EPISODE III – THE GATE THAT BLEEDS
Chapter 1: The Blood Never Sleeps
The Pulse
You don’t break the curse. You bleed it.
James lay still on the floor.
The altar beneath him cracked. Smoke rose from his skin in quiet spirals. Not pain. Not death.
Transformation.
Ellis knelt beside him, watching, helpless.
Jean-Pierre stared at the shards of the bone crown.
“It should be over,” he said.
Venus whispered, “It’s never over. She always left something behind.”
The Ground Answers
The land hears everything, especially what we wish we hadn’t said.
The spiral on James’s chest flickered.
Then glowed.
Then vanished—replaced by a new mark.
A single word, etched in flame beneath his collarbone:
Opened.
The dirt beneath the altar moved.
Not shifted. Stirred.
And far below, something sighed like a door no one remembered building.
The First Cry
Every birth starts with a scream, even if it’s not from a mouth.
James woke. His eyes weren’t his.
Ellis drew his knife.
Jean-Pierre raised his hand. “Wait.”
James looked up—slow, deliberate. A smile curled at the corner of his mouth.
Not cruel.
Not kind.
Just… aware.
“She’s inside the gate,” he said.
Venus stepped back.
“What gate?”
He touched the floor.
“The one I became.”
The Echo Begins
You can refuse the crown. But the gate remembers your name.
The wind outside changed direction.
The house creaked in response.
Animals fled the field. Lights dimmed.
The earth breathed again.
And in the rhythm of that breath—
A drum.
A song.
A summoning.
James stood.
And the voice inside him spoke:
“I’m not her puppet.”
“I’m her passage.”
And behind his eyes—
A second world opened.
🎵 Poetic Interlude – Soul Echo
Inspired by: “I Wanna Be Where You Are” by Michael Jackson
🎵
Don’t leave me in the open wound,
Where soil sings and names are tuned.
You ran from her, I ran through pain,
Now I am door, and not just name.
If you don’t want her in your hand,
She’ll bloom her kingdom in your land.
🎵
Chapter 2: The Voice That Wears Him
The Echo’s Mouth
Possession is not theft. It is cohabitation.
James spoke without moving his lips.
Words poured from him like breath that had been waiting generations.
Not his voice.
Not hers, either.
Something new—born of refusal, crown-shatter, and legacy undone.
Jean-Pierre gripped the doorframe. “That’s not my son.”
Venus, softly: “Not anymore.”
The Body Wakes
You are still home, even if you don’t own the walls.
James walked the house like a guest who knew where everything was.
He whispered to cracks in the floorboards.
Paused before each mirror.
Stood beneath the attic, smiling at what waited above.
Ellis followed at a distance, blade tucked, breath shallow.
When James turned, he spoke in chorus.
“She’s not inside me. She’s around me. I’m the shape she uses to fit this world.”
Ellis didn’t blink.
“You think that makes it better?”
James didn’t answer.
But the air around him did.
The Warning
When the possessed begin to pity you, run.
That night, James stood at Ellis’s bed.
Watching.
Protective.
Terrifying.
“I remember everything,” he said. “Even the parts she doesn’t want me to.”
Ellis sat up, heart hammering.
“She’s opening something.”
James nodded. “She’s not coming through. She already has.”
Venus lit sage in the hall. It burned green.
Jean-Pierre loaded the rifle again.
It clicked louder than it should have.
The Change Begins
No transformation happens all at once. It begins with a name.
James touched the spiral on his chest.
It faded again.
In its place, a new glyph—a gate with no hinges.
He looked at his reflection in the kitchen window.
And whispered, half-prayer, half-threat:
“You wanted to use me.”
“Now you have to speak through me.”
And the Queen answered—
Not aloud.
But in laughter.
🎵 Poetic Interlude – Soul Echo
Inspired by: “Who Can I Run To?” by Xscape
🎵
Who can I run to, when my hands are her hands,
When my voice breaks the same in all her lands?
I don’t wear her crown, but I wear her skin,
And every time I breathe, she breathes me in.
