing like the crescent moon on the dark sky. His gaze was uncanny, both warning and promise, threat and invitation wound into one unbearable thread.

“For the record,” he purred, low enough to crawl along your skin, “women never complained about my handling.”

The suggestion was a snare, warm and suffocating, pulling at the back of your skull even after his hand was gone.

You swallowed the heat in your throat.

“You know you’re meant to leave them alive long enough to have an actual opinion, right?” you said, the words sharp, even as your fingers peeled his hand from your hair with deliberate slowness, trying not to challenge him. The ache where he had gripped you throbbed like an afterthought, like a bruise that wasn’t finished blooming.

III tilted his head, considering the point as though it were worth weighing, which made your skin prickle all the more. He liked this, the push, the pull, the way you bristled and still stayed close enough to catch his scent. You rubbed the sore spot at your nape, but the ghost of his touch lingered, warm and humiliating. You pushed forward until you fell back into step with IV, breathing harder than you wanted him to notice.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” III hummed cheerfully.

You licked your bottom lip and turned to IV instead.

The suit fit him so well, you noticed, every line deliberate, every fold considered. His hands slipped into his pockets with the kind of elegance that made indolence look like power, the picture of ease for anyone foolish enough to mistake it for carelessness. You fell into step beside him, his silence wrapping close as cloth. III lurched behind like some scarecrow shaken loose from its post, all restless limbs and crooked energy.

“So... what’s the plan?” you asked.

“First of all,” IV said, tilting his chin back toward III, “ignore him.”

“Rude,” III chimed, entirely unbothered.

IV turned his head, mask gleaming, the grey light catching in his eyes until they glinted sharp as cut glass. He let the pause stretch too long, as though tasting the answer before offering it.

“The plan,” he said at last, “is that you don’t faint. You seem to enjoy making theatre of your suffering, and I hate cleaning blood from stone. Everything else—” his mouth curled faintly, “—is negotiable.”

“Cheers,” you muttered, flat as a blade.

“You hear that?” III crowed behind you, voice too bright. “Brilliant leadership.”

You groaned, the sound scraping out of you like tired breath as tipped your head towards the sky. “Gods above. Such conversation, such company. I might die of fucking boredom before Sleep even gets the chance to kill me.”

The three of you drifted on through the dim corridors, your banter too thin and too human for the weight of the silence that pressed around it.

But the days went nowhere.

They crept past on soft feet, monotonous to the point of insult. One, then another, then another still. The days blurred into a pale seam, you lost the thread of them, found it again, only to misplace it once more, like a needle thrown in a room scattered with tiny silver fishbones. The next tedious day pulled the same trick, and the next, until time itself became indistinct, two panes of dirty glass sliding over one another, smearing the view beyond into something warped. You could no longer swear which stains belonged to which side. Two weeks bled out. It might have been a blink or it might have been an entire lifetime, folded until it fit in the palm of your hand.

Routine didn’t seem to help either, not even the dull handed down tasks, here it all felt staged, a liturgy drained of belief. You tried keeping count of the passage of time the way prisoners do, marking scratches inside your own skull. But the marks smudged. The cathedral itself seemed to erase every tally until the very act of counting felt ridiculous.

So you kept quiet. You curated your expressions the way one arranges flowers on a grave. You wore your face like a veil. If freedom demanded patience, then you would gather it, even if your arms broke beneath the weight.

And yet, they didn’t trust you.

It showed in the choreography they all performed around you. Wherever you went, whatever you did, one of them was always there, a shadow, a warder, a chaperone. They called it care. We’re worried, they said, you’ve had a serious injury, they told you, as if the bandage around your head was a leash, keeping you in check. You felt it like a pressure change each time you crossed a threshold, the way animals sense a storm before the first drop of rain.

They already knew how your story ended. That was the difference. You were the only one walking this for the first time. Their tension told the truth more clearly than their words ever could. It clung to them like an extra skin, the way II’s jaw locked when your hand wandered too far, the way IV’s fingers stilled if you turned too quickly, the way III’s humming faltered every time your attention lingered on something sharp.

If they feared you might go mad, it meant they believed you were capable of madness. If they feared you might turn violent, that implied violence was within reach. And if they feared you might harm one of them, then you could. And if you could hurt one of them, then you could also hurt him, which meant the dream hadn’t lied.

You really had to kill Vessel.

The problem was not knowing what Vessel truly was.

The God of the Gaps had sounded like allegory when he told it, but allegory dissolved under the weight of your dreams. Each night the wingless angel still waited at the far side of a black pool, cradling your drowned body the way a lover might cradle a mistake, a regret. Was that your past, repeating? Or your future, rehearsed?

Perhaps it was both.

The other problem was Vessel himself.

He avoided you like a wound avoids salt. Ever since the bathroom incident, since you had pushed too far, something had shifted. He still called you love, the word falling from him with a softness that felt less like affection than like a habit he could not, or would not, break.  He still smiled in that way of his that made people believe they had been seen and not merely looked at. But his time was rationed. His distance measured. Another vessel was always within earshot, within reach. His eyes lingered on you as if hands shouldn’t, as if they had already touched too much. And he never allowed himself to remain alone with you long enough to test what might happen if you reached back.

All your plans withered in that distance.

Complications required proximity. Proximity required trust. And he gave you just enough to starve on. You were left with nothing but hunger and rage, pacing the cage he had built inside your chest, wearing down the floorboards of your patience until you feared you might break through and find nothing waiting below but his voice.

So you learned to use the others for what they were.

For the first week you were parceled mostly between IV and III.

IV carried the sensible duties, laundry, dusting, the endless monotony of maintenance. He guided you through them with the precision of a creature who despised shepherding and yet performed it flawlessly. His voice was steady, his movements careful, his lies gentle. Which is still lying. The softness was just another kind of leash. III showered you in what he must have considered affection, a thicket of painful touches, a swarm of nicknames, a gravity well of attention that made it difficult to move without bumping into him. Every step near him was a collision waiting to happen, his orbit suffocating.

In the evenings II came to your room to rewrap your head. He was brutal without cruelty, firm hands, efficient movements, herbs you couldn’t name ground into clean gauze that smelled like the underside of rain, of soil ripped open, of things buried. Your wound healed under his watch whether you meant it to or not.

By the second week they gave you back to II, and for two days you flirted with the thought of hurling yourself from the highest tower, convinced you would rather scatter yourself across the stone than endure his company. But then something resembling utility settled into you, ugly and undeniable.

Because II was, it turned out, actually useful. Vessel’s patience was theatre. III’s affection was a blade dulled deliberately, made for bruising not cutting. But II, he could be worked with when he was in the mood to do so.

He walked you through the care of each plant with a precision that made the rest of the world look messy. He taught you which leaves could be boiled to quiet the pounding in your skull, which berries could be crushed into paste to burn out infection, which stems could lower a fever and which petals might raise a god’s attention. II made you repeat the names until your tongue was raw with them, until you tasted syllables even in your dreams. And he corrected you without warmth, sometimes with open humiliation. His gaze bored into yours until you flinched, until you burned with the shame of forgetting, the shame of being lesser.

And yet it worked.

Shame is a cruel tutor, but an efficient one.

II also forced you, through sheer endurance and the cruelty of his patience, to call water out of air itself. The first lessons were hateful. You stood in an empty bathroom with nothing but a cracked basin, a mouth yawning wide and refusing you. He made you lift your hands, like a heretic reciting a prayer to a god they despised.

He made you ask the cathedral to surrender.

And the building laughed. You heard it in the pipes, in the walls, in the breath of damp stone. A chorus of whispers that mocked you, calling you child, calling you failure. By the second morning you would have cried if you had any salt left in you, but all of it was already drowned in your dreams. However, by the fifth night, a single thin thread of water appeared, sighing into the bowl as if disgusted to serve you. By the end of the week you could summon a steady stream, so pretty it sickened you. You despised it on principle, hated that your body thrilled at mastery. II only remarked, dry as bone, that a newborn could have mastered it with less trouble. You laughed anyway, sharp and real, and he allowed himself the smallest flicker of satisfaction, before punishing it back into the lines of his face, as though even pride in you was a weakness he couldn’t afford.

“The cathedral is a creature,” he told you once, voice quiet as frost. “It has nerves. Appetites. Press in the right place and it will give you its throat. Press wrong—” His eyes caught yours, unblinking, “—and it will bite your hand clean off.”

It was madness, learning this.

Madness to feel the cathedral quiver under your touch, to sense its veins in the stone, to know you could call it to heel like some slavering hound. Madness to feel your own body thrill at the leash.

II was excellent at making you competent. But he was still a bastard. Still a ruthless murderer, and nothing about his usefulness changed that. Utility was not kindness. Mastery was not freedom. And you hated how much of II had already burrowed under your skin.

Despite everything, you felt stuck.

Pinned in place like a winged insect under glass. Lost, circling yourself like a moth that beats itself y against a skylight it cannot find the angle of. Patience, you told yourself, was the only cruelty you could choose. You needed Vessel alone. You needed to find the seam in him that could be worried open, a crack to pry at until he faltered. But patience was the price. Push too quickly and you would ruin yourself. Patience would ruin you, too. Only slower.

