Suddenly, from the black sky above, the moon itself seemed to split from her moon, not in a clean break, but melted and merged into two curved fragments, like crescents torn from a circle. They descended without sound, resting in the air beside her, both are different side. The upper fragment was pitch-black, drinking in every trace of light; the lower was bone-white, glowing faintly from beneath.

The space between them quivered. Thin, jagged cracks formed, spider webbing outward, as if reality itself were splintering. From the black crescent, a thick, blood-red liquid began to drip, clinging in long strings before falling. The white crescent bled too, but its fluid defied gravity, flowing upward into the night like milk poured into the sky.

From each crescent, a girl emerged. The one from the black moon had ink-dark hair, unnervingly large white irises, lips tinted a cold blue, and wore a Japanese kimono embroidered with delicate orchid flowers. The other, from the white moon, had snow-pale hair, narrow black eyes, and a kimono marked with different blossoms.

A single small horn grew from her head, one tilted to the left, the other to the right, mirror images of each other. One stood upright, her bare feet rippling the atmosphere. The other hung upside down, as though the world itself had turned for her alone.

A low, strange melody rose, the woman's bow brushing against her violin strings. The sound called them. All around, the air thickened with the beating of wings as the bats returned, swarming to a single point. Their bodies twisted together, forming a massive, grotesque bat, its cry slicing the silence. Waves of sound rippled over the river, unsettling the very water.

But the cry faltered. It warped into a scream. From behind it, the twin girls approached—one walking as humans walk, the other gliding inverted through the air. Without a word, each seized it: one by the leg, the other by the opposite ear. They pulled. Flesh tore. Bone cracked. The giant bat split slowly, pus-like darkness spilling from its sundered body in thick, sluggish streams.

The woman stepped forward, extending her bow. She caught every drop, coating the wood in the foul liquid. Then she touched it to her violin. No note came. Instead, the black ichor slid away, dripping toward the bell at her side. The bell shuddered once, and as the pus sank into its metal, it began to twist… changing into something else entirely.

Both girls stood with half of the bat's body clutched in their hands, their expressions void of emotion. They straightened their arms and pulled, stretching the torn halves until the sinew strained and the bones popped. Without hesitation, they seized the forelimbs and began to rip away the thin, leathery wing membrane that connected the fifth finger to the body. The flesh peeled wetly, and the glistening strands of membrane were twisted into crude strings. These they tied tightly around the bat's legs, then forced the detached fifth fingers deep into the flesh to anchor them - shaping a grotesque, living harp.

They moved to the second, third, and fourth fingers next, snapping joints and tearing the remaining membrane from the body. The second finger was jammed into the creature's skull like a crown. The third and fourth were fixed to the harp's arm, bound in place by more strips of membrane, which they stretched into additional strings. The tail was ripped from the spine in one violent motion, its still-attached membrane fashioned into a bow for the harp.

Finally, the twins pulled strands of their own hair, tying them around the creature's neck as if sealing the instrument with a ritual knot. When they stepped back, the abomination began to flutter faintly in the gentle breeze, its misshapen frame whispering a soundless promise of music that should never be heard.

................

She stood in froze, as the darkness ahead began to coil and rise, shaping itself into the outline of a man. Step by step, it gained weight and form, until he emerged fully, walking with an almost casual grace. On his head sat a simple Napoleonic hat, adorned with two long feathers—one black as midnight, the other a deep, blood-red. Golden hair spilled from beneath it, framing pale brows and eyes shadowed by a strange dark-blue stain that bloomed beneath each one.

From his chin ran countless narrow lines, curling upward and downward, converging near a small black rose that seemed grown from his skin. The lines shifted subtly, like the steady breath of something alive. He wore a general's uniform, regal in design, but entirely crimson, as though dyed in blood. In his hand he carried a thick book, and on its cover an eye rolled ceaselessly, darting between her and the unseen horizon. Beneath the eye, a small mouth rested, twitching in silent motion.

When he finally reached her, he stopped, then bowed deeply, lifting his hat in a practiced gesture of courtesy. But from beneath the brim, there was nothing human, only a single enormous demon's eye glaring at her. Its veins were bloated, filled with black pus that pulsed like diseased roots. Slowly, he pulled the hat down again, just enough to reveal a smile, wide, knowing, and cruel.

"Sorry, lady… did I make you fear?" His voice slid into the air like a knife. Then his grin deepened. "Another show for you, miss…"

................

The book in his hand shuddered, not as paper does, but like a creature rousing from an ancient dream. Its black eye swivelled slowly, meeting hers for an unblinking heartbeat before something stirred within its pages. A single tendril, green and glistening, pushed its way out between the covers, curling into the air like smoke made solid.

The vine grew quickly, twisting upon itself, unfurling jagged leaves that trembled in some unseen breeze. The leaves, still wet with dew that had never existed, shivered and broke away, raining down in silence before dissolving into the dark water below. The vine thickened, reaching upward, and in a heartbeat it rooted itself into a towering trunk. Bark split like cracking glass, and from the wounds bloomed a tree crowned with one perfect flower, a demonic rose whose petals breathed like lungs.

From the heart of that rose, four thick vines emerged, each curving outward like the ribs of a great lantern, arching as though holding the shape of an invisible sphere. Thorns sprouted along their length, sharp and glistening, and from those thorns, roses began to blossom—petals deep as coagulated blood.

