Chapter Eight: The Cathedral of Flesh

  “Close it off, this cave is going to be their grave.” The tall guard's commanding voice echoed in the cave. The sound of rock crouching in snow piercing through the wind. They had blocked the path, leaving us behind to deal with the centipede monster that waited between us and the dark.

  My eyes were locked into its hollow gaze. I took a step back. Surprisingly it didn't attack; it stayed quiet like a predator. It was a barricade of bone and dried ligament; the bone rattled, each fragment of its spine clattering against another like a bag of marbles being shaken. I was trying to find a way to escape, but the only open path was blocked by it.

  “What do we do now? It had blocked our path.” My voice was too loud for the suffocating silence. I hated the fact that my voice cracked. Fear was useless here… decisions weren't

  Elara stared down her body, coiled to run, her heart thumping. She wanted to run through the Centipede. Grig placed a heavy hand on her arm, his own face a mask of grim confusion.

  “What now?…we escaped guards but…” His voice… self-doubting and struggling to accept his fate.

  Han’s gaze only lay once on the worm. His finger traced the wall beside us as if he were trying to figure out something.

  By now, I had noticed that this monster wasn't attacking us at all…Why? It should have killed us the second we reached here, yet it was just watching us. Han’s eyes locked onto something. He saw a marking on a wall, a symbol that looked like veins creating a pentagon shape. Han’s hand touching the surface of the wall was… weird, smooth like a living organism, it was warm like a body. Then I saw a twisted hint of realization in his face. Then Han spoke, his voice sounded heavy, his voice pointing out the masked truth. His face had gone pale.

  “We… We aren't in the cave…” Han pressed his palm, and the surface yielded like a bruised fruit, his eyes wide in dawning fear… My mind needed answers… Weren't we? What? I didn't know anything but this wasn't sounding good for the situation to Grig and Elara stayed close to us, both of them looking puzzled between the heavy tension. I didn't say anything, but my question was requested by Grig almost like he had read my mind.

  “What do you mean we aren't in a cave?” Grig barked, his voice too loud in the stifled silence. It was puzzling, and the anticipation lay heavily on our heads, crushing like a machine ready to squeeze us. A few moments passed, and Han’s face was unrest, almost as if he was collecting the dots, trying to figure out his own facts.

  Han spoke again, his palm flat pressed on the wall. The surface yielded slightly, like the flesh of a giant. “The stories in the town… about the Master’s secret church. ‘The Cathedral of Flesh.’ Do you know?” He looked at the Suture Worm, his face leaching of colour. “That is no guard. It’s a ritual component. A performer. This place… The Suture Worm won't harm us, which is the least concerning thing for what we had fallen into.”

  When those words hit three pairs of ears, it turned into a loud noise for us, Elara and Grig, both of their faces showing the wary situation they might have heard of, too. Grig spoke, his voice no longer hiding the different forms of panic. A fear of the known.

  “What do you mean!? We had fallen into the ‘Cathedral of Flesh’. Why are we here then? This should have been sealed, not opened. I'm not waiting to get devoured by the cave,” it was a sample of a dire situation. I was confused about what it was and why it was more hopeless than a giant twelve-foot-tall centipede made of bones.

  “... Today was the date of the ‘elders' execution… Wasn't it?” Elara's words rang a bell; Han and Grig both remembered. Yes indeed it was, but who? And what? I had to listen to it.

  “Today is the date for the execution, that's why it wasn't sealed…and we jumped into it.” Grig's voice held in frustration his own strength, a heavy weight on his shoulders.

  “Out of all the things we had fallen into ‘Cathedral of flesh’” Han’s voice hid his thoughts.

  “What do you mean by that term, Han?!” I urged for answers, though I had forgotten that ‘Time is a valuable thing, the more we forget about it, the higher value it gets’ The ground beneath us trembled, shaking us almost as if the earth itself felt the cold winter and now it was acting as a trembling child in winter, before I could get the answer from Han, the ground ripped apart

  My feet stumbled on the edge. All of us moved away, then the next scene was absolutely horrific.

  Inside the hole in the ground were made of flesh. The illusion shattered like wet paper tearing. The symbols were replaced by ribs. The grey rock melted into a glistening, deep crimson flesh. Veins surfaced like ropes beneath skin. The ceiling arched into a vault of interlocked ribs. The air grew thick with the suffocating scent of raw blood. The scent of rotting flesh scattered, and the fetid smell grew pungent.

  Bone Centipede, The Suture Worm stirred and lifted its head upward, sensing the change; it wasn't for attack but to orient. It lifted its anterior segment and unfurled itself like a whip, ready to hit the air. The pressure in the air was thick, humiliating. Its bones kept clattering like a death rattle, and aligned itself with the now-pulsing gratesque walls.

