Story 1127: The Serpent Psalms

In the drowned catacombs beneath the Abbey of Withered Tongues, a choir still sang.

Their voices were hushed, reverent, and slithering.

No one knew who taught them the words, only that they were not meant for human throats. The psalms, etched into the scales of a great serpent skeleton coiled through the chapel like a fossilized god, were forbidden even to read.

Yet tonight, Jasper Crane would hear them.

Jasper was no scholar. Just a gravedigger with dirt-stained hands and dreams full of hissing voices. For weeks, he'd dug up bones that weren’t there before, their sockets filled with black sand, and tongues fossilized mid-scream.

He followed the voices underground.

The abbey had long been abandoned, swallowed by a sinkhole and now half-flooded. Mold devoured the hymnbooks. The pews were sunken and split. But the altar remained intact—its stone shaped into a twisted ouroboros, its center open like a waiting mouth.

A breathless chant echoed up from below.