These texts were originally published as part of Hunt's Tide of Corruption, the live Event that ran from October 4th to November 29th of 2023. Are they fact, fiction, fable, or fallacy? We may never know for sure, but there's truth to every lie, and a lie to every truth. Read on, and decide for yourself.

Summary: The cursed relic of the Sculptor, the Murmurstone, has made its way to Louisiana after the Delphine's ghost purged its cargo into the bayou at the end of Tide of Shadows. The first person to find it transforms into Butcher's Cleaver as he gathers followers who wish to be closer to the Sculptor, unleashing the Dark Inferno in the process. Sofia and her crew vow to keep death sacred and set off to find and destroy the Murmurstone. Meanwhile, Burnt Marshall is on a mission to acquire the stone for Mr. Chary, ultimately stealing it from Butcher's Cleaver.

Chapter One: Sofia

Death Sleeps – Stabbed Bodies – Memories Return – Forever Missed – A Pact Forged – Moth Skull Poem

Addressed to Lulu Bassett
Translated from Spanish
Written Over Newspaper Clipping of 1893 Hurricane

We would rather stay dead.

Why Death has chosen us to come back to life, we don't know, but we are disgusted by its uncertain hand. We want answers. We demand punishment.

I'm with a trio: the Reaper, Worm Bite, and the French mother, that crooning old Bone Mason. Worm Bite was working on a fire that would burn anything forever—gravestones, poems, bodies. The Reaper's heart has changed. Something about his work being unmade doesn't sit well with him. The Bone Mason is enraged too. Death sets her free while ignoring who she wants to bring back.

We witnessed a death at Pitching Crematorium. A stain reeked off it in our Dark Sight. We gathered to sit in a circle around the corpse, stoking a cookfire, eating rabbit.

"Do you think it will rise?" Worm Bite asked.

The Reaper stabbed the body with his scythe and it spurted blood on the Bone Mason's bonnet. He apologized, tried to wipe it off her face. She bit his finger. I think I like her.

"I feel old memories," the Reaper said. "I feel my childhood again."

"You should cherish your childhood," the Bone Mason replied. "It is good to feel."

"I never want to feel again," the Reaper replied.

Worm Bite kicked the body like it was a sad dog in the kitchen.

"This Land of the Dead," he said. "Could we find someone who has been there? Could they give us some key to shut its door?"

I set two hot embers over the corpse's eyes.

"Forever dead," I told them. "Forever missed."

Our Pact is forged. Our mission is true. We will sneak through Death's house, take advantage of its shadow, and learn truths of this Land of the Dead. We will find a way to keep the coffins closed.

P.D.

I miss you. I close my eyes and see you sweetly, I see a skull painted on the wings of a moth. I see an alligator eat that moth. I see a boat eat the alligator. I see a thousand fires eat the boat. I see the night eat the fires. And then I see a sculpture. I rip the tongue out of it. I rip the tongue out of everything.

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Chapter Two: Butcher's Cleaver

Words Inside Eyelids – Tick Tick Ticking – Triple Pact Showdown – Inferno Loosed – Precious Hidden Parts – Skull Splits Open – Drink From It

Near Illegible Text Scrawled in Burned Notebook
Author Unnamed, Undated

Chisel these words into the inside of your eyelids:

We vow to let the Sculptor make of us the Sculpted. May we speak with the throats of insects and seep in the wishes of their many thousand eyes.

The rough tongue of the Murmurstone cracks and breaks and secrets come out. They rush my hearing with heat and promises—and oh. Strike a match and stick it inside too. Push its flame to the center of my mind and let it hum of hymns and the snapping of so many spines the world just stops.

Stops its tick tick ticking.

The Murmurstone licked my mind from within the three-Pact showdown at the Delphine's grave. The Rotjaw sizzled in sweet black fire with that Gar, Queen of the Primal, banishing on top of her lizard belly. Those fumbling Smugglers rummaged through the Delphine's debris looking for guns and gold, but I found it first.

Some ignorant and unblessed call it a relic, trying to sound learned. But us chosen know it as the Murmurstone, for only we can hear its scripture. The stone spoke to me, and I pulled from its mouth a steaming cleaver. The cleaver.

The stone told me a place where this prize would become blessed: The Butcher's Den. The Temple of Meat and Flame.

My followers, demented and hungry, didn't believe me. They whispered and clacked and nipped at my ankles, but I showed them. I showed them at the Slaughterhouse what I promised. Cleaver held to the sky, the divine lightning crashed down on me, burning those who tried to flee and I breathed them in and turned them into more fire inside the Murmurblade.

I carried the blazing metal outside, with the true believers kissing my boot prints, and the false believers kissing twice as hard. The Inferno unraveled itself as a tornado does. It spread to the soil and trees in search of the land's most precious, hidden parts.

