Hours passed before Mattiyahu's eyes snapped open. Something was wrong; the darkness inside the tent was no longer a wall. It was a shifting veil of grays he could see straight through, every tear and stain laid bare. The stench punched into new senses that felt flayed open.
He tried to sit. His body rose with liquid, predatory grace, as if someone else worked the joints. Skin stretched drum tight over bone and new muscle. He lifted his hands. Black purple veins forked beneath the surface like cracks in scorched marble. Where starvation once hollowed him, muscle now coiled hard beneath the skin. His shoulders had broadened, arms thickened, every line carved for violence.
A gnawing abyss lived in him, but it was no longer the weak ache. It was a fucking ache that clawed and screamed for raw, hot, bleeding meat. The memory of the rat turned his stomach inside out; his body spat the thought away like poison. He slid up through his own filth, from a body releasing the last of its bowels and bladder. He turned to Hannah.
She was already awake, eyes open and burning. The soft brown eyes he once kissed shut were gone. Twin furnaces of molten bronze stared back, pupils blown wide and bottomless. No recognition remained, only the same hollow need mirrored back at him. A low growl rumbled in her chest, nothing like the woman he married. Death had kissed her skin gray. Flawless black hair framed a face sharpened into terrible beauty.
He tried to say her name. His lips shaped the syllables, but no sound followed. The silence pressed between them. His throat scraped out a dry rasp, sand dragged across iron. Breathing felt pointless, yet every inhale flooded him with the reek of shit and rot. Hannah's hand rose slow, deliberate, testing the weight of her own resurrection. Fingers brushed the crusted beard at his jaw. His black eyes, no longer the dark brown he was born with, met hers. They held no warmth. The beard crackled under her touch, stiff with dried vomit and blood. For a heartbeat, they stared into each other, not as husband and wife but as creatures reborn. Then, together, their eyes fell to the thing between her thighs.
The infant lay curled on its side. It lay wrapped in dried membrane and placenta pulled from her womb during death. It clutched a veined slab of afterbirth like a child's rag doll. Needle teeth worried the raw tissue with soft sucking sounds. A dark string of fluid stretched from its mouth to the purple mass on the floor. The infant had rolled over, pulled the cord to feed from the placenta. Its tiny belly was already distended. It paused, lifting its head from the ragged mass. Amber eyes with red-brown pupils fixed on its parents, unblinking. A thin rivulet of red traced its chin. Then its lips curled, slow and deliberate, into a smile.
The growl in Hannah's throat deepened. Mattiyahu felt the same sound rising in his own chest, answering, claiming. Outside, stars bled across the horizon. Inside the tent, the family hungered in monstrous silence. Hannah's spine cracked as she folded, bowing like a war bow drawn too far. In the blink of an eye, she crouched, balanced on the balls of her feet, looming over the child. A clawed hand shot out, nails now black and hooked, and flipped the infant onto its back. It let out a thin, reedy mewl.
She lowered her face. Stringy hair fell around it, brushing the gleam of the infant's throat. Her whole frame quivered, love and murder wrestling in the same muscles. The scent flooded her with animalistic instinct. It came from her womb, yet it screamed meat. A growl vibrated low in her chest, testing, tasting the air. Jaws locked; new cords of muscle knotted beneath the skin. Once a starving wraith, she was now forged iron: lean, carved, and lethal. The ragged cloth at her stomach split wide. Abs ridged and hard as temple stone showed, streaked with drying gore. Every breath she took was a threat.
Mattiyahu moved before thought. A single shove to her shoulder, not rage but a father's guttural bark that said mine. His eyes fixed not on the child but on the thick umbilical rope still tethering it to her corpse cold body. He seized the cord. It was rubbery, cold, and stubborn. He looped it twice around his fists and brought it to his mouth. New fangs, longer now, ivory needles, sank in. Then he jerked his head in a short, savage twist. A wet pop, followed by a softer breaking of gristle. Scarlet oozed from both severed ends, warm against his tongue. The taste detonated behind his eyes like a struck flint.
Hannah had already gathered the infant to her breast. She cradled it with the ghost of a mother's instinct. The child's amber eyes stared up, unblinking. The cord fell in two pieces between Mattiyahu's knees. Something shifted inside them both, an appetite sharpening to a single point. The reek of the tent turned foul. Beyond, the city sang of warm blood, living salt, heartbeats thudding like temple drums. The scent poured in, irresistible, intimate, and obscene. A symphonic overload to the senses.
Mattiyahu rose. The tent flap tore open like old skin. He stood framed in the ragged opening, chest heaving, nostrils flaring. He looked back once. Hannah already had the child pressed to her shoulder, eyes glinting in the dark. No words. None needed. He let the flap fall shut behind them. They stepped out into the night, barefoot and silent. A devouring ache beyond naming drove them, and the path to the city unrolled before them like a tongue lolled.
Their clothing was ruin made visible. Mattiyahu's robe, once a carpenter's honest wool, hung in stiff ribbons. It was black with old sweat, road filth, and the remains of the rat he vomited earlier. Dark constellations of dried ichor and vomit mapped every fold. Hannah's dress was worse. Sleeves shredded, hem dragging like a burial shroud. The front split open by birth, hardened into a scabrous plate by the vast, rust‑colored bloom from her womb. They wore their suffering the way the crucified wore nails. From death they had risen, sanctified by something unholy, damned by something eternal. As the faithful took the flesh of the Son in remembrance, these three would eat the flesh of sons in desecration.
The pain that drove them from the tent was physical, intimate, and unbearable. Beneath the skin, black veins bulged and crawled like roots gorging on poisoned earth. They threaded up throats, forked across cheeks, pulsed under the jaw. To themselves it was torment, every nerve screaming. To a passerby they might have looked almost healthy. Stronger, fuller, eyes bright with fever. Up close the lies collapsed. Gums concealed retractable fangs that extended at will. Curved and yellowed, they tore tendon and muscle. Ordinary teeth surrounded them, grown sharper than most. Enough to cut, but not yet monstrous.
Hannah moved in short, predatory jerks, one arm folded across her chest. Strips torn from rags bound the infant to her body. Its small pale face, gaining color, was half hidden in the filthy wool. Needle teeth pierced her nipple. Thick, dark ichor seeped around the latch. Crimson beads dripped slow, soaking the sling. Each swallow was audible, greedy, rhythmic. A drumbeat inside her chest seemed to echo in her bones.
They stood before the city gates at the last edge of night. Wind snapped the rags around their legs. Their lips peeled back in rictus grins. Foam and black saliva threaded from the corners of their mouths. Beyond the wall, Jerusalem breathed. Thousands of racing hearts. A single living heartbeat loud enough to drown thought. The gate was tall, barred, and ancient. It might as well have been parchment. The stones seemed to shiver. Ancient mortar whispered under their claws before they touched it. Night folded itself around them like a mother's cloak. The first guard on the wall would never see what climbed over. The moon bled pale in the east. Soon the city would whisper a name in prayers it no longer believed. That name would bleed into the streets. Baal Basar Enasha. Lords of Flesh.