“We can’t just stay here, Jules!” Rayph said.

Jules groaned. “Please, not now.”

“What do you mean not now?” he asked.

“Your pastime is getting your nose into other people’s business,” she explained. “It’s your thing. My tombstone’s gonna say, ‘Her father was a Nerd’; your tombstone’s gonna say, ‘He was really good at sticking his nose into other people’s business.’”

“It’s not sticking, it’s detective-ing,” Rayph said.

“Why can’t we stay in this room and play Puzzle & Dinosaurs on our consoles until we die?” Jules suggested. “It’s a nice room. Why leave it?”

And the room was really nice. Apparently, it had belonged to Lassedite Bishop’s secretary. There were some cracks on the ceiling around the central light fixture where the secretary had hung himself, but that was really the only thing out of place. Everything else was very clean, sumptuously furnished with a heavy, dark-red color palette enhanced by the dark, varnished wood. The shelves, cabinets, and bookcases were all Second Empire.

Even the carpets were lush. It was a dark magenta background, patterned with green vines and pale yellow flowers. The individual fibers were so soft and comforting to the touch that Jules had to fight the urge to leave her cross-legged position and lay down.

Jules wondered what historical snippets her Dad might have had to say about the room. But that thought made her sad, and she was tired of being sad.

“Back when we were at the house and playing Orimon Carnivale, you were the one who couldn’t focus on the game,” Rayph countered.

“Yes, well, that was before I knew about Verune. That…” Jules sighed. “That changes things. Before, I wanted to believe there was a rational explanation for all this, but now… now, I’m no longer sure.”

Rayph got up from the rug and pushed up his sleeves. “Well, that’s why we should go and look around. There might be something!”

“Like?” Jules asked.

“Maybe we can get one of the wyrms to help us,” he suggested.

Jules scoffed. “Keep dreaming.”

Her brother nodded. “I will.”

And then he walked toward the door.

“Wait” Jules yelled. “Rayph! Rayph!?”

She got up and went after him, but he darted out the door before she could catch him.

“Oh, fuck me,” Jules muttered, rolling her eyes.

She picked up one of their consoles from off the desk by a casement window, next to her mother’s purse, and then followed her brother out the door.

She hoped her mother would at least try to contact them via console before proceeding to panic.

Following the sound of her brother’s bad idea, Jules turned to the left, away from the Great Nave. Not seeing him, she went around the corner.

Damn his little legs, she thought.

He couldn’t have gotten far.

The sconces on the walls gleamed like candlelight, casting shadows onto the arched ceiling.

And then, just like that, she found him, halfway down the hallway.

Jules hissed.“Rayph! Rayph!”

He turned to look at her. “I’m not going back, not until—”

“—Just hold on,” she said. “I’m coming. I’m coming.”

He smiled.

“Note to self,” she muttered, “if time allows, get revenge.”

“What?” Rayph asked. He clearly hadn’t heard her.

“Nothing,” Jules replied, as she walked up alongside him.

They walked down the hall. Jules did a good job of reminding her brother that there was no point in snooping if you were going to do it so noisily that people could hear you coming from a mile away. They quieted their footsteps, taking care to listen to the sounds reverberating through the Melted Palace’s halls. Jules could hear the voices of the transforming wyrms out in the Great Nave warbling in the distance, distorted, like an underwater marching band.

Fortunately, the noises the wyrms made as they slithered through the halls was easy enough to detect.

“So,” she asked, in a hushed voice, “did you just want to go out for a walk, or are you actually looking for something?”

Rayph lowered his head for a moment. “We… we need to get out of here, Jules,” he said, barely above a whisper. He looked up at her. “It’s not safe. I can feel it.”

“No shit,” Jules said, with a nod. “But how does this help?”

“I keep thinking about what Dad told us about this place,” he said, gazing down the grand hallway. “All those special entrances and secret tunnels. There has to be something.”

Jules sighed. “Rayph, this isn’t some fantasy story. The secret tunnels haven’t been secret for centuries! By now, they’re probably filled with dead people, or worse.”

