The last thing was the blade.

Then nothing.

Then this.

The mist comes first, white and total, pressing close enough that there is no sense of walls or ceiling or floor, only the fact of ground beneath you, which you discover by being on it. The cold arrives next, the kind that belongs to places that have never been warm and do not intend to start. You are here. You were somewhere else. The distance between those two facts is a gap you cannot account for, and the longer you think about it, the less you want to.

The pomegranate scent reaches you before anything else resolves, dark and split-sweet, jewel-red, the smell of something ripe past the point of comfort. Fig follows, full of honeyed intensity. Orchid blooms with a richness that has no business in this cold, beautiful the way things are beautiful when they are trying to keep your attention somewhere specific. Rhubarb cuts through with a sharpness that is almost a relief.

The mist thins, slightly, reluctantly. And then you see the chains.

They are everywhere. Floor to what might be ceiling, wall to what might be wall, crossing at irregular intervals, some pulled taut, some swaying in a wind that cannot be felt. Thick links, old and dark. They do not rattle. Nothing here has moved in a very long time.

Blackcurrant and plum deepen through the air now, cassis pressing with an urgency that does not rush. Bergamot drifts through briefly, a last ghost of something ordinary. Then the chocolate arrives at the base: slow, dark, viscous as something dripping without haste from the chains nearest to you. Frankincense rises through it like smoke from altars abandoned mid-ceremony, no one has tended in centuries, but they still burn from the force of old habit.

There is a presence in the mist. Not a movement. Not a sound. A weight, a quality of attention, the specific gravity of something that has been here so long it has become part of the atmosphere, heavy with time. Whatever this place is, you did not come here by choice.

The chains are very still.

Something in the mist knows you are awake.

It has been waiting for exactly this moment, and it is patient, and it is vast, and it has a proposal.

There is only one question. A dripping claw extends toward you through the white, through the dark-sweetly air, through the weight of the chains, with the absolute calm of something that already knows the answer.

Will you accept?

Yes.

Absolutely.

Chapel & Claw’s False Idols collection is independently created fan art and merchandise inspired by Cult of the Lamb. We are not affiliated with Massive Monster or Devolver Digital.