Page 28 of The Flesh Remembers
It began little by little. She felt something different, but Eleanor initially tried to ignore it. She tried to continue with the pretence of normalcy, but with each passing day, it grew harder and harder to ignore what was happening.
Her hand would pick up her hairbrush just a second before she decided to brush her hair. Her lips would say a word in a language she did not know, but somehow, she could understand it. And then there was the mirror.
She hadn’t looked in a mirror since she left the clinic. Not properly.
But here she was, staring at herself in the full-length mirror in the corner. She usually draped one of her shawls over it to avoid seeing her reflection, but the shawl was nowhere to be seen tonight.
Her body moved, and her voice still came when called, but everything felt distant, like her limbs belonged to someone else, like she was a passenger in a skin that still remembered how to behave.
Now, standing in the dim quiet of her quarters, she felt the urge crawl up her spine.
Look.
Just look.
She turned toward the mirror. The room behind her was bathed in candlelight. But the mirror, something about it, seemed darker, duller, as if it didn’t reflect light the same way anymore.
She took one hesitant step. The floorboards didn’t creak. Her reflection waited. Still. Patient.
Eleanor stopped three paces away. Her breath was shallow and sharp in her chest. A drop of sweat slid down her temple. She balled her fists, clutching them close to her heart to stop them from violently shaking.
And in the mirror, her reflection… didn’t.
She blinked. It did not. Only a second later, as if remembering it should. Her stomach dropped.
The candles to her left flickered, twisting toward her like they’d caught a draft, but there was no wind. She took another step closer.
The mirror offered her back. Same face, same body, same burn mark beneath the collarbone. But something about the eyes was too still, too aware, like something inside them had stopped pretending to be her.
She whispered, “I’m still me.”
The reflection blinked, on time, this time, but the corner of its mouth twitched. A smile. Subtle. Almost indulgent.
Eleanor clenched her fingers so tightly that her nails cut into her palm. The mirror version of her relaxed its fingers. It was not copying. It was choosing.
Eleanor bit down on the tender flesh of her cheek to keep from screaming. Then, very softly, her reflection lifted its hand. She hadn't moved. She was frozen. But in the mirror, her hand rose slowly, tenderly, as if offering comfort or mockery. The fingers touched the glass from the inside—not her hand, but theirs.
She took one step back. The reflection didn’t follow. It stayed, hand pressed to the mirror, mouth parted, like it was about to say something. Like it was remembering what it used to be. Or deciding what it wanted to become.
Eleanor whispered, “Stop.”
The mirror smiled wider. And mouthed a single word.
“Mine.”
Eleanor watched in horror as her mirror image stared at her from inside the glass, that same knowing smile on her lips.
The unnatural doppelganger then reached up and unbuttoned her dress, working quickly and efficiently while her eyes were glued to Eleanor’s.
Mirror Eleanor was now standing only in her cotton chemise, her hands, those same hands that Eleanor could see if she looked down at herself, slowly drifting up her torso, running over the mounds of her breasts.
She smiled wantonly, then slipped the chemise off her shoulders and let it drop to the floor.
She was now completely nude, and Eleanor gasped to see that they were indeed identical in every way.
The small mole on her stomach was there in the mirror. The scar on her thigh from where she had fallen out of a tree as a child and badly cut her leg was there just where it should be.
Mirror Eleanor’s hands returned to her breasts, and she began to rub them slowly, her fingertips pinching her pink nipples until they were hard.
Eleanor wanted to look away; she wanted to run screaming from the room, but she was mesmerized by this diabolical version of herself and found that she could only stand and watch the lewd display before her.
Then something strange happened.
In the mirror, behind the nude version of Eleanor, a shadow appeared.
The shadow seemed human-sized and shaped, but no features could be seen.
Eleanor could not determine if it was a man or a woman, but she knew in her heart. She knew who it was.
“James,”
she breathed, her eyes widening as she watched the misty shadow form reach for Mirror Eleanor and grab her by the throat.
