Story 1191: Ritual of the Vein-Walkers

The alley behind the old Chamber of Surgeons had always smelled of rust and rot, even long after the last body was carted out. The walls wept condensation like flesh after a fever, and strange symbols—vein-thin, pulsing—were etched into the brick by hands that had no bones.

It was here that the Vein-Walkers gathered.

They wore no robes. Only skin. Not their own. Their faces were masks of old humanity, sewn tight with surgical precision, lips sealed with black thread. Beneath, their bodies shimmered like raw muscle laced with flickering veins of light. They walked not on the ground, but through it—stepping between cracks in the world like crossing arteries in a vast cosmic heart.

Tonight, they came to open the Vein Eternal.

Jasper Crane, once a gravedigger, now something else entirely, stood in the center of their circle. His eyes had been replaced with obsidian marbles. He could see the pulse beneath everything now—how trees bled memory and buildings twitched in agony.