Flesh-burner temples were never meant for worship. They were for disposal—ritualized incineration sites where infected bodies were fed into black-iron furnaces, their screams swallowed by hymn-choked chimneys.
The one in Cradle Hollow was different.
It still burned—but not the dead.
Zevrak stood before its towering gates, cloaked in storm-hued robes stolen from a dead ascetic. The iron arches above him bore dozens of nailed-open eyes—some human, some not—preserved in amber resin, eternally watching. The temple breathed smoke and rot, alive with murmured liturgies that turned the air to ash.
At his side, Serana flexed her fingers near her sword hilt. Her eyes scanned the glyph-covered stone.
"You sure this is the place?" she muttered.
Zevrak didn't answer immediately. He stared up at the tallest spire—one lined with bone cages and wind-chimes made of teeth.
"I followed the dreams of the infected," he said. "They all end here."
"Dreams don't leave footprints."
"But they leave blood."
He stepped forward.
Inside, the temple halls writhed with heat. Plague-slick priests shuffled past, their robes coated in black wax and stitched with flayed verses. They moved with purpose—smoke trailing from their mouths, eyes hidden behind gilded blindfolds.
Zevrak passed among them unnoticed.
His mind palace whispered.
Second floor, west wing. The Vault of Echoes. Where the priest keeps what he fears.
He followed the scent of burnt offerings and damp parchment. Each step deeper into the temple felt like descending into a furnace-choked wound.
At last, he reached a sealed door carved from vertebrae. It pulsed faintly, as if it breathed.
Serana drew her blade.
"Subtlety over?" she asked.
"No," Zevrak said, raising his palm. "Just changed form."
He whispered in an old tongue—one only monsters remembered.
The bone door shuddered and opened.
The Vault of Echoes was not a room. It was a prison of whispers.
Crates of preserved organs, scrolls made from stitched eyelids, glass jars of dreaming blood floated in candlelight. Chains hung from the ceiling—some still twitching.
And in the center, bound to an obsidian throne by spine-hooks and cursed scripture, sat Plague-Priest Vornis—his skin pale, veined with plague veins, his eyes sealed shut by ritual scarring.
"You are no acolyte," Vornis hissed. "I smell memory on you. And wrath."
Zevrak stepped closer. "You have something I need."
"I have many things. And all of them will rot before you steal them."
Zevrak didn't reply.
He raised one hand and spoke a name he hadn't used since the era of ash palaces.
The chains snapped.
The scriptures burned.
Vornis shrieked, seizing violently as his body convulsed.
Zevrak's voice cut through the madness. "Where is the Cycle Mark?"
The priest gasped, blood spilling from his teeth. "You—you're not supposed to remember! You're not in the Sequence!"
Zevrak smiled thinly. "I broke it."
He reached into the priest's chest—not physically, but spiritually, his fingers sinking past ribs, through screaming essence.
He pulled.
A glyph blazed into being—carved not in flesh, but in fate. A swirling symbol of eyes and spirals and suns devouring themselves.
The Cycle Mark.
Proof.
Of divine manipulation.
Of reincarnation curated—not by destiny—but by a higher power playing a game with the souls of the damned.
Serana watched, silent and pale.
Zevrak turned the mark in his palm.
"Do you know what this means?" he said softly.
Serana shook her head.
"It means they're choosing who returns. Who remembers. Who suffers."
He crushed the mark into dust.
"And someone's missing."
The room trembled.
Not from anger.
But from detection.
Somewhere far above, chimes rang in unnatural frequencies. The gods had noticed the theft. The Cycle shuddered.
Vornis wept, smoke pouring from his eyes. "They will unmake you. Like they did before. Like they did all the others."
"I know," Zevrak said.
And slit the priest's throat.
Outside, Cradle Hollow reeled as the temple's bell—one forged from angel bones—rang backwards.
In alleys, the infected howled in their sleep.
One name on every tongue.
Zevrak.
Later, as the sun drowned in red mist and the two walked through corpse-choked alleys, Serana finally spoke.
"What did he mean—about the Sequence?"
Zevrak stared at the dying sky.
"The gods maintain a list. Those allowed to reincarnate. Reborn to serve or suffer. But someone—one name—is missing."
"A mistake?"
"No," he said. "A threat. One even the gods feared to remember."
"Who?"
Zevrak didn't answer.
Because he feared he already knew.
Beneath their feet, the catacombs moaned.
And in a forgotten ossuary sealed by prophecy, a chained soul opened one eye—and smiled.
The One Who Was Erased is stirring.
To be continued…