Toward the end of the fourth week, something shifted.

You dreamt again.

By now you had learned the difference between ordinary sleep and what this place gave you. Dreams here were not rest. They were invasion. They were revelation. And when you slept, you weren’t diminished, you were multiplied and magnified, turned into something that felt both more and less human at once. There was a strange clarity in it, terrible and alluring. In dreams you felt closer to godhood than you ever had awake, even closer to their god, closer to whatever raw power hung like static in the cathedral’s bones. Perhaps that was the only mercy this place allowed you, that truth came best in the dark. That with your eyes closed, you could finally see.

In this dream, you floated.

Not in a sea, not in a pool, but a river. A long and endless vein of silver water stitched through the land. It didn’t flow anywhere. It pulsed. As though the earth itself had lungs, and had grown tired of pretending it didn’t breathe. The surface was no water at all but a mirror of broken glass, every shard angled to throw you back a piece of yourself you didn’t want. The banks seemed wrong, too close and too far at the same time, collapsing and receding in the same heartbeat. They bristled with grey grass that drank light instead of returning it, the blades slick with absence. Above you hung a sky like rotting parchment with the words scraped away, clouds bruised without the decency of a storm. The air tasted of metal, like chewing nails until your tongue split.

Vessel had told you once that there were no great bodies of water here. He had said it with that careful cadence of his.

There shouldn’t be a river. There shouldn’t have been water at all. And yet you recognised the ribs of the forest along the edges, the spines of twisted trees, the ones you had learned not to look at too long because when you had first woken up here, they sold you out to whatever had birthed them. It looked like the forest outside the cathedral and not like it, familiar but odd as a photograph of someone who wears your face but isn’t you.

You didn’t sink.

The water received you without tenderness, the way a cold mother gathers a child, without warmth, without mercy, with arms that leave no mark and never let go. Your hair clung wet to your temples. Your clothes dragged heavy, seams pulling in four different directions at once. Your arms spread wide without your permission, a vulnerable posture that felt like crucifixion and baptism stitched together.

That was when you saw her.

Kneeling on the bank.

The three-headed woman, now only two. The third neck still raw with the memory of a blade. Your past self. The figure from the chapel’s corner. The thing whose blood had hissed against the altar like a curse teaching itself to speak. Both heads were still wrapped in stained linen, brown at the edges, the colour of old teeth. And yet you felt her attention on your face even blind, as though the gauze itself could burn.

She smiled. But only one of her mouths.

When her lips moved, they moved nearly together, the voices were layered, a choir that had been given one throat and two conductors.

“Come find me,” she said.

Your body shook, not just from cold, fear also hummed low and steady under your ribs. But anticipation rose sharp above it, a high, trembling note you couldn’t quite hear. Which was which, you couldn’t tell anymore.

“You died,” you whispered. “I saw III cut off your head.”

Behind her, a twisted tree laughed. The laugh came from everywhere and nowhere, its trunk, its roots, the cracks between its fibres. The sound was guttural and choked, the kind of noise a man makes while dying but refusing to admit it.

“Only one of them,” she said simply.

Her arm reached for you then, long, bony, lovely in the way bones sometimes are, elegant by accident. Her hand lowered until it kissed the surface of the grey river, and for a split second you thought she might pull you out.

Instead, she pushed you down.

The world inverted. Cold slammed into you with hands like shackles, seizing your lungs in its grip and squeezing. The river’s glass broke into your mouth, your nose, your eyes all at once. You convulsed because your body had been built to, desperate to live, to breathe, but the river wasn’t simple water anymore.

“Down, down, down,” her doubled voice shrieked, pounding against your skull until it felt carved there. The tree laughed again, as though something had unfolded exactly as it hoped. The river welcomed you, swallowing your body as smoothly as a lock accepts its key. “Come and find me. I’ll wait for you.”

Beneath the surface, the world betrayed you. The light changed at once, as if brightness were a lie that had collapsed around you. The water thickened. Shapes lived here that didn’t belong above. Not fish. Not weeds. Memories that had grown gills. You saw them not only in front of you but behind your eyelids, versions of yourself turned strange by distance or time, you didn’t know. One laughed at her reflection in a mirror. Another wore a necklace of bruises, blooming purple down her throat like violets pressed too hard. Another had a hairpin crooked along the back of her skull, cruel as a crown. You reached for them but your fingers passed through their outlines the way a wave had once passed through you in the dream of the sea.

“No matter what you see. No matter what you hear. Remember this,” The world peeled at its seam, opening for you like lips. You heard another voice, close enough to feel on your teeth. “Remember, we are not the monsters you should fear.”

Your ears howled.

Something vast moved far beneath you, slow as a mountain relearning that it had once been magma, slow as something too old to need to hurry. You didn’t look. You knew better. You remembered the black shape in the storm all too well.

“Come,” her voice said again, and now it wasn’t only in your head. It vibrated in the bones of your face.“Choose the ending that doesn’t end with you bathing a god in your own blood. You most not fear. Come and find me. I’ll wait for you.”

You woke gasping.

But that was normal now.

The sound tore out of you like something pulled from the bottom of a well. Your body moved before your mind could, legs swinging over the edge of the bed, bare feet planting against the cold stone while sweat still clung to your brow in a fevered sheen.

The dream clung worse than sweat.

It clung like river muck, thick and black, smeared behind your eyes, dripping into the space between blinks. You didn’t bother with shoes. The door of your room opened without you remembering your hand on it. You stepped into the corridor, silence pressed close against you, your steps whispering across the stones.

The walls were quiet. The voices had softened, subdued, as if the cathedral itself had stopped to hold its breath. For once, the stones didn’t giggle. For once, they didn’t mock.

They only watched.

Always watching.

You didn’t know where you were going. Not fully. But your body did. It had memorised the shape of the dream, carried its aftertaste like sacrament. Your blood hummed with geometry you didn’t understand. Your breathing sharpened. Your steps quickened. The scenery unfurled around you in a blur, the tall pillars smearing into one another as your body sprinted the way a deer runs at the sound of a bowstring. The turns came blind, corners cut too fast, until the corridors themselves began to warp, stretching, narrowing, bending wrong in your periphery. Your breath sounded too loud in the silence. Like a bell tolling through a dead town.

Was it real?

The question found no purchase. Nothing here was unreal enough to be safely named unreal. What real meant anymore? Were your dreams guides or traps? They felt like Sleep’s hands on your face, tilting your head just so, arranging you into the angle that pleased Him most. And if not His? Then whose? The old gods? The cathedral itself, making use of the body you had become? Or something softer, something that had remembered your name?

You were wheezing by the time you reached III’s door. Recognition hit like a bruise but you didn’t knock, politeness had been stripped from you weeks ago, flayed off like unnecessary skin. You stumbled through, blinking hard as your chest still heaved with the rhythm the river had left beating inside it.

And then you stopped.

III was on the floor.

He lay like a starfish fallen from the sky, arms and legs stretched wide, coat fallen open, one knee bent as if halfway to sitting up before he had thought better of the effort. The mask stared blankly at the ceiling, candlelight catching on the material.

He didn’t move when you entered.

Didn’t tilt his head, didn’t conjure a grin to greet you and didn’t make a performance of being seen. He simply let the silence hold him until his voice rose thinly from the floor, stripped of its usual velvet. “Evening, pet. To what do I owe this late night treat?”

Your pulse stuttered.

“What the fuck are you doing?” The words came ragged, torn by breath. You shut the door behind you with a soft scrape, leaning your weight against it as though the corridor itself might try to follow you in.

He shifted one shoulder against the floorboards, the smallest shrug. “Listening to the voices,” he muttered. “They’re very chatty.” One hand patted the floor next to him in a lazy invitation. “Join me.”

You didn’t move.

Something in him was wrong.

Not the usual wrong you had just grown used to enduring, his theatrical madness, his manic performance, the deliberate lunacy he wore like the paint on his skin. This was different. This was quiet. Still. And when his blue eyes finally slid toward you, they looked tired. Not the exhaustion of a jester between acts, but the kind that belonged to II, the same salt eaten blue, the same emptiness. No showman’s glimmer, no psycho teeth behind the words. His arrogance remained only in outline, like chalk after rain. He didn’t bristle. He didn’t twitch. The usual quicksilver of him had stilled.

You stood in the doorway with your hand on the frame, hovering, a trapped animal debating which way the snare will close. You should leave. You should turn on your heel and take your madness to a more sensible monster. But if not the madman, then who? Who else would you tell? There was no one here besides the five of you.

The five of you with gods and monsters.

Your throat tightened as you lingered, eyes dragging over the dark room. It was stripped of any personal touch. An unmade bed, a desk in the corner colonised by torn scraps of paper and knives, like teeth spat from a jaw. An embroidered greatcoat slung across a chair so carelessly it felt deliberate, a parody of domesticity. It was all mess, but not the kind that suggested a life, more the kind that insisted on the absence of one. No keepsakes. A deliberate refusal to let anything in here be precious.

You hesitated still.

You could leave. Go to IV and let him soothe you into obedience. Go to II and let him bully you into sanity. Hunt down Vessel and be wrapped in a beautiful lie. Or go back to your bed and pretend the dream was only a dream.

