Story 1093: Ashen Eclipse

The sky cracked open with a sound like weeping stone.

From the shattered heavens spilled an unnatural twilight, an endless, choking ash that fell like snow over the dying world. The Ashen Eclipse had begun—a prophecy whispered among the deranged and the damned, now fulfilled in grim spectacle.

In the center of the decay, the twisted ruins of a once-proud cathedral twisted upward, as if clawing at the black sun that now hung bleeding in the heavens. Gargoyle-like creatures, half bone, half smoldering ember, lined the edges of the broken spires, their eyes lit with hunger.

Below, the ash gave birth to nightmares.

Shapes formed and slithered in the drifts—withered priests, children with hollow sockets, beasts whose mouths split open to reveal endless rows of gnashing teeth. Each creature bore a mark: a black ring burnt into its flesh, the sigil of the Ashen Eclipse.