She was in my presence now, levitating over the edge of the gorge, gaze unbroken. The sky had become devoid of the mutative matter, revealing an endless horizon of blackened red and violet hues. The taloned fingers began to contort in a more wanton ritual, and the tubules that had followed in her path began to boil and amalgamate. 

The stench was not only of blood, but of sulfur and earth. Her everburnt eyes held my attention as the material began to take on structure; nested plasmid rings formed a large rotary to her back like the cogs of a sanguine engine. Spinning globules that stretched inward and outward from every angle hovered around its edges; they hummed with the sound of distant, muzzled screams of flayed souls pleading to return to the physical plane. The interlocking pieces morphed and slithered into their positions within the final formation, and the construct began to  whir and groan in a series of graceful yet archaic clock-like motions.

The cinders in her eyes cracked like volcanic lightning; and with them, the rings of the machine. The whispering screams grew louder as the lightning began to carve runic figures along the bands of the rotary; each cipher wrapped around in serpentine fashion, etched in the direction opposite its ring’s motion until circling back to where it began. 

The globes started to bulge and warp with molten wounds of the same oranges and purples that had carved the scriptures—the same that had ignited the power of Ixh’reya’s gaze. The blisters pulled at their seams and tore at the surface. The spheres ripped open as the bright colours broke free and bled away into the atmosphere. The remaining ichor of each orb flowed weightlessly in the air like thickened wine, pooling together to form a whirlpool-like mass behind the angel; the cries of the souls suffused and swirled all the same.

***

Since she had emerged from the tremors in the clouds, Ixh’reya had held her eyes to mine; ceaseless and penetrant, her sight had awakened subatomic emotions of fear and desire and everything in between that I didn’t know could have ever existed. But now, even as the ocular storm raged on, she averted her gaze to gently bow her head and shut her eyes. And as the hands to her back continued to cast the ritual, the pair at her hips rose and clasped together delicately, fingers interlaced. 

Pray.

Her mouth uttered no words, but her voice bled through my mind. I watched as the scriptures began to slither off of the rings behind her and meld onto her skin, every rune searing the flesh and releasing a tender hiss as a sliver of smoke and the smell of tempered embers wafted into the air. Her arms, legs, and everything save her face had been branded by the symbols, but she remained as unwavering as ever.

Pray.

The whispers of the burgeoning void began to grow in intensity. The whirlpool had stretched to nearly the width of the angel’s wingspan now, and its edges began to reach outward toward my position. Ixh’reya’s voice bellowed within me—

For them. For us. For you.

Pray.

***

I watched as the void’s edge advanced and blotted out the world around me. Restless tumults of ancient crimsons and pitch darknesses eclipsed the fiery vibrance of the twilit horizon, the crests and glens of the valley, the patchy and overgrown earth beneath my feet—all consumed. My reality had vanished. The sanguine void was all that surrounded myself and the angel. The whispers of the tormented rang from all directions, louder and more deafening than ever before, as if I was now trapped within a spherical, ichorous prison myself. The runes on her skin crackled with scorching heat as her incantations intensified.

To no savior and no god. 
Only to your own, you must pray. 
Your mind is what lies between your flesh and ours.
For our flesh is that of the reality we create.
All-knowing. All-consuming.

Hold high the spoils of your body.
Relinquish the mind and grant the flesh control.
This is the path of grace—the path of the Umbradawn.

The rotary rings still at the back of Ixh’reya began to mimic the runes they once held, melting back down to a molten state that lingered toward her. As it wet the tips of her hexing fingers the flesh began to dissolve away and seep into the void around us. Her head remained bowed and her hands remained clasped as the matter lingered across her skin, slowly making its way limb by limb to the rest of her body. The branded runes peeled away as the void consumed her, each whipping in a chaotic dance to form a tornado of blazing scripture in the animus around me. When only her face remained, her igneous eyes looked into mine once more with a glassy, almost-hopeful stare—

Pray.

***

The pupils of volcanic brilliance melted away into the void, and I felt her presence pass. But the runic storm raged on like an entropic catalyst of creation. They glistened and pulsed in hypnotic rhythms as they formed an undulating spherical lattice around me. Round and round the cryptic prison spun as once-defined symbols turned to blurred wisps of fiery light, the souls’ whispers whirring in tandem with ever-increasing panic. Madness filled my mind and sorrow drowned my heart. The ritual was coming to its culmination; my humanity was being pulled from my world into theirs. The revolving lattice picked up in speed until distinction between the runes had all but evaporated, creating a sphere of nauseating bloodlight. The screams in my head turned to deafening distortions, and I felt the sensation of pure madness looming ever closer to me until a sudden moment the storm froze and the souls quieted all at once.

Silence.

I gazed at the brightly burning glyphs as they hung in the air on all sides. The ritual was complete. I had been brought through the sanguine void to the other side—to an ultimate darkness. But now, for a brief moment, I felt a bottomless calm within the animus—a chance to gather whatever humanity of mine remained—a chance to pray.