Instead, you crossed the floor.

You knelt beside him, folding down onto your heels. The stone drank the warmth from your shins like a thief. Your body remembered the posture too easily, a muscle memory you hadn’t given permission for. Your skin was clammy, your breath came shallow and your fingers wouldn’t keep still. You leaned closer, into that pale stripe of light, until your hair spilled down, curtaining part of his vision. Close enough that if he looked at you directly, you couldn’t escape it.

“III, you have to help me,” the words came higher than you intended, thin with the kind of pleading you never let yourself use in other circumstances.

He turned his head a fraction and looked at you. Blue eyes slid behind his mask like tidewater, worn out as if sleep had been rubbing at them with dirty fingers.

It felt wrong to see II’s emptiness there, to feel a sick and disorienting moment where, stripped of everything else, their gazes might be confused, seeing too much and rejecting half out of spite. For a heartbeat you almost believed you could mistake one for the other because whatever hectic spark usually blackened III’s edges was missing. The glee. The rage. The child under the butcher. The twitch in his fingers. He looked, gods above help you, sad. As if he wanted something and couldn’t be arsed to want it properly.

You didn’t know what he wanted. You didn’t know what he needed. Fucking hell. Why sulk the one time you actually ask for something? Why pick the only mood you couldn’t stomach? Still, you pressed your elbows into the stone and leaned in until the candlelight on his mask split into a hairline of gold and you could count the tiny scratches there.

“You have to help me,” you repeated.

He didn’t even blink.

“III,” panic crawled up your ribs like ivy, slow and uncontrollable. Your voice thinned until it was nearly a hiss. “You’re fucking creeping me out.” You dropped lower onto your elbows so your mouth hovered by his ear, breath warm against the cold of his mask. “Say something. Please. I want to ask something from you.”

He scoffed, a sound that might have been laughter if it hadn’t been so starved of life. A small breath, gone as soon as it arrived. III’s gaze turned back to the ceiling as a melancholic exhale dragged out of him, long and deep.

“The fuck do want now?”

Relief cracked through you like lightning across dry ground. There it was, the cruelty, settling back into his vowels like an old stain.

Gods, what the fuck was wrong with him? What had slipped inside him, and why now, when you needed him most? You shifted closer, bracing one hand against the floor until you were leaning directly over him. He couldn’t dodge your gaze, not unless he wanted your face filling his entire horizon. 

“You have to help me,” you whispered. The words felt brittle in your mouth, so you pressed them again, harder, like repetition could force them into truth. “And you can’t tell anyone.”

He rolled his eyes with theatrical disdain. The mask robbed you of his brows, but you felt them rise all the same. His usual self began to crawl back over him, bone by bone, like a tide reclaiming what the storm had left behind.

“You know the price,” he said. “Truth for truth. Favour for favour. I’m not a charity, pet.”

“I know,” you breathed. “That’s why I came to you.”

You wet your lips, sucked one in between your teeth, stalling for time, a short pause that was performance and necessity both. You ran your plan over once again in your head, tested it for leaks, found them and ignored them.

“I want you to take me to the forest.”

He sat up so fast your forehead almost met the skull of his mask with an embarrassing crack. Even sitting on the floor he was taller, a sudden column of movement and attention and just like that, the III you knew snapped back into being, alive and precise, a predatory electricity that made the skin along your spine tighten.

“The fuck for?” he asked.

“That’s not important,” you snapped, the desperation in your voice making your lips sting as you leaned in again. You crowded him on purpose, trying to summon the courage you didn’t have. Close enough to see the ring of deeper blue around each iris, to feel the shallow heat of his breath through the mask. “No one can know. Not the voices, not the others, not—” Your throat closed on the name and you swallowed it down,“—not even Sleep.”

He grimaced, pushing at your shoulder.

“What’s gotten into you?” he mocked you. “Whisper all you like, Sleep hears what He wants. He dreamt this fucking world into being. He hears everything. You don’t hide from the sea by ducking under a wave, you daft fucking muppet.”

You pouted, letting your disappointment show because it could be useful. “Promise me,” you said. It came out childlike. You hated it but used it anyway. “Promise you’ll take me.”

III stared.

The mask kept his face unreadable, and yet somehow everything about him became clearer for it. Then he laughed, short and brittle, the tick of a clock that had started annoying itself. He tapped his knuckles on the mask, three sharp beats, harder than they needed to be. The noise sounded like a countdown.

“All right,” he said at last.

You let out a breath, ready to start, to spill the plan, but his hand rose before your words. Your obedience arrived before your resentment did, surprising you with how eager it was. “I’ll take you wherever you want,” he said, voice smoothing into something bartered and dangerous. “But you’ll be honest with me in exchange. Tell me why.”

Fuck.

You should have had a lie ready.

But could you really lie to III about this? 

You stared, and the hatred in your chest flared up like something kicked awake, bright, clean and mercifully simple. Your breath sawed. Hatred filled your mouth and pooled behind your eyes, moved in your joints like a new, usable limb. It was a relief to hate them. You were tired of their riddles, their bargains, the way every want of yours was translated into a price they had rehearsed paying and collecting. You were tired of being their experiment, their pet, their prophecy and its punchline. They made you sick down to the bones. You weren’t born with your teeth bared, they had taught you that and then pretended to be shocked when you used them. They made you aggressive when you weren’t even an aggressive person. You felt that. You knew that. Somewhere under the bruises, you were good.

You were a good person.

You knew you were good.

Somewhere under the bruises there was a softer self, you could feel her shrink whenever your anger rose. They kept her on a chain and rang her bell for treats. You thought of dogs, how a good dog can be made murderous by chains and the hand that feeds it. You felt that chain clinking every time you tried to run, iron biting your skin, the taste of blood on your tongue when your teeth closed around the hand that had struck you, and startled at your own growl. But they weren’t your owners. They never had been. And if killing your past selves had been a crime, then convincing you they could do it again felt worse. So much worse.

When you had first arrived, the word love in Vessel’s mouth had humiliated you. You had felt like a trained thing circling his ankles for treats. That shame was gone now. Perhaps you were a dog. Perhaps you really were.

But a dog with teeth.

Spite rose like a tide. You let it carry you.

You crawled toward III.

You did it on purpose, on hands and knees, because fury has a shape and sometimes it’s feral, the way a hound closes on prey, head low and body coiled, every inch of you sharpened into intent. Your palms pressed to the ground, sliding to rest on either side of his hips, caging him between your arms. You leaned close, close enough that if you breathed too deep, your nose would brush the hard edge of his mask. Close enough to feel the heat bleeding off his body, to sense the tension waiting in him like a drawn bow. The memory of his knife at your throat flashed, how small you had been under it, how helpless. You were done being small.

If they wanted a dog, fine.

Let them have one.

“Okay,” you whispered. “I’ll tell you the truth.”

“Will you, pet?” he drawled, voice low and amused.

III didn’t shove you away this time. He didn’t perform outrage or tantrum. He held still, let you orbit that hot, electric air between you as if your nearness was a game he dared you to lose. His attention was a pressure you felt on your scalp, a hand cupped over the top of your head.

“I want to go to the forest,” you whispered.

III waited.

Your body answered before your reason could catch up, the memory that had been bred into you, pressing its snout to whatever truth had been hiding there. The words came out like a blade pulled from a throat, clean and obscene.

“I want to go because I want to kill you.”

The threat lingered between you, merciless and heavy, as if the sword of Damocles had at last surrendered to gravity, as if unseen teeth had sunk to the root of your flesh. It didn’t need to be spoken twice. It landed, sharp as iron, final as blood.

III didn’t flinch.

He stared at you, and his unblinking focus stripped you raw, as if he was peeling the very air away from you, layer by layer, to reveal the flesh beneath. The candles chewed at their own wicks, the room breathed slowly, and something familiar uncoiled in the base of your skull. This angle. This closeness. Your body remembered him. The way his breath hit the inside of the mask and came to you sweet with rot and orange peel. Your body recognised him. Not the way the eye does, but the way a scar does. Something in you stirred. The way your skin had recognised Vessel’s touch, how your pulse had betrayed you then, now it recognised III, too.

You had been this close to him before.

But when? And why?

Your breath faltered, hitched in your throat.

Your breath stuttered, hitched in your throat like a trapped bird. You broke the stare, glanced down, then to his collarbone, then to your hands, planted on either side of his thighs, his coat between your palms. His wicked chuckle exhaled hot across your face, and the scent of him, oranges cloying and spoiled by something older, invaded your lungs like incense you couldn’t cough out. Behind the mask his grin widened, savage and delighted, as if you were not a dog but a stag at bay.

Heat clawed up your spine. Anger followed faster, striking like a match in dry grass. For a heartbeat your vision narrowed into a tunnel, bright and tight, and you could see yourself picking up a knife you didn’t have, piercing it through his chest.

That same fever gripped you, that blind rage that had nearly driven a blade into Vessel’s neck too. It rose again, red and consuming, only to collapse under its own weight. 

