Story 779: The Bloodlit Dirge

The air was thick with the stench of old rot, a perfume that clung to Selene Nocturna’s withered cloak as she moved through the ruins of the once-holy monastery. The last remnants of its former sanctity had been stripped away, replaced with the crawling whispers of the Hollowed—those empty things she had birthed from her plague-ridden will.

She hummed softly as she stepped over the bones of a fallen priest, his skeletal fingers still curled in prayer. The fool had thought his gods would save him.

"How charming." Selene tilted her head, trailing a blackened nail over her own lips, still cracked and wet with darkened blood. Her smile, barely contained, stretched wider.

The Hollowed shifted at the edges of her vision, their bodies little more than shadows stitched together by decay and suffering. They did not think. They did not question.

They obeyed.

"Sing for me," she whispered, and the Hollowed obliged.