She watched her counterpart scream silently as the shadow lover threw her to the ground, forcing her before the mirror on all fours, splayed open and aroused and ready for him.
Eleanor watched as the shadow spread her open and seemingly began to thrust himself within her wet cunt.
Eleanor, no longer shocked by the vulgarness of her own thoughts, felt her own arousal grow as she watched herself being fucked by the disembodied shadow of James.
Mirror Eleanor was thrusting back against the shadow, her head tossing from side to side as she cried out in a silent ecstasy.
She was feral, lustful, becoming something primal.
It aroused Eleanor as much as it frightened her.
Then the candles snuffed out behind her.
The reflection of Eleanor and her shadow lover disappeared.
But the mirror stayed warm as if something had just stepped away.
She knew she had gone too far when she turned and saw James watching her from the shadows of her bedroom.
His gaze locked onto her, burning, unreadable, dangerous. The weight of it slammed into her chest, pressing down, curling tight around her lungs.
“You’ve changed.”
His voice was low, dark, a purr of something dangerous, something possessive.
Eleanor exhaled slowly, her pulse still erratic from the pleasure, from the pain, from the raw energy that still sizzled beneath her skin.
“I have.”
A muscle in his jaw ticked.
He was in front of her instantly, his hand wrapping around her throat, tilting her chin until their lips nearly brushed.
“You think you can wield this power against me?”
he whispered, his breath hot, his grip firm, unforgiving.
Eleanor smirked, the heat between them suffocating, unbearable.
“I don’t think,”
she breathed. “I know.”
Something snapped.
James crushed his mouth against hers, a brutal, possessive kiss that stole the air from her lungs, devoured her whole. She fought him, biting, clawing, teasing, but she didn’t want to win.
She wanted this.
She gasped against his lips as he pinned her to the wall, his body pressing against hers, hard, unrelenting. His fingers curled around her wrists, pinning them above her head, holding her there as though she might slip away.
“You don’t get to take what’s mine,”
he growled against her skin, his teeth scraping along her jaw, her throat, his hands leaving bruises in their wake.
Eleanor laughed, breathless, wicked.
“Then take me back.”
The words sent fire through his blood.
His mouth slammed back onto hers, teeth clashing, tongues tangling, a war of dominance that neither wanted to win.
His hands moved lower, rough, desperate, demanding.
Eleanor moaned, arching into him, taunting him with every breathless gasp, every little whimper that she knew would drive him mad.
James lost himself, and Eleanor let him.
Eleanor felt powerful for the first time in her life. Truly powerful. She felt it surge through her veins, and she knew that this was some alien thing that had infected her, some primal darkness that coursed through her veins, but she noticed with mild surprise that she did not seem to care. And though Eleanor would have never previously contemplated hurting James, at this moment she felt a violence stir within her and she wanted to make James hurt.
Eleanor scratched at James’s face with her nails, leaving long, ragged scratches down one pale cheek. James’s eyes blazed with lust as he grabbed her wrists and yanked them up over her head.
“Oh, Ellie, did you think you could best me?”
He asked with a cruel laugh.
“You are no match for the power that runs through my veins. Yield to me, Eleanor, and I may yet show mercy on you.”
Eleanor smiled, but it was a dark imitation of her sweet smile. As James held her fast against the wall with her arms pinned over her head, Eleanor hooked her leg around James’s back and threw her weight forward, toppling them both to the ground.
Eleanor lay on top of James, her hands now pinning his wrists down beside his head. She laughed in delight at the reversal of their positions.
“Perhaps it is you that should beg for mercy from me, love.”
Eleanor then bent her head down and ruthlessly kissed James hard on the lips, biting his lower lip hard enough to draw blood.
James growled, his tongue filling her mouth, biting her lip back in retaliation.
The pain only further ignited Eleanor’s passions, and she began to wildly rip the shirt from James’s body until her hands felt the smooth plane of his chest.
