Chapter 33 – The Flesh Left Behind
Theme: Abandonment, betrayal of nature, and the rot of forced love.
A young mother named Melin, 26 years old.
Astral Entity: Vorrak – a leech-like abomination with human faces gaping across its body. It feeds on repressed guilt and hollow pleasures.
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In a cramped apartment high above the old city, where the air reeked of dampness and rust.
Night covered the city like dead skin that refused to peel away. The stench of sweetness and rot mingled from the narrow windows.
On the fifth floor, a woman laughed with a hollow voice while painting her face.
In the corner, a three-year-old child whimpered softly, clutching a filthy, half-stuffed toy.
But Melin did not hear.
Her eyes fixed only on her phone.
A notification from a man—one who never loved her beyond a single night.
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The Astral Awakens
Vorrak had lived inside Melin for nine months, since the first cry of the child she ignored.
It clung to her spine, creeping into her face, whispering:
"You deserve happiness. That child is only a burden. Let him cry. Let the smell of his body become the wall that leads him to death."
The more Melin rejected her nature as a mother, the stronger Vorrak grew.
Her skin darkened, her body exuded the scent of blood mixed with rotting flowers.
Neighbors reported a stench of carrion leaking from the apartment.
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Enver Arrives
Enver stood in the corridor outside, his feet not touching the ground.
The stairs did not creak beneath his steps.
A breeze stirred though every window was sealed.
In his hand, the 34th card glowed—its symbol: a baby laid upon damp soil, mushrooms sprouting above it.
He did not knock. He entered.
Vorrak sensed him immediately.
The creature burst from Melin's back, tearing open her skin, swelling into a leech as large as the bed, stretching from wall to wall. Its head ballooned like an inverted womb, vomiting black fluids that fused with the carpet, binding Enver's feet with the slime of trauma.
"She never loved that child," Vorrak sneered.
"Her love belongs only to herself. You cannot purify one who does not regret."
Enver said nothing.
He drew a single card: The Abandoned Womb.
From it emerged the child's shadow—thin, smeared with scraps of food, calling for its mother with a voice nearly gone.
Vorrak shrieked.
The room transformed into rotting flesh: walls became muscle, lamps turned to teeth, the apartment writhing like an unfinished fetus.
Enver leapt into the air, a blue circle of light blooming beneath his feet.
He spoke a word in the ancient tongue:
"Rhazien."
("Open the womb of your soul.")
Vorrak's body split from within.
The many mouths across its form bit into each other, screaming in voices both infant and woman.
Enver pressed his hand to Melin's chest, drawing the astral residue from her spine.
He did not condemn. He did not kill.
He merely stripped away the false love she had built.
Melin collapsed, blood streaming from her eyes.
Vorrak howled, slowly pulled into the card shaped like an empty baby carriage.
Within the astral chamber of purification, Enver stored Vorrak among the others.
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Closing
When Melin awoke, she found her child still alive, sitting quietly in the corner, clutching a toy that had been mended.
No music. No notifications.
Only silence.
And the stench… was gone.
But not because she was cleansed.
Rather, because her sin had been absorbed—
by someone she did not know,
who now stood on the rooftop, gazing at the moon that seemed to weep with him.
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