The sun rose over a graveyard without markers.
The village was dead.
Yet the village square had never been more alive.
Dozens of corpses sat in carefully arranged seats—propped up with stakes, bones, and bloodied rope. Heads lolled gently in mock reverence, hands clasped over torn chests. Children and elders alike were dressed in ripped finery, their eyes gouged or sewn shut, their mouths stitched into faint smiles.
At the pulpit, bathed in morning light and gore, Elyra stood barefoot and beaming.
Her dress was soaked in blood, now dark and stiff. Her long blond-white hair was stained in so much blood the strands took on a crimson shade. A crown made of rib bones sat atop her head. Her voice was sweet, singsong.
"Welcome, my loves," she whispered. "I know your bodies are tired, but your souls—oh, they sing so loud. Do you hear it?"
She tilted her head to the sky, eyes unfocused.
"Father says you've all done well."
She turned her gaze to the corpse directly in front of her—once a pregnant woman, now just a sack of torn flesh stuffed into vestments. She crouched, and cupped the woman's jaw with affection.
"I know you were scared. I was too. But now you're saved. Now you're one with the blood and a part of the song."
From the hill above, Nick and Lenara watched, arms crossed, cloaks drawn against the morning chill.
"She's preaching," Lenara murmured, amused. "To meat."
"She's insane alright," Nick replied. "I wonder how she would react if her sanity just returned suddenly."
They watched as Elyra spun slowly, speaking not just to the dead—but to someone else.
She giggled mid-sentence. "No, Mother, I won't forget the hymn! I just thought I'd rewrite the ending this time. I like endings where everyone dies and becomes one with the song."
She paused, then nodded as if hearing a stern rebuttal. "Yes, yes, I know that's what you said. But Father agrees with me. Right, Father?"
Nick grinned as he laughed at the girl's madness. "She's truly cracked."
Lenara smiled wider. "She's perfect and cute."
The sermon continued.
Elyra stepped behind the pulpit, held up a femur like a holy staff, and tapped it against the altar.
"Let us bleed," she said softly. "Let us flay. Let us be free."
Her hands opened skyward.
"This world is so loud, my darlings. It fills you with noise and lies and burdens you with choices. But the blood… the blood speaks clearly. The blood loves you."
She reached into the altar and pulled out a heart—somewhat fresh from her last victim, still twitching. She pressed it to her cheek like a soft toy.
"I give you this love. I give you this silence. May you live in me forever."
She turned suddenly, face lighting up.
"Oh! Mom! Dad!"
She skipped across the square to where Nick and Lenara stood.
Dragging a corpse behind her.
It was a boy—no older than nine—his throat ripped out, arms still twitching in residual spasms. His eyes had been plucked and placed in his hands like toys. Elyra laid the body at Lenara's feet like a kitten presenting a gift.
"I want a little brother," she said cheerfully as she knelt before them.
Lenara knelt, blood trailing from her fingertips as she brushed back Elyra's gore-streaked hair. "Of course, sweetheart," she said in a soft, indulgent tone. "Do you want a brother with quiet teeth or loud ones?"
Elyra pressed a finger to her lip, thinking.
"Loud," she decided. "So I can hear him when he plays in the dark."
Lenara's laughter was musical.
Nick stepped forward and grabbed Elyra by the cheeks, pulling her close, their foreheads touching.
His grin was wolfish. "Then let's make sure he's made right."
Elyra blinked slowly, dazed, but smiling as Nick planted a kiss on her bloody lips.
"I love spending time with Dad," she whispered.
Nick then ripped off the bloody rag that Elyra wore and proceeded to take her right then and there. A body covered in blood would turn off most but to Nick it aroused him even more as he stared at this insane girl's body.
Elyra's moans grew louder as she felt the pleasure of Nick's thrust. Soon Lenara joined them, resting her hand on Elyra's back as she kissed Nick. Lenara soon took off her clothes and this twisted "family" drowned themselves in pleasure surrounded by corpses.
The three moved vigorously in silent communion as the wind stirred the blood-soaked grass around them. Not a word more was spoken.
Beneath the ruins of a house, buried behind a broken fence, a boy of twelve huddled beneath a pile of burnt hay. He had watched it all. Lenara took him as Elyra massacred the entire village and told him if they saw him he would be killed too.
He had seen the village die bloody gruesome deaths as that evil girl smiled.
He had watched Elyra speak to the corpses turning them into dolls desecrating their bodies as she pretended to be some sort of saints.
He had seen her dance and sing and kiss a bleeding heart like a flower.
And now he whispered a prayer not to the gods he had once been taught to worship—
—but to her.
To the Saint of Blood.
To the Bride of Death.
To Elyra.
She had driven the boy mad so he prayed in hopes to stay alive.