The evening sky looked sickly above the world.
What should have been a gorgeous sunset—flaming gold and lush crimson—was instead tainted.
Ominous dark purple clouds gathered across the heavens, swirling like ink dropped into water.
The last, dying light of the sun struggled to pierce through the rot of the storm, casting long shadows that stretched across the valley like reaching hands.
The wind grew heavier, carrying with it a metallic scent, sharp and violent, that made even the trees shiver in their roots.
A slow, rhythmic thrum of thunder rolled through the sky, like the distant drums of something ancient and waiting.
On the edge of this storm, hidden in a lonely clearing where no flowers dared to bloom, there stood a small hut—crooked, battered, and hunched like an old man too weary to stand straight.
From within its rotted walls, a soft, eerie humming floated out.
Inside, the black-haired woman worked tirelessly.
She sat at a crude wooden chair, the floor beneath her drenched in dark puddles of blood and pale fluids.
Her long, perfect black hair swayed with every movement as she bent over her project, lips curled in a dreamy smile.
In her hands, she worked a needle of bone, threading it through pieces of flesh—fair, faintly meaty strips, some still twitching with dying nerves.
The material was sewn into a shape resembling a beautiful, haunting coat—
thick and heavy like a biker's jacket, but supple, gleaming faintly under the flickering light.
It had strands of grey hair woven into it, the silk-thin strands catching the dimness like fragile silver threads.
Despite the horror of its making, it was—horribly—a masterpiece.
Her hands, slick and bloody, moved with delicate precision, her humming growing louder as she stitched.
Beside her, on the decaying bed, a corpse lay—a woman whose skin had been peeled almost entirely away.
The body trembled, soft gasping moans escaping her torn, lipless mouth.
Her blood-smeared eyes darted around wildly in excruciating terror.
She was alive.
Still alive.
The black-haired woman paused, tilting her head, her black eyes glimmering.
"Shhh," she cooed sweetly, setting down her needle and reaching over with her sticky hands.
Her fingers, warm and wet, caressed the remains of the woman's broken face.
"Your beloved grandson," she whispered with a honeyed voice, "is going to love this gift. You can't die yet, sweetling. No, no."
The woman gurgled weakly, her tongue writhing like a dying worm.
"Here," the black-haired woman said brightly, "have some wine. It'll hurt less."
She smiled, stretched out her hand—and between her fingers, tiny sparks of blood-red light gathered, coalescing into a thick, bubbling crimson liquid.
The liquid floated in the air for a heartbeat—then poured itself down the screaming woman's throat.
Instantly, the woman's body spasmed violently, jerking off the bed.
Bones cracked.
A raw, ragged screech escaped her throat, filling the room with a noise that no human should ever make.
The black-haired woman burst into hysterical laughter, clapping her blood-soaked hands.
"Ahh, I forgot," she giggled uncontrollably.
"You drank acid! Silly me!"
She leaned close, whispering mockingly:
"How does it taste?"
The bloodied figure lay broken, the bitter taste of regret flooding her heart.
She cursed herself for her kindness—for ever welcoming that monster disguised as a woman into her home.
What had the villagers done?
They branded her grandson a jinx, a creature of misfortune, yet they invited into their midst a being that would bring their entire village to ruin.
A spark of venom bloomed within her chest—malice, deep and raw.
She wanted them to feel it—to taste the agony of misplaced trust, the horror of opening one's door to a smiling death.
The black-haired creature, draped in the skin of innocence, had come under the pretense of warmth, of simple conversation.
She had even cooked a meal with her own hands—
a meal that now festered inside the wounded shell of her body.
"Not acid, exactly," the dark-haired woman said with a light, almost teasing voice, leaning closer with a grin that split her lovely face.
"The meal you ate was filled with Acadia."
At those words, the skinless woman's eye widened in horror.
Acadia—the cursed essence of malevolent beings, a liquid steeped in the blood of karmic monsters.
A single drop, once consumed by any living creature, would not merely kill—it would erase, severing the soul from existence itself. This was known to others as Evil yin energy.
And she had consumed an entire meal saturated with it.
That explained the horror she now endured: her flesh flayed away, her insides collapsing under the strain, her intestines swelling and bleeding, writhing within her as agony claimed every nerve.
Her body was no longer dying.
It was being unwritten.
The bloody figure quivered under the black-haired woman's gaze, her mind splitting at the seams just like her flesh.