You recoiled on your heels, blinking hard. III moved as if to seize you, to draw you back into his hold, but you were quicker. You crawled away, shifting the distance between predator and prey. You were perfectly aware now that whatever game this was, the roles could switch in an instant, and that the most dangerous thing might be how want and hate had braided together until you could no longer tell which was which.

Your body trembled as you pressed both palms against your damp temples, fingers slick with sweat. Shame burned inside you, thick as smoke, choking your chest with every breath.

What the fuck was happening to you?

You were a good person.

A good person.

“I’m sorry,” you whispered, breathless, your voice breaking into pieces. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry—” You repeated it like a prayer until the words withered into silence, leaving only the sound of your own unsteady breathing.

Who made you like this?

He slouched back against the bedframe, long spine folded like a bent blade, and for a moment he looked like a corpse caught between mockery and sleep. But his eyes betrayed him. They gleamed with something wrong. Something you didn’t want to name. Something too near desire, too near hunger. It clung to you like heat in a locked room, stifling and suffocating.

“Don’t fret,” he muttered, as you pressed a hand to your chest, trying to crush down the wild rhythm of your heart. “It’s Sleep. That’s what He does, it’s part of His charming repertoire. Hearing Him makes you off. Makes you disoriented. Violent. Concussion didn’t help. Double whammy, yeah?”

“Yeah,” you rasped, your throat dry. “Vessel told me.”

“Then don’t make such a bloody fuss.”

He kicked the side of your thigh, playful the way boys kick each other on church steps, too hard for play. Pain flowered and closed. You bit the inside of your cheek and tasted iron.

You stared at the floor, knuckles white on your knees.

The cathedral had been gnawing at your body for weeks, but now it was gnawing at your mind too. Voices worming through your skull. Dreams that dug their teeth in deep. Their lies. Their eyes. Their hands. You felt as if you had already been hollowed out by their pathetic god and filled with something that did not belong to you.

After a long quiet, his voice dragged itself out again. “Want to know a secret, pet?”

Tension coiled under the lilt. 

“When I first came here,” he said, tone lazy but his gaze not, “I wanted to kill everything that breathed. They made my skin fucking crawl. Every moving, blinking, muttering little bastard. I wanted to tear the fucking life out of them. See them bleed. Purge them. Clean this fucking word. Make it pure.” His grin glinted even through the mask. “Sometimes, I still do.”

The pause that followed twisted your stomach.

Goosebumps roared up your arms. You couldn’t stop yourself from glancing. His eyes were too bright. Too awake. Like something unholy had just remembered its purpose. Then, as if nothing had passed his lips at all, he grinned wider. His teeth pressed through the mask as if you could feel their shape against your skin.

“Maybe I’ll come to like you once you turn into a vessel,” he purred. His voice was warm in the way blood is warm as it leaves the body. “Until then? Not a chance.”

You choked on your breath. “Feeling’s mutual.”

His laugh was low, vile, pleased with you like a wolf is pleased with the noise a rabbit makes in its throat. “Family’s supposed to hate each other,” he said. “That’s what makes it fun.”

The word family slithered into your ears.

It curdled your stomach. Their mouths had worn it to a rind, left it sour and spoiled, and now it burned on your tongue like spoiled wine. Silence dropped heavy between you, but the kind of silence that breathes. The candle hissed. Damp pressed into your bones until you shivered, and still he sat watching you squirm.

“You know,” he added then, too casual, a performance you recognised and hated in equal measure, “I meant it. Back then.” His head rolled lazily against the bedframe, mask tilted to the ceiling like he was speaking to a god. “When I said I always wanted a sister.”

The word struck you wrong.

It wasn’t kinship. It wasn’t comfort. It was a violation dressed up in sentiment, obscene as a priest with blood on his hands.

Sister. Too many teeth in it. Too much tongue. It felt filthy in his mouth. Of course it did, III had always been a disgusting creature, even when he was trying to act normal. Especially then. The word snagged in your throat and made the rage falter for one beat, like a hound that hears its name and forgets its bite. His eyes gleamed as though he had found something worth cutting open and keeping.

You shivered. “Don’t fucking call me that ever again.”

He laughed. “Touchy.”

“Shut up.”

“Oh. Bossy too.” His voice sank low, warm with rot. “I like that.”

Your face twisted into a grimace, but you didn’t look away. He watched the expression like a sunrise he had paid for.

“Okay,” III said at last, voice easy as a promise and twice as dangerous. “I’ll take you to the forest. And I’ll keep your dirty little secret, yeah?” He tapped his chest with a finger, a mock oath as if it was your inside joke with him. “Cross my heart, hope to die—whoops.”

You nodded because nodding cost you less than words.

You hauled yourself up, palms scraping the floor, knees folding beneath you like they were in the process of relearning how to stand. The room swayed and bowed. Your eyes stung and you blinked them away like an animal trying to erase a remembered pain. You could feel the cathedral’s attention like static on your skin. 

What the fuck was happening to you, really?

What part of you was still yours?

The walls watched.

The whispers rose in your wake and then fell back, cowed by something that smelled like a promise. You could feel Sleep the way you feel weather, a pressure change in your sinuses. Far off, you swore you heard water dripping into a cracked stone basin with the patience of centuries, each drop a tiny, indifferent clock.

The sound drove you mad.

“Come on then,” III said, almost cheerfully, sliding up with the catlike grace of a thing that knows gravity is only a suggestion. He shrugged into his coat as if it were skin, his joints moving with the neat cruelty of a predator.

“What? Right now?”

“Why wait?” He cracked his neck. The sound was small and obscene, like a twig breaking in a quiet wood. He started for the door with that twitchy, pleased gait of someone about to be given exactly what he wanted. “You said you wanted to kill me,” he chuckled, and the sound was a blade sliding home. “Sounded urgent. And what am I if not fucking helpful?”

The words fell between you like a dare.

Beneath the fury and disgust, something darker stirred, a heat you hated yourself for feeling. You tasted salt and remembered the river again, and for one breath you teetered dangerously close to giving in to that raw, animal part of you that wanted blood and proof and, oddly, to be seen by III. But you forced your jaw shut and followed him to the door.

───────── ౨ৎ ─────────

“Every rose wilts. Every promise of beauty rots. What remains is the hand that refuses to tremble, the edge that refuses to forgive. So you set aside the roses, and take up the sword. Love cannot shield you anymore. Only the blade can.”

Chapter Text

“Perhaps the roses will bloom again when this is over.”

───────── ౨ৎ ─────────

“Fucking keep up, will you?”

III’s stride ate the distance with that unnatural, liquid rhythm of his, too long, too exaggerated for the narrow corridors that tried and failed to contain him. He always moved like a puppet whose strings had been pulled by cruel hands, like a sin you couldn’t quite confess. Horrible and beautiful. Like everything he was. You followed because you had no other choice, almost jogging to keep pace with him, your breath sawing, boots whispering across the stone floors like moth wings. You watched the back of III’s embroidered coat as it moved ahead of you, the fabric swaying like something alive. The threads caught what little light there was, just as his white hair swayed too, pale and weightless. He glanced around once, the turn of his head sharp and birdlike, before slipping forward into the silent emptiness as if the dark had opened just for him.

The hairs on your neck prickled.

You looked over your shoulders more than once, certain that something lurked behind you, watching, following, waiting.

But the corridors stayed empty.

And the silence stayed thick.

III had kept his promise, at least.

After you had pulled on some fresh clothes, shirt clinging with nervous sweat, shoes laced by trembling fingers, he had simply appeared, all grin and poison, and said “Come on then.”

No ceremony. No argument. Not even the thin disguise of kindness. Just a door opening, his grin splitting, and then the corridor unraveling into ashen light.

You had half expected Vessel to appear, six eyes brimming with that awfully soft devotion, mouth full of obedience and chains disguised as blessings. You waited for II to crawl out of the garden soil, trimming your disobedience as easily as he pruned his vines.

But no one came. No one stopped you. Perhaps because III moved like this was his absolution to grant, and his alone. The shadows parted for him. The fog coiled his ankles like an old lover, remembering the taste of his teeth. The forest leaned forward as if III was its spoiled son, its child in a monster’s body and this playground was his domain.

And you, gods, you didn’t want to see Vessel. Not here. Not outside. Not with the echo of his words still clinging like cobwebs to your ribs. You remembered the way his deep voice had wrapped around you when you first woke in this place, that quiet mercy, saying you were free to leave the building. You remembered the very thing he had left unsaid. Free, but never free of consequence, right? Free, but only in the way a moth is free to throw itself into flame. The thought prickled under your skin even as you followed III farther from the cathedral, your mind whispering the truth you didn’t want to admit.

That Vessel wouldn’t approve.

And you shouldn’t care. You fucking shouldn’t.

But somehow, you did.

Outside, the forest pulled around you like no weather ever could, not as sky or season, but as an interior, a place you entered rather than traversed. It pressed around you like ribs. Like the first time you woke within its cage of bone. A tomb, yes. Or, more like a womb. It greeted you the same way it had the day you first opened your eyes in it. With silence. With breath. With nothing. The deeper you went, the more the cathedral disappeared behind the grey fog, until it became nothing more than a dream whispered in another life.

