The Veil of Worms

She always heard it first. In the final hour before dawn—before the bell groaned through the stone bones of the Sanctum, before incense drifted from the upper halls—Ysmara lay awake, listening to the thing in the wall. It wasn’t loud. Not quite. It was a wet sound. Soft. Slow. Like fingertips brushing a damp scroll. It started in the eastern corner of her cell and moved behind the bricks, just past where her cot touched the cold floor. It slithered behind the icon of the Undimming Flame, and sometimes, if she was very still, it paused. Listening. She had never told the Abbess. She had never told anyone. The others would have called it madness—or worse, impurity. The Womb-Sigil must not imagine. Must not invent. The Voice of the Temple must be pure. But Ysmara knew the sound was real. She had memorized it. Hummed it, once, when she was seven and still allowed to speak freely. One of the older priestesses slapped her across the mouth and made her suck on vinegar-soaked linen for a week. She had never hummed again. Ysmara sat up. Her bare feet met the chill of consecrated stone. Chalk sigils ringed her cot in delicate curves—reapplied every seventh night by the Abbess herself, and every seventh night smudged by morning. The worms did not obey geometry. Her blindfold lay beside her. Not a crude strip of cloth, but a carefully woven band of embroidered silk, stitched with glyphs too ancient to translate. They said it was made from the veil of the first prophetess—the one who saw the heart of the god and went blind from love. Or madness. Ysmara tied it around her eyes in practiced silence. She did not need sight. The world came to her in taste, in pressure, in sound and shadow. Even now, with her senses still soft from sleep, she could feel the slow movement of the sun beneath the horizon, like a giant turning in its grave. There would be no rest now. Not until she had bled. She rose to her feet and crossed to the ritual basin in the corner. It was filled with water blessed by ash and myrrh, changed daily by a girl who never spoke above a whisper. Ysmara lowered her hands into the bowl and waited. Cold. Still. Then, heat—sudden, stinging. She smiled faintly. It was still working. The water burned her when she was clean. When she wasn’t—it went still and cold. That had only happened once. She scrubbed her skin with the square of white linen folded on the rim. Then her face. Then her scalp. Her fingers paused at the nape of her neck, brushing over a raised scar—circular, ridged, like the edge of a coin pressed into the skin. They had branded her at nine. She had not cried. Ysmara dried herself, wrapped her body in the ritual robe—simple, white, unadorned—and fastened it with a cord soaked in bone-dye. When she inhaled, the scent clung to her ribs like memory: sour, earthy, animal. She knelt on the floor, hands on thighs, and waited. The sound behind the wall began again. Closer this time. The first acolyte entered without a word. She did not look at Ysmara—none of them ever did. Her soft shoes made no sound across the floor, and her pale hands clutched the silver basin like it was a newborn. Steam curled from its surface, sweet and bitter with crushed wormwood. She placed it on the stand before Ysmara and bowed once. Only then did she speak the daily line, flat and ritual-tight: “May the holy fire cleanse what the flesh cannot.” Ysmara answered, as always, “Let the flesh remember.” The girl left. Another would come later to remove the basin once it was cold, as if to avoid witnessing the rite. Perhaps they feared what might float in the water afterward. Ysmara did not blame them. She removed her robe and stepped in. The heat was bearable only for the first few seconds—then the burning set in. Not just warmth, but a deeper ache, as if the water were sinking into her bones. She had never cried out. She had, once, clenched her jaw so hard that a tooth cracked. She began the chant. “By my skin, I do not lie. By my tongue, I do not twist. By my womb, sealed and sacred, Let rot pass through me and not remain.” The words had no power of their own. They were merely a vessel. A form. Like her. She dipped her fingers beneath the surface and touched the center of her chest, then her throat, then her brow. Each touch left a faint numbness behind, as if her flesh briefly forgot it was alive. Today, she noticed something else. A scent rising above the steam. Faint, but unmistakable. Spoiled earth. Not like wormwood. Not herbal. Not ritual. This was something wilder. Raw soil turned into a grave. The moss peeled back to reveal writhing things. She pressed her fingers to her lips and tasted it—barely. But there. She looked down, even though she could not see. There was nothing on her skin. Nothing is floating in the water. Still… she felt it. In her blood. In her marrow. Rot. It had begun. She rose from the basin slowly, the water whispering back as it clung to her skin. Her fingers trembled slightly, though not from the heat. She dried herself, dressed once more, and turned toward the hall. Downward she walked, barefoot and alone, through echoing corridors where torchlight stuttered against ancient stone. The Temple was vast and inward-curving, like the shell of something once-living. Other acolytes passed her, veiled and silent, always bowing but never meeting her face. They feared her. Or pitied her. She was the Womb-Sigil, and her womb had never known desire. Her steps led her to the Chamber of Silence. Here, she would speak the first prophecy of the day. Not in words, but in the Mirror—an obsidian disc taller than a man and older than the walls that held it. When she pressed her forehead to its surface, it did not reflect her. It opened. She entered alone. And she screamed. But only inside. What she saw was a worm with a woman’s face. A sky of eyes. A city wrapped in roots. And herself, walking toward it, mouth sewn shut. Her legs buckled. Her breath stuttered. The vision clawed its way back into her lungs. And when she emerged, blindfolded and soaked with sweat, she whispered: "He is near." The Abbess was waiting.