“What’s worse than dead people?” he asked.

“I’m not gonna answer that!” Jules hissed.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Suddenly, the dim, caliginous polyphony of the wyrms in the Nave was cut through by a sharp, faint scream.

A human scream.

Jules’ back tingled.

“What was that?” she said.

“I think it’s this way!” Rayph said.

Then he made things worse by going that way.

Jules lunged, trying to grab him by the back of his shirt, but her fingers just barely missed.

Up ahead, the hall branched in a T junction, continuing straight ahead, but also moving off to the right.

The sound had come from the right, and Rayph had turned to the right.

Neither of these were good things.

Jules followed her brother, intent on getting him away from whatever danger had caused the scream, only to—

—Jules skid to a stop, her shoes screeching softly on the hall’s marble floor.

She’d passed through… something

It took her a moment to find the right words for it.

It was a wall. A wall of… sound.

She’d passed through a wall of sound.

Up ahead, the T branch had let out onto the second floor of an atrium. Halfway between the atrium and the T branch, though… that’s where it was.

The wall.

Jules hadn’t felt it (or anything) when she’d passed through it. It wasn’t like she’d stepped through a layer of cobwebs or a veil of cloth. No.

She’d heard it.

One moment, all she could hear were the distant noises of the wyrms in the Nave. However, the instant she passed through the invisible barrier, it was like space itself had changed. Sounds that weren’t there suddenly were. Even the air felt different. It flowed one way on one side and another way on the other.

It was as if someone had put up a wall to block the flow of sound.

Rayph stood at her side, equally gobsmacked—and not just by the sound barrier.

The screams were bouncing off the ceiling. They made Jules’ blood run cold.

As bad as the Nave had been, this place was far, far worse.

The rectangular atrium was small by the Melted Palace’s standards; to anyone else, it would have been as big as two good-sized living rooms. The atrium had two stories, with the upper floor being a walk-around galleria. The floor below was checkered in black and white marble. A statue of the Holy Angel stood in the middle of the room, bearing aloft the Sword. At the far end, a set of double doors opened wide—one of the Melted Palace’s side entrances.

There were changelings down below.

And they were feasting.

“No! Stop!” the victim yelled.

Jules recognized the voice as the one they’d heard out in the hall. “Sto—”

—Jules shuddered as the skull crunched.

“J—”

—Jules put her hand on her brother’s shoulder. “Quiet,” she said. She could barely hear her own words.

There had to be half a dozen changelings down in the atrium. Several of the Last Church’s goons stood at the entrance.

Jules gasped.

Those weren’t zombies.

They were dragging people inside. Not zombies. Living, breathing people. A few looked really sick. But, others…

Well, it didn’t matter. The changelings were equal-opportunity eaters.

They were changing before Jules’ eyes.

Several people floated mid-air, either bound in place or gyrating around.

One of the more changed changelings—human above the waist, big and snakey below—was coiled near the statue of the Angel statue. He extended his body, overlooking the other changelings. It looked like… it looked like he was

—Oh shit, Jules thought.

He was training them.

He brought his forepart over to the changeling who had bitten through the screaming man’s head.

“Slow down,” he said, addressing the changeling feasting on the headless corpse.

“Why?” the changeling asked.

“You’re being sloppy,” came the reply. “You should use this opportunity to practice working your miracles. Muffle the sounds they make. I could hear that scream. I shouldn’t have.”

The changeling flicked his hand at the half-wyrm. His neck cracked and popped as it lengthened, freshly eaten biomass crawling under his skin.

“Well, you’re marking the big sound barrier, right? To keep from scaring the newbies.”

“Yeah, but… I’m starving,” the half-wyrm said. “I can’t keep the barrier in place when I’m this hungry.” He licked his lips. “If you all hurried up and did your exercises properly, I’d be able to get my share and keep going.”

“Don’t rush me!” the changeling snapped back. “I’ve been waiting forever. All the newbies get to eat the zombies. We’re stuck eating them before they get ripe.”

