The Kiss of Iscariot
A violent shudder ran through the colossal creature, a sound like grinding tectonic plates echoing across the dunes, before the structure finally failed. The Sovereign of Marrow collapsed, a mountain of bone rendered suddenly inert, sinking into the golden sand. George stood frozen, his hand still white-knuckled around the hilt of Ascalon where it remained buried in the Golem's chest. Cold sweat plastered his hair to his forehead as his breath came in ragged gasps. Then, the world vanished.
His mind was suddenly overwhelmed by a torrent of images, vivid and chilling, burning behind his eyes with the intensity of a sun. He saw a skeletal figure, towering and grotesque, its frame meticulously pieced together from countless centuries of remains, all held together by an unseen, malevolent force. And a name, whispered on the phantom wind of his vision, echoed in his ears with terrifying clarity:
"Yehudah Iscariot."
George stumbled backward in the physical world, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. He knew, with a certainty that chilled him to the bone, that this wasn't mere exhaustion or his mind wandering. As he blinked, the dunes of Zone B disappeared entirely. He found himself standing at the edge of a long, rough-hewn table. Around it sat thirteen men, their faces etched with the dust of travel and the warm light of shared purpose. Laughter boomed, stories intertwined, and the clatter of earthenware filled the air. At the head of the table sat Yehoshua of Nazareth. His eyes held an ocean of wisdom and a twinkle of profound compassion that made George's breath catch. Beside him, leaning in close, was Yehudah. His face, for this brief moment, was softened by a joke someone had just told.
"Another tale, Yehoshua!" boomed Simon Bar Yonah, a burly man with the calloused, powerful hands of a lifelong fisherman. "Tell us of the loaves again!"
Yehoshua smiled, a gentle, all-encompassing warmth radiating from him. "Perhaps later, Simon. For now, let us savor this moment—this fellowship."
George watched, mesmerized, as the others joined the lively conversation. He saw the boisterous brothers Andraus and James Zebedee with their cousin Yohanan; the earnest Philip; the quiet, observant Nathanael; the ever-doubting Thomas; Levi-Matthew, counting coins with a knowing smirk; the steadfast Jacob; the thoughtful Thaddaeus; and the zealous Shimon. They were a tapestry of personalities bound by devotion. But George's gaze drifted back to Yehudah. A shadow began to creep across his features. The smile faltered, replaced by a tightening of his jaw and a flicker of something cold and envious in his eyes. George could almost hear the insidious whispers festering in Yehudah's mind: Recognition. Power. It is your due.
The vision blurred and sharpened. The warm scent of bread was replaced by the damp chill of a hidden alleyway. George saw Yehudah, his face contorted by a mixture of fear and grim determination, leading a detachment of temple guards through the dark.
"There he is," Yehudah whispered, his voice harsh. He stepped forward, his steps heavy with a terrible finality. "Greetings, Rabbi."
He leaned in, and his lips, in a grotesque mockery of affection, pressed against Yehoshua's cheek. The kiss—a symbol of ultimate betrayal—seemed to echo in the sudden, chilling silence. Yehoshua's eyes, filled with sorrow but devoid of surprise, met Yehudah's.
"Yehudah," he said softly, his voice almost a sigh, "do you betray the Son of Man with a kiss?"
The guards seized Yehoshua with swift, brutal movements. As they dragged him away, a profound emptiness, cold and absolute, settled in Yehudah's chest. He had sought money and power, but all that remained was a gnawing void.
The scene shifted violently one last time to a desolate, wind-swept place. Yehudah lay crumpled on the ground, his face frozen in a rictus of despair. A pang of guilt, a searing, all-consuming fire, had devoured him. He had sought release in death, but no release was found. Instead, a darker power, ancient and malevolent, stirred. It was drawn to the lingering stain of his treachery. George watched in horror as Yehudah's mortal form withered and decayed, but his bones—imbued with the very essence of his betrayal—began to stir with an unnatural, undying life.
The Eternal Betrayer
A macabre dance of reassembly began before George's sightless eyes. Each bone, once belonging to a man of flesh and blood, now reanimated with a sickening chorus of friction.
CLACK. CRUNCH. SNAP.
The sounds vibrated through the very air. The skull, which had once housed a mind capable of great thought and intricate schemes, became the grim capstone of this monstrous new architecture. Ribs, vertebrae, and femurs fused, twisted, and elongated, forming a grotesque parody of the human shape. The eyes, once alive with a calculating glint, were now hollow sockets burning with a cold, malevolent light.
Yehudah Iscariot was no more. In his place stood Yehudah the Bone Golem, a towering testament to the ultimate consequence of betrayal. Its skeletal fingers, tipped with razor-sharp talons, twitched with a newfound, terrifying purpose. The echoes of his past life—his friendship with Yehoshua and the camaraderie with the eleven other men—were twisted into a monstrous mockery within his bony frame. He had become the embodiment of vengeance and sorrow, a chilling whisper of what happens when a heart turns to stone.
George jolted awake with a violent gasp. Ascalon wrenched free from the Golem's chest with a sickening, metallic rip. A persistent ringing hammered in his ears, pulling him in and out of fragmented, horrific scenes that refused to leave him. Even as he stared at the sand dunes, he saw flashes of the Golem's long, solitary journey: Yehudah roaming the earth for millennia. Confused, angry, and utterly broken, the creature had stumbled through the annals of Eden's history, falling in countless battles against powerful warriors, only to revive again and again, his bones knitting back together in the dark.
Flynn's shouts were distant echoes, barely penetrating the psychic haze that enveloped George. "George! What's wrong? Fight it!" Flynn's voice sounded strained, his face a mask of worry as he gripped George's shoulder, battling the unseen enemy of the Seer's trance. George was yanked back into the vision one last time, forced to witness the horror of Yehudah's endless resurrection—a fate far worse than death. An immortal Golem, cursed to forever walk the earth as a monster, carrying the weight of a kiss that broke the world.
"Why am I having these visions now? Why now?" George whispered, though the sound was swallowed by the cacophony of his mind.
The vision shifted again, showing a younger Elijah Xeroxes. The Druid's face was grim as he performed an ancient rite, trapping the wandering Yehudah within the confines of the Forest of Golems to contain his sorrow. George squeezed his eyes shut, a desperate attempt to banish the image of those hollow sockets burning with that malevolent light. A century had passed since then. How many times had Yehudah returned from the dust? And why was the sword revealing this truth now?
"Why am I seeing this?" George's voice was a ragged gasp as the vision dissolved as abruptly as it had begun. He fell to his knees in the sand, the heavy weight of Ascalon suddenly feeling like a mountain in his hand, as the true nature of the enemy they had just "defeated" settled into his soul.