🎵
Chapter 3: The Hollow Boy
Into the In-Between
The circle was drawn in bone dust and breath.
Venus spoke the rite softly, her voice unraveling between syllables like thread pulled from old cloth.
Ellis stepped in barefoot.
He held only one thing—his father’s knife, now wrapped in cloth soaked in his own blood. A tether. A truth.
James sat nearby, silent, eyes unfocused.
Half-here.
Half-hers.
“I’ll bring you back,” Ellis whispered.
James didn’t answer.
But something behind his eyes blinked.
And then Ellis stepped through.
The world folded around him like a sigh from beneath the earth.
The Fog of Form
The in-between was not dark.
It was fogged.
Light bent wrong. Sound moved in echoes that arrived before their cause.
Ellis walked through tall grass that grew from ash, the ground pulsing gently beneath each footstep like a heartbeat trying to sync with his own.
He saw memories growing from the fog—hazy, half-formed things.
His mother, younger, dancing in a field.
James, laughing in water.
Gregory’s voice, shouting his name in joy—then fury.
The land wasn’t lying.
It was remembering.
And it wanted to know what Ellis remembered, too.
The Boy Behind the Voice
At the heart of the fog, he found him.
James.
But not as he was now.
Younger. Barefoot. Staring into a cracked mirror made of smoke and regret.
He turned when Ellis called his name, eyes wide but not frightened.
“I didn’t mean to open it,” he said.
“I know,” Ellis said, stepping closer. “But it’s open now. And she’s walking.”
James looked down at his hands.
“They’re still mine. But my voice… isn’t.”
Ellis placed the knife into James’s palm.
“Then speak with this. Cut your way back.”
James nodded.
And the mirror behind him screamed.
The Return
They ran through fog that turned to fire behind them.
The land tried to fold them in.
Tried to offer easier truths.
They said no.
And bled for it.
When they crossed the circle again, Venus screamed with joy.
James collapsed.
Ellis held him, breath ragged.
The spiral on James’s chest returned.
Faint.
But his.
He opened his eyes.
Whispered:
“She knows I left.”
And the wind outside roared like a throne dragged across stone.
🎵 Poetic Interlude – Soul Echo
Inspired by: “Love’s In Need of Love Today” by Stevie Wonder
🎵
There’s a space between yes and no,
Where boys walk just to let go.
One held a knife, one held a name,
Both chased a light that looked like flame.
Love don’t wait for crowns or war,
It waits where breath forgets the floor.
🎵
Chapter 4: The Smoke Remembers
Scene 1: The Lingering
Smoke had its own mind.
It clung to the corners of the farmhouse, coiled in places sunlight used to live. It seeped from beneath the cellar door, from behind the mirrors, from the mouth of the kettle without a fire beneath it.
Venus swept and salted, muttering in three languages.
“It’s not gone,” she said. “It’s remembering.”
Jean-Pierre stood at the window, hand trembling as he lit another match. The flame cracked, then flickered blue.
“She’s looking,” he muttered. “She wants to know what we’ll forget first.”
James sat in the living room, silent.
Ellis beside him.
Neither boy blinked.
The smoke watched them both.
Scene 2: House of Echoes
That night, the farmhouse breathed.
It creaked not from age—but from awareness.
Doors opened themselves.
The floor whispered names none of them recognized—then suddenly did.
Ellis heard his father laughing, low and wrong, from inside the walls.
James heard Levi praying in a language he never learned.
And in the kitchen, the smoke curled into a shape that looked like a woman—brief, broken, beautiful.
Alizia.
Her mouth moved, but made no sound.
James reached for her.
The image shattered into soot.
And the house sighed.
Like it missed her, too.
Scene 3: The Smoke’s Question
In the attic, the bone mirror was covered again.
But the smoke circled it, waiting.
Venus stood before it, candles flickering in rhythm with her pulse.
She asked, “What do you want?”
The mirror didn’t answer.
The smoke did.
It wrote on the glass in ash:
“We want him whole. Or not at all.”
Ellis read the words.
Turned to James.
Whispered, “She’s not offering a crown anymore.”
