The impact felt like being hit by a train made of nostalgia and rotting meat.
Kaelen didn't scream when the creature wearing her mother's face slammed into her. The air left her lungs in a wet, pathetic wheeze. She hit the marble floor of the nave hard enough to crack a rib, skidding backward through the ash of the incinerated Council members.
"Kae!" Valerius roared.
The blast of his shotgun echoed like thunder in the vaulted ceiling. The slug hit the White Queen in the shoulder, tearing through the grey asylum gown and the pale flesh beneath.
But there was no blood.
The wound simply hissed, knitting itself back together with a swarm of black, skittering shadows. The creature didn't even flinch. It—she—scrambled over the pews with unnatural, arachnid agility, her sewn-shut eyes tracking Kaelen by the sound of her heartbeat alone.
"Don't shoot her!" Kae gasped, trying to push herself up. The pain in her chest was sharp, jagged, real. "That's... that's Elena. That's my mother!"
That is a meat-puppet, darling, the Voice hissed, its tone stripping away all amusement. And if you don't sever the strings, she's going to rip your throat out with the same hands that used to braid your hair.
The White Queen lunged again.
Valerius intercepted her. He moved with the desperate, fluid grace of a man fighting a losing battle. He abandoned the gun and drew his silver-headed cane-sword, slashing at the creature's extended claws.
Clang.
The silver blade sparked against the creature's fingernails. They weren't bone; they were reinforced with alchemical glass.
The Queen backhanded Valerius. The blow lifted the Inquisitor off his feet and threw him into a stone pillar. He crumpled, his sword skittering across the floor.
"Mother, stop!" Kae screamed. She scrambled to her feet, the Dreg-power she had inhaled on the roof now churning in her gut like battery acid. "It's me! It's Kaelen!"
The creature froze. She tilted her head, the silver threads crisscrossing her eyelids catching the light from the shattered Rose Window. She sniffed the air.
For a heartbeat, Kae hoped. She remembered the smell of lavender and warm milk, the safety of her mother's lap before the madness took her, before the Mindsink gene manifested.
Then, the creature's mouth—that ruin of scar tissue—split open. The threads snapped with a wet pop.
"Hungry," the White Queen croaked.
It wasn't Elena Vance's voice. It was a hollow, distorted echo.
"So hungry."
She didn't want a hug. She wanted to feed.
"Fascinating," the Killer observed from the altar. He was leaning against the golden sunburst, swirling the sacramental wine in the chalice. "The necromancy is fueled by a paradoxical inversion. Usually, the dead want to rest. She wants to consume. I modeled her hunger after yours, Kaelen. Like mother, like daughter."
"Shut up!" Kae shouted, raising her hand. Black smoke curled from her fingertips. She prepared to blast the Killer with another wave of Dreg-force.
The White Queen moved faster than thought. She was on Kae instantly, pinning her to the ground. Her hands, cold as the grave, wrapped around Kae's throat.
Kae stared up into the sewn-shut eyes. She could smell the chemicals the Killer had used to preserve the body—formaldehyde and ozone—but underneath it, that heartbreaking scent of lavender lingered.
She's killing you, the Echo of the Banker whispered, terrified. Foreclose! Foreclose on the asset!
Kiss her, the Whore sobbed. Just kiss her goodnight.
Kae's vision began to spot with grey. The pressure on her windpipe was immense. She clawed at her mother's wrists, but it was like fighting a hydraulic press.
"Do it, Vance!" Valerius shouted from the floor, blood streaming from his hairline. He was trying to crawl toward his sword. "Sink her! It's the only way!"
"I... can't," Kae choked out. To sink her mother meant to eat her. To consume the last remnant of the woman who had birthed her. It was the ultimate taboo.
"She is already gone!" the Killer called out, sounding like a disappointed director. "You are clinging to a corpse, Kaelen. This is why you starve. You refuse to eat the things that hurt you."
The White Queen's jaw unhinged. A long, black tongue, slick with necrosis, lolled out, dripping saliva onto Kae's face.
She's going to eat your mind, the Voice warned. She's a mirror, Kaelen. She's a Mindsink too. A dead one. If she feeds on you, you don't just die. You become part of the hive.
That terrified Kae more than death. To be trapped in that rotting skull? To be a prisoner in her own mother's corpse?
Survival instinct, cold and reptilian, finally snapped into place.
Kae stopped fighting the hands on her throat. Instead, she reached up. She placed her palms on the White Queen's cheeks.
"I'm sorry," Kae whispered.
She didn't blast. She pulled.
She opened the floodgates of her hunger—the singing void in her skull—and she latched onto the animating force inside the corpse.
SINK.
The world dissolved.
The Cathedral vanished. The smell of ozone vanished.
Kae was standing in a small, sunlit kitchen. It was the kitchen of her childhood home in the Weeping District, before the damp took the wallpaper, before the money ran out.
