[A/N: A Warning from the Author]
I put a general disclaimer at the very beginning of Project-01, but this chapter requires a specific warning. We are diving into the deep end of the Cathedral of Filth today.
The first half of this chapter contains the most graphic, visceral, and uncompromising scenes in all of Volume 1. It is a pure, unfiltered nightmare. If you are sensitive to extreme horror, please take this warning seriously.
Content Warnings for this chapter include:
•Extreme graphic violence and ritualistic torture
•Body horror and severe mutilation
•Explicit gore and blood-draining
•Heavy religious subversion and dark thematic elements
(Skip Guide: If you cannot stomach heavy gore but still want to experience the emotional resolution of Ben's story, safely scroll down until you see the ———>Line Break<——— marker. Everything below that line is completely safe to read and contains the final conclusion of this arc.)
Tread carefully.
— Asura_26
The bald fiend grabbed Ben's hand and caressed his fingers before turning away. He opened a massive, ancient tome bound in stretched, pale leather that looked horrifyingly like human skin. As the heavy pages flipped, the flickering lights illuminated a twisted, frantic charcoal portrait. It depicted a bloated, multi-limbed demon sitting upon an isolated rock in a black sea. The demon held jagged strings attached to tiny, cherubic figures trapped in golden cages, while faceless men wearing the crowns of kings eagerly handed the demon bags of silver in exchange for the cages.
Staring down at the page, "Solve vincula carnis," the fanatic chanted, his Latin echoing with ancient authority. He stared down at the caged children. "If thy hands cling to the mortal earth, let them be stripped. Cast away thy earthly grasp, for only the broken hands may hold the divine."
Another cloaked figure stepped forward, wielding a heavy pair of rusted industrial pliers.
Ben didn't even have time to process the words before the cold, clinical jaws of the pliers slid firmly over his right index fingernail.
"O-o-o-o-o-oye!! Oye!! W-w-wait!! W-what are you d-doing!? T-t-th-there s-seems to b-be s-s-some misun—AAAHHHHHH!!!"
His scream tore through the Cathedral of Filth as the heavy metal clamped down and violently wrenched backward. But the nail didn't give way cleanly. Snap. The keratin violently splintered down the middle, leaving a jagged, bloody shard buried deep inside the cuticle. Warm blood instantly flooded the raw nerve bed.
Without a flicker of emotion, the torturer jammed the rusted, blunt teeth of the pliers directly into the exposed, weeping meat of Ben's finger. With a sickening, wet crunch, he brutally dug around in the live nerves, grinding metal against bone until he clamped onto the buried root, tearing it free in a spray of hot crimson.
The torturer casually flicked the bloody gore from the pliers' teeth. Without a single word, he grabbed Ben's trembling hand again, forcing his middle finger into the iron grip.
"W-w-ait! Please—AAAHHH!"
Ben shrieked, his entire body convulsing violently as the second nail was ripped from the root. He sobbed, his mind actively shattering under the pain. But the zealots did not care about his agonizing pain and pleas for mercy. They stared at him with the fanaticism of a starving congregation, moving their heads in a hypnotic synergy while repeating the cryptic prayers followed by the bald giant.
After plucking every nail from his fingers, the anonymous figure stepped down toward Ben's bare feet.
"H-h-hey! P-please l-listen t-to m-m-me." Ignoring his cries, the zealot made his way to Ben's foot. Preparing himself for another wave of agony, Ben clenched his teeth tight. 'My sweetheart… just wait a little longer…. Daddy will come home for sure, with lots of chocolate for you.'
Ben clung to the vivid picture of his daughter in his mind, using it as a shield against the maddening pain. Streams of tears and snot mixed together as they traced through his cheeks and mouth.
Then, the cold pliers clamped down on his big toenail.
"AAAAHHHHHH—!!"
The hoarse screams continued tearing from his shredded throat until each of his toes had a clean nail bed, washed with warm, sanguine blood.
After plucking every nail from his fingers and toes, Ben barely clung to his consciousness. His limbs hung limp from the sheer mental and physical trauma. His voice was reduced to a wet, ruined wheeze, his digits a gruesome tableau of macerated, bleeding nerves. Yet, driven by the desperate need to see his family again, he didn't give up. He weakly struggled against the restraints, his muscles twitching, desperately trying to break free from the rotting wooden table.
The Architect turned the heavy page. The next illustration was of a towering, horned beast made of burning timber, standing in a blackened forest. Men in sharp, aristocratic suits and porcelain masks bowed before the burning effigy, casually tossing bound, weeping lambs into the roaring fire as they drank from ornate chalices.