“They’re ripe enough,” the half-wyrm said, unfurling his coil. “If they weren’t sinners, they wouldn’t have gotten sick.”

“Honestly, I don’t give a shit,” the changeling said, turning around to face the half-wyrm. “I came here for a meal, and I’m still waiting to get one.” He crossed his arms. “I don’t get why we have to do this off to the side.”

“Some divine beasts aren’t comfortable with eating them before Hell claims them. We introduce it slowly.”

“Yeah, well, that’s stupid.” The changeling said.

Jules’ heart dropped into her stomach.

“Jules…” Rayph muttered.

She shuddered. “It… it looks like you were right to want to leave,” she whispered.

Jules clenched her fists.

“On the count of three,” she said, “we’re walking out of here.”

Rayph nodded.

Jules counted down in her mind, and then slowly—slowly—crept away, with Rayph on her tail, only to stop cold in her tracks.

It took all of her strength not to yelp in surprise.

They weren’t alone. Around the corner, one John Henrichy had come a-creeping.

Jules silently mouthed, “What the fuck…”

It looked like he’d been eavesdropping on the wyrms and cultists below. His face was pale. He coughed softly.

Jules pinched the nosepiece of her mask, to tighten it.

Henrichy flicked his hand, silently telling them to move along.

Jules pointed at him, and then at the entryway leading back to the T-shaped intersection, as if to say, “You first.”

Henrichy–who was crouching low—stuck out his hands and shook them, as if trying to strangle someone.

Jules huffed.

She looked over her shoulder back at Rayph, and motioned him to follow her.

Going back through the sound wall was only slightly less disconcerting than the first time through. Knowing it was coming didn’t make it feel any less strange.

Henrichy came out after them a moment later.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he hissed.

He coughed.

Jules skittered back.

“I was about to ask you the same thing.”

“I’m a journalist, kid, I don’t need to justify where I’m going or where I’ve been.”

Jules scoffed at that.

The TV star’s face tensed in anger. He pointed a trembling finger at the sound atrium behind them.

“In case you haven’t noticed, they’re eating people in there!” he said.

“Why do you seem so surprised?” Jules asked, not afraid of looking smug.

Also, it was easier for her to look smug than admit she was so scared, she was fighting to keep her knees still.

“I signed up for this shit because it was supposed to keep me alive, and in Verune’s good graces!”

“W-Well, don’t get them angry, then,” Rayph said.

“Can it, kid!” Henrichy snapped. “You don’t get it. You wanna know what I was doing? Fine. I’d heard rumors that some of the priests who had still been in their rooms when we arrived had gone missing. One thing leads to another, and I discover that what’s going on out front is a literal front.”

“What do you mean?” Jules asked.

“Verune…” he shook his head, “he has some sort of effect on the Norms.”

“Wyrms,” Rayph said, pointedly. “Or sneople.”

Henrichy clenched his fists and shook his arms. “It doesn’t fucking matter! What does matter is that they’re feeding them zombies up front, but everywhere else, they’re just feeding them anyone who they don’t like.”

“They’re a cult, dude,” Jules said, with an impassioned gesticulation, “what did you expect? They’ve got their savior, they worship him, and people suffer and die as a result.”

“If they’re eating whoever,” Henrichy continued, “it means what Verune was saying was a load of shit!”

“So what are you going to do about it?” Jules asked.

“They’ll eat us if we try to leave,” he replied.

“Really?” Rayph asked, with a nervous warble.

“Believe whatever you want,” Henrichy replied. “I saw it with my own two eyes. They can use their powers to immobilize you and lift you off the ground.”

Jules gulped. “I know,” she said, quietly.

“You do? Then why the fuck are you still here?” Henrichy snapped.

“You don’t need to tell us twice,” Jules replied, storming off. “C’mon Rayph,” she whispered.

He followed.

She turned away and then let go of the breath she’d been secretly holding.

“Fuck…” Jules muttered.