The descent began with silence.
Noah hated silence.
Not the good kind—the soft, sleepy silence of blankets and rain—but the kind that buzzed in your ears and crawled over your skin like something waiting to bite. The kind that filled the space between breath and scream.
The flesh-forest didn't help. If anything, it made things worse.
The trees twitched as they passed, muscle-bound towers veined with black sap and pale, membranous leaves. Every so often, a low groan would ripple through the rootbed like something beneath them was shifting. Or breathing. Or starving.
"Don't step on anything that looks like it's pulsing," Noah whispered.
"I wasn't planning to," Abel muttered. His sword was out, low and ready, his eyes flicking left and right like a trained animal. "Can you sense anything?"
Noah exhaled through his nose, holding his tarot deck tight against his chest like a holy object. "Too quiet. The monsters either cleared out or they're watching. Neither's good."
The slope gradually evened out, opening onto a shallow valley half-swallowed by root arches and fungal ribs. And there, just ahead—warm, flickering light.
A campfire.
They both stopped.
Noah blinked. Then blinked again.
"Okay, that's not ominous at all," he muttered. "Totally normal. Random campfire. Still burning. In the middle of a meat forest. Love that."
It was real. No illusions, no mirages. A proper campfire surrounded by makeshift logs arranged with unsettling precision—almost ceremonial. Scorched cooking gear lay scattered around it, half-covered by a tarp stitched from animal hide and what Noah really, really hoped wasn't human leather. The greasy scent of roasted meat lingered, mingling with herbs and a disturbing hint of something sweet.
But no people.
"Someone left in a hurry," Abel murmured. He stepped forward, sword low, eyes narrowing at the half-finished meal.
Noah followed at a slower pace, careful not to step on anything that might scream. He noticed the details: leaves still curling with residual heat, a knocked-over bowl still steaming faintly, footprints etched into the soft, wet flesh-like ground.
He crouched beside the fire, brushing ash aside. The coals hissed and cracked like they had something to say. "They were here. Like, moments ago."
Then, louder: "And I'd just like to say, if this is another haunted kitchen situation, I'm filing a divine complaint."
Abel gave him a dry look.
"I'm serious," Noah said. "I've already been cursed by a book, flirted with a prince, and exploded a library. I draw the line at cursed camping equipment."
That's when he heard it.
Singing.
High voices. Children's voices.
A chorus.
Noah froze. Abel's hand was already at his back, dragging him upright as the forest around them erupted in sudden light.
Torches. No—brands of sacred flame, held aloft by small figures in ash-colored robes. Dozens. Maybe more. Their eyes shone unnaturally, glassy with devotion. Their faces were painted with soot or ink, mouths open in perfect, terrifying harmony.
The song wasn't joyous. It was a hymn. A dirge of rebirth, laced with fire and blood and praise for the Flame Saint. Words twisted in a language Noah didn't fully understand, but the meaning curled through his bones anyway.
"Shit," Noah whispered. "It was a trap."
A voice—calm, gentle—rose above the song.
"Blessed are the lost, for they will walk through fire and be made clean."
Figures stepped out from between the trees. Adult followers now. Tall. Robed. Masked. But not all of them were fully human anymore.
One limped forward, dragging a leg that had fused into a melted stump of bone and charred skin. Another's arms were elongated and blackened, the fingers crackling with residual flame like half-spent wicks. One woman's mask had no eye holes—because she no longer had eyes, just polished sockets filled with ember-like stones that glowed faintly beneath her hood.
Their robes shifted with strange bulges—some too angular, some too soft, as if something moved beneath the cloth. A man lifted his hood and revealed a face half-consumed by flame-scarring and fused flesh, his mouth locked in a permanent smile.
One among them carried a staff crowned with a melted silver hand, the fingers locked in a gesture of benediction. From the way the others stepped aside for him, he was clearly someone of authority—or insanity.
"You have come," the man said, his mask shaped in a grotesque parody of serenity. "The Saint foresaw it."
Noah blinked at the melting eyeballs and culty smiles and whispered, "Why does every welcoming committee in this world look like a Halloween clearance sale threw up on itself?"
Abel lifted his blade, but the circle had already closed.
They were surrounded.
And the fire behind them still burned.
Noah shifted his weight, ready to move, to run, to cast something—anything—when he felt it. Not one blade, but several. Cool metal pressed against his throat, another hooked around his ankle, and two more settled along the curve of his ribs like a lover's embrace. Abel froze beside him with similar precision—immobile, tense, surrounded.
Children. They were surrounded by children.
They had moved without sound, like trained predators. No clumsy footfalls. No laughter. Just that eerie, perfect coordination. Hooded and robed, faces painted in soot and ash, they crouched and clung to them like shadows with knives. Their sickles were jagged, rusted, and carved with glowing runes.
One little girl, maybe nine years old, dangled just above Abel's shoulder—perched like a vulture in the gnarled branches of a nearby tree. How she'd gotten up there with a sickle in one hand and no sound at all, Noah would never know. But there she was, calm as could be, leaning forward until her blade hovered just inches from Abel's jawline. She smiled with all the innocence of a schoolyard sketch and whispered, "The Saint doesn't like screaming."
Noah didn't scream. He sighed.
"Well," he said slowly, "this feels wildly inappropriate and deeply on brand for my life."
Time blurred.
When Noah blinked next, they were walking.
Not by choice.
The children walked behind them, in front of them, beside them—sickles still drawn, as if this was just the world's most threatening field trip. The adults followed in reverent silence, many disfigured and cloaked in heavy robes. Yet they did not lead.
It was the children who gave the commands. Short, whispered words that the adults obeyed without question. Noah watched, baffled, as a tall, scarred man flinched at the gesture of a child's hand and stepped aside like a scolded servant.
"I think I've cracked the hierarchy," Noah murmured. "Toddlers with knives. We are absolutely in the safest place possible."
The path twisted through a fleshy marsh, the ground spongy and wet beneath their feet. Trees made of sinew and ribs arched above like a cathedral of organs. Light came not from torches but strange floating lanterns—bulbous glass orbs pulsing with scent and color. The air shimmered faintly wherever one passed, leaving behind trails of something like incense and heat.
"These are... scent-lanterns?" Noah asked, wrinkling his nose. "Who the hell makes lighting you can taste?"
No one answered. Not even the kids.
Then the forest shifted.
The trees parted slowly, and in the distance, a pale structure rose.
No—an archway. Massive. Built entirely from bones, fused and twisted together like something divine had torn its ribcage out to make a gate. Around it, more of the scent-lanterns floated like fireflies, bathing the perimeter in glowing hues of orange and violet.
Beyond it, a wall.
High. Fleshy. Bone-reinforced. Lit with rows and rows of lights that flickered but never faded.
And past that?
A settlement.
Massive. Alive.
"If this is paradise," Noah muttered, eyes wide, "then the brochure seriously undersold the cannibal architecture."