There was no wind. No birds. No chatter of life to prove the world was turning. Only the fog brushing soft against your skin and the sound of breath. Yours. III’s. And a third, uncountable exhale that came from everywhere at once. The air vibrated with it. A gaze without eyes, the sensation of being read from behind the skull. The same suffocating presence as the cathedral walls, only here it filled the whole horizon. Sleep. A pressure more suggestion than touch, an invisible weight laid across your spine. You tried to ignore the sensation that the forest itself was watching. That it knew you were here.

Maybe it was Him.

Maybe it was madness.

Maybe there was no one behind you. Maybe there was. Maybe this was what losing your mind really meant, realising the line between Him and your own thoughts was never really there at all. Vessel had asked you, back in the bathroom, what difference it would make to know.

Perhaps he had been right.

You didn’t have to be sane to be dangerous. You didn’t have to be sane to be efficient.

You only had to be sure.

And you were sure. You told yourself so, over and over, until it sounded like prayer. Because you were a good person. Good people lie when they must. Good people manipulate monsters when no other tools are given. Good people survive. And you, cornered, furious and stripped of softness, you were surviving. Using them. Using III. Using every filthy chance this world offered until you found her. The three-headed woman. Your past self. Your only compass and your only proof the dream you had seen wasn’t just rot in your brain. Nothing else mattered right now. Not your captors, not their god, not the gnawing fear of losing your mind.

For a second, the thought steadied you.

The ground gave under your boots like rotten fruit, plush and indecent, as if each step pressed into organs left too long without burial. The air reeked of ash, of wet metal, of ruined florals left too long on stone statues and ruined buildings, sugar drowned in dirt, sweetened into rot.

Countless trees emerged from the fog like monuments, gestures stretched heavenward not in hunger but in grievance. Grey trunks veined with silver scars, as though they had once been carved into and refused to heal. Their leaves hung like dried tongues, magenta ovals withered and brittle, not stirring, not sighing. There was no breeze to stir them anyway. Beneath the weeds, the moss and the flowers, the ground broke open into pale roads. Polished ivory tiles, clean and perfect as teeth, unmarred by moss or soil. They twisted outward in all directions, too precise, too symmetrical, the geometry of obsession.

The geometry of a god.

You remembered waking here the first time, how your body had wanted to follow them, how they seemed to promise direction. Now every step upon them felt like trespass, like walking the spine of a corpse that had dreamed itself divine. Every step was a prayer and a defilement all at once. As if you were walking not through His world but across His body.

Across the bones of Sleep Himself.

“Where do these go?” you asked, breath snagging behind your teeth as your gaze followed one of the pale roads vanishing between tall columns strangled in dead vines.

III didn’t answer.

No joke, no grin.

He moved through the quiet as if he wore it, like a coat stolen from a corpse, tailored in grief. That unsettled you more than his manic joy ever had. Silence wasn’t his costume, wasn’t his game. You realised then how long you had been walking without a word between you. It wasn’t like him. III lived to fill the air, to turn silence into theatre, to whistle and taunt. Yet now, nothing. No humming. No cruelty. No words. Just silence, the kind that pressed at your ears until you couldn’t tell if you wanted to lean closer to it or run from it.

It prickled your skin raw.

You tried to ignore it. Tried to swallow down the iron weight in your gut, to scrape your focus across the forest instead, searching for any sign of the river from your dream. The banks. The black grass. Anything to prove that vision had been more than a fever. But all you found was the grip of wrongness pressing against your ribs, that gnawing certainty that something here was off. As if the more you searched, the less you saw. As if the forest had been swallowing you by degrees and you hadn’t realised how deep you had gone.

“III,” you tried again. “Where are we going?”

Suddenly, III bent at the waist and plucked something from the damp earth. A pinkish flower with petals shaped like delicate hearts, too soft for this goddamn graveyard world, obscene in their beauty. He twirled it between his long fingers once, then slipped it into the inside of his coat, a shrine of madness pressed against his ribs.

He didn’t even glance at you.

“I don’t know.”

You frowned, sweat slicking your palms as you flexed your fingers. “That’s… comforting.”

He straightened, and his eyes flicked to you, quick as a moth, gone as soon as they landed. “I go where Sleep leads me.”

“Are you messing with me?”

“No.” His reply came mild, stripped bare of all his usual giddy sharpness, and that lack made it worse. The seriousness was alien on him, heavier than any mask. “The secret is not wanting to arrive anywhere. Just walk. Believe Sleep’ll guide you back, and He will.”

Your heart hitched against your ribs. “And if He doesn’t?”

His mask tilted. “Then you disappear in His teeth.”

You slowed without realising.

Back in his room, you had been all spit and fury, and he had been awfully delighted, drunk on it, feeding off it like a stage actor basking in applause. Now that mask had been folded away. And the absence of theatre was worse than the theatre. Something was wrong with III. You had seen it already, felt it even when you were too angry to name it, but only now, in the hush between the trees, did you notice how good he had been at hiding it. Had the voices told him something? Had Sleep Himself? Did III dream the way you did?

Whatever it was, you didn’t like it.

“Does He… you know, always lead you back?”

III’s head turned just enough for the grin to show under the mask, then turned away again. No answer. That’s when the wrongness really bit. It started low in your belly, twisting, like fruit gone bad turning inside out. You glanced behind your shoulder again, swallowing air as if it was water. Gods, you were completely alone with him. No Vessel to intervene, no II to loom, no IV to steady. No one to stop him if his mania resurfaced.

The question was, would he hurt you?

You looked at him more closely, and it hit you. III was excited. Excited like a child who has already chosen the bug he is going to pull apart. Was this why he had been so eager to leave? Did he think you wanted to kill him and wanted to beat you to it and kill you first? To finish what you had started, away from the others, so no one could intervene?

“III,” you tried carefully. “What—what are you thinking about?”

He giggled, just a breath, a sound small enough to fit between your ribs.

He stopped walking.

You stopped too.

You and him stopped by a ruin, where a half-collapsed statue showed an angel and a woman locked in combat with some tentacled monster riddled with eyes. Time had chewed most of it away, one of the angel’s arms gone, half the beast’s head sheared clean off, leaving the scene half-finished and half-forgotten. The longer you stared at it, the more the figures seemed less frozen than waiting. But what were they waiting for? You let out a slow breath through your teeth, the silence pressing too close, making your skin itch. If even angels could be defeated here, what chance did you have against someone like III?

III hummed, his voice slipping out low, a drawl thinned into something nearer hunger than humour. “Ugly fucking thing, isn’t it? Doesn’t matter how righteous you look with a sword in your hand. You’ll still end up missing an arm. Statues, gods, lovers. Here everyone wants to see how long a pretty thing lasts before it crumbles.”

You looked at him sidelong, unsettled.

“Is that what you’re doing with me?”

“Am I?” His head tilted further, like he was weighing whether to step closer or simply enjoy the alarming distance. “You came out on your own, didn’t you? Asked for it. Fucking begged me, near enough. Makes you wonder who’s keeping score, huh?”

The statue loomed over you both, monstrous even in its disrepair. You pressed your hands to your thighs to keep them from trembling. “I asked you to take me to the forest, not—”

“Not what?” He cut in, sharp as glass. 

III turned to face you, one hand still buried in his pocket. You thought of the knives from his room, the memory of them making your stomach slide downward. You stepped back without meaning to. This wasn’t the III you had gotten used to. This one stood still, balanced on some unknown decision. Ironically, it was the most sane you had ever seen him.

Why was he looking at you like that?

“I told you once,” he muttered, his voice steady, almost bored with the truth of it. “The only ones to trust here are us. We only have each other, after all.” His sharp eyes flicked in the slits of the mask. “Yeah, bargains are a bitch but I still fucking hate being lied to.”

Your mouth dried to salt. Shit.

“You’ve yet to give me your part, right?”

He hadn’t called you pet. He hadn’t called you lamb. No soft knives now, no velvet over the steel. His seriousness coated your tongue with the taste of iron, metallic and inevitable, and something small inside your chest cowered like a beaten hound remembering the collar. You licked your lip, nervous, your gaze skittering anywhere but his, desperate for escape where there was none. Did he know? Had he seen through you so easily, caught the impulse behind your words that meant to trick him without paying the price? How could he know, and worse, how long had he been waiting for you to realise that he did?

“I’m not—”

III stepped forward, cutting your lie in half before it could leave your lips. You stepped back once again, staring at him. His throat bobbed with that awful, patient curiosity, the posture of something deciding where to start biting.

“I know you lied,” III spread his hands just wide enough for you to notice he was denying you the sight of what they might hold under his coat. “I won’t walk you back until you learn how to tell the truth. Seems fair, right?”

You shivered. “I—I don’t know what—”

“Tell me why we’re here. Tell me or I cut out your tongue,” he added pleasantly. “Keeps you from lying to me ever again, yeah?”

Cold gathered in your ribs, lifting each breath with a tremor.

Should you tell him? But the dream at the sea had warned you to keep it secret, that whatever they knew, Sleep would know too. Should you risk another lie? But what would III do if he caught you lying again? What could you even say then?