"Effunde vitam falsam," the Architect hissed, tracing the burning beast with his sickly nail. "For the life of the flesh is a sickness in the blood. Pour it upon the altar, drain the weakness of humanity, that the vessel may be hollowed."
A third figure approached. In one hand, they held an ornate stone bowl. In the other, a wickedly sharp, rusty scalpel.
"P-p-please..." Ben whimpered, tears drying on his face. "M-m-my d-daughter... s-she's w-w-waiting... I-i'll... G-give y-y-you my e-everything..." He shut his eyes tight, the innocent smile of his daughter flashing before him, "p-p-please l-let me b-be w-with h-her..." His voice breaking in hiccups.
The figure ignored him. With terrifying surgical precision, the scalpel sliced deep into the radial artery of Ben's left wrist, then his right, then to both of his calves.
"Gaaah..!"
Dark, arterial blood immediately spilled forth, guided perfectly by the torturer's hands to drain straight into the stone bowl below one by one. Ben clenched his eyes hard as he was forced to just watch and cry in paralyzing horror as his own life force steadily pumped out of his body. He wasn't bleeding out fast enough to die instantly; it was a measured, torturous drain. As the bowl filled, a deep, creeping cold invaded his veins. Within minutes, his skin began to lose its color, turning the sickly, pale hue of curdled milk.
"The blood is purged. The vessel is pure," the Architect rumbled. "Now, we must dress the altar for the Great Lord's arrival."
Two acolytes approached, holding iron branding rods glowing a molten, furious orange, while the scalpel-wielder returned.
What followed was an eternity of waking hell.
With jagged, agonizing incisions, they began to carve arcane symbols directly into his torso. As the scalpel peeled back thick, bloody strips of his skin—dressing him in his own exposed anatomy—the acolytes immediately pressed the white-hot irons directly against the raw muscle.
Hsssss!
"AAARRRGGGHHHHH!!!!"
The suffocating stench of burning hair and cooking flesh filled the cavern. The cauterization kept him from bleeding to death, locking him in a state of perpetual, agonizing life. His chest and abdomen became a macabre map of third-degree burns with uncountable blisters and flayed, weeping muscle.
The Architect turned to a page that depicted a human skull with hollow, bleeding voids where the eyes should be.
"Exstingue lucem mendacem," he whispered, raising his head to look at the broken father.
Step—
The heavy boots closed in again. Turning his head, Ben focused on the acolyte with the sutured eyes stepped forward from the shadows, holding a rusted, two-pronged iron hook.
Because the zealot could not see, he reached out with trembling, soot-stained fingers. Ben thrashed, but the cold, filthy hands firmly gripped his skull. The acolyte's thumbs tenderly traced Ben's jawline, mapping the terrified man's face, slowly crawling up the bridge of his nose until they rested softly against Ben's closed, weeping eyelids.
"N-no… no... st-top! S-s-stop i-it…! P-please... N-no! No—!!"
A filthy, foul-smelling black cloth was brutally jammed into his mouth, cutting off his pleas.
"The eye is the liar of the mind. Pluck them from the skull, extinguish the false light, so the vessel may be blinded to all but the Abyss." The Architect whispered, before roaring loud, "The mortal eyes are tainted. They are unworthy of gazing upon the descent of salvation."
Receiving the command, the blind acolyte jammed the iron hooks deep into the sockets. With a wet, sickening tear, he violently yanked, blinding the father and dragging him into the same eternal darkness the acolyte worshipped in.
"Umph—!!!!! Hmmffff—!!!!! Hmmfff—!!!!!" Ben's body jerked around violently, frantically pulling, stretching and beating his strained limbs against the filthy wood as he wept muffled cries through the gag. Tears of warm blood rolling down his face.
Completing the command, the figure retreated. The entire cult began murmuring a strange, low-frequency prayer, the cavern humming with their dark devotion.
The Architect's whistling breath filled the cavern as his finger traced the final passage. The illustration was of a man standing surrounded by smiling, familiar faces—but their shadows cast upon the floor were jagged, drooling wolves tearing the sheep's limbs away, dropping his severed pieces into a bubbling, acidic pit of black tar.
"Sanguis carnis, venenum animae," the Architect chanted, the Latin syllables rolling off his tongue like venom.
To Ben's left, the wet, heavy sound of liquid sloshing echoed. A sickening, sweet stench of necrosis and decay suddenly overpowered the sharp copper scent of his own blood.
"Misceatur cum putredine bestiarum,"
Someone was mixing it. Ben heard the viscous, thick stirring. The black, coagulated ichor drained from the rotting caprine and feline heads above was being ruthlessly churned into his own stolen lifeblood. The foul stench of necrosis made Ben gag against the filthy cloth shoved in his mouth, his chest violently heaving.