  “Look,”Elara whispered, horror stripping her voice to a thread.

  My footsteps pacing around, my thoughts snapped backward to the past I remembered in the previous world, the hollow blood tree was the same kind as a living organism… But it wasn't ravenous… living organisms didn't always mean predators. That reassurance didn't calm me, it narrowed my options. Trepidation glued in my mind.

  “If there is only one way to escape, then why are we wasting our time deciding?” My voice filled with apprehension. I turned toward my movement steadily.

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  My words reached their ears. Grig, a man of physical strength, was no longer fighting the walls, making him look small. A claustrophobic situation.

  Grig roared, a raw, defiant sound and smashed his shoulder into the quivering wall of flesh… Once…Twice. The wall dented. It absorbed the blow, then pushed him back with a soft, sickening resilience.

  “I can't smash a wall!” Grig roared again, this time quietly. Suddenly, the floor beneath him softened, the floor turned soft and spongy, and a jagged rift opened beneath his boots, smelling like iron and slaughtered human flesh.

  Elara hitched slightly when she noticed the exit was starting to turn into living flesh and closing like a human mouth shutting down. Her finger dug deeper into her sleeve like she might tear herself apart.

  “This isn't real…” She muttered to herself in helplessness.

  “We are between a living ritual. We HAVE to escape!” I paused for a second. “Unless… You wish to live as a slave and follow those people who have no value in human life.” I never liked to act like a saint who gives the right way right now. I was apathetic. All that I needed was to survive. “Han, Elara, Grig… I'm anonymous here and a stranger, but I know one thing that everyone loves their life. If one of us doesn't live, the other wouldn't die out of despair.” I took some steps back.

  “I refuse to live like this; we are dead weights.” My eyes were locked on Suture Worm, preparing to escape.

  I was almost going to run away toward the Suture Worm before Han’s hand stopped me, his hand tightened on my shoulder, his voice a mix of gravel and emotional grit.

  “This cave, a place that digests disobedience. The Suture Worm isn't just a guard; this chamber is made for execution by the Overseer. The Overseer uses it for… refinements. The Worm doesn’t kill you. The chamber does. It just… guides the process… Which means…” Han said, the truth settling on him with terrible weight. He paused, trying to find the next words.

  My expression turned grim. A place for execution wasn't sounding well to begin with. “Which means what?” I questioned, prepared for the consequence of hearing something that could most likely turn the situation worse.

  There was an awkward silence, then Han spoke.

  “Which means that exit doesn't lead us to the snow outside, it leads us deeper into dreams…or perhaps toward the master himself. The Suture worm isn't attacking us, because the door opens when it has finished its work.” Han paused again, his voice filled with fear, which he was desperately trying to suppress. He moved his head toward the wall and lifted his finger to point toward it. “Look, it has formed. The execution had already begun; the four spaces for bodies were there.”

  The moment I realized the situation, my eyes faltered slightly, but I quickly dissolved the fear. We had fallen into an inescapable situation, and even if we managed to escape, we'd reach the overseer, then he'd definitely kill me when he knew my identity. My eyes landed on the exit. The exit we’d glimpsed was gone, sealed by a puckered seam of tissue. The only remaining features in the execution chamber were the four body-hollows, the Suture Worm, and us.

  Panic, thick and acrid, rose in my throat. My mind raced down two terrible paths:

  Path One: The Quick Death. I could charge at the Worm. Force it to kill me. My death would be an escape… a one-way ticket to World five. I would ascend. I would leave them here to be digested by this fleshy hell.

  Path Two: The Unthinkable. Stay. Fight a living ritual. And try to break this ritual that I didn’t understand, with people I barely knew, likely dying anyway. Which one was better, leaving behind them or risking my life, and one more thing was there, “If I get digested and get executed, will I ascend? Not guaranteed, but if I force my death, I can.” It was either becoming a survivor or being a saint, and I'm not the second one for sure.

  “If I escape, I am guaranteed to die in the next world, and here I'd die either way. If I choose myself, then the fight is already over… I'd be no better than the overseer. Thoughts, and thoughts, and more thoughts keep circling in my mind at one time. Staying here would mean execution and death.

  I saw the same calculation in their eyes. Elara’s eyes were wide with animal terror, fixed on the closing walls. Grig’s blazed with furious, helpless strength. Han’s held a weary, tragic acceptance he’d seen too much to believe in miracles. I'd accept it too, and a miracle that could save me once wouldn't be there for a lifetime.

  My apathy crystallized into a sharp, clear point. I couldn't risk my life just to be a hero in others' eyes that held no value in my world. But I was starting to despise being a chess piece, just a pawn in someone else’s game. The Overseer, the Master, and this Cathedral. They all assumed we were just toys made of meat to play with.

