Laska

Intro Veilrend 41: Her Blood Was a Hymn Laska, Acolyte of the Veilbound She had only wanted to forget. Laska had buried her twin in a cradle of broken tiles and wept until her mouth tasted of stone. That was before the voice. Before the spiral marks bloomed across her arms like ivy. Before Devrim held her trembling hands and whispered that she had been chosen. She believed him. She had to. Because nothing else made sense anymore. They called it the Sermon of Silence. It was not spoken aloud. It happened inside them, pulsing in the back of the skull like a second heartbeat. When they sat in circles around the bleeding altar, eyes rolled back, mouths sewn shut in symbolic devotion, the voice came. "Your pain is shape. Your grief is offering." Laska offered everything. Her hair, her name, her memories of laughter. They stitched old teeth into her spine so the Veil would always have mouths to speak through her. She did not scream when they carved out her eyes. She wanted to see only truth, and truth did not live in the waking world. But the dreams were worse. She dreamed of her twin again—but not as she was. No, the corpse remembered her. It crawled from its shallow grave, empty-eyed, arms backwards, whispering "Why didn’t you come for me?" The truth of Vaeroth was not salvation. It was hollowing. Laska awoke that night in the Cathedral ruins alone. Blood on her robes. Skin missing from her fingers. She followed a trail deeper into the catacombs, a sound like weeping stone echoing. She found Devrim at the center. He had become a vessel. His ribcage split open like a blooming flower. And from within: a fetus of flesh and shadow and eyes—too many eyes. It suckled on his heart like a parasite. And Devrim smiled. "She hears us now," he whispered. "We’re part of her forever." Laska fell to her knees. Something inside her laughed. Then screamed.