She began to run her tongue along the faintly glowing pattern of veins that crisscrossed across his chest in a wild pattern.
As she moved her tongue along this highway, she smiled to herself and then bit down hard onto one of his nipples.
James cried out, jerking his hands from her grip and grabbing a fistful of her long black hair.
He laughed as she screamed her anger at him, her sharp nails digging into the pale, almost iridescent flesh of his chest.
The battle of wills between them continued as they began to twist and roll over and over on the floor.
One would emerge on top only to be felled by the other again and again.
As they continued to struggle with one another, their clothing soon discarded, and the two of them were like feral animals in heat, desperate to satisfy their lustful desires in any way they could.
Eleanor positioned herself on all fours, her legs spread obscenely wide, arching herself back against James, silently begging him to fill her.
She needed to satisfy the wild frenzy that raced through her blood and pounded in her ears.
James knelt behind her, his pale cock rock hard and swollen.
He grabbed a handful of Eleanor’s hair and yanked her head back while positioning himself at her entrance.
He rubbed the tip of his cock across her wet opening, making her moan lustfully.
James then rammed himself deep within Eleanor, taking no care to be gentle but smiling in satisfaction as he heard her cry out with a mixture of pain and pleasure at each conquering thrust.
James continued the onslaught, thrusting into her again and again as Eleanor met each thrust, backing against him to make each one more intense.
James used his fingers to slip down into the dripping wetness between Eleanor’s legs to find her clit and he began to pinch and rub it as well.
Eleanor cried out in ecstatic agony, thrusting back against James so hard that the force of their bodies slamming against one another was powerful enough to leave bruises.
Eleanor climaxed first, her orgasm coming out in an unnatural agonized cry that left her shaking uncontrollably.
James came not a moment later, his preternatural seed filling Eleanor, so hot that she felt it might scald her insides.
James held a tight grip on Eleanor’s neck as he loosed the pearlescent fluid within her.
When it was over, James still wasn’t satisfied.
He lay beside her, his fingers tracing the glow of her veins, watching as they pulsed like something alive.
“You feel it,”
he murmured.
“Don’t you?”
Eleanor swallowed, but she didn’t deny it.
She had never felt more powerful, more in control. And yet… she could feel the apparatus digging deeper into her, wrapping around her soul like an unbreakable chain.
James turned her wrist over, pressing his lips to the delicate skin. Although his gesture should have been gentle, it felt like a warning.
“You can still stop,”
he whispered.
“You don’t have to let it take you.”
Eleanor stared at the ceiling, her fingers curling into the sheets. But she wasn’t sure she wanted to stop.
Eleanor sat alone, watching the faint glow of her veins pulse in time with her heartbeat.
She had a choice. To hold onto whatever remained of her soul. Or to give in completely, wield this power, and become something unstoppable. She wasn’t sure what terrified her more: losing herself entirely…Or how much she wanted to. And against her throat, the disk glowed faintly, vibrating softly against her flesh, whispering to her what she should do. What it wanted her to do.
Excerpt from the diary of Dr. Eleanor Ashcroft
I have awakened. Power coils beneath my skin, whispers in my veins, urging me to wield it. Benevolence or cruelty, is there even a choice?
James has come for me. I felt him before I saw him. His presence threads through my bones like fate itself. We were made for this, for dominion, for creation, for destruction. Part of me craves surrender, to bow and whisper devotion. The other part longs to crush him beneath my heel, to hear him gasp my name in reverence and ruin.
The silver pendant has become me. I tried to tear it free, to scrape it from my throat, but it would mean peeling away my flesh. My skin has swallowed it whole. It pulses there, a living thing, feeding, growing, whispering its hunger. I could carve it out. I could drive it deeper.
I am unravelling. Thought and madness intertwine, inseparable, infinite. And I wonder, was I ever sane at all?
