He woke to darkness pressing against his eyelids.
A weight pinned his chest and legs, heavy enough to restrict his breath but not crush it.
The air was stale and sour, thick with the scent of dried blood and something faintly metallic. When he inhaled, the taste clung to his tongue.
His fingers twitched first. They brushed against something cold, yet soft.
He froze.
Above him, something shifted. A dull, rolling thud of a limb knocking against another. Then stillness again.
He pushed. His arm slid between bodies, skin hardened by death, cloth stiff with old stains.
The weight barely budged. He pushed again, harder this time, until a gap opened and cold night air seeped in.
His head rose through the space.
Moonlight spilled across him in a thin, washed-out beam.
The world around him took shape slowly.
Bodies.
Dozens.
Stacked deliberately, not thrown.
Faces pale, eyes open, all of them marked by the same carved symbol across the chest.
He exhaled once through his nose, breath steady despite the tightness in his lungs.
He dragged himself upward.
Cold limbs slid aside as he pulled himself to the top of the mound. His palms were red when he lifted them, though there was no wound on his skin.
No bruises.
No marks.
No remnants of the blows that had killed him.
As he stood, his knees nearly buckled.
Not from pain, but from the mere sight at his feet.
His father's hand.
Fingers curled as though reaching for something.
His mother lying beside him, her cheek resting against a stranger's shoulder.
And there, half-covered by a torn blanket—
His sister.
Her small body folded into the pile with thoughtless precision, her skin gone cold.
He sank to one knee. The world narrowed to that single point of stillness, the slight tilt of her chin, the braid he had tied for her that morning.
His hand hovered over her face.
He waited for warmth that wasn't there.
When his fingers touched her cheek, the cold ran straight to his core.
He didn't speak.
He didn't cry.
He only lowered his head, letting the silence melt his very heart.
A lantern clattered to the ground nearby.
He didn't flinch.
A man stood several paces away, a cultist with the carved symbol faintly visible beneath torn robes. His eyes were wide, breath trembling, lantern forgotten at his feet.
"You—" the cultist stammered. "You were here. She marked you. All of you were marked."
Alaric slowly rose to his feet.
The cultist stumbled backward, as if seeing something impossible. "No one crawls out. The Cantor said—she said none of the marked can rise again."
He turned and ran, tripping over roots before vanishing between the houses.
Alaric remained still.
The lantern's flame flickered against the pile of bodies, casting uneven shadows across the faces around him. The symbol carved into their skin seemed to drink the light.
He looked down at his own chest.
Untouched.
His stomach hollowed. Revival in the Backrooms had been confusing. This was… something else entirely.
A violation of natural ends, of death itself.
A soft crunch of leaves came from behind him.
More footsteps followed. They were quiet, measured, and arranged, not at all frantic.
He turned.
Three cultists emerged first, their lanterns held high. Their faces were blank, eyes glassy. They formed a loose semicircle around him, quiet in wait.
Then a fourth figure stepped into the light.
She looked almost unremarkable at first glance—her frame slender, posture straight, dressed in simple traveling robes. But her presence pressed against the air, bending it subtly, almost as though through a gravitational lensing effect.
The Cantor.
She approached the edge of the mound, hands clasped behind her back.
Her gaze swept over the bodies, pausing briefly on his family before settling on him.
Her expression did not change, though something tightened around her eyes.
"How?" she said. Her voice was soft, but it carried with unnatural clarity. "You should be dead."
He remained silent.
She stepped closer, the lanternlight catching the faint sheen of a symbol inked on her wrist. It was different from the ones carved into the villagers. Older, and intricate.
"You were among them."
Her head tilted slightly.
"I marked all of you before the Hymn. None of my Chorus survives their offering."
She reached out, examining the air around him with her fingertips.
"No wound," she murmured. "No imprint. Your body is clean."
Her eyes rose to meet his.
"This is impossible."
He didn't respond.
The Cantor circled him once, slow and unhurried, like an archeologist studying a rare artifact.
"You are breathing," she continued. "Your heart rate is steady. Yet your nen—"
She paused.
"Your life energy has not dispersed. It's sticking to you, like… clay."
Nen.
There it was again.
She watched his face carefully, noting the stillness in his expression.
She stopped a step away from him.
"Tell me," she asked quietly. "Why do you still breathe?"
He looked her in the eyes for the first time.
And remained silent.
A faint smile shaped her lips, though it did not reach her eyes.
"Attachment," she whispered. "Purpose. Both are fertile ground for vows."
She lifted her hand.
Two cultists stepped forward instantly.
"Bind him," she said. "And bring him to the Sanctuary. He will be tested."
The cultists approached.
He moved before they reached him, instinct threading through muscle and bone. His elbow struck the nearest attacker's throat; another step sent the second stumbling back. For a moment, he nearly slipped through the gap between them—
Then pressure crushed him.
From the air itself.
His limbs locked. His breath tightened in his chest.
Nen.
The Cantor's hand hovered calmly in the air, her fingers curved in a loose gesture.
"Do not struggle," she said. "You are already chosen."
His vision blurred.
He collapsed to his knees, the last sound he heard the shifting of robes as she stepped closer.
Then darkness swept in once more.
***
He woke to stone.
