The Rotting Cathedral stood silent, but its silence was not one of peace. It was a waiting, an inhalation before the exhale of something foul. Selene Nocturna moved through its crumbling halls, her footsteps barely disturbing the layer of dust and dried blood coating the stones.
She had feasted. The girl had feasted. And now, it was time for the harvest.
Beyond the cathedral's grand doors lay the Bone Garden—a grotesque field of twisted remains, where skeletons did not rest but clawed at the earth, writhing in silent torment. The garden was alive in a way that defied nature. It pulsed, breathed, shifted. Bones grew like vines, twisting into spires, flowering into cruel shapes.
Selene stepped forward, inhaling deeply. The scent of death was sweet, laced with the memory of pain. She ran a hand over the jagged spine of a once-defiant warrior, now reduced to nothing but another root in her garden.
"Not yet ripe," she mused, fingers pressing into the brittle bone. A faint pulse, a flicker of resistance still clung to it.
Behind her, the girl from the feast stood, silent. Her skin had lost its warmth, her veins darkened from what she had consumed. Her hunger had not vanished. If anything, it had deepened, stretching into something primal.
"Mistress..." she murmured, eyes darting to the shifting remains beneath them. "They whisper."
Selene turned, amusement flickering across her lips.
"Of course, they do. They remember what they once were. They beg for release."
She knelt, pressing her palm against the soil of the Bone Garden. A sickly green glow emanated from her touch, and the ground quivered. The bones, tangled and fused, began to pull apart. Something beneath was stirring.
The girl tensed as a skeletal hand burst from the soil, clawing at the air. Then another. And another.
A chorus of tortured moans filled the air as Selene's garden bore fruit. The dead were not just rising—they were changing. Their bones twisted, reshaping into something monstrous. Jagged edges fused into blades, ribcages hollowed into cages, skulls lengthened into grotesque visages of eternal suffering.
Selene stood, watching her new creations crawl from the earth, dragging themselves into the moonlight.
"Beautiful," she whispered, stepping forward.
One of the creatures shuddered before her, its hollow sockets filled with a greenish, spectral glow. It knelt. The others followed.
"Go," she commanded. "Find them. Bring them to me. Let them feel what it means to defy the Pale Widow."
The creatures obeyed, their jagged forms scuttling into the darkness, leaving only the sound of rattling bones in their wake.
"What are they?" she whispered.
Selene turned to her, a wicked grin curling her lips.