"Ut oculus caecus videat veritatem... In fimo renascitur! Et vas inane impleatur ab abysso!" The Architect roared over the chanting. His heavy voice vibrated through the stone walls, "Unless a man be born again in the rot of the beast and the corrupted flood, he cannot become the Cathedral of our Lord! Be baptized in the filth, and wash away the fragile soul!"
"HHHMMMMFFF— HMMFFF—!" Muffled, panicked shouts vibrated through the gag.
The second faceless acolyte stepped directly in front of the strapped, blind man. Thick, rusted twine permanently sealed his lips, his jaw locked in a state of eternal, agonizing silence.
He reached out and violently yanked the gag from Ben's mouth.
"AAAHHHH!! LET ME GO!! LET ME GO!!" Ben shrieked with every strand of vitality he had left in his body, gasping for air.
No one listened to his pleas.
The mute acolyte's chest heaved. He stared down at Ben, his sutured mouth twitching as if desperate to drink the baptismal fluid himself, but denied by his own devotion.
Shhhhhh—
Without hesitation, the mute acolyte tilted the heavy stone bowl.
The concoction was freezing cold, thick and gritty with coagulated clumps of rotting animal matter. It crashed over his face, instantly flooding into the raw, weeping nerve beds of his empty eye sockets with a searing, infectious sting. The unholy mixture forcefully washed down his neck, sliding into the deep, flayed incisions and third-degree burns across his chest. His raw muscles instantly seized. The agonizing contrast of the freezing, decayed blood hitting his blistering, cauterized wounds sent a shockwave of unparalleled torture directly into his brain.
"AAARRRGGGHHHHH!!!!"
But the mute acolyte didn't just pour it over Ben's head; he brutally gripped Ben's jaw, forcing his mouth open, and poured the freezing, thick concoction directly down his throat. The unholy mixture of rotting animal matter and stolen lifeblood forcefully invaded Ben's esophagus.
"AAAHHH—Cough! Cough—!" The mute acolyte forced him to swallow the vile rot, violently stripping away Ben's voice as he drowned on the inside.
Ben convulsed violently against the rotting wood, his nervous system completely shattered, his breathing turning ragged and heavy after being forced to swallow his own lifeblood mixed with filth.
The mute acolyte returned to his place, and the Architect finally approached, holding the massive, ominous syringe.
As he neared the helpless, choking man, the entire cavern ceased their low murmurs. In synchronized fanaticism, they shouted, "Oh great Lord! Bless us with your almighty and magnum presence and lead us to the paradise!"
The Architect raised the syringe high into the air.
Without a moment of hesitation, the Architect slammed the syringe deep into Ben's chest, right beside his frantically beating heart. The cold, parasitic substance was injected straight into his veins.
"AAAHHHHHH!!!!!"
Ben arched his back violently, his spine snapping against the wood as a strange, ominous, pitch-black aura began to violently erupt from his pores.
*** ———>Line Break<——— ***
Despite being all broken, there was this one hope that Ben tightly held on. The hope of someone hearing his desperate cries for help. The hope of being saved from this hell so he could meet his family again... the hope that God will listen to his pleas and have mercy on him. But there was no savior. No heroic interruption from the shadows. Just the suffocating, unfeeling doom of the Cathedral of Filth.
'Ahh... it hurts... it hurts... it hurts like hell...' Ben's thoughts drifted like ash caught in a cold wind, his consciousness beginning to unravel under the catastrophic mutation of his cells. 'It hurts... it is cold... it is painful... why do I have to endure all this pain and agony...? What was my fault...?'
He was slowly being consumed by an eternal, suffocating darkness. His humanity started fading as a primordial beast with insatiable appetite stretched its claws from the darkness, slowly devouring his consciousness.
'All I wanted was to give a present to my little angel... was that too much...?' His breathing grew rigid and uneven, his fragile humanity a flickering candle against the howling gale of the beast.
Endless darkness. Cold and absolute. The Vargr's primal hunger reached out from the void, ready to devour the last spark of the man he once was.
But just as the shadows descended to consume him, a final, desperate thought anchored his fraying sanity. 'Ah, how I wish to see my little angel for one last time...'
His consciousness began to drift, slipping away from the agony. Amidst the suffocating blackness, a memory bloomed. The sterile glare of hospital lights. Five tiny fingers reaching out from a swaddle to wrap around his own. It was the moment his universe shifted—the day his heart stopped beating for his own survival, and began beating entirely for the fragile, beautiful life resting in his trembling, overly cautious embrace.