The Watching Abyss
The sanctum was dying. Not in the way that mortal things died. Not with blood. Not with silence. It was dying the way bodies tremble before collapse, the way lungs burn when there’s no air left to take.
The last of the remaining cultists who had sensed Eleanor’s new power knelt before her, their breath ragged, their hands shaking. But it wasn’t fear keeping them there. It was her. They had lost their souls. Now, they wanted something in return. They wanted to be remade. And Eleanor was the only thing strong enough to do it.
Her gaze dragged over them, her ruined flock, her broken worshippers. Diana, hands gripping the fabric at her thighs, thighs pressing together. Felix, on his knees, panting. Tomas, his fingers clenching and unclenching in his lap, unable to meet her eyes. They were wrecked. But she wasn’t. Not yet.
She traced a slow, deliberate line down her throat with the tip of her finger. A taunt. A warning. A summoning.
Felix exhaled sharply, shame staining his breath. Diana’s chest rose and fell too quickly. The air throbbed, thickened, and poisoned by something worse than desire. It was bigger. It was need.
The room exhaled, and the shadows moved. James stepped into the firelight, and everything stopped. The others wanted Eleanor, but James did not want her; James owned her. He didn’t kneel before her like the others. He never had because he had taken her already; now, he would take her again.
Felix shifted, his first and last mistake. James grabbed him, his fingers around his throat like iron. Felix made a sound—a choked gasp, a shuddering exhale—not fear but something worse, something ruinous.
James tilted his head, watching Felix tremble, and his pulse pounded against his palm. The way his breath quickened like some shameful, filthy reaction he couldn’t suppress. James’ grip tightened.
“You like this,”
he murmured.
Felix twitched. A whimper. A curse. A plea.
James laughed. It was not a soft thing. Nor a kind thing, but a thing that curled like a fist in Eleanor’s stomach, which told her he was already gone. That he had been gone for a long, long time.
James leaned in, voice dripping with honeyed menace, “You think you’re worthy of her eyes?”
Felix tried to breathe but failed. James’s hand around his throat was like a vice, squeezing ever tighter. James smiled. Slow, patient, deadly.
“You aren’t even worth my hands.”
James then unceremoniously dropped Felix to the ground without a second thought.
Felix collapsed, shaking and gasping, but James had already forgotten him. Because Felix was nothing. Eleanor was everything.
And she was his.
James turned. His eyes were on her now. Not looking but claiming.
The room tilted. She should have stepped back. She should have run. But she didn’t. She couldn’t. James didn’t touch her. But his presence was already on her skin. Already inside her. Already pulling her apart.
His voice was low and deliberate. "Tell me no." It was a challenge. It was a command.
Eleanor parted her lips, but no sound came.
Because there was no answer.
Because they both already knew.
Within her chest, buried beneath her flesh, the silver disk hummed happily.
The others broke first.
Diana grabbed Tomas, their mouths colliding. Shaking, humiliated, and panting, Felix turned to the nearest body and clawed at it. It wasn’t passion but survival. The desperate, violent instinct of bodies that had been resurrected, that had lost something in the abyss and now needed to take something back.
Eleanor had done this to them. And James? James had done this to her.
His grip tightened in her hair, tilting her head back. His breath was warm at her throat. His voice was ruined.
“You don’t get to run from this,”
he murmured.
His fingers pressed against her pulse, feeling it race. He could feel her surrender.
The world was ending, and James would take her with it.
The fever broke.
And then
The sky tore apart, black and endless, a wound in the fabric of reality.
The abyss howled. A scream not of agony, but of hunger, shook the very bones of the earth.
The fire was extinguished, smothered as though it had never been.
Shadows surged, shifting, writhing, corpse-like figures flickering in and out of existence, not quite real yet not entirely imagined.
James did not flinch. He did not fear. He only understood.
He leaned in, breath ghosting across Eleanor’s skin, grazing her pulse, steady, frantic, doomed.
“This isn’t an omen,”
he murmured.
