Part 1: The Hollow Road
The road into Holgaris wasn't a road.
It was a scar.
Grass didn't grow here. Not fully. Trees leaned in strange directions. The canopy was too high, too quiet, and the air tasted like something had died a long time ago but never stopped decaying.
Sacha led with her axe across her back, muttering now and then about the smell of copper.
Sylvia walked close to Yuji, ears up, every sense drawn tight like a string on the edge of snap.
Amelia, as always, walked slow. But her parasol was closed. That was the tell. It only closed when she was hunting.
Siora whispered, "We're already in it."
Yuji looked at her.
She gestured to the trees. "Holgaris isn't just forest. It's overgrowth. Wild mana strangled by something buried beneath it."
Amelia glanced sideways. "More like a tombstone garden."
The road narrowed as they moved deeper—stone paths cracked open by root claws and moss-throated vines. Birds didn't call. No bugs. Not even wind.
Yuji stepped through a grove of thick-trunked ashwood and stopped.
A circle of white flowers bloomed in a perfect ring.
He crouched.
The petals pulsed faintly with decay magic—just a trace.
"They're feeding on something," he muttered.
"Us," Sacha said, tapping her temple. "Or our aura."
Siora added, "They react to divine interference. That's Fertility magic, even if you're not casting."
Amelia's voice was soft. "The earth is watching."
They reached the edge of a shallow ridge—and stopped.
Below them, half buried in the forest floor, was a massive arc of bone—curved, hollowed, larger than any beast.
Sylvia whispered, "Rib."
Yuji stood very still.
The earth pulsed beneath his feet.
Alive.
Not in a way his magic understood.
But in a way it recognized.
He spoke without turning.
"That's no ruin."
Siora nodded.
"That's a corpse."
Part 2: The Corpse Beneath Us
The rib arched skyward like the spine of a fallen world.
Pale ivory, fossilized and fused with moss that burned to the touch. The size of it dwarfed everything they'd seen—not just ancient, but divine.
Siora moved first, hands pressed to the soil near the base.
"This isn't just a corpse," she murmured. "It was worshipped. Then forgotten. Something this big doesn't rot on its own."
Amelia tilted her head. "So the Church didn't just find it. They've been building inside it."
Yuji traced his fingers along a carved line etched into the curve of the bone.
It wasn't natural.
It was writing—a flowing, angular script that glowed faintly under Fertility magic.
"Door," he said. "But sealed."
Siora stepped forward. "Let me."
She knelt, whispered in a dialect older than elvish, and the vines coating the rib twisted, then curled away—revealing a tunnel carved into bone and soot.
No light inside.
Only the smell of prayer.
Not incense. Not holiness.
Devotion made wet.
They stepped in one by one.
The passage descended.
The walls were not stone—but hardened marrow. Glyphs burned in low red light along the ribs. Some shimmered as they passed—responsive, not defensive. Yuji's aura made them pulse slightly, like a heartbeat remembered.
At the end of the tunnel was a gate.
Not metal. Not magic.
Flesh.
A curtain of skin, stretched taut and veined, marked with hundreds of prayer glyphs—repeating the same word.
Succession.
Sylvia looked away. "This place is sick."
Yuji stepped closer, placed a hand on the flesh.
It didn't move.
It breathed.
Then parted.
And behind it was the cathedral.
It had no pews. No altar.
Just a central spire of bone reaching up into the dark, wrapped in scaffolding and hung with tattered white banners bearing a twisted Church sigil.
Monks moved around it—hooded, barefoot, silent.
Their eyes were sewn shut.
Their mouths, burned closed.
They moved like sleepwalkers. Like whispers given shape.
Sacha raised her weapon.
Yuji stopped her.
"No," he said. "They're not guards."
Amelia nodded. "They're pilgrims."
Siora whispered, voice dry with horror.
"Willing ones."