1081: Story 1081: Chapel of Lost Gods 1081: Story 1081: Chapel of Lost Gods The chapel stood at the edge of the whispering woods, shrouded in perpetual dusk.
Its spires pierced the blackened clouds, and moss clung to its bones like mourning lace.
It had no parishioners, no priests, and no hymns—only echoes.
Locals knew it as the Chapel of Lost Gods, a place where old deities were abandoned and new ones born in secret, writhing prayers.
It was Mara Grimm, an archivist from the Fractured Library, who first uncovered its location in a crumbling tome bound in flayed hymnal pages.
The chapel had been erased from maps centuries ago, after it became known that worship there warped reality itself.
She believed it held relics of the Eldritch Choir—gods that humanity had forgotten but never truly silenced.
Accompanied by a guide named Rourke, a grizzled man with a scarred soul and no memory of his birth, they journeyed through the haunted pinewood trails.
Creatures watched from the treetops—some with too many eyes, others with none at all.
The chapel called to them in silence.
Inside, the chapel’s interior defied architecture.
Stained-glass windows glowed with inner light, depicting beings that twisted mid-gaze.
The altar bore thirteen thrones, each carved from bone and shadow.
Upon each sat a statue of a forgotten god, their faces blurred, shifting, or missing entirely.
Mara was entranced.
She approached the altar and spoke the names etched beneath each seat—names like Ul’Zareth, Yssa-Marn, and He Who Lurks Behind the Pulse.
As she did, the statues began to twitch.
Dust fell like ash, and the air grew wet with divine decay.
Rourke screamed for her to stop.
He recognized the tone of her voice—it wasn’t hers anymore.
It belonged to something older than belief, something not meant to be remembered.
The chapel awoke.
The walls bent inward, ceiling bleeding stars.
The statues moved—not fully, but just enough to whisper across time.
They didn’t speak with mouths but with concepts, urging Mara to join them.
To fill the thirteenth throne, which had always awaited a mortal willing to forget their name.
Rourke, desperate, smashed the chalice on the altar—an ancient vessel bound with a silver tongue.
The chapel shrieked as if struck.
The gods wailed like thunder through a dying lung.
But Mara smiled.
“I remember them now,” she said.
“And they remember me.”
With a flash of red light and a chorus of voidsong, she was gone.
So was the chapel.
All that remained was a patch of scorched earth and a broken chalice.
Rourke, mad-eyed and hollow, wandered the woods mumbling divine syllables, no longer fully human.
But sometimes, when the wind hits just right, people swear they hear bells from nowhere, and see a chapel at the edge of their vision—beckoning them closer.
“Pray to what you’ve forgotten,” it whispers,
“before it remembers you.”