The night hung thick with the scent of rot and fresh blood. In the heart of The Rotting Cathedral, Selene Nocturna stood before a banquet of the damned. The long, decayed table stretched before her, lined with silver plates filled not with food, but with remnants of souls—phantoms struggling to escape, wisps of life swirling in tortured silence.
Her twisted grin widened.
"They feast, but they do not savor."
She turned her head, looking at her newest creation—the girl who had taken her first taste of life in the last hunt. The girl's lips were still stained with crimson, her pupils dilated from the ecstasy of the kill.
"Tell me, my child," Selene mused, running her blackened nails over the rim of a goblet filled with thick, dark ichor. "Did you enjoy it?"
The girl trembled. Her hunger was growing unbearable. She had thought a single taste would be enough, but the gnawing void inside her only widened with each passing second.
"Yes, Mistress," she whispered.
Selene chuckled, her laughter crawling through the chamber like creeping ivy.
"Good. Then you will enjoy what comes next."
With a slow, deliberate movement, she raised her hand, and the shadows in the chamber writhed. The walls, lined with the corpses of monks long dead, shifted—skin cracking, ancient tongues whispering curses.
Then they opened their eyes.
The souls trapped in Selene's collection screamed, clawing at the plates, at the air, at the prison of their own existence. They were more than just food—they were Selene's trophies, her reminders of conquests past.
The girl shuddered, watching as the husks began to rise, animated by something far worse than mere necromancy.
"These are not simple dead," Selene purred, walking along the table's edge. "They are those who defied me. Those who refused to serve, who thought they could resist my will."
She reached out and lifted a skull, its hollow eyes flickering with a dying ember of what it once was.
"Now, they serve another purpose."
With a single motion, she crushed the skull in her hand.
A ripple of black energy pulsed through the chamber, and the tormented remains twisted into grotesque shapes—sinew stretching unnaturally, limbs contorting, screams becoming music.
Selene turned to the girl.
The girl hesitated. The figures before her were no longer simply the dead. They were something more. Their agony was palpable, their suffering intoxicating.
But her hunger was greater.
She stepped forward, her hands shaking as she reached for a still-moving ribcage, tearing into it with a newfound savagery. The taste was bitter, but the power—oh, the power. It burned through her veins, filling the void in her soul, but also deepening it.
Selene smiled in approval.
"You will learn, little one," she whispered. "Hunger is not meant to be sated. It is meant to be worshipped."