Part 3: Choir of the Silent
They did not scream.
They did not kneel.
The monks—if that was what they were—moved in precise, circular paths around the central spire, arms folded, heads slightly bowed, feet bare against marrow-polished floor.
Their skin was pale from lack of sunlight. Their robes stitched with thread made of bone-fiber and sacred ink. No weapons. No armor.
Yet the air around them felt crowded.
Not with noise.
With presence.
Yuji stepped slowly between two of them, hand near his weapon, but not drawn.
No reaction.
Then a hum.
Not from the throat.
From inside his head.
The sound was ancient, layered—a hundred voices pressed through a single chord.
Not painful. Not loud.
Just… steady.
He walks in life. We walk in longing.
He bears the gift they buried.
He will understand.
Yuji staggered.
Siora grabbed his shoulder. "They're using collective thought projection. It's prayer—broadcast through spiritual resonance."
Sacha snarled. "Feels like someone's digging in my brain with dull tools."
Amelia stood still. Her eyes were half-lidded. Listening.
"They're not trying to break us," she said. "They're offering."
Sylvia's hands clenched. "Offering what?"
The monks slowly shifted their circle.
Reoriented.
Toward Yuji.
Not with eyes.
With attention.
And in perfect psychic unity, their voices sounded in every mind at once:
The world will rot clean.
We will sing it whole.
And the seed will awaken.
You are the soil, red one.
You are the root.
Yuji's breath hitched.
Not fear.
Recognition.
Amelia stepped in front of him, shadows curling around her like a living dress.
"We need to move," she said softly. "Now. Before they try to plant something we can't pull out."
Yuji blinked.
Then nodded.
They turned from the silent choir.
But the humming didn't stop.
Not even as they descended toward the heart.
Part 4: Heart of the Cathedral
The descent was not marked by stairs.
It was a slope.
A throat.
The marrow corridor twisted downward, ribbed and wet, until the party emerged into a massive hollow chamber—circular, domed, dim.
The light came not from torches or glyphs.
But from the walls.
Veins. Glowing, pulsing.
Siora whispered, "This was the heart cavity."
And in the center—hovering above a runed stone pedestal suspended by tendrils of bone—was a mass.
Not a being.
Not yet.
A cluster of fused flesh and stone, encased in a translucent membrane of blood-colored resin. Inside, something shifted—not moving, but rearranging. Like it was learning how to have limbs.
Sylvia covered her nose. "It stinks of burnt roots."
Yuji stepped forward—and stumbled.
His magic—his Fertility aura—surged outward.
Then stopped.
Like it hit a wall.
Not blocked. Not resisted.
Absorbed.
Sacha caught him.
Siora's eyes widened. "This place is metabolizing your energy."
"It's feeding it," Amelia said. "That's why they lured you here."
Yuji stood again.
Looked at the mass.
Watched the twitch inside.
It looked almost human.
Then not.
Then… something else.
Not life.
Not death.
Preparation.
"The fragment," Yuji said. "It's not just a piece."
"It's a prototype," Siora whispered. "It's… dreaming itself into form."
They didn't speak for a moment.
Then the resin pulsed.
A faint glow inside.
A heartbeat?
No.
Not a beat.
A breath.
And the air in the chamber twisted—spells fizzled, mana flared and died.
Even Amelia swayed.
Yuji forced himself upright.
"We need to get out. Now."
But something in the mass… watched him.
And waited.