The pain was no longer human—it was something deeper, something cosmic, a violation of body and soul.
Her torn lips trembled in agony, yet not a sound escaped her ruined throat.
The woman knelt by her side, humming a soft, lilting tune—a nursery rhyme, gentle and mocking.
She cupped the grandmother's bleeding face in her cold, wet hands and cooed,
"There, there... don't cry now. You'll ruin your beautiful new coat."
Her voice was sweet, almost motherly.
She thumbed away a trail of blood from the skinless cheek, leaving smears of red across her own fingertips.
The black-haired woman leaned closer, her breath hot and sticky, smelling of something sweet and rotting.
"You see," she whispered, her voice like silk dipped in poison,
"you're not dying... no, no... you're becoming art."
The grandmother's shredded body convulsed again. Her one working eye rolled upwards, desperately seeking escape—but there was none.
The walls of the small, isolated hut seemed to press inward, the dark purple storm clouds outside twisting the sunset into a sickly, dying gold.
The hut groaned with the wind, as if the building itself mourned for her.
The black-haired woman giggled, spinning the unfinished grey coat in her hands, the strands of flesh glistening under the flickering twilight.
The garment, heavy and brutal, looked almost regal—like a knight's leather jacket forged in a nightmare.
The silky grey fibers were woven intricately, threaded with sorrow, blood, and betrayal, beautiful in its monstrousness.
"You'll be so proud," the woman said brightly.
"Little Theo will wear your love close to his heart."
The corpse on the bed twitched helplessly, a muffled, gurgling sob escaping from her half-ruined mouth.
The woman only smiled wider.
"Don't be sad," she sang softly, rocking back and forth.
"You gave him life once, and now you'll give him strength. Isn't that what all good grandmothers do?"
She whirled away from the bed, holding up the grey flesh coat like a trophy.
The thing was thick, durable-looking, patched together expertly, polished in places to a gleaming smoothness.
The grey hair sewn into its seams gave it an eerie elegance, almost beautiful in its monstrosity.
Spinning around the room, she laughed and sang nonsense songs, the coat twirling with her like the cape of a mad queen.
Finally, she stopped—eyes wide and shining.
She turned to the doorway where they stood.
A row of children, silent, waiting.
Elise's old friends.
But not the way they had been.
Marla, once the bubbly girl with braids, now stood pale and ghastly, her skin powdered white like porcelain, her eyes blank and milky.
She clutched her sides as if trying to hold herself together, a crooked, almost broken smile on her face.
Jonas, the brash boy with a chipped front tooth, grinned wider than humanly possible, his jaw unhinging slightly as he rocked on his heels like a puppet without strings.
Lina, shy and soft-spoken, now twitched and shivered like a broken marionette, her head listing to one side as she stared emptily at the coat.
Bren, the tall, strong boy who once bullied Theo the most, stood with hands at his sides, long fingers twitching unnaturally.
A single tear of blood ran down his otherwise vacant, smiling face.
Their white, shining skin caught the flashes of distant lightning, making them glow eerily.
Their eyes were blank—just plain white orbs with no pupils.
Not a hint of life behind them.
And yet, when they saw the coat—
they smiled.
Wide, giddy, broken smiles.
"Amazing, Mother!" Marla squeaked, clapping her small hands together.
"So pretty, Mother!" Lina chimed in, her voice light and airy like a bell rung in a graveyard.
Jonas giggled, an ugly, high-pitched sound.
"I wanna wear it! I wanna wear it first!"
Bren simply nodded eagerly, his face twitching uncontrollably.
The black-haired woman beamed at them, her expression glowing with pride.
"Now, now," she cooed, holding the coat closer to her chest, "this belongs to our special boy. Theo has earned it."
They all pouted slightly, but nodded obediently, their ghastly smiles never faltering.
Outside, the thunder rolled again, closer now.
The heavy, purple clouds thickened, swirling like a storm ready to be born.
The black-haired woman gazed lovingly at the coat in her arms, then at her ghastly "children."
"Now, darlings," she whispered, "we must prepare."
She kissed the air toward them, her black eyes gleaming with unspeakable things.
"Tomorrow," she said softly, "the world will see our little Theo bloom."
And in the gathering storm,
something laughed.
The night pressed down on the village like a heavy, suffocating blanket.