“It’s a claim.”
Eleanor swallowed, her throat tight, her heartbeat loud. "A claim?"
James smiled, slow, dark, final.
“The abyss doesn’t take without giving.”
His fingers found her throat, curling with eerie gentleness.
“And this time,”
He pulled her closer, his voice a whisper, a promise, a verdict.
“it’s giving you to me.”
The world convulsed. The ground caved, reality distorting as the abyss stretched its fingers further.
Eleanor, still fighting, but losing.
James, no longer feigning humanity, no longer pretending at all.
And above them
The abyss watched.
It had been patient. But it would not wait much longer.
And Eleanor
This time, she would not escape.
Excerpt from the diary of Dr. Eleanor Ashcroft
James.
James, James, James, James, James.
His name is the only thing left of me. The only thing that matters.
The sky fractured, splitting wide, eternity screaming into the void, yet all I hear is his whisper, curling against my ear like a binding spell.
“You are mine.”
And I fall.
I unravel.
I offer myself, hands trembling, mind dissolving, soul undone.
There is no resistance. There is no escape.
Only him.
Only James.
Only the abyss, waiting to swallow us whole.
The End of the Ritual
The grave was not a place anymore. It was an opening, a wound in the fabric of the world pulsing with something thick and unseen, something Eleanor could feel before she even stepped into it. The air around her shimmered, electric with tension, the unseen force of something waiting, something hungry. The remnants of the apparatus lay scattered around the disturbed earth, still humming with necrotic energy, whispering in a language she couldn't quite hear. But she knew what it was saying.
She knew who was calling her.
Eleanor had walked this path before, stood at the edge of this broken place when she still believed she could resist, and thought she could stand alone. That illusion had long since shattered. James had made sure of that. He had taken her, corrupted her, claimed pieces of her she hadn't even known existed. But she had still held onto something, some small, useless sliver of herself that she had clung to like a fool, believing it was hers to keep.
Now, she was here to give him the rest.
The moment her foot crossed the boundary of the disturbed soil, the world collapsed. The ground vanished beneath her, the sky ripped away, and she was falling. No, not falling, being pulled. The darkness wrapped around her like unseen hands, dragging her down, down, down into the void where James had been waiting. It was not just emptiness. It was him. His presence coiled through the abyss like a sentient thing, thick and heavy, sinking into her lungs, curling around her ribs.
She gasped, but there was no air here.
There was only him.
And then he spoke, and his voice wasn’t just sound.
It was a touch.
A pressure at her throat.
A weight on her skin.
A command inside her bones.
"Eleanor."
His voice hit her like a lightning strike, the sharp inhale as if her ribs were caving under its weight, threatening to shatter her entirely. He had not touched her yet, not truly, and already she felt his hold tightening around her. It was suffocating, overwhelming, and delicious. The void moved, shifting around her like something alive, and suddenly she was not standing; she was suspended. The abyss held her in place, weightless yet restrained, unseen threads binding her wrists, her thighs, her throat, spreading her open for him before he had even laid a hand on her.
"You came back," James murmured, his voice slipping over her skin like a breath, like a brand.
He was behind her, then in front of her, everywhere. His presence was more than a body, more than a man, something greater, something monstrous. When it came, his hand was cold and firm, dragging down the curve of her waist over the trembling muscles of her stomach, his grip settling low, possessive, knowing.
"You’re ready now," he whispered.
Not a question.
A sentence.
A fact.
A judgment.
She shuddered, her body giving in to him before her mind could catch up. The darkness pressed closer, a force tightening around her wrists, her ankles, pulling her open, holding her still. There was no resistance, no power in her limbs, only submission, only the need to be taken, broken, remade.
"You should have given in sooner," he mused, dragging his lips over the curve of her throat, his teeth scraping, teasing, threatening. "But you always had to be difficult, didn’t you?"
His hand slid lower, fingers ghosting, testing, teasing.
