787: Story 787: The Hollow Crown 787: Story 787: The Hollow Crown The Rotting Cathedral pulsed with a sickly glow, its bones creaking as if the structure itself breathed.
The Black Hymn still echoed faintly, retreating into the cold corridors like a ghost unwilling to depart.
Kruger lay motionless, his body wrecked by shadow and plague.
The corruption had spread—dark veins twisted across his skin, his breath ragged, barely clinging to consciousness.
Selene Nocturna lood over him, her features unreadable, her lips curled into sothing between amusent and cruelty.
Her skin was deathly pale, her veins laced with unnatural silver, and her golden eyes shimred like candlelight in an abyss.
“How fragile you mortals are,” she whispered, crouching beside him.
Her fingers brushed his cheek, tracing the lines of decay now etched into his flesh.
“And yet… you refuse to break.
Do you think your gods will save you?”
Kruger’s jaw clenched.
His body was failing him, but his hatred remained intact.
He spat blood onto the cathedral floor.
“You’re no god, Nocturna.”
Selene chuckled, tilting her head.
“No.
Not yet.”
She stood, her cloak shifting like oil in the dim candlelight.
Chains rattled in the distance, and from the cathedral’s great doors, the first of her creations slithered forth—a monstrosity of bone and rot, a stitched-together soldier of her own design.
“You will watch,” Selene murmured, extending her arms, welcoming the abomination as it knelt before her.
“You will witness what cos next.”
The creature growled, its eyeless sockets locked onto Kruger.
Selene turned away from him, stepping toward her throne—a twisted, organic thing of bone and rotting vines, pulsing with the black ichor that flowed through her veins.
She ran a finger over the armrest, deep in thought.
“They called many things, you know,” she mused aloud.
“A witch.
A plaguebringer.
A nightmare.”
She exhaled slowly, her gaze lifting to the towering stained-glass window that once depicted a saint—now corrupted, the figure’s face twisted into sothing monstrous.
“But a queen?”
She lowered herself onto the throne.
“That is sothing new.”
The room trembled.
The plague spread.
The cathedral breathed with her.
Selene’s smile widened, revealing the blackened tips of her teeth.
“And yet… it fits.”
Kruger’s fingers twitched toward his sword, but Selene simply lifted a hand.
“Don’t,” she said gently, her power coiling around his limbs, keeping him still.
“Your part isn’t over yet.”
She leaned forward.
“Sleep, Kruger.
Dream of .”
Darkness took him.
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