Above, the sky churned — a boiling mass of black and purple clouds, flashing with occasional veins of sickly red lightning.
The wind carried with it a bitter, metallic tang, whispering through the narrow alleys and crooked wooden homes.
Elise sat alone by the dim hearth, the embers barely alive.
Her parents hadn't spoken to her in hours.
When she looked into their faces, she found only stiff smiles, hollow and fragile like cracked porcelain.
She had screamed, pleaded, begged them to see the truth — the stranger they brought had twisted everything.
And yet... they had smiled and looked away, pretending nothing was wrong.
"Am I the crazy one?" Elise whispered to herself, feeling the words rot in her throat.
Her fingers dug into her scalp as a nagging pain bloomed behind her eyes.
The world around her swam—walls breathing faintly, floors creaking without weight.
Then the flashes came:
— An unknown sky, violet and broken.
— A shattered mirror, her reflection bleeding into a thousand wrong faces.
— Strings, millions of strings, sewing her mouth shut.
Her heart thrashed.
She clutched her head as the alien visions clawed at her mind, trying to root themselves inside her.
Her body trembled violently as her vision flared—
Her eyes erupted in a wild, luminous glow, bathing the hut's walls in a sickly purple.
Around her, threads—malevolent, twitching threads—materialized, spinning and twisting like worms.
She screamed soundlessly as the threads tore themselves apart, unraveling into mist.
And then—
Whispers.
Soft, seductive, clawing at the edges of her sanity.
Elise stumbled up, the world a haze of pain and noise.
She staggered into the night, the villagers' homes looming like crooked teeth.
The guards at the gate stood like statues, their faces blank and grey, not even turning as she passed.
Drawn by the whispers, Elise followed the broken, muddy path leading to the outskirts.
The wind grew heavier.
The sky flashed again, revealing a landscape twisted under the storm's weight.
Tree shadows clawed at the ground like dying beasts.
She rounded a bend—
—and froze.
There, atop a chopped and rotting tree stump, sat Theo.
At first, she almost didn't recognize him.
He wore a ghastly, ear-to-ear smile, his posture twisted, hunched over a book that glowed with a violent purple light.
Rain battered him, matting his yellow hair to his skull, but he seemed utterly oblivious.
In Theo's eyes, the book looked playful and sweet—a childish thing, bound in soft pink leather, decorated with golden bells and silver lace.
Little puppets danced along the cover, strings attached to tiny laughing figures.
It seemed... harmless. Whimsical.
But Elise saw something different.
The book pulsed with life, its cover wet and fleshy, a mass of writhing, ink-black tentacles spilling from its spine.
An enormous, slit-pupiled eye bulged from its center, twitching and rolling.
Every page breathed with a wet, whispering hunger.
Elise stumbled back, bile rising in her throat.
In one desperate motion, she sprinted forward and smacked the book from Theo's hands.
The monstrous tome hit the mud with a sickening splat, writhing and hissing as it rolled over.
"What the hell are you doing, you idiot?!" Elise shouted, her voice high and cracking with panic.
Theo looked up at her, blinking slowly, that crooked smile never leaving his face.
For a moment, under the flashing stormlight, Elise almost thought he looked... grateful.
The air between them thickened, heavy with the storm, with guilt, with old memories.
The night bent around them, the wind whispering songs from their childhoods—songs of games played in the fields before everything fell apart.
Theo rose slowly to his feet.
Rainwater sluiced down his face, washing away streaks of mud and revealing his wide, bloodshot eyes.
"Elise..." he whispered, voice trembling.
"They hurt us. They hurt us so much."
His fingers twitched towards the book, yearning.
Elise stepped back, breathing hard.
The storm crashed overhead, wind snapping through the dead trees like broken strings.
Despite the horror, despite the madness clinging to him, Theo's voice cracked in a way that was... heartbreakingly familiar.
That small, desperate child she used to know still hid somewhere inside this twisted boy.
"Elise... you'll help me, right?"
He smiled wider, too wide, his teeth glinting in the lightning.
"You're my friend. You caused this pain, you hurt me, help us"
Her heart twisted painfully.
Beyond the fear, beyond the madness, beyond the nightmare they were living—
—they were still just two broken kids, trying to find something to hold onto in the storm.
The book lay at their feet, twitching like a wounded animal, its single eye rolling between them.
And far, far away in the black woods, something watched.
Smiling.
Waiting.