Yvette trailed the withered procession of phantoms deeper into the asylum’s bowels.

The air thickened with cadaverous dampness—a miasma of mold and mildew clinging to the walls like the breath of an exhumed grave. Her footsteps, once sharp against stone, now sank into spongy decay, each muffled thud accompanied by the groan of buckling planks.

Surrounded by silent specters, she alone broke the tomb-like stillness. Her pulse quickened, but she smothered the sound with a practiced twist of her Gift.

As the shades drew nearer, their fractured thoughts seeped into her consciousness:

["Revelations! The shackles of reason undone—through dreams I witness humanity’s cradle, the dance of continents and stars! The Child Divine heals our flawed minds!"

"Letters burn with color! A—azure, I—ebony, J—crimson… How blind I was to life’s prismatic truth! Only the Child’s whispers unveil it!"

"Gloria! Gloria! The Child is thought’s flame, existence’s purpose—the Alpha, the Omega!"

……

Whispers swelled into a clamorous hymn—a deranged liturgy tinged with sacrilegious reverence.

Yvette’s skull throbbed. Her body moved autonomously with the parade. When she willed herself to retreat, she found the corridor choked with boiling mist—a predator coiled to strike.

Trapped, she bit her tongue sharply. Focus. Observe.

Decay ruled here. Mold veined the walls like malignant lace; paint hung in leprous shreds. The floor’s gray blotches puzzled her—lichen? Fungus? Yet no spiders skulked in this damp purgatory.

The procession pressed onward. Though her mind rebelled, the advancing mist forced her forward.

At last, the asylum’s heart yawned before her: a sunken theater of nightmares. Tiered seating encircled a surgical stage, as Stone’s journal had described—a funnel of suffering where doctors once played God.

Now she understood the walls’ blight.

Barnacles.

They clung everywhere—clustered on benches, crusting the ceiling, devouring the walls. Not ordinary shelled vermin, but swollen growths festering like plague-boils. The largest—a monstrosity at the stage’s edge—loomed like a tumorous titan, its lesser kin groveling at its base.

As boils merge into carbuncles, so barnacles…

Bile rose in her throat.

The phantoms took their seats, eyes riveted to the spectacle below. "Surgeons" in gore-caked coats wheeled a stretcher bearing a vacant-eyed wretch. Though his skull seemed whole, his slack jaw and dull gaze proclaimed his idiocy. He blinked innocently as they clamped a trepanation device—jagged crown of rust and old blood—to his brow.

The amphitheater’s anticipation crackled. A thousand alien zealots roared in Yvette’s mind:

["Another soul to be sanctified! Let the Child sunder reason’s prison!"

The "surgeons"—likely madmen moments prior—fumbled their instruments. The trephine bit into bone. The victim thrashed, tendons straining, until a final seizure left him limp.

["Unworthy. Let the void claim him."

Their collective sigh hollowed Yvette’s chest.

Madness. All madness… Unless it’s I who am deranged—

The titan barnacle shuddered. From its jagged maw oozed a translucent horror—a gelatinous brain veined with blackened sinew, sliding forth on a slug’s viscous track. Smaller cysts spat forth amoebic abominations, their forms warping as they crept toward the corpse.

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["O Blessed Child! Sanctify our idiocy, imbue us with Your endless mind!"

The psalms crescendoed. Yvette clawed her temples. Not my voice—whose? Whose?!

Through stinging eyes, she watched the "Child" engulf the corpse and butchers alike, its stomach pulsing with half-digested twitches. Yet the throng’s joy swelled—a cacophony of adoration.

She strained to look away. Failed.

Every phantom wheeled toward her, eyes blazing with rapture:

["Behold perfection! The Child embraces even the wretched! Offer yourself, holy bride—bear His scion!"

Her will crumbled. Though her soul screamed, her lips moved:

"Praise… the Divine… Let my womb… be His vessel…"

Hands—cold, spectral—bore her to the gore-smeared slab. The Child reeked of rancid tidepools. Its neural tendrils slithered up her legs, peeling away silk and skin—

A god’s puppet I may become…

But not here.

Not yours.

Mine is the Sleeper Beneath—

Who dreams in the Abyss’ cradle.

Away, carrion!

The shot shattered the dark.

From the moment it began, Yvette sensed the unnatural reverence coiling through her veins—a cursed compulsion warping her mind to worship the abomination before her as divine. An ancient tactic, this: false angels and older horrors had always exploited mortal awe to pose as saviors.

