Chapter 7: The Doctrine of Flesh
The Doctrine of Flesh
The sun never reached this part of Velmora.
Not because of clouds… but because of the weight built above it — towers of greed, palaces of deception, and the mechanical veins of the Capitol choking the sky.
Down here, beneath the filth and luxury, only flickering fungus-lamps and groaning generators dared to breathe. The air smelled like forgotten sweat and metal rot. The ground, like everything else, remembered pain.
Rael stood under a rusted archway.
Beside him, Dust kept his pistol low and eyes sharper than usual. Up ahead, Thread moved in silence, fingers gently gliding over carvings in the stone walls — symbols worn down by time, and not in any living language.
"This used to be a cathedral," Dust muttered.
Rael raised an eyebrow. "Religious?"
Dust shook his head. "No. It's older. Flesh Doctrine. Before the Red Spires ruled. Back when people believed pain could purify the soul."
Rael didn't respond. He just breathed in the air. It felt thick — like walking through someone else's memory.
They had followed a rumor. Survivors whispered about a place where the nobles trained their 'pets.' Not dogs — children. Stolen from slums. Injected. Broken. Turned into weapons.
The deeper they moved, the louder it got.
Not voices. Not wind.
Memories.
Rael's power responded now without command. Every step sent a pulse through his body. He saw flashes of chains. Heard a boy screaming. Smelled fire.
Thread stopped at a massive iron door.
No handle. No lock. Just a bleeding sigil, etched into black metal.
Without hesitation, she took out a shard of glass.
Rael's voice caught in his throat. "Thread, wait—"
But she had already dragged the glass across her palm. Blood trickled onto the sigil.
The door didn't open.
It screamed.
Not mechanical. Not human. A scream carved into reality. A memory.
And then — it opened.
---
Inside was a chamber of silence and shadow.
Stone pillars reached toward a ceiling veiled in darkness. The air was heavy, unmoving. Ancient torches lined the walls, their flames long gone, replaced by the cold echo of something holy… and wrong.
In the center of the room stood an altar, blackened and corroded.
Above it — suspended from chains — was a body.
A child.
No older than thirteen. Dressed in fine noble silk. Still warm. Still bleeding.
Rael's chest tightened. Not from fear.
From something older. Deeper.
Dust moved to a plaque nailed into the stone nearby. He squinted.
"Rite of Purity," he read aloud. "A noble must sacrifice their bloodline's weakest child to awaken the others."
Rael's eyes drifted back to the hanging corpse.
"This… this is tradition?" he said under his breath.
It wasn't a crime.
Not a mistake.
It was a system.
On the walls — carvings. Hundreds of them. Not art. Documentation.
Children kneeling.
Children mutilated.
Children turned into weapons, their bodies reshaped by magic and knives.
Thread stepped forward, drawn to the altar like a ghost returning home. Her hand hovered over the dead noble child.
Rael moved, "Don't—"
But it was too late.
Her eyes rolled back. Her body stiffened.
And the room shattered.
---
A memory.
Rael was no longer in the chamber. He was inside someone else's past.
A young boy — golden-haired, shaking — stood before the altar. Behind him, a tall man in crimson robes pressed a branding iron into flame.
"You must not cry," the man said coldly. "Tears stain the gift."
The boy trembled. The brand met his back.
The scream tore through the chamber.
Stone beneath the boy's feet glowed red.
The pain… became something else. His eyes changed.
No longer afraid.
No longer a boy.
The man nodded. "You are now worthy."
---
Rael snapped out of it.
His body collapsed to one knee. Sweat coated his skin. His heartbeat thundered in his ears.
Thread whispered, voice shaking: "That boy… he survived. He grew up. He's real. He's alive. He leads the Corrupt now."
Rael's stomach twisted.
The Capitol didn't create monsters.
It refined them.
---
Dust stumbled onto a shelf in the dark and found a book. Leather-bound, locked by bone.
Rael took it carefully.
The title was carved into its cover in seared flesh:
"The Book of Perfected Pain."
A Wound Script.
He flipped it open. Pages written in red. Diagrams of magical surgeries — spells etched into nerves, rituals involving memory and death. One page even described how to make a Corrupt from a living child by removing emotion piece by piece.
Every sentence felt like a scar.
Every diagram like a crime that had never been punished.
---
They took the book.
They sealed the chamber behind them.
And as they emerged back into the half-lit world above, none of them spoke.
Not because they had no words.
But because words weren't enough.
This world… wasn't broken.
It was built like this.
And it had to be burned from the roots up.
---