Cold, uneven stone beneath his back and above his head, as if he had been laid inside a hollow carved by human hands.
A torch burned somewhere beyond his field of vision, its light flickering across the walls in soft orange pulses.
He sat up slowly.
Chains clinked, hanging from the walls, empty and rusted. He wasn't bound. His limbs moved freely.
He inhaled.
The air carried the scent of incense and damp earth, and beneath that, a faint metallic tang.
Death.
He touched his chest out of habit. There was no mark, nor bruise nor injury of any kind.
His revival had erased everything again.
A door scraped open, so he turned.
The Cantor stepped inside.
She looked smaller without the night behind her, but not weaker. Her posture was rigid, her gaze steady, and her expression too calm for the place she stood in.
Her clothes were simple fabric robes, shoulders dusted with soil.
Her eyes stayed on him as she closed the door.
"You're awake," she said. The words were plain, delivered as if remarking on the weather. "Good. I wasn't sure how long your body would take to recover."
He stared back in silence.
She walked a few steps closer, stopping where torchlight met shadow.
"I carried you here myself," she continued. "Well—dragged, technically. You're heavier than you look."
Her tone was flat. If anything, slightly irritated.
He didn't answer.
Her gaze slid over him, assessing without a care.
"No wounds," she said, more to herself than to him. "You died. I saw it. Your aura dissipated."
She lifted her fingertips slightly, as if sensing something on him.
"But now there's… residue." Her eyes narrowed. "A layer of post-mortem nen clinging to your aura. Thin, but present. And you're breathing again."
He didn't speak.
She tilted her head. "I know what that nen feels like. My father's aura was drenched in it before he lost his mind."
A small pause.
"My own isn't clean either."
She stepped closer, stopping only an arm's length away.
"You revived," she said simply. "I hope you see how that makes me interested."
Still he didn't respond.
She stared at him for a few seconds longer before exhaling faintly. "You're not talkative."
"Not to you," he replied.
Something flickered across her face. The expression of someone remembering an old bruise on their mind.
"That's fine," she said finally. "I didn't bring you here for conversation."
She turned slightly, gesturing around the stone chamber.
"This is my Sanctuary. Built from an old hunter outpost my father abandoned when he… changed." She searched for the word, shrugged, and moved on. "I repaired it. Expanded it. My Chanters and Choirlings gather above. I work here."
She looked back to him.
"You don't fear this place."
"I've seen worse."
"Mm." She accepted that without question.
She approached a wooden table near the wall. On it lay a few tools, metal instruments and pieces of chalk worn down from use.
She picked up a piece of chalk, twirled it once between her fingers, and began drawing on the floor. Slow circles, straight lines, intersecting arcs. Shapes that meant something to her.
"You revived," she said again. "Clean again. Your aura carries a death residue yet still circulates normally. Which should be simply impossible."
She glanced at him.
"You're perhaps the most abnormal thing I ever came across."
He remained still.
That seemed to please her.
"My father told me something once," she said while drawing. " He told me: 'If you find something that breaks the rules, keep it.'"
She sat back on her heels, finished drawing, and set the chalk aside.
Then she stood and faced him.
"I want you here," she said plainly. "Alive. Under me."
He blinked once. "Why?"
"You revived." She stepped closer. "You're drenched in post-mortem nen. You don't break under aura pressure. You kill efficiently even without training." Her eyes darkened with interest. "Those traits make valuable material."
"For what?"
Her answer came without hesitation:
"To teach you. To train you. To shape you into someone useful."
He didn't move.
"And if I refuse?"
She shrugged. "Then we start over."
"Over?"
"I kill you again." She said simply. "You'll come back. And eventually, you'll stay."
Silence stretched.
She studied him from head to toe, her expression settling into something disturbingly close to approval.
"You walked out of a pile of corpses," she said quietly. "That alone makes you more interesting than any follower I've ever marked. And I've marked hundreds."
Her voice dropped, losing any pretense of neutrality.
"I want to see what you become."
He finally asked, "And why would you teach me nen?"
She met his gaze without blinking.
"Because my father taught me," she said. "Even after madness hollowed him out. Even after he forgot my name. He still taught."
A faint, brittle smile touched her lips.
"So I'll continue the line."
She took one slow breath, then spoke with calm conviction:
"Alaric–is it? That's what they called you at least. You will be my disciple."
His heartbeat stayed steady.
Her eyes held a quiet, fractured certainty. Like someone who had already decided reality and expected the world to adjust itself accordingly.
The silence between them thinned.
He inhaled once.
"No."
Her head tilted—as if she hadn't heard correctly. "What?"
"No," he repeated.
The Cantor blinked slowly.
Then she smiled—a small, unsettling smile that didn't match her otherwise rigid composure.
"You can say no," she said softly. "For now."
She stepped back toward the door.
"We have a month until the next Hymn," she said without turning. "During that time, I will train you. You'll break, or adapt. It doesn't matter which. Both outcomes please me."
Her hand rested on the doorframe.
"You can walk out of this room when you're ready."
Then she left.
The lock clicked once.
Then silence.
Alaric remained seated on the cold stone, his pulse steady, and breathing calm.
He had died four times.
Revived four times.
Enough was enough.