The kneeling woman gasped, a choked sound of pure terror.

The gunwoman and the remaining man whirled around, their confident expressions shattered by shock and confusion.

The last man reacted on instinct, yanking a knife from his belt, his eyes wild as they darted around the empty-feeling alley.

"Who's there?!"

His answer came a second later.

Another knife—this one seeming to materialize from the air itself—plunged deep into the side of his neck.

He made a wet, gurgling sound, his hands flying up to the hilt as he stumbled back against the wall before sliding down, leaving a dark smear.

The gunwoman froze.

Her breath caught in her throat.

This... this was an attack involving supernatural means!

Her eyes darted frantically across the brick walls, the piles of trash, the dark corners.

She saw no one...

But to her, the emptiness was far more terrifying than any visible enemy!

Behind her, the older woman had collapsed fully to the ground.

Remembering the frantic warnings of her superstitious grandfather, she pressed her face into the filthy cobblestones, covered her ears with her hands, and squeezed her eyes shut.

See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil...

It was a child's mantra against the dark, and it was all she had.

A deep, yet youthful voice cut through the tense silence, coming from the direction of the alley's mouth.

"Tell me, who hired or instructed you to do this?"

From the shadows, a figure revealed itself.

A man with dark hair, wearing a simple black mask with a painted, wide grin.

He stood calmly, as if he had been there the whole time.

The gunwoman didn't bother to think or ponder as fear translated directly into violence!

She swung her pistol towards the masked man and pulled the trigger.

Click.

Nothing happened...

The man in the black mask let out a low, soft laugh.

It wasn't loud, but in the quiet alley, it was a sound of pure mockery.

Confusion joined the fear in the gunwoman's heart.

'A jam? '

Her hands fumbled, ejecting the magazine to check it.

It was full...

She slammed it back in, racked the slide, and aimed again, her finger white on the trigger.

Click.

Again, nothing.

"Does your sense of security come from knowing you have a weapon capable of killing someone?"

The masked man asked, his head tilting slightly.

She didn't understand the question...

All she understood was that her gun, her ultimate equalizer, was useless.

A deep, chilling panic began to set in.

"Gun doesn't work?"

The man mused, his tone almost conversational.

He bent down casually and picked up a short, discarded stick from the ground.

"Here..."

He said, straightening up.

"Let me try."

He pointed the blunt end of the stick towards her abdomen.

"Bang," he said softly.

BANG.

A deafening gunshot roared through the alley.

The gunwoman was thrown backward by an invisible force, a gaping, bloody hole suddenly blossoming in her stomach.

She hit the ground with a heavy thud, her own weapon clattering away, useless.

The kneeling woman flinched violently at the sound but kept her face pressed to the ground, her whole body trembling.

The man with the black mask—Seth—stepped over to the writhing gunwoman.

He knelt beside her, his expression unreadable behind the grinning facade.

"I'll ask again. Who was it that ordered you to perform this ritual?"

The woman was drowning in pain and terror.

The mystery of the gun, the invisible attacks, the stick that shot—it had frightened her deeply...

"It... it was..."

She choked out, blood bubbling on her lips.

"Them... they told me to...—"

Her words cut off in a sudden, violent gasp.

Her face contorted in agony beyond the gunshot wound.

A horrific grimace locked onto her features.

She began to convulse, her back arching off the ground.

Then, a stench permeated the air—

It was an overpowering, sweet-rotten smell of decay, exploding from her body...

Her skin seemed to writhe.

From her eye sockets, her nostrils, her open mouth, a wriggling mass of pale worms began to pour forth, accompanied by a buzzing cloud of fat, black flies.

Her screaming died into a wet, gurgling silence.

Within seconds, the process was complete.

Where a dying woman had been, there was now only a rapidly decomposing, insect-ridden corpse...

Seth stood up and took a step back, falling silent as he watched the grotesque transformation.

'A geas? A spell to silence someone permanently?'

He thought, his mind coolly analyzing through the horror.

He looked from the twitching corpse to the dumpster with the unsigned name, then to the terrified woman still playing dead on the ground.

"Go to a local coven... the Coven of Solace, perhaps. And tell them exactly what you read and what you saw here."

Seth instructed the woman on the ground, his voice low but firm.

"Your soul is under the gaze of an evil spirit now. You must have it cleansed."

The woman didn't need to be told twice.

She scrambled to her feet with a frantic nod, never once looking back at the corpses or the masked man.

She simply ran, her footsteps echoing desperately down the alley before fading into the market's noise.

Seth watched until she disappeared from sight.

"A dumpster ritual...?"

He muttered to himself.

When the woman had been reciting the poem, a deep, instinctual horror had stirred within him.

It was a physical revulsion, a sensitivity he'd developed to the Sin of filth after his own horrible experiences with the Coven of Abomination and Fredero Tangen...

The words had felt sticky and corrupt, like touching something rotten...

A memory clicked into place.

The body of Old Man Eddie...

He had also been found in a dumpster, and his corpse had mysteriously vanished while a witch was investigating it!

'No wonder the body of that old man suddenly disappeared...'

Seth thought.

'If the ritual 'takes' the body once the poem is recited, then entering the dumpster is not just a form of symbolism...'

It was consent.

By climbing inside, the victim was placing themselves into a prepared vessel.

To the worshipers of filth, the dumpster was a form of an altar... A delivery point!

And the poem was the key.

'By reciting it you acknowledge the Progenitor of Filth... By entering the dumpster, you allow yourself to be collected.'

His gaze darkened.

'That kind of ritual points directly to the Progenitor of Filth which means it's connected to the Coven of Abomination...'

A new, more troubling question arose in his mind.

'If this is happening, why aren't the other covens doing anything about it?'

He thought, frowning behind his mask.

'A Progenitor conducting public, sacrificial rituals through a dumpster cult... that's a major threat. It's impossible that the Coven of Solace or others haven't noticed. So why is it being allowed to continue?'

He paused as he let out a murmur.

"There really is something wrong with the Progenitor of Filth..."

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.