He digs his fingers into his flesh, tearing deep crevices into his skin, then rips strips from his body as crimson floods beneath him, forming a river of red. His lips quiver, teeth clenched as he seethes like a wild animal, spit flying from his mouth as he trembles. His eyes go wide as his fingers dig in again and tear another layer free, he muffles his cries as a sea of sweat washes down his brow.

She smiles, sitting cross-legged across from him. Her head tilts, her eyes blink. She runs a finger through the wet, sticky river and holds it to her lips. Her tongue slithers out, wrapping her finger in a slippery embrace, she gasps, and her smile grows.

“Oh, the pain, how exquisite,” she purrs as she crawls toward him on all fours, bathing herself in his blood. “I didn’t think you had such depravities left in you, but here, in your true self, we have found the hidden child.”

He stares at her, eyes wide, as his fingers dig in again, tearing more flesh from his frame. “F-Fuck you!” he hisses as he spits a wad of salty red at her. It slaps her cheek with a wet groan, and her smile widens.

She grabs him by the throat, her smile curling at its edges. She leans in and licks the side of his face, then presses her lips to his ear.

“You can either entertain me or fight me, I care little which,” she purrs as she pulls away and stares into his petrified eyes. “Either way, I will consume you. How you leave this plane is no care of mine, it changes nothing, but imagine the journey if you joined in? Imagine the sea of red, the depths of depravities shared could take us both? Imagine and spread yourself wide with your fingers in flesh! Let me come inside you and birth a new version of who you truly are!” she spits as she releases her hold and backs away, sitting cross-legged before him once more.

Her smile twists as her face rotates inside her flesh, eyes, nose, and mouth sliding into an upside-down grin. Her skull, as ever, still sits atop her shoulders.

She giggles, and everything slowly rotates back into place, he screams in terror as his fingers tear another strip of flesh from his body. His teeth grind, and his jaw locks. His eyes pulsate, and his body twists, he falls forward. His head hangs low. A river of red cascades down his face, dripping from his jaw. He gasps, grips handfuls of earth, and spews forth a sea of black from his lungs. He chokes and wheezes, he groans through each ragged gasp.

“P-Please,” he whispers, “s-show me.”

She giggles again and, like an elongated spider, she twists and turns then circles him, dragging her fingers across his torn flesh, tracing symbols, relics of a world long gone, into his sinew with the tip of her nail.

“I want to show you so much more. I want your pain to shape your next stage,” she whispers. “Do you want it? Do you want to change? I want to give you the truth, show you what devotion rewards, what sights pain reveals. Do you?” she purrs as he trembles before her, for the first time this night, he doesn’t tremble in fear, but in the clarity the pain brings.

From the dark beyond the circle, chains shoot out and coil around his flesh. She sings in agony, then quivers in rapture.