"The mortal coil is at once a gaol for the soul and a curb upon reason's excesses. The flesh harbors queer instincts of self-preservation—filtering sounds like a sieve, discarding trifles as autumn sheds its leaves.

  But a spirit unchained from its corporeal prison stands naked as our world without sky or shield. Even golden Apollo's light turns venomous then.

  In life, Lorenzo had been a bishop of peerless conviction and noble ambition. Yet paltry decades of mortal strides paled against centuries of death's march—each second stretched to a year's crawling torment, until naught remained but a wraith steeped in festering spite.

  When Yvette emerged from the attic's shadows into the candlelit chamber, she knew him instantly.

  To her sight, the pustule-faced figure pulsed like wax beneath a flame. Six visages seethed beneath his skin—distorted cameos of anguish straining against their fleshy prison. Five bore resemblance to portraits in the oleander manor; the sixth, a scarred ruin, could only be the body's rightful soul.

  The festival's five magistrates sat frozen in their chairs, oleander among them—puppets with severed strings.

  Here stood peril incarnate. No parley could be brooked with such as he.

  Yvette struck first. Four bullets found their mark in eruptions of gore before a fifth—forged to sunder spirits—tore through reality itself. Its passage burned a corridor of void through the air, igniting the specter's transluscent head as it fled its host.

  The banshee's shriek laid bare its form—a rotten cadaver with ribs like prison bars, behind which six shrieking faces writhed in a ghoulish menagerie.

  Yet Lorenzo was no common revenant. Three hundred years of unlife had honed his will to a razor's edge. With unnatural swiftness, he wrenched his flaming skull free—only for another to sprout in its place—while one captive face within his ribs melted away, leaving its fellows trembling.

  Dodging another enchanted round, Lorenzo surged forward, the cramped quarters favoring his advance.

  Those ghost-slaying bullets marked her as Church-hound. How fitting she should bear the brunt of his vengeance.

  With malice carved into every line of his stolen face, Lorenzo fell upon Yvette as a wolf upon the fold...

  ...

  Three measured knocks preceded the door's creaking protest. A maid stood framed in the threshold.

  For a heartbeat, both froze in mutual surprise.

  "An unexpected guest?" Her practiced smile held no warmth. "Forgive the lack of preparation—do come in. Tea will be ready momentarily."

  Lorenzo remained silent. Here in the dream-realm, flesh wore no masks. Those who walked the Path beyond the Fifth Principle learned this truth—dreams laid souls bare, making waking recognition inevitable.

  Yet this serving girl was not the man he'd come to claim. Why then did she haunt another's mind?

  A fractured psyche, perhaps?

  As she returned bearing a silver tray, Lorenzo tested the waters. "Black tea doesn't suit my palate. Tell me—who else dwells here?"

  The maid blinked. "Do you not seek audience with the Master? The Lord of All? There are no others worth your—"

  "I'll find my own way." He waved away the proffered cup. Even in dreams, wise men refuse strange viands.

  Her phrasing troubled him. Split personalities seldom worshiped one another. That title smacked of divinity—or worse, those groveling things that worshipped elder horrors.

  Best withdraw ere some tentacled nightmare took notice.

  Yet the maid pressed on with eerie fervor: "A moment, sir, to speak of the Purifying Flame, the Unblemished who—"

  Lorenzo's will became an iron talon at her throat. Bone snapped like dry tinder. Crimson rained upon the Axminster rug as her ruined form crumpled.

  No answers here. Best purge every persona until the mental edifice stood empty—a derelict house awaiting its new master.

  As he turned toward the stairs, icy fingers closed about his ankle.

  The broken-necked abomination crawled behind him, spine twisted so her upside-down face grinned with gore-stained teeth.

  "...the chalice...blood of gratitude..." she gurgled. "...drink and be whole..."

  Then—whether by sorcery or madness—Lorenzo found himself upstairs, prying her severed hand from his flesh with fire-wrought tongs.

  The intervening moments blurred in memory. Only impressions remained—the maid's uncanny strength, her bones like tempered steel beneath his supernatural assaults. In the end, only dismemberment and the cleansing flame had stayed her advance.

  A lesson learned. Some profane union had reforged her flesh into something...other.

  From the hearth came weeping whispers. Lorenzo gritted his teeth. What devilry had Albion's priests loosed upon the world? Their hunters now outdid the horrors they were meant to leash?

  No retreat remained. The manor's corridors had shifted—an exit once obvious now swallowed by the dream's protean nature. Yet the tea service remained unchanged, its porcelain shards grinning like broken teeth.

