M
The thread moved.
Lucien stared at his father's face - at the crimson sutures stitching the old man's lips into a permanent rictus grin. The flesh around the threads pulsed, as if something beneath the skin squirmed along each bloody loop. Lord Virell's eyes rolled wildly, his muffled screams vibrating through the chapel's rotting beams.
"Don't touch it."
The voice came from everywhere and nowhere. Lucien spun, his bad knee buckling, hands scraping against the warped floorboards. The shadows between the pews deepened, coalescing into something vaguely humanoid.
Kael stepped forward.
Or something wearing Kael's face.
The crown sat crooked on his brow, its jagged edges weeping black ichor that burned star-shaped holes in the stone where it fell. His eyes - gods, his eyes - were voids containing distant, dying suns.
"They planted a hymn in his throat," Not-Kael murmured. "A little song to unravel the world."
The Thing Inside His Father
Lucien watched in horror as the stitches began singing.
A wet, buzzing vibration at first. Then words - if words could be carved from nightmares and spoken through a corpse's clenched teeth.
"We-are-the-mouth-you-cannot-close—"
Lord Virell's cheeks bulged. Something pressed against the inside of his skin, forming fist-sized protrusions that slithered toward his sewn-shut lips.
Kael sighed, almost wistful. "Ah. Stage two."
He reached out.
The moment his black-stained fingers touched his father's forehead—
—the man's head unfolded.
Revelation in Three Acts
1. The Peeling
Flesh parted like theater curtains along the sutures. No blood. Just infinite blackness beneath.
2. The Choir
A dozen miniature Inquisitor masks stared out from inside Lord Virell's skull, each chanting in a different language.
3. The Invitation
Kael turned to Lucien, gesturing to the hollowed-out husk that used to be their father.
"Would you like to see where the hymns are born?"
Lucien's Choice
The golden heir did something unbecoming.
He ran.
His bad knee screamed. His lungs burned. Behind him, the chapel doors slammed shut with a finality that shook the estate's foundations.
The last thing he heard before the darkness took him:
Kael's laughter.
And beneath it—
The sound of a thousand mouths unstitching.
Final Line:
Some silences aren't peaceful.
They're hungry.