Chapter 64. The Blood-Star Ceremony
⚠ Content Warning ⚠
This episode depicts a fictional ritual in which cult members commit mass suicide as part of a supernatural ceremony. It also contains scenes of death, horror, and psychological distress. Viewer discretion is strongly advised.
***
Ten minutes begin.
Dominic, Alana, Hana, and Sarliya stood frozen in place, both hands clutching at their own throats. Breathing had become agony, as if something inside them was trying to force its way out. Just as that sensation reached its peak, everything suddenly stopped. They could breathe again. The pain that had been tearing through them subsided.
The moment air filled their lungs, they dropped to the ground, gasping in ragged breaths. After a few moments of recovering, Dominic finally looked around properly, and when he saw what surrounded them, his eyes went wide. Every tree, every blade of grass, everything nearby had died. Birds had fallen from the branches. Leaves hung withered and dry. The grass beneath them had turned to nothing. But none of that was what truly shocked him.
What struck him hardest was that one person among them was missing entirely. Nowhere, in any direction, could he see any trace of him. That person was Necrotize.
Dominic scanned every direction, searching for him, but there was no sign of Necrotize anywhere. One by one, the rest of his team came back to their senses and noticed the same thing, Necrotize was nowhere to be found. Standing before them now were only the three robed figures, their faces still hidden beneath black cloth, only their lips visible.
Once it was certain Necrotize wasn’t among them, they scrambled back to their feet and fell into a battle formation. Dominic gripped his sword tightly with both hands, though anyone looking closely would have noticed it trembling faintly. The one person he’d counted on to stand against the lunatics before them had vanished without a trace. Their chances of surviving this were close to none.
But that didn’t mean he would surrender. He would fight until his very last breath, even if death was the only thing waiting for him at the end.
Alana quickly pushed Messy and Lucy forward to shield the group. Both of them still bore the marks of exhaustion from the earlier ordeal, but there was no other choice, if she didn’t use them now, she had no idea whether she’d make it out of this alive. Painful as it was, she had to send them in.
Hana gripped her thrower tightly, aiming it at the three figures standing before them, but she couldn’t hold a steady line of sight, her whole body was shaking too hard. She had no idea what to do next. Her mind had gone completely blank. Every instinct in her screamed to turn and run, but some part of her already knew that running wasn’t an option anymore.
Sarliya stood behind the others, hands clasped together in prayer. Her face didn’t show much fear, but anyone watching closely would have seen her hands trembling. This was the first time in her life she’d faced anything like this, and she had no idea what she was supposed to do. All she could do was pour every ounce of her devotion into a prayer to Goddess Luna.
Seeing them so tense, Lord Second smiled. The sight of that smile only made the group tighten further with dread. Still smiling, he watched them for a moment longer, then turned his back to them.
"There’s no need to fear me. I won’t lay a hand on any of you, you still have a purpose to serve. And I can’t very well let you die before that, can I?" He began walking forward slowly, leaving them behind. "Enjoy your sweet moments while you still can. Because in just a little while, you won’t be standing long enough to say your farewells. Let death take you into his embrace."
The instant he spoke those words, a chill ran through Dominic and the others. The color drained entirely from faces that had, until now, only been beaded with sweat. Their bodies slowly began to go cold.
With that, Lord Second stepped back into the bush he’d emerged from, and the two figures behind him followed suit, vanishing into the underbrush. The moment they were gone, the group sank to the ground, breathing hard and fast.
Once seated, Dominic looked up at the sky. The massive barrier still hung over the entire forest, and behind it, the sun had begun its slow descent, evening wasn’t far off now. Orange light filtered through the barrier and washed over them. Dominic stared up at it with a hollow, distant look in his eyes.
***
Outside the massive circular star carved into the forest floor, a hundred black-robed figures stood in a ring around it. Each of them held a curved dagger, etched with strange markings that radiated a faint, unsettling aura. One of them, the same man who had spoken before, raised his voice to address the gathering.
"My brothers and sisters. We now stand at the final step of our plan. We can all be certain that Lord Second has succeeded in the task he set out to accomplish. Now it falls to us to carry out our own part, the single most important role in this entire plan. Without it, everything we’ve worked toward would be impossible. Many of you may feel a flicker of fear in your hearts right now, and that is only natural. But you’re forgetting something important. We are only leaving behind this physical world. In the end, every one of us will arrive in His kingdom. And is there any greater dream than serving Him with everything we have?"
He let his words settle for a moment, glancing around at the gathering. Many of them had grown visibly emotional, tears streaming down their faces. Seeing this, he pressed on without pausing.
"As I said a moment ago, each of us came here carrying our own dreams. Some came for their families. Some came seeking revenge. Some came hoping to be reunited with a love they’d lost. Each of us wants something different. But in the end, we all share one common desire, to meet Death face to face. And that is exactly what we are about to do."
At his words, everyone softened further, and by now nearly all of them had tears in their eyes. Seeing this, the man flipped his dagger in his hand, gripping the handle firmly with both hands. He raised it above his head, and following his lead, everyone else raised their own daggers as well. Once every blade was lifted high, he turned his face toward the sky. A strange smile spread across his lips. As he tilted his head back, the hood covering his face slipped off.
What lay beneath it was horrifying. From above his lips all the way up through his eyes and forehead, his face had been burned completely to ash. His eyes were entirely white, and the scarring across his face was severe enough to make anyone’s stomach turn just from looking at it. He gazed up at the sky, a strange joy welling up inside him, an unreadable smile drifting across his ruined face. Then he spoke, eyes still fixed on the heavens.
"Let death take us to his embrace."
The moment he said it, everyone around him, all looking skyward, echoed the words together, almost in perfect unison.
"Let death take us to his embrace."
The words rose from a hundred mouths at once. Finally, the man tightened his grip on the dagger’s handle and spoke once more.
"All praise be to Death."
The instant he said it, he brought the blade straight down and drove it into his own throat. The dagger tore through his neck and drove straight up into his skull, burying itself deep into his brain. As he did, everyone around him echoed the same words together.
"All praise be to Death."
And with that, one by one, they began driving their own daggers into their throats. Many hands trembled as they did it, but none of them stopped themselves. Slowly, every single one of them drove the blade straight into their own necks. Within moments, all hundred of them had done it, and nearly every one collapsed to the ground, bodies convulsing as blood poured from their throats in torrents.
They lay scattered around the circular star, but to anyone looking down from above, their fallen bodies would have formed a single, unmistakable shape, arranged in a pattern radiating outward from the star at its center, forming the exact likeness of a red spider lily.
Then something strange began to happen. The fountains of blood spilling from every throat all began flowing toward the same destination, the circular star at the center. Streams of blood rushed rapidly along the ground and poured into the inscriptions carved across the star. Within moments, every last drop had been drawn into those markings, and the ground that had been soaked red only seconds before was now completely clean.
The instant the final drop of blood sank into the star’s inscriptions, a strange reaction rippled through it. The star, which had been giving off a black light only moments before, now blazed with a deep red glow instead, entirely different from before. Where the earlier light had carried an icy chill, this new light radiated warmth.
With every passing moment, the red light grew brighter and brighter, until at last it stopped intensifying altogether. The instant it did, an eerie silence fell over everything, a silence unlike any other. And in the middle of that silence, a massive hand began to rise up from within the circular star.