"Do you think they'll mind if I just walk in, or is there a formal knocking process for places like this?"

The voice didn't come from a throat, but seemed to vibrate from the center of a chest that strained violently against the fabric of a revealing nun’s habit. The woman stood at the threshold of the blackened limestone archway, her silhouette heavy and imposing. She shifted her weight, the movement causing the dried, stiffened linens wrapped around her entire body to crackle like old parchment. Every inch of her—from the featureless void where a face should be to the stumps where arms once existed—was bound in thick, blood-soaked bandages. Beneath the linen, her skin had the glistening, dark sheen of oiled, cooked meat, a texture that looked less like flesh and more like something prepared for a feast.

"Wait," she whispered to the silence, the vibration of her voice rattling the stiff bandages around her jaw. "The etiquette is important. One doesn't simply barge into a sanctuary of iniquity without the proper humility."

She leaned back against the cold limestone, the movement sending a sharp, searing ripple of pain through the burns beneath her wraps. It was a delicious, grounding sensation. For Ceres Fauna, pain was the only currency that never lost its value, a constant reminder that she existed in a state of perpetual, exquisite ruin. She shifted her weight, feeling the heavy pull of her chest against the thin fabric of her habit, the sheer mass of her form making the simple act of standing an endurance test. To her, this was the point. The discomfort, the restriction, the agonizing friction of blood-crusted linen against charred skin—this was the pleasure she craved, a slow-burning penance that tasted of iron and smoke.

She imagined the interior of the Church of Sin: the oppressive weight of a ceiling that felt like a descending slab of granite, the scent of old incense and older regrets. She didn't want a welcome; she wanted a trial. She wanted to be told she was too broken to enter, or perhaps too grotesque to be seen, forced to wait in the void of the black courtyard until her legs gave out. The anticipation of rejection was a feast in itself, a psychological hunger that gnawed at her more fiercely than any physical void ever could.

As the minutes stretched into an indeterminate span of time, she began to sway. Without arms to balance herself or eyes to gauge the horizon, she relied entirely on the feeling of the wind whistling through the gaps in her bandages and the rhythmic thrum of her own heart. She felt like a monument of meat and gauze, a living sacrifice waiting for a priestess who might never come. She focused on the tightening of the bandages around her torso, the way they bit into her flesh with every breath, savoring the sensation of being slowly crushed by her own attire.

A soft, distant chime echoed from deep within the church, a sound like a hammer hitting a lead pipe. It wasn't an invitation, but it was a signal. Fauna straightened her posture, her lime-green hair—stiff and synthetic—brushing against the blood-stained wraps of her neck. She didn't know if she was truly welcome, or if she was merely a curiosity to be mocked, but the possibility of the latter made her pulse quicken. She took one tentative step forward, the soles of her feet clicking against the black stone, eager to find someone who could provide a punishment more creative than her own. For she is gluttony and no matter the tourture shed always live always recover, always reform again and again.

A cold night, awaits Glutony