A scream pierced the silent halls of the castle, echoing through a cold study, startling awake the elderly priest sleeping in a threadbare chair. He was positioned in front of the smouldering remnants of a once-blazing fire with an almost empty wine bottle clasped in his hand. The priest pushed himself groggily to his feet to investigate what had startled him awake, rubbing sleep from his tired eyes. A burlap sleeve slid down his thin arm to reveal pale skin marred with pockmarks, indicating his failing liver. Holding up the bottle, he shook it to determine how much was left. Letting out a sigh of regret, he downed the remaining contents in one short gulp.

“What was that noise? I fell asleep in front of the fire again. Molly usually stokes the fire before she retires, though." Looking around the dim study, he became concerned. "Something must be wrong, It’s unusual for her to go to bed without at least trying to wake me or placing a blanket to keep out the chill," he grumbled.

Joints protesting the movement, he stiffly got up to investigate the wintry hallways. "I’d best go investigate to ensure that she’s alright. Ice can be anywhere in the castle halls at this time of year. She may have had an accident,” the elderly priest murmured to himself in concern.

After stumbling around the dark study illuminated only by embers from the dying fire, the priest discovered a neatly folded blanket on top of a nearby table. He shook open the thick cotton blanket. With great effort, he draped it around his hunched shoulders before shambling cautiously towards the exit, trying not to bump into furniture in the darkness.

There was a clatter as he bumped a tray containing his cold dinner, scattering food and gravy across the thick rug. A glint in the darkness caught the elderly priest's attention. It was a sterling silver dinner knife. He paused for a moment before impulsively stooping to retrieve the knife as his knees groaned in protest.

Holding the knife in one hand, the priest managed to find the exit door in the darkness. He turned the knob and pried the door open with both hands. The heavy door creaked unnervingly into the silent study, startling the elderly priest with the unexpected noise. He almost dropped the silver knife as he jolted.

“I must have one of the castle boys oil the door hinges tomorrow. I’m too old to be jumping at ghosts,” the elderly priest mumbled to himself. Chuckling softly at his foolishness, he stepped into the hall. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something bad had happened.

Blood-red moonlight streamed through the gothic-styled windows lining the corridor. After opening the heavy door, the sound of the wind howling became overwhelming. The old priest looked to his right. Snow was streaming in through an open window, piling up to block the hall. The old man shivered as he felt the cold bite deep in his bones. Pulling the thick blanket tighter around his shoulders, he started to walk in the opposite direction.

As he walked, the hairs on the back of his neck stood upright. He felt like he was being watched. Clutching the silver knife tightly, he glanced around the corridor to find the source of his discomfort. Shadows shifted unnaturally in the red light. The wind formed what sounded like eerie whispering around him.

“Look at you, Alfred. Approaching eighty and too scared to even walk down a dark corridor. How Molly would tease you as being foolish. Then she’d ask you where’s your faith, clutching at a dinner knife instead of the Lord,” the elderly priest quietly mocked himself. "Please be alright," he added hopefully.

Eventually, the elderly priest arrived at the end of the corridor. In front of him was a spiralling staircase with ornate stained oak handrails. He always felt a sense of admiration whenever he saw the craftsmanship of the carved angels at the base. Tonight was no exception as he gripped the rail to haul himself upward. His breathing quickly became laboured as he climbed, pausing midway up the stairs.

The old man desperately gripped the rails to support himself while inhaling in short, ragged breaths. Left with no other options, he forced himself to continue, drawing strength from the iron will he had been renowned for in his youth. Having long ago lost the fanatical fervour once felt in the service of his Lord, his stubbornness had only grown stronger with time.

What felt like an eternity later, he arrived at the top of the stairs. Not far ahead of him a door was ajar. The elderly priest was confused because he had yet to encounter another living soul and the door belonged to the man he had helped raise from childhood. It was the entrance to the King’s private suite.

The priest had been growing increasingly concerned for the King’s mental health after the Queen had died in childbirth at the beginning of the winter. The elderly priest’s hearing may have begun to fail, but servants would still confess their concerns to him in private. The King had been seen rambling to himself when he believed no one was listening. The servants said that he was arguing with the spirit of his deceased wife.

That alone wasn’t enough to concern the old priest, people dealt with grief in different ways. The most concerning issue had occurred earlier that evening. The King had dismissed the majority of his staff amid a blizzard, and ordered the removal of all symbols of the Lord from the castle, tossing them into a pyre he had built in the courtyard.

Rubbing at his seemingly empty collar, the elderly priest lamented the loss of the sunburst pendant representing his faith. He recalled that when the King had personally demanded the necklace, there had been a moment of hesitation. Alfred suspected the King had considered adding him to the pyre, somehow deciding not to at the last moment. Once the last holy item was added to the pyre, the King had then stood alone in the courtyard to oversee the bonfire, seemingly immune to the cold, billowing snow.

“You’ll be back with me soon, my Queen. I’ve done everything that you’ve asked of me. Tell me what I must do now,” came the familiar voice of the King from the open room.