  “We’re not dead yet,” I said, my voice cutting through the moist, sighing sounds of the chamber. “We have to stay strong” Yes I couldn't blame them. It is hard to stay strong when you fall into a living hell in the name of ‘Ritual’ or ‘Execution’.

  Now, the wall began to move more aggressively, and the space for four people created a path. The surface was sticky; now the whole place wanted to glue us. As we tried to find a way, the ‘Floor’ began to secrete a viscous, numbing fluid. My toe touched it, and I felt a sharp pain. It was like I'd stepped into an ember. This was acid that could burn us alive.

  Grig took steps back slowly from the substance, Elara panicking quickly, stepping away and holding her cloth like a lifeline.

  “There has to be some way to stop the execution ritual.” My voice was venomous, the hatred for the world growing further. This pain and fear weren't giving me panic, but they were giving me the will to survive further.

  “I don't know, but if there is, it could be the Suture Worm,” Han stated, his disappointment toward his own knowledge was clear.

  “Han’s right,” I said, my voice raw. “This is an execution chamber. But there should be a weak point to this.” I pointed a trembling finger at the base of the Suture Worm, where its bony fragments met the living wall. I couldn't see the spirit thread anymore, but I could feel that it was hiding something beneath that flesh blanket. “There. That’s where we… we could find something, we might stop it. Or we might make it worse.”

  Grig stared at the Suture Worm’s tall figure unfurled like a whip, then at his own hands. “Break it with what? Bones with bones?” His voice was skeptical, but with a hint of hope.

  “Do whatever we can,” Elara whispered, her eyes fixed on the four slowly deepening body-shaped hollow spaces in the wall. “It wants us to be devoured.”

  Han shook his head and stated, “It also takes our emotions. What I've heard from the past is that the Overseer uses it to perform his rituals better.”

  A terrible understanding settled over us. The chamber wasn’t just killing us, but it was also filling the empty emotions. And our fear and struggle were part of the ritual.

  The wall behind Grig gave a soft, sighing contraction. The exit was now a puckered seam of flesh, completely sealed.

  “It's… It's sealed,” Elara’s voice broke, and she was on the verge of losing her sanity.

  My gaze met Han’s eyes. The older man gave a grim, almost imperceptible nod. There was no way out. Only through.

  “Then we can't let it finish the ritual,” I said, turning toward the Suture Worm, my mind racing with the thoughts of our doom. “How can we break the ritual?” I couldn't see the spirit thread; that power was not a friend anymore

  “How?”Elara breathed, nails digging into her own arms.

  “The ritual has a weak point. All systems do.” I turned to the Suture Worm. It was the focal point, the needle directing the source of its soul. “It’s not attacking because its job isn’t to fight. It’s to bind. To tie our dying energy into the structure. I guess that it collects them in its back, hiding beneath the blanket of flesh.”

  I looked at Han. “The stories. Did they say how it ends? The execution?”

  Han’s brow furrowed slightly upward, raking through memory. “The Suture Worm… When the ritual ends. It screams a first and final reaction. Then the chamber goes quiet. The bodies are gone. Absorbed.”

  A final note.A completion. A closed circuit.

  “It's just like the singing bird in the previous,” I thought. I had what I needed. The plan was forming, born of sheer, desperate defiance. “I have a plan… We break its neck.”

  Grig stared at the monolithic bone creature.“With what? Prayers?”

  “With a counter-offering,”I said, the idea feeling both insane and inevitable. Yes, a foolish person would volunteer. “It wants ordered fear, ritualized despair. So suppress the.” I looked at each of them.

  “Han, we both will try to catch it, and Grig, you have got those muscles, breaking it will be your responsibility… Elara. Uh, well, you just stay strong, just give us hope or something.”

  They stared at me as if I were mad. Perhaps I was.

  “Why do you think this would work on a twelve-foot-long Centipede?” Han asked quietly.

  I looked at the Suture Worm. In my mind was the ‘No’ towards fate, my defiance. Not a shout, but a silent, structural ‘No’. The same ‘No’ that had driven a shard into my own throat. The same ‘No’ that had made me decide this insane choice.

  The floor beneath us secreted a clear,viscous fluid. Where it touched my boot, the leather hissed and began to dissolve. The acid was rising. The hollows in the wall deepened, ready to receive.

  The Suture Worm’s body began to vibrate, a low hum that made our teeth ache. The ritual was reaching its crescendo.

  “You know what, I'm really hard to digest. Better dream of killing a fly,” I spat. The scent of bones flares up further.

  “Now!”I yelled, leaving no fear but command. “Don’t just stay still, rush! Aim it!”