James nodded.
“She’s offering a choice.”
Scene 4: The Ember Beneath
Later, as the others slept, James stood at the hearth.
The fire had died down, but the coals still glowed.
He placed his hand above the embers.
Not to feel warmth.
But to hear the rhythm.
A drumbeat.
Faint.
From beneath.
The land was still speaking.
He whispered to the flame:
“I’m not afraid of remembering.”
“I’m afraid of what comes after.”
The coals sparked once.
And went dark.
🎵 Poetic Interlude – Soul Echo
Inspired by: “The Makings of You” by Curtis Mayfield
🎵
Smoke is not just what’s left behind,
It’s memory, caught in time.
She calls not with fire, but scent,
A lullaby of what’s been spent.
Your name in her mouth tastes like youth,
But your silence hums with truth.
🎵
Chapter 5: The Return With Scars
The Awakening
James woke in the gray hush before dawn.
The room around him still smelled like sage and smoke, the air still holding its breath. He sat up slowly, the sheets clinging to his back like a second skin.
His hand went to his chest.
The spiral was gone.
But in its place—a burn.
Not a wound.
A brand.
A mark shaped like a doorway split down the middle, the two halves quivering ever so slightly.
He called out, once.
“Ellis?”
His voice sounded strange to him—familiar, but… heavier.
Like someone else had been using it.
The Eyes That Know
Ellis appeared in the doorway, hair wild, knife tucked into the back of his jeans. He hadn’t slept.
“I saw it,” he said.
James nodded.
“I think it saw you, too,” Ellis added.
They stood there, neither speaking.
Until Ellis finally stepped closer and said:
“You came back.”
James shook his head slowly.
“I brought something back.”
Behind him, the candle on the nightstand flickered once—then turned blue.
The Follower
Downstairs, Venus set the table for breakfast. Ritual, not hunger.
Jean-Pierre read the same page of the paper for the fourth time.
Then the back door opened—though no one stood there.
Just a breeze.
Sharp. Wet. Wrong.
Venus turned. “Someone else came through.”
Jean-Pierre stood.
“The Queen?”
Venus shook her head. “No. A shadow she left behind. A watcher. Maybe a seed.”
The salt around the windows curled inward.
And upstairs, James’s brand began to hum.
The Truth Beneath Skin
Later, James stood shirtless before the mirror.
Not the bone one.
Just glass.
He traced the brand with one finger.
The skin around it pulsed, like breath moving in reverse.
He whispered, “She used me to open a door.”
Ellis stood behind him. “And something walked through?”
James didn’t answer.
Instead, he turned.
“Not something,” he said.
“Someone.”
And from downstairs, the sound of the basement door creaking open echoed through the house.
🎵 Poetic Interlude – Soul Echo
Inspired by: “I Know You, I Live You” by Chaka Khan
🎵
You wear her mark but breathe your name,
Still not yourself, still not the same.
I know you—yes—but not this flame,
A heat that knows but won’t explain.
If you came back, did you stay whole?
Or leave behind a piece, a toll?
🎵
Chapter 6: The Seed in the Spine
The Mark Wakes
The brand on James’s back began to pulse just after sunset.
It wasn’t pain.
It was presence—like breath exhaled just beneath the skin.
He stood in the bathroom, shirt off, the light buzzing low above the mirror. The mark had deepened in color—no longer red or silver, but a slow-moving shade of violet, like bruised sky.
He turned, trying to see it.
The edges flickered.
And for a moment—only a moment—he saw eyes in the mirror behind him.
Watching.
Not hers.
His.
The Reading
Venus spread the old pages out on the kitchen floor.
The words were written in two inks—one black, one rust-colored.
She read aloud, voice quiet, hands steady.
“The Seed is not a curse, nor a blessing. It is intention made flesh. A beginning before a choice.”
Ellis crouched beside her. “And if we don’t make that choice?”
She looked at him.
Then at James, who stood silent in the hallway.
“Then it grows on its own. It chooses for you.”
James touched the back of his neck.
And felt the seed move.
