Flesh Cathedral

The path to the Womb Tomb was not a road but a wound.

The further Varek and Selene walked, the more the world lost its shape. Trees bent in unnatural arches, their bark pulsing like heart tissue. The sky bled long tendrils of red mist, and gravity faltered, warping the air with every step. At their feet, the soil squelched—not dirt, but something more like muscle.

They spoke little. The silence between them was not hollow, but loaded, thick with exhaustion and grim anticipation. Every so often, Selene would clutch her ribs, the phantom ache of her broken connection to Eriseth flaring through her bones. Varek would touch her shoulder without words—his warmth grounding her in a reality that grew thinner by the minute.

By twilight—if time even flowed in this space—they stood before it.

The Womb Tomb rose from the earth like a ruptured cocoon. Massive ribs arched skyward, stitched together with cords of glistening sinew. Between them stretched a gate of flesh and bone, opening and closing like the lips of a breathing wound.

Selene recoiled. "It's alive…"

Varek stared, jaw tight. "This place was never meant to be found."

They stepped forward.

The gate sighed open with a moist, sucking sound, and a fetid wind rolled out to greet them, heavy with rot, lust, and blood. Crossing the threshold felt like being born backward—the air inside was warm, wet, womb-like, and every surface pulsed with a heartbeat that didn't match their own.

The walls glistened, soft and vascular. In the distance, moans echoed—human and inhuman, pain and pleasure interwoven. Something moved along the walls, beneath the slick membrane—eyes blinking in and out of visibility.

As they walked deeper, runes written in old blood revealed themselves on the pulsing flesh:

"The child of war shall become the father of endings.

The wound is the gate.

The gate is the god."

Selene touched the wall. It shivered beneath her fingers.

"I've been here," she said, voice hollow. "In dreams. In memories. I think… this is where my mother was taken. Where Eriseth touched her."

Varek put a hand on her lower back. "Then we end it here."

They continued until the path opened into a chamber. The ceiling towered, ribbed with spines and weeping ulcers. In the center was a throne of fused bone and flesh, and upon it sat a figure—slumped, unmoving.

It was Kael, or a version of him.

But his body had changed. Stretched. Warped.

His jaw was elongated, tusks jutting like ivory blades. His arms were slick and veined with dark light. Tentacles writhed beneath his skin, and his chest was torn open to reveal a second face pulsing like a tumor—Eriseth's sneering expression, carved in visceral tissue.

"Welcome, Varek," the thing rasped, dual voices echoing from both mouths. "And the failed vessel."

Selene snarled, stepping forward, but Varek blocked her with an arm.

"Why here?" Varek asked. "Why show yourself?"

Kael rose, and the ground wept beneath his feet. "Because you are the final seal."

Varek's blood turned cold. "What?"

"You are the hybrid, the blood-born mistake of predator and prey," Eriseth cooed through Kael's torn chest. "Your body is the bridge. Your suffering is the altar. And your love for her is the offering."

Selene stepped beside him, her dagger already drawn.

"You'll die here," she hissed.

Kael laughed. "We are already dead. You've merely arrived at the cathedral of your conception."

The walls began to shift.

The entire chamber came alive—pulsing, contracting. The throne shattered, and Kael's body extended—spine unraveling like a whip, limbs growing, splitting, reforming. He no longer resembled a man.

He was a god-in-becoming, a malformed fetus of divinity and rage.

Varek drew his blades. "Get behind me."

"No," Selene said. "We fight this together."

They charged.

The walls screamed.

Kael struck first, tentacles lashing with wet fury. One wrapped around Selene's arm, yanking her forward—straight into a gaping mouth that had formed in his abdomen. She sliced through it, bile spraying across her face, and rolled beneath the attack.

Varek came from behind, twin blades flashing. He aimed for Kael's neck, but his weapon struck bone and stuck—held fast by sinew that pulsed and swallowed the blade into the hybrid's flesh.

Kael laughed, eyes burning with inner light. "You were made to end the world, Varek. Why do you fight your destiny?"

Varek's only answer was a roar as he drove his clawed hand into Kael's stomach, ripping through layers of burning muscle. He pulled out something still twitching and crushed it.

Kael screamed. The cathedral shook.

Selene was already climbing his back, using bone spurs like handholds. She drove her dagger deep into his shoulder, severing one of the thick tendons controlling his monstrous limbs. Kael buckled.

Then his chest opened like a blooming flower.

The Eriseth-face inside smiled. "Enough games."

A psychic blast threw them both back—Varek hit the ground hard, ribs cracking. Selene hit a pillar of flesh and slumped, dazed.

Eriseth's voice rang in their skulls, layered and ancient. "Love is a lie. Flesh is truth. Let me show you."

Tentacles erupted from the ground, seeking their bodies.

Varek screamed as one pierced his side, invading nerve and memory. Selene tried to crawl, but she was pinned—and worse, seduced by the mental onslaught. Images of twisted ecstasy, godlike pleasure, and corrupted desire surged through her.

"Don't give in," Varek rasped, his voice a lifeline through the madness.

He forced himself to stand.

Blood poured from his mouth. His body trembled. Something inside him was changing.

The divine rot was waking inside him now.

He closed his eyes and reached inward—to the beast within, to the ancient part of him that was neither vampire nor werewolf.

It answered.

With a scream that shattered the chamber's silence, Varek transformed.

Not into a wolf. Not into a vampire.

Into something new.

His body elongated, black fur erupting from silver skin. Wings of bone and fire split from his back. His eyes burned violet, and his voice became a chorus.

He leapt.

Tore Kael from the altar.

And bit down on the Eriseth-face.

It shrieked, writhing, spewing black flame and divine ichor. Selene lunged forward with her dagger and stabbed it through what remained of its eye.

Together, they fell upon the abomination—ripping, cutting, burning.

The chamber screamed.

The sky outside cracked.

And the Womb Tomb collapsed

They woke in silence.

The forest was gone.

Around them stretched an endless white desert, lit by a black sun.

Selene coughed and rolled onto her side. "Are we dead?"

Varek stood, his hybrid form flickering. "No. We're in between."

They turned to see a figure waiting.

The Oracle.

"It has begun," it said. "The child is born. The gods stir. The veil is open."

Varek stepped forward. "Did we kill Kael?"

"You killed a version. But the others awaken. The final gate lies ahead."

Selene looked at Varek. "Do we keep going?"

He took her hand. "To the end."

She smiled.

Then the desert began to bleed.