He watched that little life growing up, doing mischief, going to school, the child with the crayon portrait growing into a rebellious, intelligent teenager. Earning various achievements, receiving her diploma before finally becoming a beautiful, elegant woman, financially independent and finding a man for herself.
A waterfall of white silk and lace cascaded around her, and a translucent veil obscured her face as she walked down a long, petal-strewn aisle.
Everyone was looking at the beautiful bride she had become. But as she drew closer, the veil was lifted, and Ben saw only his little angel, still shyly giggling, reaching out with five small fingers to hold his hand to guide her down the aisle. Tears glided off his smiling, upturned cheeks.
'Ah... I am tired... I want to rest... yeah... If I just let go of myself... If I just surrender to this cold darkness... I will not need to fight anyone... I will not feel any more pain... all I want is to rest now...'
His thoughts drifted astray, swallowed by the abyssal mouth of the beast looming above his head.
But before the beast could put Ben's head in its mouth and consume him in eternal depths... Short and fast footsteps echoed in the darkness as two small hands quickly wrapped around fading Ben into a warm, tight hug.
Lifting his head, he found the smiling figure of his small and adorable daughter looking up at him, her bright eyes alight with the pure, uncomplicated joy of a child seeing her hero. "Daddy~!" Her bright voice illuminated the darkness around him, making the beast stumble back on its steps.
Another hand stretched from behind, wrapping both the daughter and the father in a tight, protective hug. "Ben." The voice sweetly soothing, called out his name. He turned around and found his wife holding them in a warm embrace.
"A-a-ah...! M-my s-s-sweeth-hearts! I-i am s-sorry! I am sorry!" The man who once held himself up firmly without showing any weakness or fear to protect and provide for his family, instantly broken down, crying like a child in their ethereal embrace.
Behind him, the beast silently looked at the heartwarming spectacle before a bright shimmer of burning violet violently penetrated the pitch void. Shriek?! It pierced through the vile darkness and the beast that had almost swallowed him, suddenly providing a strange, comfortable warmth.
'Ahh... it's warm... it's comfortable... what is this..?'
Lifting his head from the embrace, Ben looked at his daughter and wife who looked at him with a gentle expression on their faces before pointing in the air.
Following their fingers, he looked toward the source of the bright light.
The howling abyss of the cavern was gone. The darkness drifted away like smoke.
Standing before them in a distance was a handsome young man. Long, black hair, ragged clothes, bearing numerous deep, dark lacerations and injuries across his body. His depthless, violet wells burned amidst the crimson sea, looking down at him, surrounded by a fiercely majestic, darkish purple aura.
Behind the young man, standing tall amidst the ruins of a shattered sanctuary, was a towering stone cross. The crucified Son of God hung upon it, looking down at the dying father with open arms.
'Ahh... An angel...' his eyes welled up with hot, crimson tears.
Closing his blood and tear-stained eyes, the dying father smiled. 'I can finally rest in peace.' A single, crystalline tear rolled down his bloodied, smiling cheek.
Lifting his torn eyelids one last time, the man—who in his final moments had morphed back from the monstrous Vargr to the fragile, loving human he once was—turned his sightless, hollow gaze toward the majestic presence standing over him.
"P-please... t-tell m-my l-little g-g-girl t-that..." his voice was a broken, wet whisper, hardly audible and barely comprehensible, "...h-her d-dad w-w-will always b-be w-with h-h-her… t-that... h-her d-d-daddy—loved... h-her..."
With that, his chest ceased its rise and fall. The frantic, rhythmic beating of his heart finally came to a standstill.
With an expression filled with absolute gratitude, and a soft smile on his face that showed no regret, the lost lamb finally returned to the arms of his shepherd. His path brightly illuminated by the serene moonlight spilling through the shattered cathedral roof.
Soon, the pole star beside the moon began to shine brighter than ever. A bright, twinkling blue star.
Witnessing this, Karan crouched down. A strange, heavy emotion—one entirely unknown to the Asura's corruption—swelled tightly inside his chest. A blurred image of a woman and a child sitting at a brightly lit dining table appeared in the back of his mind.
Putting the thought away, Karan reached out with a blackened hand. Gently, he drew the torn eyelids down over the hollow voids—closing the blinds on a cruel world so a weary father could finally go home.
"She is truly blessed to have had such a loving father," Karan whispered into the quiet night.
In this poignant juxtaposition of brutal life and peaceful death, the man's story came to a close. His spirit was finally released from the shackles of its feral existence, finding solace in the memories of a life once lived and one he never got the chance to live.
Absolute silence enveloped the Cathedral of Filth.