A crimson tide poured down the steps, faster than nature should allow, as if the mountain itself were drinking greedily. The humans sat motionless in their chains, their throats slit in perfect unison. The blood didn't pool. It raced along the grooves in the floor, swirling toward the altar in a macabre dance.
"This... this isn't supposed to happen yet," Haydric whispered, his confidence fracturing.
Haydric's voice reverberated through the cavern, his words laced with equal parts terror and awe as the very stones trembled beneath them. "Blood Mother!" he cried out, his usually composed face now contorted in disbelief. His fingers clutched the spear with desperate strength, knuckles standing out like pale marble against his dark skin.
"This wasn't supposed to happen—not until the festival!" He repeated.
Gregarious felt the world tilt beneath him as another violent tremor shook the chamber, sending plumes of ancient dust cascading from the vaulted ceiling. The air grew thick with the metallic tang of blood and something older, more primal—the scent of waking divinity.
"Is this—is this meant to be happening?" he managed to gasp out, his voice barely audible over the groaning cave.
The priest seemed not to hear him, his entire being focused on the artifact in his hands that now pulsed with unnatural warmth.
The carefully orchestrated ritual—the product of decades of planning, of generations of secretiveness—was unraveling before their eyes, hijacked by the very entity they sought to honor.
Where there should have been solemn ceremony, there was only chaos; where there should have been controlled power, there was only the Blood Mother's unfettered will.
As the tremors intensified, Gregarious felt the crushing weight of the cavern's aura return with devastating force.
His knees struck the unyielding stone as his body folded under the pressure, every muscle trembling not from exertion but from sheer, animal terror. The resistance potion's effects had somehow subsided like morning mist, leaving him defenseless before the Blood Mother's overwhelming presence.
Hot tears carved paths through the dust on his face as he assumed the formal bow of gratitude, his forehead pressed to cold stone in instinctive supplication even as his mind screamed with primal fear.
Haydric's strained cry pulled Gregarious's attention upward. The priest stood like a man caught in a hurricane, his robes whipping about him as he struggled against some invisible force that sought to wrest the spear from his grasp. His arms shook with the effort, tendons standing in sharp relief as his fingers tightened convulsively around the shaft—until suddenly, with dawning realization, his grip slackened.
The moment his fingers parted, the spear hung suspended in midair, defying gravity with casual arrogance.
A hush fell over the chamber as the weapon began to rotate slowly, almost thoughtfully, its polished surface catching the dim light as it turned. Then, with deliberate, ceremonial grace, it moved toward the altar, sliding into the waiting depression at its center with the satisfying click of a long-awaited reunion.
The fit was flawless—every groove, every etching on the spear's surface aligning perfectly with the ancient carvings in the stone. This was no mere weapon; this was a sacred key returning to its lock after centuries of separation.
As the final connection clicked into place, the altar erupted with light so intense it cast their shadows in stark relief against the far walls. The spirals and sigils carved into its surface blazed as though lit from within, their glow pulsing in rhythm with what could only be described as a heartbeat.
The tremors ceased abruptly, leaving behind an eerie stillness that seemed to hum with latent power.
Haydric sank to his knees, his face transformed by rapturous devotion. "She has chosen to grace us with her presence!" he proclaimed, his voice trembling with fervor. "Who are we to question her will?"
But Gregarious could summon no such reverence. His attention was fixed on the sea of blood now flowing with unnatural purpose across the cavern floor. The crimson tide moved with impossible speed and precision, channeling itself into the altar's intricate system of grooves and channels. And as he watched, the very liquid seemed to thicken and coalesce.
Gregarious remained paralyzed on the ground, his body still trembling from the Blood Mother's crushing presence. Though the weight of her aura had lifted, his limbs refused to obey him. A sudden, violent retch wracked his frame, bile burning his throat as his stomach emptied itself onto the stone. The taste of acid and fear lingered on his tongue.
Before him, the altar split open with eerie silence, its massive stone segments sliding apart without so much as a whisper. No quakes, no tremors—just the smooth, unnatural motion of ancient mechanisms obeying their programs.
Haydric scrambled back several paces before dropping into a deep bow, his forehead pressed to the blood-slick stone. "Gratitude… gratitude…" he mumbled, his voice trembling with fervor.
Then—she emerged.
A pale figure, small and ghostly, floated upward from the altar's depths. Her skin was unnaturally white, almost translucent, like marble bathed in moonlight. She might have been a woman, or perhaps a girl—it was impossible to tell. Her face was blank, her eyes empty of recognition or emotion. She simply existed, hovering just above the ground as if gravity had no claim on her.
Gregarious could only stare, caught between awe and terror. This was no grand, horned deity—this was something else. Something hollow.
The priest continued his whispered prayers, but they dissolved into gibberish, his devotion overtaking coherent speech.
Then, without warning, the pale woman raised her arms.