Your lungs tightened until the forest itself seemed to tilt, vision fracturing into flashes of his fingers forcing your jaw open, your tongue severed and discarded and no one to stop it. You cursed yourself for carelessness. You should have listened to your instincts. You should have gone to IV. Now it was only you, and III, and the teeth of Sleep waiting in every shadow.

He hummed low, a sound like a blade dragged under water, and closed the distance in a few lazy steps. You staggered back until the tree bark pressed cold and unyielding between your shoulders, a hand that would not let you flee. III leaned his weight into his posture without touching you, and yet you felt it anyway, the heat of him, the calculation, the warning.

The air between you thinned to a thread.

“No use playing if you cheat,” he muttered. “But see, I’m a good brother. Giving you another chance, yeah? A truth for a favour. So tell me, why the fuck did you want to come here?” His voice had gone quiet, and there was something nasty in the softness, like velvet moulding in a locked room. “It’s quite good, that tongue. No fucking sense wasting it if you can learn to use it properly. Would be a shame, right?”

Your pulse lurched, a rabbit slamming itself against its own ribs. You watched him the way you watch waves when the sea remembers the storm on the horizon.

The fog coiled higher around your legs, a cold leash winding up your calves. Damp climbed your spine like a wet finger dragging vertebra by vertebra, leaving a smear of chill that made your skin crawl. Your skull buzzed with panic, thoughts splintering, trying to stitch together something, anything really, that could pass for truth without cutting too close to your secret. But every thread you grasped failed you. Was there even an answer that wouldn’t damn you? Or had he brought you here for this very moment, to corner you in the teeth of the forest, to watch you stumble, to savour it and kill you in the end?

III flattened his palm on the tree beside your head and leaned in. Not touching you, not yet, but the space between you collapsed.

He was close enough that the polished scent of his coat hit the back of your mouth, making your throat tighten. Close enough to count the tiny scuffs in the black paint of his forearm and imagine what made them. You hated being this close to him. It made your skin prickle and your belly twist, hot in the wrong places, nausea braided with something worse. It was the wrong kind of warmth, the kind that blooms when disgust and desire share the same nerve.

You looked up at him from under your lashes, his towering height forcing your head back until your neck ached. His blue eyes glimmered in the slits like beautiful and bright traps, keeping you in place. For a breath, nothing moved, as if the world were waiting to see who would flinch first.

“Go on, V,” he said at last, and the endearment was ash. “Make it worth the mercy. You’ve an excellent mouth for honesty when you try.”

He had never called you V before. Hearing it now felt like a brand pressed to your skin. More warning than threat. A promise of what he would take if you lied again.

Your tongue felt heavy.

The dream’s warning scraped its claws along your skull, whispering don’t tell him, don’t tell him, don’t tell him. However, your body valued itself too much to risk a piece of it on a gamble with his hunger. You could still choose which piece of yourself to offer up, which to keep. The dream had told you to guard the secret, but those fucking dreams didn’t pay the price of your tongue. So you steadied your breath. Let the tree bark bite your shoulders. Counted in your head, one, two, three, four, five, like a child lowering herself into winter water. You began to decide which fragment of the truth you would feed to the wolf.

“Okay,” you breathed, hiding the tremor from your voice as if it might iron the temper from him. He looked perfectly steady, no manic gleam, no giddy playfulness, only that unreadable blue and the leisure of a monster who already knows the field is his either way. “I wanted to come out here because I had a—I had a  dream,” you muttered, blinking up at him, your heart beating against your ribs like it wanted to bolt and leave you to sort the mess.

You paused, hoping that would be enough. III tilted his head in that theatrical, birdlike way again. Not enough. So you continued.

“In my dreams,” you whispered, blinking up at him, “I saw that… thing. You know, the one you—” your mouth caught around the word and decided on a cleaner one, “—the one you beheaded during the ritual. I saw her and she told me to—I mean, she wanted me to come to the forest and—uhm, and find a river.”

There it was, a mouthful of truth with the stones picked out.

But was it worth a tongue?

The silence tasted sharp as you waited.

Your breath trembled in your throat as III’s gaze slid off you and back again, measuring. His muscles twitched under the heavy red of his coat as he sighed, deep and strange, head tipped like he was listening to something that wasn’t there. His breath fanned across your face, too warm, too close, and your body betrayed you with a shiver. What was he thinking about? Did you just confirm a suspicion already circling him, or had you fed him something poisonous without knowing it?

Then, at last, he shook his head and pushed off the tree. The soft sound of bark peeling from bark scraped the air, and only then did you realise you had been holding your breath. It left you in a single violent exhale. Your neck was damp. Sweat slid down the hollow of your throat as you rubbed at it, reminding yourself you had nearly lost your tongue.

“Fucking foolish,” he muttered, voice pitched in that spoiled, condescending drawl. “Trusting a dream in the realm of a god named Sleep.” He raised his brows under his mask as if your idiocy fascinated him. “Did it never cross your genius mind that Sleep might be scripting the whole bloody thing? Moving you like a piece? Walk here, speak that, look left, all that shit to make you useful. You daft fucking idiot.”

“I can tell what’s real,” you snapped. “And what’s not.”

He rocked back on his heels, that infuriating little sway that made you want to push him to the ground to stop the movement. “Are you sure?” he asked. Not cruel, worse, indulgent, as if humouring a child. “How do you know you’re not dreaming right now?”

Your arms folded across your chest before you thought about it, as if bracing your ribs from the inside. He sounded like Vessel when he said things like that, when he unhooked certainty from its moorings and watched you drift away from the shore. Making you doubt the seams of your own mind. You refused to give him the dignity of an answer.

“Do you know where the river is?” you asked instead.

He hummed, a vibration that crawled down his ribs and seemed to echo in your own spine, like an insect crawling under skin. “What kind of dreams do you usually have?”

Your lips pressed together until they whitened.

You fucking piece of shit.

The bark at your back felt like a thousand palms, rough and slick, clutching your shirt. Every beat of silence pressed you harder against it. So the game was still going. You could feel the chopping block under the conversation, the groove worn by other necks. Ignoring him made III huff, a sound almost playful but sharpened by the migraine drilling into your skull. It was like your mind had been turned inside out and stitched wrong, seams left on the surface for the fog to finger and worry at.

Somewhere in the distance, or maybe in your own head, water dripped. Drip, drip, drip. Like blood in a bowl. It had followed you here like a hound.

III gave a small nod, but it was to himself, not to you.

He tilted his head up to the ancient canopies, too graceful for a man, too absurd for anything else, comical and sacred at once. A stalemate had risen between you. Neither of you trusted the other. Both of you pretended you might. Your thoughts raced in broken circles. Did the others notice you missing yet? Would they come looking, or leave you here to vanish?

And then, slowly, the familiar III crept back into him, the one your body recognised against your will. The twitch of his fingers, the neat snap of his neck, the restless sweep of his gaze over you, your throat, your hands, your mouth, back to your eyes. Unless that, too, was just another performance. And that was the worst of it, you no longer knew where his pretending ended, and III as a person began.

A branch snapped behind you.

You whipped your head around, mouth open, breath snagging. There was no one there. Of course there wasn’t. III didn’t turn. The sound hadn’t bothered him. He watched you instead, patient as a cat, long fingers tucked into his pockets, rocking on his heels.

The dripping began again.

Didn’t he hear it too? You didn’t dare ask. It had followed you out here, whispering down your spine, drip, drip, drip, as if the cathedral had dragged its walls after you into the forest.

Gods, you hated this place. You hated the way it turned your nerves into strings for something else to pluck. You hated these disgusting creatures. And you hated yourself for hating them so hard it made your teeth ache. You wanted it all to be over. Wanted III to stop playing, for once in his godforsaken life, and simply show you where the river was. No bargains. No hooks hidden in honey. Just the truth. But the sound pressed into you until it forced speech, until cruelty felt like the only thing that could smother it.

You tilted your head against the tree, voice sharp enough to cut your own tongue. “You’ve got nothing I’d want, freak. My dreams are none of your damn business. You’ve got nothing valuable enough for that anyway.”

“Oh, try me, pet,” he hummed, chuckling. He stepped in with the confidence of someone who expects people to part for him like water. But you slid out of reach, and his hand found air.

You licked your lip, thinking. “Take off your mask. Do that, and I’ll tell you.”

III froze.

It was immediate and unnatural, as though some unseen hand had driven a blade between his spine and pinned him upright. His arms fell limp at his sides. For a heartbeat the forest itself seemed to hold its breath, and you watched him, not with triumph, but with something fouler. A sick kind of satisfaction curdled in your gut. You had silenced him. You had made him still. Coward, you thought. He would never dare do that, not with Sleep watching. None of them would. They were beasts on leashes, terrified of their master’s hand, every last one. You were disgusted by their servility, by their fucking weakness. They made you sick.

You didn’t even wait for an answer. 

You stepped past III before the moment could break. Your fingers brushed the hem of his embroidered coat, the fabric cold under your hand. Your breath came shallow, then steadied, each exhale like testing ice that might crack beneath you. You didn’t look back. You didn’t want to see his face. But you felt the air shift, the weight of his body turning, following, the tremor in the silence that meant the danger had only paused, not ended. Five steps. That was all you managed before he moved.