I will be the edge that pries apart those secrets. When the world's skull splits open, I will not look away: I will drink from it.

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Chapter Three: Burnt Marshall

Flame with Flame – My Mother's Name – Caught Between Gears – Jackal Laugh – Artistry of Rome – A Steamboat Dragged to Hell – Devils Set Loose

Forestry Burn Log
Handwritten, Original
Undated

We didn't have long. We vowed to rage against flame with flame. We exploited chaos. We lacked the discernment of fire, and in its spreading took whatever victories we touched.

The corn husks were dry and coarse against my hand. Embers flickered high up in the dark and brooding autumn sky.

Henry scouted for signs of Chary at the windmill. His mask was on, but I could tell he was jealous that he hadn't started this Inferno: a true devil's advocate through and through.

"Henry," I called as he made his way back. "Did Chary leave a note? Anything?"

He shucked a husk and ran an ear of brown kernels across the wooden tongue of his mask.

"The corn is full of sleeping fire, and the fire is speaking my mother's name."

I threw my flare gun at him. He caught it against his chest.

"If you keep speaking nonsense like that, I'll kill you with the corn." I snapped a stalk in half. "Pull yourself together."

We climbed the ladder to the lookout platform. The windmill creaked its hot metal and sounded like a person caught between gears. Across Seven Sisters Estate, dark figures hoisted the banished remains of The Butcher atop a pyre and crawled around on all fours, grunting and hopping and biting at each other.

Then the jackal laugh of a maniac came from behind us. A Demented with a pumpkin over his head cackled and rocked back and forth on the top rung of the ladder. The pumpkin was carved with an artistry worthy of Rome:

A steamboat dragged to hell. An alligator vomiting rain. Insect limbs and mandibles, more foul than an imagination can bear, holding a sculpture above an all too familiar barn.

"We have our message, Henry." I took the pumpkin off the man's head. "I know where we need to go."

Henry forced the flare gun into the lunatic's mouth and fired. We sat and watched his eyes burn from the inside out, shadows playing against his skull. We sat and watched the devils set loose in the smoke that rose into the sky.

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Chapter Four: Butcher's Cleaver

The Kid – Barbed Wire – Rat Thumpers – Worthless without Direction – Rotten Apple Smooth – Eaten by Worms – The Split Piglet – A True Painter

Near Illegible Text Scrawled in Burned Notebook
Author Unnamed, Undated

"We caught him sniffing around, trappin' at our altars." The Beast Hunter tossed the Kid to the ground all wrapped up pretty in barbed wire.

"You know what we do with sniffers?" I hoisted him onto our new altar. "We remove the tool that sniffs."

We took turns spiking grubs and rat thumpers onto the points of the Kid's sharp metal cocoon.

"Why do you think these altars give us gifts?" I asked him. He sputtered bile through tight wire.

"Because we are ants," I continued. "Worthless without direction!"

I grabbed a follower—a false believer, unworthy from the doubt flittering in the pus of their eyes—and tossed him to the ground before stomp-stomp-stomping his skull rotten-apple smooth.

"How worthless?" I asked those who remained.

"Worthless as the Split Piglet eaten by worms!" they replied.

I brought out their favorite object: the Split Piglet, so small and dead. So filled with maggots and feral blood-milk. Mosquitoes drank its splendor and flew with fat bellies to feed themselves to beetles hungry in the rafters.

"Will the Sculptor turn us into art?" a follower on her knees wanted to know, brushes and dye strewn around her like a true painter.

"Yes," I told her. I dipped my fingers into the piglet and marked her forehead with the juice. "We will gut and slash and slaughter and maul and bite and tear and bash our heads into hollows that heads weren't meant to hollow inside of."

"We'll scream inside their bodies—a prayer to set us free!" they all chanted.

I squeezed the piglet's blessings into the Murmurstone's mouth, all the curds and blisters and red milk gore. It hummed and delivered my intentions.

"Now," I proclaimed, pressing my shotgun to the Kid's face. "Let's turn you into paint."

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Chapter Five: Butcher's Cleaver

Scrapper's Roost – Love Birds – Sewn Shut Eyes – Lord of Meat and Flame – Pig Tongue Crow – False Leader – Swirling Embers – Pets Asleep

Near Illegible Text Scrawled in Burned Notebook
Author Unnamed, Undated

The spiral stairs were draped with bird bones. Feathers fluttered and fell with the stink of egg rot and oil. My pig heart felt cradled by mantises, my face on their faces as they feasted and became holy in the hog blood. At the top, I found the Scrapper's roost, and two of them stooped there.

They wore their Target's beak over their faces. Morrigan and Midian: two tall love-birds, side by side, strapped with trash, totems, offerings. In their hands, one wingless crow, tired and bloody.