The words caused the elderly priest to forget to hold the blanket draped over his shoulders as he hurried through the door. Inside was a scene of horror. The King stood in the centre of his bedroom, with his back to the entrance. The priest thought he saw a shadow embracing the King from behind, whispering into his ear, but once he blinked it was gone.

The King’s hands were soaked with blood. At his feet lay the still body of Molly. Her kindly face marred by an expression of terror. Her blouse had been torn open, exposing expose her voluptuous chest with a dagger standing upright like a totem between her exposed breasts. The dagger looked as if it had been put there more out of convenience than necessity, as if the user had tired of holding the blade after savagely slicing open her throat. Molly's life poured out of the throat wound, pooling blood across the decorative rug underneath her .

The scene caused the elderly priest to freeze with shock and revulsion. The King turned to face the priest with a fanatical expression, his movement revealing a second corpse atop the enormous bed, placed reverently in the centre. It was the shrouded corpse of the Queen, with the swaddled form of the King's still-born son in her arms.

“Can you see her, Uncle Alfred? She’s beautiful. My Queen can come back to me now that I’ve done everything she asked of me. There’s only one last sacrifice I must make to be with her for eternity. I just need to wake her up,” the King excitedly said with a beaming smile.

Alfred, was reminded of the time when the King first laid eyes upon his Queen as a young prince. He said similar words after seeing her for the first time through the window of a passing carriage. He had been smitten from the moment he saw her, and determined to win her heart. After successfully intimidating her other suitors out of pursuing her, he had succeeded. The elderly priest suppressed the bitter-sweet memories as he collected himself. Swallowing back his sorrow, he made eye contact with the mad King.

“What have you done, Gregor?” Alfred asked with forced patience. His voice cracked as the hand holding the silver dinner knife began to tremble.

“I’ve brought her back. She told me how,” the King said with confusion.

“You’ve killed Molly. The Queen is already dead, that cannot be changed,” the elderly priest said, his voice breaking with emotion.

“No. I brought her back. Can’t you hear her, Alfred? She’s alive,” The King clutched his head with his bloody hands as he stumbled backward into a bedpost.

Alfred noticed the walls behind the distraught King. Demonic symbols covered the entire surface and bed. They were drawn with Molly’s blood. The elderly priest felt his skin crawl when he thought of a possibility that he had forgotten in his wavering faith.

“Demon…” the elderly priest whispered weakly.

“She’s no demon, Alfred. If you call her that again, I’ll add you to the pyre as she asked of me earlier. It was the only thing I refused her," the King said in a seemingly benevolent tone. "I destroyed the symbols of the Lord and sent away the servants."

Moving his gaze to the corpse atop the bed, the King responded to something only he could hear. "Yes, my Queen? Is that why you haven’t moved? You need living blood? Dead man’s blood is poison?”

The King’s eyes glazed over as he lunged for the dagger in Molly’s chest, removing it in a jerking motion before standing upright again. He began to advance toward the old priest with unnatural movements. Alfred lifted the silver dinner knife in front of himself with trembling hands. He slashed his blade at the king’s outstretched hand, drawing blood. The King unexpectedly retreated a step as the silver knife glinted with blood under the red moonlight. An apparition suddenly peeled away from the King to hide in the shadow of the bedpost with a pained screech. The king’s body slumped onto the bloodied rug like a puppet with its strings cut. It was unclear if he was alive or not.

"You will pay dearly for your impudence, mortal,” a mysterious otherworldly voice angrily hissed from the direction the apparition disappeared.

“Begone demon!” the elderly priest commanded with authority.

The demon retreated further into the shadows as the priest took a determined step forward, the thick blanket falling from his shoulders to reveal a thin frame garbed in fine priestly robes under the moonlight. The old man’s advance was interrupted by a fit of coughing. He doubled over to catch his breath before straightening up to stumble backward. Steadying himself after backing into the wooden doorframe, he weakly raised the silver knife in front again.

“What good will your weak faith do you here, priest? Your Lord has abandoned this place. My brethren spread across the land under the light of the blood moon into every dark corner, until every mortal is at our mercy. This is only the beginning. It is already done,” an eerie voice whispered from the darkness, accompanied by mocking laughter.

An eerie light began to emanate from Molly’s blood under the king’s still form. The light spread throughout the room, revealing symbols drawn in blood over the surface of the bed and the walls of the room. The symbols painted in blood lit up with red light. Their outlines appeared to be roughly etched with a sharp object to give them shape.

The elderly priest had a growing feeling of overpowering dread appear in the pit of his stomach. He clutched desperately toward his neck, the feeling of dread miraculously dissipated as the elderly priest’s forgotten faith rekindled when touching the empty location once occupied by the sunburst of his Lord. His slumped frame straightened with renewed vigour as his resolve hardened in the face of crisis.

The glowing puddle of blood beneath Molly’s corpse began to ripple as if something unseen had stepped in it, heading in the direction of the unconscious king. The king gasped sharply awake as his limp body was suddenly dragged by an invisible force across the room to hover unnaturally in the air over the Queen’s corpse. A gust of wind blew aside the gossamer shroud covering the Queen’s face. The red light from the symbols illuminated her unveiled features. Mummified flesh clung to her skeletal features as red light appeared inside the pupils of her lifeless eyes. The Queen’s corpse gave off a feeling of bestial hunger as her eyes fixated on the King floating in the space above her.