  Upward, then. Though what fresh nightmare awaited...

  As he tossed the charred hand into the flames, a new odor arose—not burning flesh, but something older, fouler.

  Turning, Lorenzo's breath caught.

  Upon the side table—impossible yet undeniable—sat a fresh tea tray. The cup bore a crimson kiss along its rim."

  Both versions maintain the gothic horror tone while balancing accuracy with readability. The idiomatic translation employs more period-appropriate metaphors and phrasing reminiscent of classic horror literature. Let me know if you'd like any refinements to either version.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  When did that tea tray materialize behind him?

  Lorenzo's pulse raced as he crept toward the familiar set—the same blood-speckled porcelain the deranged maid had carried before he snapped her neck. The crimson droplets hadn't even fully congealed yet.

  The tea's aroma of bergamot and bay leaves made his mouth water despite himself. For one reckless instant, he yearned to drain the reddish brew.

  Then the reflection moved.

  Two faces stared back: his own wide-eyed panic, and over his shoulder—the maid. That grinning ghoul he'd dismembered and incinerated now leered through the rippling liquid, her expression a nauseating mix of hunger and delight.

  Pure terror propelled Lorenzo backward. Snatching flaming logs telekinetically, he hurled them at the apparition. As fire engulfed the room, he bolted through the curtain of flames.

  Only when he reached the corridor did he dare glance back. A shadowy figure stood impassive in the inferno's heart, watching him through burning flesh.

  Get out. Now.

  Albion and its deranged secret policeman could rot—he'd exile himself to the New World if necessary.

  But the house defied reality's rules. Its endless corridors spiraled like a hornet's nest, each turn revealing identical doorways. He might wander this nightmare forever.

  Psychic realms typically mirrored finite spaces—a childhood bedroom merged with an adult's study, perhaps a cave or lakeshore encircled by void. Even master mentalists couldn't sustain domains larger than small towns.

  This? An infinity of rooms haunted by an unkillable specter?

  She appeared sporadically during his flight—materializing from shadows, doorways, even his own reflection—forcing him into constant motion. Then, as he rounded another identical corner...

  A voice.

  "Living flesh? Truly living?" A red-haired man in a gilt-framed portrait clawed at his own face, leaving bloody tracks.

  Not another personality fragment. This trapped soul believed himself deceased.

  "That murderess caught you too?" The portrait's voice cracked. "Blood binds us here. She skins us daily—" His nails tore fresh wounds.

  Among this asylum's inmates, he'd apparently been the last sane one. Others had devolved—some mutating, others cannibalizing their young under eldritch influences. Only "Redbeard" had resisted complete insanity... until relentless torture broke even him.

  "The maid's tea doesn't trap people?"

  "That brainless slave worships her killer!" The portrait spasmed. "The real monster walks as a man—a she-devil in male skin!" His scripture quotes suggested this former skeptic now clung to religion like a drowning man.

  Lorenzo pieced together the truth: this prison held souls consumed by the cross-dressing secret policeman. Their blood somehow anchored them here.

  "Take me with you!" The portrait's sudden plea startled him. "I know doorways!"

  Lorenzo recoiled—until the painting flung open a side chamber. There hung a flayed corpse, organs sorted into neat piles like a grisly museum display.

  "I endure this daily." The portrait's whisper turned lethal. "Refuse me, and you'll join the collection."

  Nightmarish as the threat was, Lorenzo recognized the raw desperation of another escaped prisoner facing re-capture. He swaddled the frame in torn drapes, leaving minimal visibility.

  "Quickly now—she's near." The portrait guided him through shifting architecture until the decor transformed. Wooden panels became sterile tiles; brocade gave way to uniform blue linen. The walls glowed antiseptic white, the air thick with chemical sharpness.

  Some new circle of hell awaited.

  "What is this place? The decor is so strange..." Lorenzo mused aloud.

  "Nearly there now. Take the second left down the hall—that's the exit," the portrait urged eagerly.

  Following its directions, Lorenzo quickened his pace.

  Emerging from the passageway, his breath caught at the sight before him.

  The building's plain exterior gave no hint of the impossible space within—a vast central atrium soaring upward like the Tower of Babel. Tier upon tier of white-tiled balconies with gleaming railings spiraled beyond sight.

  At its heart hung a monstrous cocoon—or perhaps some creature's nest—woven from millions of white ribbons and translucent tubes. Dark openings pocked its surface. Peering into one sent Lorenzo reeling as if staring down a bottomless chasm.

  "The exit you promised?" he demanded of the portrait. But through rents in its fabric, he saw only blank canvas within the frame.