His hand snatched your wrist with the precision of a trap springing shut. The grip was cruel, tight enough to bruise. You shrieked as he yanked you back, crashing back into him, spun like a ragdoll until your chest hit his with a force that stole your breath. You pushed against him, palms flat, desperate, shoving at his chest, but he didn’t yield. III was lean, yes, but there was strength under his madness, and now that iron was pressed into your bones as his face dipped close. Eyes burned down into you, stripped of theatre, stripped of joy. There was no play left in them, no mischief, no boyish cruelty.

Only a terrifying stillness.

“You think that’s funny?” he whispered. “Asking that?”

You tried to speak and found your mouth sewn shut by terror as if a hand had already closed around it. The air caught in your chest, beating uselessly against your ribs like a trapped bird. Your heart slammed so hard it felt like it might tear free and throw itself into the grey grass. And then, unexpectedly, he let go of you. His fingers slipped from your hand as if discarding something filthy, and instead they rose to his mask.

What was he doing?

Your stomach dropped as if the ground had opened beneath you. “What are you—” It came out a rasp, broke on the last word. “No. No, no, no—III, don’t—”

You had expected everything but this.

Mockery, threats, a laugh cut from his throat like a blade, but not this. The world shifted with his movement and somehow, the whispers spoke again. At first in your ears. Then under your skin. Then in the flesh of you, threading themselves through your veins.

“You don’t want this, V. But you begged. You begged us to peel your eyes open. He will show you now. And you will never forget. Oh, it will drive you mad. Look at him. No, look away. Tear the skin from your face if you must, but see. Take it. Take it. Swallow it. Choke on it.” 

You trembled, not from cold, not even from fear, but from the dreadful certainty of knowing. Something sacred was about to break.

Something that should have stayed hidden. Something not meant for your eyes. From the cracked statue behind you, the tentacled beast’s countless eyes turned in their stone sockets, the lids peeling back to watch.

III’s fingers unclasped the first strap.

“No!”

You lunged without thinking, your body moving on its own, your mind screaming a hundred contradictory prayers, panic seizing you. One hand caught his wrist, bony and warm, tendons taut like cables under skin. The other slammed over the mask, pinning it to his face.

“Don’t,” you whined. “Don’t do it. Please, I was just—I didn’t mean it—” You were begging now. You didn’t care how it sounded. You didn’t care how it looked. Terror had stripped you bare, raw as the first breath after drowning. “Sleep will punish you, you know He will!”

Under your fingers, the muscle in his forearm tensed. You could feel the decision gather in III like a storm massing on the horizon. You looked up through the mask’s eyeholes, hunting for some flicker of change. And for the first time, you saw him. Not the mask.

Just him.

And it scared you more than anything you had ever seen. Your hands trembled against the hard planes of the mask, lips parted, but the words had vanished. Only a low hum remained in your bones, and the haunting whispers rose and fell around your ribs like a tide. III’s voice, when it came, was so quiet you could believe you had imagined it.

“Sleep already punishes me,” he said. “Every day I wake. Every hour I breathe.”

“No—” your fingers tightened around his wrist, frantic but useless. “Please—”

He unclasped the second strap.

And the mask came free.

Everything went dead. Not silent but dead. The kind of stillness older than sound, older than breath, the silence before the first scream. The pressure bled out of your skull. The dripping stopped. Even the whispers, those parasites coiled around your ribs, gone. Their absence was worse than their gnawing. It clawed at your skull, hollowing it out. For a heartbeat the only sound left in the universe was your own blood hammering in your ears, slow and enormous, a red drum beaten in some distant cavern.

And then you saw him.

The mask slid from III’s face with a sound too soft for what it truly meant. You wished it had shattered. Wished it had split into a thousand shards and cut his hands so he could never wear it again. But it didn’t. He held it. Cradled it. And you whimpered, involuntary, cracked loose from the deepest part of you the way a bone gives under pressure. Like your soul recognised something your mind hadn’t yet named. Because this was wrong. Oh, wrong, all wrong. Fear, pure as instinct. Fire remembered by an animal that has never seen flames.Your body knew it. Some feral part of you was already trying to back away, teeth bared without thinking.

Had this happened before?

Had another version of you already been burned for this, some other incarnation punished for the crime of seeing? Was this terror written into the marrow of you so you would never forget the cost of disobedience? Or were you just worried for III and what Sleep would do to him for showing you his face? You didn’t know. You knew nothing anymore.

Your hands flew to your face.

Your eyes clamped shut.

Your breath came in wet and panicked gasps, your body folding inward like paper curling in a fire. “No, put it back,” you begged, the words cracking like a child’s voice caught in an adult throat. “Put it back, please, put it back—Sleep will see—He’ll see and He’ll punish you—”

Your fingers found him without meaning to.

His coat, his shoulder, nails digging through fabric like claws sinking into flesh. You buried your face against him, not to comfort, not to touch, but to hide. To vanish. To crawl out of the moment before it devoured you. You didn’t even realise you had crossed the distance of your own free will. Your cheek pressed to his shirt like a confession you hadn’t meant to make.

Your voice was not your own.

Perhaps it never had been. Had it always been borrowed, reshaped by the hands that fed and bound you? Because the sound that left your lips was too thin and too haunted, threaded with something unfamiliar that didn’t belong to you. The whispers had returned, but not from the trees, not from the fog, not from the walls, they came crawling out of your mouth.

“I have to see her,” you murmured, words spilling like blood from a cut you hadn’t meant to make. “She’s waiting by the river, III. I’ll… turn into her if I don’t go—I’ll be dragged back down, under the surface, into the deep, into the cold, into nothing. I don’t want to die again. Please, I don’t want to come back here again, I can’t—”

Your body shook against him.

The ritual had already split you open once, skull cracked like a chest of drawers forced wide, and now this moment slid into the hollow space inside you. It was the weight of every past self pressing into your soul at once, suffocating and skeletal, filling you until you felt both swollen and empty, overrun and starved. You couldn’t bear it. You couldn’t survive it again.

Not again.

And then III’s hand was in your hair again.

A familiar violation. Long fingers threading through with a force that was neither tender nor cruel, but something worse. Possessive. Like a muscle memory of his that your body hated for recognising. You had felt this before, in nightmares, in lives that weren’t yours. Heat and nausea rose together, a fever behind your ribs. Then he pulled, but not viciously, not yet. Just strong enough to remind you who commanded this very moment. Your head snapped back as your face dragged up from his chest, breath caught in your throat like a bird in a child’s fist. Your eyes clamped shut, refusing him.

Refusing to see him.

Your lips peeled back in a grimace that was half plea, half curse. “Please,” you whispered, the word cracking as it left you. “Just—put it back. Please, put it back—”

III laughed then, and you hated that it was beautiful. Unfiltered without the mask, his voice was bare, smooth and cutting as obsidian.

“You’re perfect,” he murmured. The syllables slithered against your skin, made you shiver so violently you thought your bones might rattle apart. He leaned close, his breath brushing your cheek, warm where the world had gone dead. “Oh, Ves could never appreciate someone like you. Not the way I do. He’s rotting in the past, and he’ll die there, chained to her. But you—” His words sharpened, deliberate, intimate as a knife pressed to the skin of your throat. “II was fucking right. You’re nothing like her, yeah? That’s what makes you better than Eden.”

A whimper broke from you, thin and helpless.

A whimper cracked out of you, high and strangled. His hand tightened in your hair, subtle but undeniable, a leash woven from flesh and intent.

“I think—” he whispered, “I think you’re my punishment.”

Something broke inside you. Low in your gut. A string that had been pulled too tight for too long.

“I don’t want this,” you breathed, soft as prayer. But it wasn’t true. Not fully. Not anymore.

“Open your eyes,” he said.

You shook your head.

He didn’t ask again. He commanded.

“Open your eyes, V.”

His hand held fast, iron woven into flesh, pulling you taut. Your pulse convulsed against your throat, your limbs trembled with revolt, and still you obeyed.

Your eyes opened.

And there he was. III. Bare. And he looked—

Human.

That was the worst part.

Not a beast. Not some faceless parasite spun out of nightmare. Just a man. Horribly and beautifully ordinary. Pale skin, ink curling like scripture down his throat, across the line of his jaw, vanishing into the dark mouth of his shirt. Perfectly mortal features, carved not by gods but by flesh, and it broke something fragile in you to see that. To see the cruelty that had scarred you, mocked you, hunted you, wearing such a human face. Your grip slackened against his coat, your body sagging into the cage of his hand. Because how could a man look so human, and still be this monstrous? His features were unmistakably mortal, the sort of face you could have passed in a crowd, forgotten, except there was no forgetting him.

But his eyes, those were still his.

No madness in them now, no manic glimmer. Something colder. A darkness deeper than lust, more binding than devotion, a claim carved in a language older than words.

And he smiled.

“Told you we’d see each other again.”

You blinked, disoriented. “What are you—what are you talking about—?”

He didn’t answer.

Instead, he pulled you in.

And then his mouth crashed onto yours. But it wasn’t a kiss. It was a claim, a conquer and it was violent and merciless. Your teeth knocked together, pain instantly sparking white in your skull. You whimpered into his mouth, a muffled sound, as his grip in your hair tightened until your scalp burned. His other hand found your waist, yanking you forward with such brutal need it felt as if he wanted to carve you out of yourself and wear you under his skin.

