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It was a lonesome sound, the groaning of the rope, and yet it drowned the whole chapel. It was the central piece which the whole place turned around. Shaw couldn’t remember why he was here. Searching through his muddled mind he couldn’t find a thread of reason. But he was here. Locked in a stone chamber that swayed to the motion of the rope that descended from a drinking void. Shaw moved forward, for that is what he had always done. For when the storm enclosed, you had to venture through it. Struggle with teeth and blood.
The gods watched as he strode through the decrepit chamber. Their visages stern and cold like the stone their flesh was chiselled from. Shaw could feel their eyes, piercing and hating.
Should I be honoured for the loath you give me?
He heard them whisper… no not them. The hissing voices came from the void above, thousands of them, tens of thousands, screeching, screaming. The whispers erupted into chants that devoured the lonesome sound of the rope into a single cry like an inferno. Unbearable, a needle drawn into his ear. He could feel blood trickle out of them, feel the weight of the voices pushing him down.
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He crawled across the leeching stones, digging fingernails into broken mortar, struggling with teeth and blood. Then he saw it…
…John’s naked body hanging from the rope, naked as the day he was born. His flesh opened, ribcage to groin. But his head wasn’t his, it was a raven’s head with dark eyes that ran with blood.
The whole chamber jolted, turning upside down. The voices screamed with a fervour belonging to beasts. He fell, crashing into the depths of the void.
When his eyes opened, the world he saw was a vault of knitted branches, black and stark against the starry night. Shaw knew this place, a brief familiarity. Then it was gone. He turned his head to the side and saw Darshan’s face, eyes closed. It was rotted black, flesh torn and ruined, a horrid sight, a familiar sight, and it belonged to something dead. And yet, Darshan opened his eyes.
Flesh-draped and rotting hands erupted from the snow. They clawed and clasped, dragging him down. Shaw fought, thrashing, and clawing, but his struggle was in vain. He sank deeper and deeper until he was all expended and all he could do was scream, his voice joined by a thousand others, plunging into the place that his father had promised.