In the material world, those with awakened souls might resist. But here in the Shadow Realm, where a thousand broken minds amplified the creature’s allure, even seasoned practitioners found themselves genuflecting to its vile majesty.

She felt her psyche sliding toward oblivion, clawing for purchase yet finding none. Distraction proved futile; resistance, a fading dream.

Save for one thread of salvation.

Each time she envisioned those serpent eyes—burning beneath the void like bloodied suns—the counterfeit devotion wavered. While phantom choirs hymned praises to their "Divine Scion," her whispered litanies honored the Nameless God who slept beyond the stars.

If madness claimed her, she’d choose whose madness it would be.

Mercifully, memory alone sufficed. The Sleeper required no attention to command awe—Its presence was the tide, the vortex, the silent majesty of galaxies unborn. This upstart "godling"? A gutter mummer playacting at godhood, reeking of desperation.

It marked her now. Escape? Impossible here. True Old Ones couldn’t breed in this withered realm, but half-blood spawn through mortal wombs? That they could manage. Her death or its own—those were the exits. Slay the anchor, collapse the pocket dimension. Simple geometry.

She played the compliant broodmare, enduring its slithering touch upon the surgical slab.

Closer. Closer.

The corpulent horror moved with glacial torpor, its true weapon the psychic yoke binding thralls. Those formless servitors, however—ah, their claws could rend steel. Yet as Yvette lay recumbent, they withdrew, deferring to their master’s grim sacrament.

Tentacles slick with mucus coiled about her legs. Her mind sharpened to a blade’s edge—calculating trajectories, attack vectors, counterstrokes. They’d die to shield it... therefore...

The moment flashed. Steel cleared its sheath; mercury-cored bullets found their mark. Four roars merged into one thunderclap as enhanced reflexes surpassed mortal limits. Spectral horrors dissolved—no time to confirm. Her blade sought the writhing black cord in its brainstem.

Translucent tissues quivered, half-digested corpses suspended within. The blade struck resistance—wrongness.

Shadows converged. No second chances. Abandoning steel, her hand plunged into viscera colder than a corpse’s guts—clawing, ripping—until her fingers closed on smoothness.

If wrong... She smiled. The fifth bullet—her ace in the hole.

Her hand tore free clutching a milky orb veined with gore.

The psychic shriek near shattered her skull—a stillbirth’s wail. Servitors disintegrated. The false god collapsed, jellyfish-limp. Then—the roar of breaking worlds.

......

Two hours missing. The asylum yielded no traces of "Libra" Yves.

"Shadow Realm," grunted Oak-Sage Keegan.

Funerist Shar paced. "A novice shouldn’t face phantoms alone—"

"My ravens will alert the Circle." Keegan’s communion with beasts required no familiars.

"Blundering hairless apes!" Marcurse’s flattened ears quivered. "Lose a whole human! Incompetent—"

Rafters trembled. Plaster rained down.

"Quake?"

"Structural collapse," corrected Keegan. "We leave. Now." Minutes after their escape, the building imploded.

Shar frowned at the settling dust. "Not mere collapse. Ancient dead stir—mad shades, long entombed..."

"—Realm’s crumbling! Meatbag’s still inside!" Marcurse’s tail lashed.

"Silence." Keegan planted a golden mistletoe twig. Murmured invocations summoned a tide of rats. Scampering scouts returned minutes later, leading them to a fresh burrow in the graveyard.

Shovels bit earth. They unearthed Yvette amidst skeletal debris, her arms locked around a luminous artifact—a barnacled idol depicting a fish-headed horror.

"Pearl?" Shar brushed dirt from its nacreous surface.

"Uncarved. Saltwater. Six-pound specimen." Keegan squinted at the aberrant hybrid visage.

Marcurse sniffed. "Dagon’s likeness. Mediterranean cults. Rare in Albion’s climes."

"But this asylum," the cat added, "was once a church held by Sir Charles Roberts—privateer turned 'gentleman' after the Reformation."

Shar connected the dots. "A plundered relic?"

"Precisely!" Marcurse preened. "Thus concludes another purr-fect operation! Tribute! Salmon! Shiny things—"

"Keegan returns the artifact," Shar overrode the feline. "I’ll tend our wounded."

As they parted, the idol’s empty eyes watched—and somewhere in the deep, something old and vast turned in its sleep.