The Rotting Cathedral groaned with unseen voices. The air was thick—a miasma of incense, decay, and something far older. The candles burned lower, their wax pooling like blood upon the altar.
Seraphine stood motionless, her breathing shallow. The hunger was growing. It gnawed at her insides, whispering temptations she couldn't yet decipher.
Selene Nocturna watched her with quiet amusement. Her golden eyes gleamed, reflecting the candlelight like a serpent poised to strike.
"Does it hurt?" Selene's voice was a dark melody, gentle yet cruel.
Seraphine's lips parted, but the words failed her. Her body felt… hollow. Stretched. Reshaped.
Selene stepped closer, fingers tracing Seraphine's wrist. "You were afraid before. Now, there is no need for fear. You have been chosen."
Seraphine's throat tightened. The mark on her skin—**a dark spiral of veins creeping outward from her collarbone—**throbbed with each slow pulse of her heart.
"What have you done to me?" she whispered.
Selene smiled. "I have given you the gift of unmaking."
A shudder wracked Seraphine's body. The hunger sharpened. The voices grew louder.
"Take. Consume. Become."
Selene turned, her cloak swirling around her like living shadows. "Come. I want to show you something."
Seraphine hesitated, but her feet moved on their own.
They descended into the undercroft, where the walls were slick with ancient rot. The air was thick with whispers—voices of the long-dead, pressed into the stone itself.
At the chamber's center lay a figure—broken, barely human, bound in chains of bone and sinew. Their breath rattled like dry leaves.
Seraphine's stomach clenched. The hunger flared, primal and insatiable.
Selene's voice coiled around her like silk. "This one was once like you."
The figure stirred, their hollowed-out eyes locking onto Seraphine. Their lips, cracked and bloody, barely moved.
The whisper barely reached her ears before Selene's hand shot forward, gripping the figure's throat.
Bones cracked. A sickening wheeze escaped their lips.
Seraphine gasped, a surge of power rushing through her as the life bled from the wretched thing before her. The hunger… it fed. It rejoiced.
Selene watched. Waited.
And then—Seraphine exhaled.
The agony eased. The voices settled. The hunger, though never-ending, was sated… for now.
She looked at Selene, and for the first time, she did not see a captor.
A reflection of what she was becoming.
Selene tilted her head. "Good girl."
Seraphine did not flinch at the praise. She did not run. She only smiled.
And somewhere in the darkness, something laughed.