A sound like grinding bone echoed through the chamber as stone tombs ruptured open along the edges of the arena. From the darkness within, skeletal hands clawed free.
Haydric's face twisted in fury. "No! NO!" he shrieked, lurching to his feet. "I won't allow some wretched undead to defile this sacred moment!" He whirled toward the cavern's entrance, where dozens of Demonoids—drawn by the earlier quakes—now stood gaping. "Sanct of the Blood Mother! To me!"
The response was immediate.
Swords were drawn. Spells crackled to life in upturned palms. The gathered Demonoids surged forward, their crimson eyes alight with fanatical purpose.
From the tombs, twenty undead warriors rose in eerie unison. Some clutched rusted blades and splintered shields; others nocked spectral arrows to bows of bleached bone. Their hollow eyes fixed on the pale woman, their advance silent, relentless.
Haydric snarled and slammed his palms together. A shimmering barrier erupted around the altar, sealing the undead out. "Fight them beyond the sanctum!" he commanded. "This awakening will not be interrupted!"
The pale woman watched—blank, indifferent—as chaos erupted beyond the barrier.
Gregarious finally found his voice. "Is… is she the Blood Mother?"
Haydric barked a laugh, though his eyes never left the floating figure. "Don't be absurd, boy. The Blood Mother would have horns that scrape the heavens and wings that blot out the sun! This is merely the key—the one who opens the final seal!"
The last of the undead crumbled to dust, their bones scattering across the cavern floor like brittle twigs. Three Demonoids lay dead among them, their bodies torn open by rusted blades, yet no one mourned—only reverent silence remained. This was a holy battle, and their deaths were offerings in themselves.
The pale woman lowered her arms, her hollow eyes drifting shut. Then, as if her purpose had been fulfilled, her form began to fade, dissolving into mist that curled upward like smoke from an extinguished candle.
The ground shuddered.
Haydric's barrier flickered out as he grabbed Gregarious by the shoulder, dragging him back from the altar just as the stone split apart with a sound like cracking ice. The priest's breath came in ragged, ecstatic gasps, his entire body trembling with uncontainable fervor.
"This is it! This is IT!" His voice cracked with hysteria, his fingers digging into Gregarious' arm. "The awakening of our magnificent, glorious Blood Mother! The world will tremble! No human will ever dare scorn us again!"
Gregarious kept his head bowed, his stomach churning. The others cheered, their voices ringing with fanatical joy, but he couldn't shake the unease coiling in his gut.
Why was she sealed away?
Why did the undead try to stop this?
Why did the carvings show her slaughtering thousands?
He swallowed hard, forcing his face into neutrality. Now was not the time for questions.
Then—movement.
A figure rose from the fissure in the altar, slow, deliberate.
At first, all Gregarious could see was hair—black as the void, spilling like ink over unseen shoulders.
Then the Blood Mother lifted her head—
And the world stopped.
/—/
Someone once said a flower can bloom even in a windowless room—that life, stubborn and persistent, will find a way to unfold its petals even in the absence of light. Whether this was true of not was up to interpretation. However this girl lived like she was that very blooming flower.
Every morning, she woke with a smile.
It wasn't that she didn't notice the cracks in the walls, or the way the floorboards groaned underfoot like a living thing in pain. She saw the empty bottles piled in the corner, their glass mouths gaping. She heard the whispers of neighbors who spoke of them in pitying tones. But none of that mattered, because her mother was there.
And her mother was warmth.
At six years old, she had already learned the rhythms of their poverty: the hollow ache in her belly that never quite faded, the way her clothes hung loose on her small frame, the sour tang of unwashed skin that clung to her no matter how hard she scrubbed with the sliver of soap they rationed. She knew, too, the sound of her father's stumbling footsteps long after midnight, the way the door would slam against the wall like a gunshot, the muffled cries that followed. On those nights, she would press her small hands over her ears and count the seconds until silence returned.
But the worst part wasn't the hunger, or the fear, or even the smell of rot that seemed to seep from the very walls. It was the way her mother flinched from her touch.
Every time—every single time—she reached out, her mother would jerk away as if scalded. The rejection was a puzzle she turned over in her mind, examining it from every angle. Was it because of the grime under her nails? The way her unwashed hair clung to her neck in greasy strands? She didn't know. She only knew that the love in her mother's eyes never wavered, even as her body recoiled.
That love was enough to blot out everything else.
Then came the week when even the scraps ran out.
Her father, in a drunken rage, had torn through the house like a storm, upturning furniture and pockets alike, stealing the last few coins they'd scraped together for bread. For days afterward, her stomach cramped with a pain so sharp it brought tears to her eyes. But her mother—her beautiful, hollow-cheeked mother—would press her own meager portion into the girl's hands with a smile that didn't reach her eyes.
"Eat," she would say, her voice thin as paper. "For me."
And the girl would obey, even as she watched her mother's hands tremble with hunger.