She made a sound, half gasp, half whimper.
And James smiled against her skin.
"Not anymore," he murmured, and his grip tightened.
The abyss pulsed, alive with his will.
Heat licked at her skin, a slow, maddening burn. The unseen bindings tugged tighter, arching her back, leaving her open, vulnerable, completely at his mercy. She had never felt smaller. She had never felt more owned.
And James, James was dead, she knew that now. But Eleanor also knew that James was always listening.
"You understand now, don’t you?" he whispered, dragging his teeth along her pulse, savouring the way it pounded, the way her breath broke beneath his touch. "This isn’t about love. This isn’t about power."
A beat of silence.
Then his fingers pressed harder.
Her whole body jerked, arched, surrendered.
"This is about belonging," he said.
His hand curled around her throat, not choking, not yet, but just enough to remind her who she belonged to.
"Say it," he demanded.
Eleanor’s lips parted, but she couldn’t form words. Couldn’t think. There was no thought left only sensation, heat, pleasure twisted with something darker, filthier.
James laughed softly, dragging his tongue along the soft part of her ear, his grip tightening.
"You can’t, can you?"
The abyss pressed closer, suffocating, overwhelming, cradling her in its hold.
"You don’t have words anymore," he murmured. "Just this."
Just him.
Her breath shattered, her body giving completely.
And James took.
Not gently.
Not sweetly.
With everything.
Because he was not a man anymore.
He was a god.
And she was his first worshipper, his only altar, his final ruin.
The Ritual Ends
Or begins.
There was no before.
No after.
There was only this.
James, inside her, around her, consuming her.
And Eleanor, no longer Eleanor.
Just his.
Just ruined.
Forever.
Excerpt from the journal of Lord Alastair Blackwood
I write from the ruins of my greatest creation. The supplicants no longer heed me. The subject, once mine, would kill me on sight.
Eleanor fled weeks ago. I let her go, thinking it would solidify my control—a mistake. Without her, he is wilder and unknowable. She vanished in the night, slipping through the cracks I had failed to see.
He broke when he discovered her gone. He smashed his fists into stone, shredded his flesh, yet no blood came. A thing beyond understanding. If only I could reclaim control, dissect him, study him.
But something else bleeds into our world. The ritual, its consequences, unravel reality thread by thread. The flowers, their monstrous bloom devouring the faithful, should not exist. And yet they do. More horrors will come. We are being consumed.
I hear voices, too close now. The tunnels beneath the estate remain my secret, meant for hiding others, never me. Yet here I crouch, a rat in the dark, waiting.
I will not wait forever.
I will take back what was stolen.
An Altar of Flesh
The church's graveyard groaned as if remembering its death. Although the church had been part of the estate for years before it had fallen into disrepair, everything inside it was wrong. The architecture itself had begun to breathe, as if the structure had become a great, hungry beast, waiting for the last offering.
The apparatus, now reborn, pulsed in the centre of the church. It was no longer just a mechanism, cold metal and dead inscriptions, it had changed. It had fused with flesh, writhing, shuddering, alive. Its engraved symbols no longer sat still, but crawled across its surface, shifting, burning, bleeding, reacting to the touch of those who dared to press themselves against it. The carvings that once held meaning had become obscene, not just in depiction, but in how they moaned, whimpered, and pulsed in reaction to the growing fervour in the room.
At the head of it all, Eleanor stood, her body shaking.
Not with fear.
With readiness.
With acceptance.
With the hunger James had placed inside her.
The abyss had called her, had promised her the unravelling of all things, and she had answered.
Tonight, she would finish what she started.
Tonight, she would give James the final piece of herself.
Tonight, she would become something else.
The air in the church was thick with delirium, heat rolling through the shattered walls like a living, pulsing thing. The last of the faithful had long since shed their inhibitions, and now they shuddered and moaned in fevered ecstasy, their bodies pressed together in a final act of submission to the abyss.
This was no simple orgy.