“My love… AHHHHHH!” The King attempted to speak before his words were interrupted by a scream of unimaginable pain.

The King’s body contorted into unnatural angles, breaking all of his limbs simultaneously. An unseen force slowly sliced open the skin of the King’s neck, dripping blood onto the mummified lips of the Queen. The King’s blood pooled between the Queen’s teeth, overflowing to form a trail down her chin, soaking her shroud red. The frightful light inside the Queen’s eyes grew brighter as vitality returned to her lifeless corpse.

The elderly priest tightly gripped the silver knife with resolve. He lunged towards the Queen, attempting to plunge the knife into her chest. Something caught him from behind in mid-charge as he leapt toward the Queen. The hands clutching his frail body suddenly tossed him away from the feeding Queen. There was a loud sound of broken glass as he plunged through the ornate window of the royal suite. The elderly priest managed to clutch onto the window sill with his free hand, swinging his body to a jerking halt against the wall. The sill was filled with shattered glass which cut open the palm of his hand. He reflexively dropped the silver knife to cling with both hands on the broken window casing, causing him to curse. The knife fell with a clatter onto the stone courtyard below, exposed from the snow by the warm smouldering remains of the King’s bonfire.

“You old fool, what have you walked yourself into? You should have stayed in your room and died peacefully frozen in your sleep,” Alfred complained to himself.

The old man mustered his strength, using his feet to scramble for a foothold in between the large stone blocks of the castle wall. He peered inside the room as he struggled to climb back in. What he saw caused his heart to skip in his chest. Standing in between him and the bed was Molly, her head and body twitching oddly in jerking motions as she looked around the room. Her teeth were also clattering together strangely while opening and closing each finger independently of the others as if she was testing the mobility of her body. As the priest watched, her body began to change. Her clothes fell away accompanied by the sound of tearing fabric as she transformed. The priest watched in horror as the feminine figure he was always so secretly fond of writhed into a figure of nightmares. She became unrecognisable as human as her body hunched over, the demon’s muscles expanded one by one like balloons as it doubled in mass to become a hulking monstrosity. The newly formed demon was making unimaginable noises as skeletal finger-like bones extended from its back before a membrane started knitting between them in the form of terrifying wings.

“Molly…” the elderly priest whispered to himself with a voice filled with sorrow. The demon twisted sharply as it spun in his direction, prepared to pounce with its incomplete wings spread out to crowd the room.

“Be still, my pet,” a seductive voice crooned.

Before it could leap at the priest, the demon was interrupted by an unexpected voice. The elderly priest shifted his attention back to the bed. The King no longer hovered above the bed, instead, he rested backward in the Queen’s lap. Cradled from behind as he gargled on blood. He took one last gasping breath and he shivered into stillness. The Queen was no longer a mummified corpse. She now possessed an otherworldly beauty unrivalled by her appearance in life. Her skin had become the colour of porcelain with no visible flaw to be found. She used her blood-soaked funeral shroud to wipe off blood from the corner of her lips as she discarded the King’s corpse beside the body of her still-born son. She moved with careless grace as she floated to her feet while stepping away from the bed to approach the mutating form of Molly. She placed a gentle hand on the demon’s chest while directing her attention toward the elderly priest.

“Alfred, I know you always secretly loved Molly. She is right here waiting for you. You need only revoke your faith toward your useless Lord and you can be with her for eternity. Wouldn’t you like that?” the Queen spoke, her words echoing inside the elderly priest’s mind.

The figure of the demon disappeared and in its place was the naked form of Molly. Alfred’s determination began to waver as she looked at him lovingly. The priest began to relax as he gazed toward her enticing figure, causing his grip to slip against the jagged glass of the broken window frame. The sharp pain awoke him from the Queen’s glamour, revealing the grotesque form of the demon in Molly’s body. The priest’s face contorted with rage, making him forget his pain.

“I will never forsake my Lord, you foul witch. I would first see myself burn at the stake before I would ever accept such a proposition!” the elderly priest roared, throwing himself back into the darkness below.

The Queen hissed with anger as she suddenly moved with supernatural speed, appearing at the opening of the broken window clutching toward the falling priest. The priest was unable to even track her movements with his eyes as the grotesque figure of Molly erupted through the stone framework of the castle, swooping toward his plummeting body. Just before hitting its target, the demon veered away from him with a shriek of pain and rage. His landing was cushioned by the smouldering ruins of the King’s bonfire, causing sparks and ash to spray upward into the sky towards the retreating demon.

The elderly priest felt a searing heat beside his right hand as his awareness started to fade. He looked with squinted eyes to see the intact form of his sunburst pendant lying atop a charred log. The priest grabbed it along with a handful of ash as he lost consciousness. The last thing Alfred witnessed before his death was the Queen shrinking away from the early morning rays of sunlight, retreating into the darkness of the castle.