The Bloom
That night, James dreamt in roots.
He was walking barefoot through soil that breathed, vines rising to kiss his ankles, thorns curving away from him in reverence.
The Queen was there—but distant.
He could feel her approval, her patience.
But she didn’t speak.
Instead, a tree rose from the center of the field. Bone-white. Hollow.
Inside it: a boy.
Smiling.
Wearing James’s face.
And the seed pulsing in his spine like it was remembering who it used to be.
: The Fracture
James woke gasping.
The seed burned—then cooled.
Ellis rushed in, gripping his shoulder.
“What did you see?”
James’s voice cracked.
“Myself. But older. And… wrong.”
Venus appeared in the doorway, eyes dark.
“It’s not a parasite,” she said.
“It’s a possibility.”
James stared at the floor.
And whispered:
“What if it’s a better version of me?”
And in the shadows of the hallway,
the seed pulsed once.
And smiled.
🎵 Poetic Interlude – Soul Echo
Inspired by: “Love Under New Management” by Miki Howard
🎵
Something’s growing under skin,
A whisper where there should have been.
Love, maybe. Or something close—
A name she sings beneath your ghost.
Not a curse. Not just a flame.
A bloom that asks you for your name.
🎵
Chapter 7: The Blooming
The Change Begins
The first signs were small.
James stopped blinking as often. His pupils held light longer than they should. He spoke softer, as if someone else were listening from inside him.
He began walking barefoot—always.
Even when the ground froze overnight.
He said the earth didn’t hurt him anymore.
That it welcomed him.
Ellis watched from across the porch, gripping the wooden railing like it could keep him steady.
Venus kept track of each new behavior in a little book she never let anyone else touch.
Jean-Pierre just cleaned his rifle, every morning.
Without asking why.
The Garden
James started planting things.
In dirt that shouldn’t take root.
At hours that made no sense.
At first, it was herbs. Harmless. Familiar.
Then roots no one recognized.
Petals with edges like teeth.
One morning, Venus found a bloom on the windowsill—pale gold, veined in black. It had grown overnight.
It pulsed when she touched it.
Bled when she cut it.
She burned it in silence.
And told no one.
The Mirror Speaks Again
James stood before the bone mirror one night.
It no longer shimmered—it reflected him clearly now.
But the image behind him? Always different.
Sometimes Ellis, holding a blade to his own throat.
Sometimes Venus, young again, with a crown in her hands.
Sometimes the Queen.
Always smiling.
James leaned in, and the mirror fogged over.
A single word appeared, etched by invisible breath:
“Closer.”
The Family Gathers
They met in the kitchen, candlelight painting their faces in flickering strokes.
Venus set the book down.
Jean-Pierre poured a drink no one touched.
Ellis leaned against the counter, silent.
James entered last.
The room went still.
“I know you’re all scared,” he said.
His voice was soft.
Gentle.
Not entirely his.
“I am too.”
Venus asked the only question that mattered.
“Is it still you in there?”
James didn’t answer right away.
Then:
“Yes.”
A pause.
“But not for much longer.”
🎵 Poetic Interlude – Soul Echo
Inspired by: “Didn’t Cha Know” by Erykah Badu
🎵
Didn’t I say I’d come back new?
Didn’t I bloom like they told me to?
I tried to hold the roots in place,
But they grew teeth, and wore my face.
Didn’t cha know the gate has breath?
Didn’t cha see her dream of death?
🎵
Chapter 8: The Thorn Rite
The Ancient Tool
The thorn was kept in the chest beneath Venus’s bed.
Wrapped in velvet, oiled with ash and salt.
It wasn’t a blade. Not quite.
It was bone—long, narrow, curved like a question left unanswered.
It hummed faintly in her palm.
Not sound.
Memory.
She carried it into the room like a priestess and a mother all at once.
Jean-Pierre looked away.
Ellis stared.
James met her eyes.
And whispered:
“I’m ready.”
Preparing the Circle
The floor was cleared.
The spiral redrawn in ground stone and dried herb.
Candles placed at the four corners of the room, each one lit with a different vow:
Protection.
