The Rotting Cathedral trembled with laughter. Not the laughter of joy, nor the mockery of the damned, but something worse—a cacophony of glee twisted by malice, shrieks of mirth thick with rot. At its center, Selene Nocturna stood, head thrown back, cackling into the abyss.
The masked intruder's words still clung to the walls like a lingering poison. "Even rot can be undone."
Selene found the idea hilarious.
She wiped a streak of blackened ichor from her lips and exhaled, the amusement in her eyes turning to something sharper—a cruel hunger. The Laughing Dead, still recovering from the crimson explosion of alchemical power, watched their mistress in awe. Her Dark Arms coiled behind her, restless, twitching like starving serpents.
"You poor, misguided soul…" Selene mused, pacing toward the desecrated altar. The masked man had vanished, but his echo still lingered, his voice a phantom in the cracks of the cathedral.
The Pale Widow placed a bloodstained hand upon the ancient stone, whispering a curse older than the bones beneath her feet.
The cathedral listened.
Its walls quivered, its shadows swelled, and the air grew thick with maggots of sound—squirming, chittering, forming words that should not exist.
The Laughing Dead fell to their knees, their bodies convulsing in ecstasy as the melody crawled into their skulls. Selene's laughter warped, becoming the song itself—a dirge of sickness, a hymn of hollow hunger.
"No more hiding, little alchemist," she whispered. "You wish to unravel my work? Then let the plagues sing your name."
Her Dark Arms stretched outward, clawing at the unseen, tearing through the veil between rot and flesh.
Somewhere in the city, the masked intruder gasped.
A crimson sigil burned itself into his chest, his blood turning against him, veins darkening into threads of decay. He stumbled, gripping his ribs as the weight of Selene's hymn sank its teeth into his very being.
"Do you feel it, physician? The kiss of my cathedral? The plague is not a disease. It is a prayer. And you—" her voice coiled around him, wrapping his throat in invisible tendrils, "—are its latest verse."
The masked man staggered into the shadows, but he was already marked.
Selene turned back to her congregation, the Laughing Dead grinning, waiting, convulsing in bliss.
"Let the culling begin."
The cathedral roared in approval.