Chapter 1225: Story 1225: Baptized in Ash
Smoke clung to the shattered hillside like a second skin.
The trio—Lena, Ward (now on crutches), and the girl—erged from the ruined vent behind the Virex facility. Trees stood blackened. The earth was scorched. Birds did not sing.
They had entered the Ashlands.
Legend among survivors told of this place. Once a military purge zone, it had been the site of a failed cleansing operation. Entire towns incinerated to contain a “spiritual mutation.” The fire never fully died.
Ash rained from the sky like cursed snowflakes.
Their destination: a chapel they’d seen marked on a torn cultist map. “Sanctum of Renewal,” it read.
But nothing renewed here. Not truly.
The chapel rose ahead—crooked, leaning, built from scrap and scorched wood. Its cross was inverted and burning at the tip.
Ward hesitated.
“This feels wrong.”
Lena nodded. “Everything does since Virex.”
Inside, the pews were filled—with people.
Or what remained of them.
Figures knelt in silence, their skin ashen, their eyes sewn shut with bone needles. Their bodies were covered in flaking symbols, etched deep into flesh.
At the altar, a figure stood cloaked in blood-red ash robes.
She turned slowly. Her face was cracked porcelain stretched over sothing else—sothing not human.
ASH PRIESTESS:
“You have walked through fire, and yet you live. You are blessed.”
Lena stepped forward, gun raised.
“We’re just passing through.”
The priestess smiled. “No one passes. All who enter are ant to burn. To be reborn.”
Suddenly, the congregation began to hum—a low, vibrating dirge that made the walls tremble. The air thickened. The sll of sulfur and rot grew unbearable.
Ward collapsed, coughing black dust.
The girl stared at the ash priestess. “I know you,” she whispered. “You were in the vision.”
The priestess opened her arms.
“Then you are chosen.”
From behind the altar, ashwalkers erged—humanoids whose skin flaked like cinders. Their eyes burned orange. They didn’t walk so much as float, trailing soot.
The trio fought to retreat. Lena shot one in the head—it collapsed into a pile of embers. But more ca.
Then, a fire broke from the ceiling. Not natural. Not wind-fed. It crawled.
The priestess raised a hand.
“You must be baptized in ash. Then you will belong.”
The girl scread, and the sound cracked sothing in the air.
The fire died. The ashwalkers halted.
Then she spoke in a voice not her own.
THE GIRL (possessed):
“I belong to no god born of decay.”
The priestess staggered back.
Lena grabbed the girl, pulling her out the door. Ward limped behind.
As they ran, the chapel exploded in a column of black fire.
Behind them, ash fell heavier.
Lena looked at the girl, who was unconscious but breathing.
Ward asked, “What the hell was that?”
Lena didn’t answer.
Because she had seen what the girl beca.
And it wasn’t human.
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