A woman was standing at the stove, humming a lullaby. Elena Vance. She was beautiful, whole, her eyes blue and bright.
Kae stood in the doorway, her heart breaking all over again. "Mom?"
Elena turned. She smiled. "Breakfast is ready, Kae. Sit down."
It was perfect. It was a loop of the happiest memory Kae possessed.
But then, the edges of the room began to bleed. Black, oily sludge seeped from the cupboards. The sunlight turned the color of a bruise.
The Killer walked into the kitchen. He wasn't wearing the white suit; he was wearing the shadows. He placed a hand on Elena's shoulder.
"This isn't real," Kae said, her voice trembling. "Get away from her."
"It's real enough," the shadow-Killer said. "It's the anchor. The memory that holds the spell together. He found the one moment where she loved you most, and he corrupted it. He filled it with need."
Elena's face began to crack. The blue eyes turned white. The mouth was sewn shut.
"Hungry," the memory-Elena whispered.
Kae realized then what she had to do. The construct wasn't powered by a battery; it was powered by this specific memory. To stop the monster, she had to destroy the memory. She had to eat it.
She had to eat the last time her mother looked at her with love.
"No," Kae wept. "Please, no."
Do it, the Voice commanded, gentle for the first time. It's the only way to set her free. Eat the love, Kaelen. Eat the pain. Make it yours.
Kae walked toward her mother. The kitchen was rotting around them.
"I love you," Kae whispered.
She opened her mouth, not physically, but spiritually. She became the void.
She took the memory of the sunlit kitchen, the smell of pancakes, the sound of the lullaby, and the warmth of her mother's smile.
And she swallowed it.
It tasted like honey and broken glass. It tasted like absolute, crushing grief.
The kitchen shattered.
Kae slammed back into her body on the cold floor of the Cathedral.
The hands around her throat went limp.
The White Queen let out a long, shuddering sigh. The silver threads on her eyes unraveled, and for a split second, the blue eyes beneath cleared. They weren't hungry anymore. They were just dead.
The corpse collapsed on top of Kae, a heavy, inert weight of meat and bone.
Silence returned to St. Aethelgard.
Kae lay there, pinned beneath her mother, staring up at the broken Rose Window. She felt full. Sickeningly, horribly full. The memory of the kitchen was now locked in her mental library, cataloged next to the dockworker's brawl and the screaming Dreg-ghosts.
But outside of her head, that moment no longer existed. She was the only one who would ever know it happened.
Delicious, the Voice whispered. And tragic. Bravo.
Slow clapping echoed from the altar.
"A stunning performance," the Killer said. "I admit, I teared up. The matricide angle is a classic for a reason."
Kae shoved the corpse off her. She stood up. She didn't feel the pain in her ribs anymore. She didn't feel the fatigue.
She felt cold.
She looked at Valerius, who was pulling himself up by the pillar. He looked at her with wide eyes, seeing the change. The girl who had entered the Cathedral was gone. The thing standing there now was something harder.
Kae turned to the Killer.
"You made me eat her," she said. Her voice was flat. Dead.
"I made you strong," the Killer corrected. He picked up the White King from the chessboard. "You were holding onto sentiment, Kaelen. Sentiment is heavy. It slows you down. Now? Now you are light enough to ascend."
He tossed the White King into the air. It didn't fall. It hovered, spinning, emitting a low hum that vibrated the teeth in Kae's skull.
"The opening game is concluded," the Killer announced. "The board is cleared. Now, we enter the Middlegame."
The hovering chess piece exploded with a flash of white light, blinding them.
When Kae's vision cleared, the altar was empty. The Killer was gone.
But on the altar, where the chessboard had been, a single object remained. It wasn't a piece of the game.
It was a ticket. A golden ticket, embossed with the seal of the Laughing God.
Kae walked up the steps. She picked up the ticket. Her hands were steady now. Too steady.
Valerius limped up behind her. He looked at the corpse of the White Queen, then at Kae. He didn't ask if she was okay. He knew better.
"What is it?" he asked, nodding at the ticket.
Kae read the inscription.
Admit One.
The masquerade of the Eclipse.
Midnight. The Spire of Sighs.
"It's an invitation," Kae said. She looked at Valerius, her eyes devoid of anything human. "He's not done. He's taking the show to the Spire."
"The Spire of Sighs?" Valerius paled. "That's the city's asylum. It houses the most broken minds in Obolus."
"A buffet," Kae said. She pocketed the ticket.
"Vance," Valerius said, placing a hand on her shoulder. "What did you see in there? Inside her?"
Kae looked at the body of her mother one last time. She felt the new memory in her library—the warm kitchen—and she slammed the door on it, locking it tight.
"Nothing," Kae lied. "I saw nothing."
She turned and walked down the aisle, her boots leaving bloody footprints on the marble.
"Let's go," she said. "I'm still hungry."