You should have fought. But you didn’t.

Your body betrayed you.

It kissed him back. Like muscle memory older than your bones. Like a hunger stored in your marrow, awakened. Like your lips had known this once, somewhere, centuries ago, in another version of yourself. The cold void that had gnawed at you since the ritual, that hollow behind your ribs where fear and grief had lived, filled. Heat surged up your spine, lit your veins, curled down into your fingertips as they clawed into his shirt like they had always belonged there. And for the first time since the ritual, you felt whole.

His kiss wasn’t kind.

III didn’t know how to be kind.

III kissed like war, like it was a punishment and a reward at once. His lips forced yours open, shoving breath into you as if he could replace the air in your lungs with himself. He kissed like he wanted to consume you, to chew the soul from your body, to swallow every scream and keep it for his own. You gasped and he inhaled it, like a dying man gulping one last final breath or a starving one tasting flesh he had waited a lifetime for.

You were fire and ash in his hands, a ruin he wanted to cradle and crush at once. His kiss was desperate, twitching with something broken, as if the man of who he had been tangled with the creature he was now. As if every bloody path that had ever led him here had been written for this kiss, this devouring, this madness.

And gods help you, you let him.

Because it wasn’t just you kissing III back.

Mouths that weren’t yours remembering him. Tongues that weren’t yours tasting him. Fingers that weren’t yours clawing at his clothes. All of you aching for him as though you had always been his to claim. The weight of every lifetime pressed behind your lips, and it was almost unbearable. It was like being drowned in your own history, each version of you pulling at the thread of the kiss, desperate, starving and furious.

Then you heard a voice.

Not in the forest. Not in the ruin. In your ear. In your head. In your own mouth before it left your tongue. Your voice, but somehow not. It was whispering like water through stone, soft and slick, bringing with it the clarity of fever.

“You’re close,” it hissed. “She’s waiting. The water is warm. You’re so close.”

The kiss broke with a wet, stunned sound. Your lips parted like a wound splitting. Breath tore ragged from your lungs. Your chest heaved as if trying to climb out of itself.

“I heard something,” you gasped. “Did you hear it?”

III blinked. Dazed. His eyes half-lidded, his jaw slack as though still tasting you. The faintest flicker of irritation ghosted across his bare face. “Heard what?”

But you were already pulling away, your hand slipping from his. And he let you. That startled you more than his hands ever had. His compliance was a trap with no teeth, and somehow it cut deeper. Your fingers trembled. Your lips burned. And beneath your skin, a thread had been knotted, something invisible binding your heart to his palm, his teeth, his breath.

You didn’t look back.

“Come on,” you rasped, voice hoarse, not to him, not even to yourself, but to the phantom voice still dripping in your ear.

Behind you, III groaned low, the sound of an animal waking. Fabric whispered. You knew without turning that he was putting the mask back on. Reclaiming the thing you were never supposed to see. But you didn’t watch.

You couldn’t.

Your cheeks were burning as you moved, no, fled, towards the echo ringing in your skull like a bell tolling from some forgotten steeple. The forest blurred around you, trees warped into leering shapes, their barks peeling like old scabs, grey branches arching overhead like brittle ribs trying to trap you inside a lung. But you didn’t stop.

You couldn’t.

Something was pulsing inside you, something wrong. The kiss clung to your mouth like a fever you couldn’t sweat out. Your mind snarled with red static, your body felt scooped out and filled with oil and fire. You didn’t know what was happening to you, not really. You didn’t even want to think about it. You didn’t want to think about what you had done. What you had wanted. What you had let happen.

You wiped your forehead with the back of your hand. It was soaked.

Heat prickled under your skin as if something was boiling alive in your veins. Your stomach turned and your breath quickened. Gods, you were going to be sick. And still, you walked. Behind you, you heard III, his voice slicing through the fog, strained, calling your name. He was calling you pet again instead of V.

But you didn’t stop.

You didn’t look at him. You couldn’t.

The memory of the kiss burned itself into your mind like a scar. His lips. His hands. His face, the one you were never meant to see. The things he had said. The way he had looked at you. The way you had looked back. How your body had betrayed you, every ounce of common fucking sense collapsing into a single reckless breath. How you had let him claim you, kiss you, touch you, own you, if only for a heartbeat’s worth of godless eternity.

And that was the worst part, wasn’t it?

That you had kissed him back.

You hadn’t even hesitated. You had moaned into the mouth of Sleep’s most unhinged vessel like a damned fool with stars behind her fucking eyes. You had let your hands wander, your tongue press back against his, the taste of him fill your mouth. And you had seen his face. Gods above, you had seen his face. He should have killed you for that. Sleep should have. But he hadn’t.

And that, somehow, was worse.

You nearly jumped when III appeared beside you. He seemed to rise out of the fog rather than walk through it. One moment there was only the ache of your own footsteps and the pulse in your ears, the next he was beside you, his presence sliding along your skin like a shadow that had learned to breathe. His steps matched yours, heavy and deliberate, though his legs were longer and could have swallowed the ground twice as fast.

When you risked a glance at him you almost wished you hadn’t. The mask was back on, but the man inside it had shifted. His shoulders were wound tight as wire. His neck stiff. His head tilted at an unnatural angle, just enough to tell you that whatever he carried inside had grown new teeth. And he was watching you. Not the casual watchfulness of a predator that already knows its odds. This was a new kind of focus.

“You still haven’t told me,” he said at last, his voice flat and hollow, scraped clean of its usual music. “What you’re really looking for.”

Your mouth opened. Closed again.

Right.

That was the deal. That was the price. He had shown you his face. You owed him the truth now. He more than earned it. When the memory of his mouth flickered behind your eyes you felt your stomach turn, your pulse go brittle. You shook your head like an animal trying to rid itself of a scent. You exhaled through your nose, long and sharp, trying to steady yourself, listening for her voice, the one that had followed you out of dreams.

You saw a slope of jagged rock slick with moss and bonedust, worn down by something older than footsteps. And beside it was a statue, cracked and rotting, leaning as if exhausted by the weight of its own existence. It looked almost like Vessel, but its face was melted, scraped off by some divine cruelty until it resembled only a mask of absence. 

You didn’t stop to question it.

“I keep seeing her,” you said suddenly, your voice spilling out like a confession you had been choking on. “The three-headed woman. Over and over in my sleep. I think—I think someone is trying to tell me something. Through her, I mean. Like a—you know, a message from the past. As if she was me, trying to guide me to that fucking river. I keep seeing water. Does that make sense? What does it mean? Do you know, III?”

III snorted beside you.

“Bollocks,” he muttered. “You’re chasing ghosts. We should head back.”

But you weren’t listening.

Because just then you saw her.

She drifted between two crooked trees, long bony limbs vanishing between the grey bark like a spider folding itself into a crack. She had two heads now, not three. Where the third had been was only rot and ruin, broken bone, raw flesh, a bruise of strange discolouration.

Your gut twisted.

Your breath caught, lodged like a shard of ice behind your sternum. Your fingers shot out, clutching III’s upper arm so violently he stumbled, hissing through his teeth. He opened his mouth, maybe to curse, maybe to laugh, but then he followed your gaze. And he saw her too. His posture changed. Rigid. Defensive. But not surprised, no. Just irritated.

“Fucking marvellous,” he muttered, dragging his hand down the mask as though to smear the sight away.

You didn’t wait. Instinct moved faster than thought. You seized his hand, lacing your fingers with his before he could protest, and you ran.

“Wait—” you called, your voice echoing across the fog. “Wait—don’t go, I’m here—”

She didn’t vanish. She stepped out.

And she screamed.

It was not a sound but a force, something that wasn’t built for human ears. It was a shriek that cracked through you like a chisel splitting a skull. It rattled the meat of your thoughts, shook your teeth in their sockets. Shadows shaped like birds burst upward from nowhere, scattering in patterns that had no wings. You screamed too, but yours came out thin, shredded, human.

She came at you like a godless mother tearing down a church.

“Why did you bring him?” she howled.

You spun toward III, confused, mouth already shaping the question but she was on you first. Fingers like tree roots, wet and knotted, skin like rotted cloth dragged from a river. She tore you out of III’s reach as if you weighed nothing. You flailed backward, arms reaching for him blindly, but he was already too far, too late, while her third arm, hidden until now, shot out like a striking eel and closed around your throat. You gagged as your feet left the ground, toes scrabbled against the stone, scraping at nothing. Her grip was iron and cold, her skin slick as though she had just crawled from the black water of your dreams. The two remaining heads turned toward you in perfect unison, rags clotted where eyes should have been.

“You’re filth,” she spat.

Your voice came out as a choke.

“The trees told me,” she hissed. “They giggled when he kissed you. It made Him happy. It made Sleep happy.”

Your heart dropped through your stomach.

“I saw it,” she whispered, leaning so close you could smell the river’s rot in her breath. “I saw what he did. I saw what you did. You let him contaminate you with his filthy mouth.”

Your legs kicked weakly beneath you.