The air was vacuumed of warmth. Every tombstone glimmered faintly beneath the thin sickle of the half-moon, slick with frost that seemed to cling to the marble like a cold sweat. The graves of Elizabeth Kylie and Ceaser Grey lay side by side, one sealed by a nation's grief, the other sealed by something ancient and far older than any man.
A subtle rustling of heavy cloth broke the stillness.
Seven figures, draped in hooded robes as black as burnt feathers, moved through the fog like specters. Their footsteps were synchronized, barely disturbing the frozen grass, reverent to the point of obsession.
None spoke, none looked up. They moved with the purpose of acolytes, focused on a rite that superseded human mourning.
They stopped precisely at the head of Ceaser's grave, their robes pooling on the dirt, and laid down their tools, long, elegant shovels and silver implements that caught the meagre moonlight like small, crescent daggers.
Their leader, a figure slightly taller and broader than the rest, drew a complex sigil into the mud with a trembling, obsessive hand. It was not a familiar Christian cross or a known occult circle, but a twisting network of lines that looked like veins drawn in black ink. As he rose, he drew a deep, ragged breath that rattled in his chest.
"The seal is weak," he whispered, though the voice was thin and reedy, a temporary channel for something that demanded to be heard. "He calls to us. The vessel is clean, the time is right, and the earth will yield its rightful sovereign."
Every strike of the shovel against the hard, freezing ground echoed like a frantic heartbeat. The rhythm was hypnotic, mechanical. They didn't appear to be robbing a grave, but rather completing something left unfinished, retrieving an object of immense, sacred value.
The soil, which had been still and heavy, began to pulse faintly, black veins of mist, smelling of ozone and crushed stone, curled from the dirt with every displaced scoop. The seven figures paid the phenomena no mind, their eyes fixed on the deepening hole.
Finally, after what seemed like an hour snatched out of time, a final, hollow thud rang out.
wood met metal.
The digging stopped instantly. The black mist thickened, swirling into a dense, oily curtain above the hole. The leader dropped to his knees, his hands extended over the coffin lid.
"Master," he choked out, fear and ecstasy battling for dominance in his throat. "We have honored the prophecy. We have come to deliver you."
The seven men worked in concert, prying the lid from the coffin with the silver tools. The atmosphere had become unbearable, the air pressed down on the cemetery as though trying to hold the lid in place, trying to smother the resurrection before it could begin.
The instant the coffin opened, reality itself recoiled.
The air didn't rush in to fill the void, it folded inward, collapsing into a sickening silence that felt heavier than any sound. Pressure...crushing, metaphysical pressure, hit the first hooded man.
His body didn't fall back, it crushed in on itself, his ribs snapping like dry twigs inward, his skin darkening. A fine spray of blood and viscera shot not outward, but directly into the dark maw blooming inside the coffin.
The others followed, one after another, their forms folding, twisting, collapsing into ruinous heaps of blood and bone, their very souls sucked into the black pit as fuel for the ascent. The ground absorbed the carnage without a whisper, leaving behind seven empty robes lying in pools of cooling gore.
And then.....
laughter!
A wet, rolling laugh, like gravel tumbling in a well, that crawled up the throat of the earth and made the stars flinch. It was not a sound of simple amusement, but of vast, ancient intelligence finally finding comfort in its return.
A hand emerged first, pale, bloodless, yet veined with a cold, black light that seemed to draw all surrounding energy into its form. Then came the body, rising without effort. The expensive suit Nurse Astor had dressed him in was now perfectly intact, dusted only with a film of pale graveyard dirt. His hair, mended and restyled, fell like ink, heavy and wet with the grave's moisture.
He raised his head, and the half-moonlight illuminated the face of Ceaser Grey. But the eyes were wrong. They were a whirlpool of mirrored reflections, two distinct pupils flickering a brilliant red, revolving slowly like faces seen through water.
"Ahh!" he breathed, flexing his jaw, the sound of his voice deep and multi-layered, like four men speaking in perfect, unsettling chorus. "Such insolence! a mere man presuming to deliver me."
His grin split wider than it should, pulling the mended skin taut across his cheekbones. When he laughed again, a deep, resonant sound of cosmic victory, the shadows that had clung to the tombstones bent backward, fleeing from him. The cemetery, the silent trees, the very wind, all seemed to kneel to listen.
"Master," a soft, familiar voice murmured from the shadows.
Astor walked from behind the ancient weeping willow, her mortuary gown now replaced with a high-necked, black ceremonial coat embroidered with twisting veins of silver thread. Her expression was beatific, her eyes shining with the zealous glow of a true believer. She did not approach him casually. She fell to her knees in the mud and gore, her head bowed so low her hair touched the dirt where the hooded figures had been crushed.
"Welcome back, Lord Nimesh."
He smiled faintly, his eyes settling on her. He stepped out of the shallow grave, the movement graceful, divine. He approached her, and with a single, gentle touch on her forehead, the crimson splatter on her coat vanished, leaving only the ceremonial silver thread.
"Faithful Astor," he whispered, his voice intimate and utterly devoid of human warmth. "You kept me perfect."
She raised her head, weeping tears of pure devotion. "i never once stopped believing my lord"
Nimesh glanced at the ruined graveside and the scattered, empty robes of his failed summoners. "They were so eager to feed my power. So simple." He looked away, his eyes blinking in a slow, staggered sequence.
As they did, the faces behind them flickered briefly: a frightened child, a Roman soldier screaming, a benevolent man smiling. The shifting light was a visual reminder of the fragmented personas he had absorbed over centuries.
"I buried the boy when he was ten," Nimesh said quietly, his voice settling into the low, rumbling register Elizabeth had last heard from Ceaser. "But I wore his name. Wore his face. I learned his laughter, his kindness, even his guilt. Do you know what it feels like, Astor, to kill a soul so small it never fights back?"
He turned his full attention back to the cemetery. "Ceaser Grey was the dream I built for them. Their messiah of madness, their scapegoat for my divinity. He made the human world trust me. He made the woman love me. And now... the dream wakes."
Nimesh raised a pale, powerful hand toward the twin graves. The moonlight dimmed sharply, the residual wind died instantly, creating a silent, suffocating pocket in the night.
"Rise, O four corners of creation," he whispered, his command effortlessly shaking the deepest foundations of the earth.
The soil under both the coffin of Ceaser Grey and the coffin of Elizabeth Kylie shifted. The graves pulsed once, a slow, visceral beat, as though they were breathing flesh.
Then, there was only silence. Nimesh stood tall, the supreme figure of authority in the desolate graveyard, his gaze fixed on the hidden movements of the cosmos.
Only the echo of his final, confident words lingered in the frozen air:
"From one face, I became four. From one death, I became God."
And the fourth day came to an end.