The four great vines reached upward, their tips entwining at a single point. From that knot, a new rose swelled into being—a bloodier, darker thing than the first, heavy with something older than decay. Then, in slow defiance of nature, the thorns along the four great arcs twisted and uncurled, reshaping themselves into smaller vines that wove together above the massive central bloom. A sphere of green and crimson formed, resting delicately upon the flower's crown.

The sphere pulsed, then began to open. Its vines parted, their roses folding back into themselves, the structure reshaping into a massive rosebud. Slowly, agonizingly, it began to bloom.

Petals unfurled in layers, huge as sails, their deep red veins glistening in the dim light. All the roses along the supporting vines suddenly shuddered and began to shed their petals. One by one, they broke away, spinning downward, touching the black water only to rise again as if caught in some invisible tide. Drawn upward by an unseen pull, the petals circled the giant blooming flower in a slow, hypnotic dance.

They gathered above the flower's heart, whirling faster and faster, until they melted together in a suspended, molten-red mass that shimmered like liquid silk. The air shifted, heavy with a scent that was both intoxicating and poisonous.

From that molten bloom emerged a shape, fragile at first, cocooned in soft green threads. The cocoon swelled and split open in the warm red glow. A figure unfurled within, graceful and terrible.

She was a woman wrought from roses and sin. Her body formed as if sculpted from living vines, each curve traced in green, each hollow wrapped in bloom. Her hair spilled out in silken strands, human at first, until the ends coiled upon themselves into two spiralling ponytails. Two perfect roses bloomed upon her chest, crimson against the green of her skin. The rest of her was draped in layers of rose petals that shifted like living silk, veiling and revealing with every breath.

Her eyes were vast, black pupils opening like flowers at dawn. They fixed upon the world with a knowing too deep to be human.

She descended slowly from the great rose, her bare feet kissing the air until they met the water's surface. Wherever she stepped, a new flower bloomed, delicate and glowing, only to dissolve moments later.

In her hand, she carried a single rose, its petals trembling with a strange light. She stirred it as one would a flame, and from it, petals broke away in bursts, scattering into the wind like sparks. The air seemed to bend around her, as if the world itself leaned closer to witness her passage.

The book in the man's hand snapped shut, not with the dry sound of paper but with a wet, final pull, as if sealing away a heart. The vines that had built the spectacle recoiled instantly, retreating into the book's spine until there was no trace they had ever existed.

She walked across the water without a ripple, each step blooming and fading in a heartbeat, until she reached him. Without a word, she stepped lightly onto his shoulder, her vines curling around him with the ease of a partner in a long-forgotten dance. They stood together, one hand resting upon the other as though they had been sculpted in that pose centuries ago.

But the man's smile deepened—not in triumph, not in peace, but in promise. His one visible eye glittered like a coin dropped into an abyss.

And as the book pulsed faintly in his hand, the unspoken truth pressed into the air like a weight

This was not an ending.

.....................

That black ichor, dripping from the crescent where the woman sat on moon and melody was coming from there, fell in slow, deliberate drops. One splashed against the river's surface. Ripples froze. The water stiffened like glass, and from its still heart a thin rod began to rise.

Above, another eclipse moon descended, silent, heavy, its shadow smothering the world. The two moons met, their rims fusing with a dull metallic scream. They began to rotate, faster and faster, shapes flickering in their dance: first a sword, then a polearm, then something far worse, a scythe, curved like a dying smile.

The scythe swung without hands to guide it, slicing through the river. But the cut did not bleed water. It opened into blackness.

From that split, a hand emerged, long, skeletal, the skin shrivelled tight against bone, pale as candle wax. A deathly blue vapor seeped from its joints, drifting like the breath of graves. The fingers flexed once, talon-like, before closing around the scythe's shaft.

It stabbed the air.

The river shattered, and from the fracture a figure pulled itself free—not from water, but from the void beyond it.

He was robed in black so deep it seemed to eat the light. His face was thin, too thin, with features stretched into something cruel. His eyes were pits of blinding white, ringed with spirals of drifting blue dust, moving like restless galaxies.

He did not walk. His legs dangled uselessly, and yet he hovered forward. Behind him spun the hollow moon, no longer silver, but a bone-white ring gnawed by shadows. Around it orbited smaller moons, each a different phase, shifting in silence.

He tilted his head, the scythe lazily lowering to his side. And then he stared into her...

........................

From the torn seam in the river, all black seeped forth in ribbons, slow at first, then frenzied. Streams of it slithered across the water, drawn together as if by some silent summons. They pooled in one place, thickening, twisting, shaping themselves into a body.

It had no fingers, no hair, no human softness at all. Just a smooth, featureless black form, as though someone had scraped away identity and left only the shadow.

Behind it, a disk of darkness began to rotate. Its edges bled into the air, swallowing what little light dared to linger.

The body writhed with motion, not its own, but from the countless tiny specks crawling over it. They swarmed like flies on rotting fruit, glimmering faintly as they moved. The same restless particles churned in its eyes, spinning like storm clouds trapped in glass. Its mouth was worse, an open pit of shifting specks, each catching light for a heartbeat before vanishing again. The colours flickered and warped with every restless turn.

In its hand, two golden coins spun and danced, juggled with a hypnotic ease.

Even here, in this blackest dark, the coins caught light.

And in that light, you felt watched...

To be continued…