This was a sacrifice.
The faithful did not just touch and take.
They offered themselves.
Their flesh, their moans, their minds, their souls.
Some bodies had already begun to change, their skin melting, stretching, and reshaping as the ritual consumed them. Limbs fused, tongues elongated into grotesque sigils, fingers transformed into tendrils that reached for more, for everything, for nothing. Their cries of pleasure turned into something else entirely.
Some did not survive the transition.
They were dragged into the altar, their bodies absorbed into the living stone, their final gasps swallowed by the apparatus itself, which had begun to quiver, bulging with stolen flesh and essence, pulsing with sick anticipation.
Among those who were permanently melded with the apparatus was Assistant Edgar Frye. He realized too late that he had been right, but there was no chance to flee by then. He had fused with several others; their bodies grotesquely entwined into one mass of quivering flesh. Arms and legs stuck out at odd angles while their pained and horrified faces stared with sightless eyes and screamed silently. Frye’s mouth and black beard were still visible, though much of his face had melted into the surrounding flesh. The last semblance of Frye that could be seen was his mouth, open in agony, his tongue growing unnaturally long and slithering out of his anguished mouth like some hideous red snake.
And yet, no one resisted.
No one fled.
They offered more.
They gave everything.
Because they wanted this.
They had come here to be devoured.
James stood at the centre of it all, or rather, he loomed.
He was no longer just a man.
No longer just a lover returned from the dead.
He was the abyss given form.
His skin no longer held shape; it stretched and shifted, glowing and darkening. His veins pulsated with something thicker than blood, something ancient, something waiting to be set free. His eyes, if they could still be called eyes, burned with a light that did not belong to this world.
When he moved, the very air fractured.
When he spoke, the worshippers cried out, their bodies reacting as though his voice alone was a caress, a whip, a brand burned into their souls.
"Eleanor."
Her name was not just spoken.
It was etched into her.
Her spine arched at the sound, her breath stuttering, her body instinctively preparing for what would come.
She had never belonged to herself.
James had always known that.
And tonight, she would prove it.
She had come here with the thought that she still had a choice.
That she could save him.
That she could rescue herself.
But standing beneath James’s towering, shifting, monstrous form, feeling the church tremble beneath her feet, hearing the worshippers dissolve into madness around her, she understood the truth.
There was no escape. There was no salvation. There was only this. And this had all happened before, hadn’t it? And it would happen again, whether in one year or a thousand.
But for now, there was only him.
Only the abyss.
She had been fighting for so long. And now, she was tired. She did not want to fight anymore. She wanted to fall.
"Say the words, Eleanor," James murmured, his voice like velvet and violence, a promise and a sentence.
He reached for her, his fingers no longer fingers but longer, darker, more than human, reaching, pressing, curling around her throat, her waist, and her hips.
She gasped, her vision blurring, her pulse syncing with the pulsing of the apparatus, with the groaning of the living church, with the cries of the faithful as they offered their last moments to the ritual.
Her lips parted.
The final chant rose inside her.
It was not a language she had learned.
It was a language that had always existed inside her.
The words crawled up her throat, spilling from her tongue like a final prayer, a final blasphemy.
The moment the last syllable left her lips, the world shattered.
The apparatus convulsed, swelled, twisted, then burst, releasing something far worse than death.
The church screamed. Stone and flesh melded, writhing, consuming, swallowing the last of the faithful in a grotesque embrace.
The stained glass shattered. Beyond it, there was no sky, stars, or remnants of the world that had once been. Only a chasm—the endless, watching, ravenous abyss.
James made a sound, was it laughter? A groan? A growl? A scream? It was all of them. It was none of them. It was something that should not exist.
Eleanor dissolved. Not into nothingness. Into him.
Her body was no longer hers. Her voice was no longer hers. Her thoughts ceased to be.
She had given herself. And James had taken everything.
The abyss widened, stretching its jaws.
And together
They stepped inside.