I held out a squirming piglet, kissed its freshly sewn-shut eyes. I squeezed tight and it squealed, hailing my Lord of Meat and Flame. I leaned over its snout and bit its tongue and ripped it out, teeth-smooth.

The Scrappers held out their fat crow, and I fed the bird the squealer's tongue, and our bond was forged forever.

"Stagnant," the left one said. "We're stuck," the right one said, petting the bird.

"Who blocks the Sculptor's wishes?" I asked them.

"There is a wounded bird out there," said one. "The old leader of the Hunt."

"He gobbles our prayers," spoke the other. "All of them."

"Finch," I said, and the Scrappers screeched and shivered their feathers loose.

"Finch," they agreed. "False bird. False leader. He blocks us from the pathways our Scrapbeak uses."

I nodded. "He used to lead us all fair and true. I admired him. Now he clips our wings."

"He hobbles our ankles and pigs!" they replied.

Bwuh-bwuh-spittle-muuah-muuuuaaaah, went my little piglet.

Kreeew-kreeew-cacaw-cacaaaw, went the crow.

We placed our pets in a Rift nest and watched the embers swirl. We shushed them to sleep. We sealed them away. We knew when Finch bled his last that they would carry our wishes to our Lord on his chittering throne, and the pathways would be cleared.

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Chapter Six: Burnt Marshall

Singed Infernals – Chary's Message – Bad Luck – Coward Captain – Baseball Bat – Toes – The Harvest Sky – A Startled Hive – Wingless Crow

Forestry Burn Log
Handwritten, Original
Undated

Infernals entered the barn one by one, singed and stinking. The fires outside had spread on the wind. The heat had purpose and weight. It was oppressive to the point of darkening the night.

I took the pumpkin from my smock and showed them.

"This is a message from Chary."

Private Eye came from the corner and inspected the carvings.

"See these moon phases?" She drew her finger along the orange skin. "Fort Carmick? And here, the Murmurstone—pigs kissing it. Looks like Chary wants us to lay siege to the Slaughterhouse tomorrow."

"You gather all that from a gourd?" Black Coat asked.

"We wouldn't have to do this at all if the captain hadn't sunk his boat and the stone." She pointed to him, the Delphine's coward of a captain. He sat on a crate of beetles to keep the lid on as they buzzed with the will to combust.

"Bad luck to let a woman speak amongst us," the captain said.

Black Coat produced a baseball bat from his jacket and swung. He hit the captain in the chest hard enough to fling him into the air. There was applause.

Henry sniffed. "Wait, what the hell is that smell?"

There was a sound of muffled screeching. We looked up to the hole in the ceiling and saw pale, gnarled toes curl over the edge of the roof boards. Above them, Monroe and Cain drooled against the harvest sky.

Then they dumped a startled Hive onto us out of a sack. The bee lady loosed her brood and they poisoned us, killed the fire beetles. We shot open an exit through the barn as the insects exploded. On our escape, I saw a wingless crow riding a piglet's back.

Insanity was in for a season, but I knew that all seasons burn at their end.

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Chapter Seven: Burnt Marshall

Fire Was an Oasis – Bullets Licked – Llorona's Heir – Worshiped by Pigs – Men Sewed Inside – Decapitating Magician – The Miracle Roar – Escape – Whispers in the Woods

Forestry Burn Log
Handwritten, Original
Undated

If the Demented think they know fire, they're wrong.

Llorona and I were in clear sight of the Slaughterhouse and a dozen muzzle flashes winked from the barn roof, the doors, the windows, the piles of rotting swine.

We tossed jug after jug of flammables and each pit of fire was an oasis. Their bullets slipped into us. The flames licked them right back out and blew us kisses. We snaked through the firebreak and infiltrated the barn under waves of hot lead.

There was chaos inside. Naked men with axes. Naked men with pig heads on fire. I shot blindly into the mess, moved up the stairs, and found the Murmurstone enshrined as depicted on the pumpkin—worshiped by pigs. Living ones, dead ones, men sewed inside sow skins, too.

Llorona used a sticky bomb and leveled the shrine, I grabbed the Murmurstone, then ran to the roof. There stood the Demented leader, face to face with Chary. Our Infernal founder held firm with the flair of a magician who had just decapitated his audience.

"Don't you wonder?" Chary spoke to the Butcher's Cleaver. "Why the Sculptor let you unleash the Inferno, only for us to be healed by it?"

The Butcher's Cleaver roared. Not squealed or screamed. But roared. The sound of a stone animal being ripped in two shook the foundations of the compound. Chary stood petrified before such a miracle.

I jumped off the roof and retreated with the Murmurstone while the rest of the Infernal held off the Demented. The Murmurstone whispered to me in the woods as we escaped, just one word. The same one, over and over again, that only I could hear:

Drown.

Drown.

Drown.

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Continue here to read Tide of Corruption Part Two.