Where the Veil Blooms

Prologue

The lab had been shut down for three years.
Dust clung to the walls and settled inside unused terminals, long since dark. The isolation ward hadn't beeped since the CDC pulled funding. Despite the closure, Dr. Hal Vire still arrived every morning at five, moving through the remnants of caution tape without a glance. The world above had forgotten this place, but Hal had not. He was close. He stood at the center of the former autoclave chamber, now repurposed into his sanctuary. The hum of the centrifuge filled the space, its rhythm constant, mechanical, and soothing. Three vials cooled in the frost chamber, each trembling almost imperceptibly. The glass was fogged, but Hal could see the pulse within. Something was alive in there.

His hands hovered above the containment glovebox. Not shaking from illness or fatigue. That had ended months ago. He had been quiet about the cure, because it had only worked on part of him. The rest needed refinement.

It had started as treatment. A synthetic stabilizer to dampen the auditory hallucinations and grant control over his cognitive spirals. Chemical inhibition had failed him. Neuromodulators had dulled his perception, not quieted the noise. When Hal could no longer trust the medicine, he turned inward, stripping his biochemistry down to something malleable.

He mapped every hormone and neurotransmitter implicated in psychosis. Then he introduced new variables. Unknown proteins, folded through guesswork and instinct. Strange compounds had come to him during fever dreams. That was when the whispers began. Not from his mind, but from elsewhere.

He followed them. They taught him to refine his blood. The first successful process yielded a viscous shimmer that slid from the centrifuge in slow ripples. Within it was something more than chemical. A pattern, waiting to be placed. He gave it structure with the last of his viable stem cells, harvested directly from his own marrow.

The blood accepted the stem cells without resistance. A quiet union. Then he added the compound base. Hormonal scaffolding, trace stimulants, a substrate grown in fungal molds scraped from his own lungs after one of the early failed attempts. It smelled of rust and ozone.

He capped the pill and held it under the sterile lamp. It caught the light with a soft opalescence. A swirling core shifted beneath the surface. No pill should look like it was breathing, but this one did.

"I name you Veilbud," he said, voice almost reverent. "For you shall bloom where sanity ends."

He swallowed it without hesitation.

There was no pain. No rapture. No flood of clarity. Only stillness. The kind that descends in a storm's eye. The voices that had tormented him fell silent. Not gone. Not banished. Simply heard, and made singular. A harmony, resonant and slow, like rot given form.

It spoke with patience. It did not command. It invited.

You are clean, Hal. You are ready.

He wept for twenty minutes and never understood why.

Three days passed. The effects held. The voice remained. More than one, but layered into a single chord. He returned to his notes and began again. The second batch came faster. More refined. Less dangerous. He offered them to the only people he trusted.

They were grateful. Eager. ****.

Within days, pain vanished from their joints. Anxiety ebbed. Depression lightened. Hunger sharpened, as did joy. They felt alive again, but different. Lighter. Hollowed out, then filled with something cleaner.

They asked for more. He obliged. It was working.

They no longer needed to ask after the third week. They arrived in silence, waiting in rows, listening to air that hummed with invisible tone. They began to worship. Not Hal himself, but something behind him. Through him.

Rituals formed. New names were spoken. The Pillfather. The Root of Bloom. The Quiet Choir.

Then their bodies began to change.

Not all at once. Never the same way twice. Some grew fast. Some grew inward. Some lost names and replaced them with numbers. All of them smiled.

The cults fractured not long after. One group prized blood purity and strength. Another painted murals in the dark, full of shifting colors and impossible angles. Another simply sang a song as sweet as rot. Each one claimed a name older than memory.

Khorne. Tzeentch. Nurgle.

But the last god remained without a voice. Watching. Listening. Waiting.

A boy named Alex found a strange ad on a late-night message board. A pill promising new confidence and growth in areas he lost hope he could grow in. He hesitated, just long enough to hear the first echo in the back of his skull.

Yes, darling. That one. It will make you more... you.