There were no crickets, no birdsong.
Tall grass rose high to sway against bare hips as she stood, a lonesome, naked spark in a field that stretched endlessly in all directions. Each waving stalk was colored a deep teal that verged upon black, the white tips whipping low in waves like a sea of shivering stars adrift in the gloom created between dark vegetation and slate blue sky above.
Crucifel did not know this field, nor the type of grass that sprang up around her, though something about it felt familiar in a way that was not at all comforting. This felt like she was standing barefoot on ground that was once holy, but now was utterly, completely salted of anything divine or otherwise.
It was a feeling she had encountered before, not quite the same, but the similarities were enough that the angel felt a need to drape her wings around herself like a cloak in order to hide her uncovered form.
A single step carried Crucifel forward as waxy, cool grass bowed beneath her feet.
She had no choice but to wander through what could only be described as an unending vastness of dark grassland with a sky that appeared to be on the cusp of wicked downpour. If it did rain now, in this hollow place, there would be no shelter for her save for her own wings. There wasn't even a moon above to light the way, and the stars in their mismatched patterns were all unfamiliar.
It felt unceasingly lonely, but full in the most empty way that she had ever felt.
With each step and brush of wings to part a path through the field, that empty feeling grew until it took up more of Crucifel than her actual form did. Its melancholy gathered at her ankles as phantasmagorical, unseen hands, clinging to be dragged along through the dark as they worked their way up her legs.
The wind swelled higher with a faint whisper of shifting grass and something else, a low humming like a distant hymn. It lent to the eerie feeling of razor thin fingers brushing her thighs while blades that had once bowed to be crushed seemed to stir in recognition of the breeze, snapping back into place and kowtowing again like they were in the throes of zealous prayer.
Under the dull glow of her yellow gaze, shapes sprouted up from the grassy sea; faces, arms, and legs that pushed soundlessly through the earth to writhe and reach toward the muted blue above.
Hands clasped in braided chains of flesh and bone, legs locked at the knee and jaws yawned wider than they had any God-given right to as the disembodied limbs melted together and rose higher, forming a nightmarish, fleshly simulacrum of a forest. The bark of its trees was mostly cast from feathers, fingernails and teeth, all distorted and broken as they twisted into their new form while branches of disjointed arms clutched at distant stars.
She had to go deeper.
She desperately did not want to, but Crucifel's legs carried her almost as a prisoner beneath the forsaken branches, watching as gilded sap ran from corners of gaping mouths and between feathers to slide down each breathing surface. With each step, the trees grew taller and denser, sprouting more arms that fanned out to gradually edge out the already dim light until all that remained was complete darkness.
The wayward prophetess could hear countless heartbeats in the dark that thudded in time with the hymn that had grown louder, feeling their pulsation in the slick roots that were slipping out of her way to form a path to...somewhere. In the midst of this haunting ruin of flesh that echoed with thick, pulsing drums, Crucifel felt something between peace and void.
She stopped when she felt it, a presence in the dark. Sight wasn't needed to know that something stood before her, perhaps even just inches from her face.
"Hello?" Crucifel breathed, not daring to speak above a whisper.
"Hello? He-- Hear us? Help us? Hurt us? Let me!"
Countless voices sounded as if they were clustering together, blending and overlapping in different inflections and pitches before falling apart to try again like a murmuration of starlings. There was silence for a few uncomfortable seconds, then a shifting, unsteady, but nonetheless slightly more unified voice spoke.
"Prophetess," the unseen whispered in a voice that was a dry autumn leaf's rasp. "Catalyst, shepherdess. Do you hear us? Hear us?"
Crucifel's chin dipped in a shaky nod before she remembered how dark it was beneath the branches, but the unseen seemed to perceive the movement anyways.
"Be not afraid. Closer, nearer."
The prophetess obeyed, taking cautious steps forward until her outstretched hand brushed the warm skin of a tree. Her own flesh crawled when she felt the outline of a cheek, shifting beneath her touch as the face pushing through the organistic bark spoke, clearer than ever in a voice that was somehow familiar.
"We are...breaking, splintering. We are falling apart, you can feel it, yes? Your soul was shaped to feel us, know us," the face whispered under her touch, sounding gradually lighter, sweeter. "Listen! You need to listen, because you will forget. Please, Prophetess of mine. Mine."
"I am listening," Crucifel replied quietly, feeling her wings tense and feathers bristle as a pair of yellow eyes so like her own opened in front of her, glowing like two distant suns in the dark. "I think I know you."
The light emanating from the eyes was bright enough to reveal the curves and slopes of her, until now, unseen conversation partner. It showed Crucifel enough of the being's partially obscured face that her mind was able to make those final few connections needed to put a name to a countenance she'd only ever seen in paintings. Some details were shifted or otherwise missing, but it was hard to mistake who this was supposed to be.
"Sacralyre?" It couldn't be.
"Listen!" Her grandmother gasped, face shifting slightly askew before pulling itself back into place. "What we have to tell you, you shall forget, but not for long. Not long. We need your silence, this shape is...hard, half recalled."
Sacralyre's face was framed in hands that were not her own. One pair rested over her cheeks with tapping fingers as if clapped over them in surprise, the second held on at either temple with elongated, thin fingers that were a disquieting mimicry of hair. And finally, like a macabre crown, the third complete set sprouted up from the ones at her brow, pressed in prayerful silence as the remaining multitude of fingers and partially formed hands fanned out around the angel's head like overlapping wings.
It would have been pointless to try and fight the cold serpent's belly of dread sliding along Crucifel's spine. This was, in maybe the most existentially upsetting way possible, terrifying. But it was so much more than just the face of impending mortality wasn't it?