  "Here it is," said a middle-aged man in a bloodied lab coat, gesturing to the cocoon's passages. "Enter the sacred channel and depart."

  Behind him, Lorenzo noticed the moving painting again—the red-haired man now sprinting toward them through the landscape.

  "I've brought him, as you wished," said Redbeard, voice shaking slightly.

  Once, he'd never have groveled before mere ghouls. But in this insane world, these fanatics who'd embraced damnation held more power than he. The woman who'd killed him was terrifying, but this ghoul-doctor chilled him worse—always ready with another "corrective lesson."

  "Our Master's will, not mine," the doctor corrected. "Your obedience proves my teachings took root at last. You begin to understand our blessed fellowship."

  Redbeard stayed silent. He'd pay any price to avoid more "lessons"—even betraying a stranger. It wasn't really betrayal anyway. He'd told the truth.

  "You can lie in dreams?" Lorenzo was stunned. Dreams reflected true consciousness. Only self-deluded fools could lie there.

  "Redbeard didn't deceive you," the doctor smiled kindly. "Renounce service to the All-Father, and you may leave—as scraps from His table."

  "Scraps?"

  "When Eve took the forbidden fruit, she damned humanity with knowledge. The All-Father offers cleansing—strip away that sinful wisdom and be reborn pure."

  Lorenzo understood now. That "fruit" symbolized intellect. To exit meant becoming mindless.

  More figures emerged behind the doctor—all staring at him with zealous hunger. As a scholar-transcendentalist, Lorenzo excelled at rituals and enchantments over combat. Given preparation, his skills exceeded warriors'. But here, unprepared...

  "Who is this 'Master' truly?"

  "Praise the Unspeakable!" The doctor's eyes shone. "She is the Silent God who transcends all, parent of creation—flawless, infinite, eternal! While false gods preen in their petty paradises, She exists beyond perfection itself.

  All humanity fell from grace, yet in mercy She manifested—light descending into darkness to gather Her lost children!"

  "...Messiah," Lorenzo whispered.

  "One of Her many holy titles," hissed a black-robed man. "We who worship false gods float ever farther from the All-Father's light. Our Savior offers return—to shed our dross and ascend homeward!"

  Lorenzo's world crumbled. He'd sacrificed everything seeking to become the prophesied Messiah who'd free humanity. Now he found another wore that crown—presided over this nightmare.

  Only the cowering man in the painting seemed sane, flinching like a beaten dog.

  Below the atrium, black waters stirred. An enormous fish with primate limbs and a human face breached the surface. Against all physics, it floated upward to circle the cocoon before plunging down again.

  "See?" said a horse-headed man, flames dancing in his eye sockets. "Once that one worshipped false Dagon until the Master cleansed it."

  Lorenzo wished this all some fever-dream. During his lifetime in the late Renaissance, recovered pagan texts had led him to terrible truths—how small and fragile humanity was against cosmic horrors.

  Transcendentalists like him sought ways to combat the Elder Gods. Ancient prophecies spoke of a resurrected savior... He'd believed himself chosen.

  Three hundred years of lonely pursuit—for this?

  "Wh-what was it all for?" His body cracked like broken pottery, bleeding between the fractures.

  "He's breaking," Redbeard observed bitterly. He'd been just as terrified upon arriving, yet hadn't shattered. Now he wondered—had he broken then, perhaps they'd have killed him cleanly.

  Lorenzo raised his ruined face. "Fools! If your 'All-Father' is real—true Creator—then He's never forgiven you! To Him we're insects—kneeling won't make you worthy!"

  With that, he leapt toward the cocoon.

  Some force pulled him into a dark passageway, swallowing him like sinking wreckage.

  His purpose gone, he sought one final answer before madness took him—what lurked inside that monstrous womb?

  As the abyss claimed him, his fading consciousness glimpsed...

  "What madness," the doctor sighed. "To choose being devoured over salvation."

  "He was mad already—burst in shouting, nearly gutted poor Molly!" Miss Moore tutted.

  "A wise householder feeds his children meat, his slaves bread, his beasts straw." Former nobleman Duran chuckled. "Our Master is the favored heir—we her loyal servants. That one? Mere livestock."

  The others nodded, the dark pool below rippling agreement.

  Only Redbeard hesitated. He'd once yearned for escape—but now found himself... reluctant.

  "I just... didn't want to end up mindless," he muttered, glancing at the cocoon. Once he'd have jumped too. Now? Strangely, the house behind him felt almost... comforting.

  He kept the traitorous thought silent—terrified speaking it might make it true.