The Slipping Mask

The incense smoke coiled through the cavern like a living thing, thick with the cloying sweetness of moonbloom and something older, something that clung to the back of your throat. You knelt on the cold jade tiles of the inner sanctum, the bones of dead priests forming a mosaic beneath your knees, and you did not flinch. Not when the chant rose around you, a low thrum of a hundred voices that vibrated in your chest. Not when Priestess Senka's shadow fell over you, her obsidian robes whispering against the floor.

"Brother Vale," she said, her voice a silken blade. "You have been with us for six weeks, yet I have never seen you complete the Rite of the Weeping Moon. Are your hands too stained with the outside world to hold the serpent's scales?"

Your heart hammered against your ribs, but your voice was steady. "I seek purity before I approach the altar, High Priestess. I would not offend the Serpent with an unworthy offering."

Her eyes, dark and depthless as the void between stars, studied you for a long, terrible moment. The sentinels at the chamber's edge shifted, their bone-and-jade limbs clicking with an almost imperceptible sound. The countdown to the rising moon felt like a physical weight on your spine.