Remembrance.
Sacrifice.
Return.
James sat at the center, chest bare, the brand now pulsing slow like a heartbeat just below the skin.
Venus handed the thorn to Ellis.
He flinched at the touch.
“It knows me,” he said.
Venus nodded. “It remembers all hands who’ve wielded it.”
James’s eyes were steady.
“If it doesn’t work?”
Venus’s voice cracked. “Then it flowers fully. And we lose you.”
The Cut
Ellis stepped into the circle.
The thorn glowed pale in the candlelight.
James didn’t move.
Ellis knelt, raised the thorn, and pressed it to the center of the brand.
The mark hissed.
The room darkened.
Then—
The thorn sank in.
James’s back arched.
Not in pain.
In release.
He cried out—one voice, then two.
Then silence.
The thorn pulled free, covered in black sap.
Venus caught it in a bowl of salt.
James slumped forward.
Breathing.
Alive.
And marked only by sweat and memory.
The After
James slept for three days.
Venus burned the sap.
The smoke rose straight up—no twist, no whisper.
Jean-Pierre buried the thorn again, deeper this time.
Ellis sat by James’s side, refusing to sleep.
When James finally woke, his eyes were clearer.
Still shadowed.
But his.
“I heard her,” he said.
Ellis leaned in.
“She told me… ‘You’ll bloom again. Somewhere else.’”
Outside, the wind shifted.
And a tree—dead for years—began to sprout one green leaf.
🎵 Poetic Interlude – Soul Echo
Inspired by: “Sweet Thing” by Rufus and Chaka Khan
🎵
You’re my sweet thing, until you’re thorn,
You bloomed too fast, and I was warned.
Still I kissed your blooming breath,
And prayed this rite would cut her death.
But sweet thing, love can’t choose the hour,
When boys must burn to hold their power.
🎵
Chapter 9: The Spiral Breaks
Something Beneath
It began with a tremor beneath James’s skin.
Not fear. Not fever.
A quiet unraveling—like threads loosening from fabric older than the world.
He lay in the middle of the spiral, eyes open but not focused.
Venus touched his forehead. “He’s still warm. Still tethered.”
Ellis stood nearby, the thorn wrapped in fresh linen.
But something was changing.
The brand on James’s chest began to glow—not red this time.
Not violet.
But silver-white.
Pale as bone.
Then—
It cracked.
Not the skin.
The mark.
And the spiral beneath him—burned into the floor—fractured down its center.
What Falls Out
The light burst soundlessly.
No scream. No flame.
Just a sudden absence—like the world blinked.
James convulsed once.
Then stilled.
Then arched.
From his back, near the spine, something began to emerge.
Small. Wrapped in light and ash.
A form.
A boy.
No older than ten. Pale. Glowing. Breathing.
He tumbled out as if waking from a womb made of fire and name.
Ellis caught him instinctively.
Held him.
The boy opened his eyes.
And whispered:
“Levi.”
Venus gasped.
Jean-Pierre took a step back.
James, now trembling, looked up.
“Is that…?”
Venus nodded slowly.
“Yes. That’s the part of Levi the Queen buried in our line.”
The Truth Takes Shape
The boy sat in the salt circle, knees drawn to chest.
He wasn’t crying.
He wasn’t confused.
Just calm.
Like he’d always been waiting for this.
Jean-Pierre whispered, “He looks like… my father.”
Ellis crouched beside him. “Are you… him?”
The boy looked up.
“No. I’m what was left when he said no. I’m the part that wouldn’t let her all the way in.”
James stared.
“Then why are you in me?”
The boy smiled.
“Because you were the first who let me bloom.”
The Breath After
Outside, the sky shifted.
Not darker.
Not lighter.
Just… wider.
Like the world had made room for something returned.
Venus laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder.
“You’re not a ghost.”
“No,” he said.
“I’m a root.”
And in that moment, the spiral on the floor faded.
And the brand on James’s chest cooled.
But deep beneath the house, the land still hummed—
Because the Queen had not lost.
She had split.
🎵 Poetic Interlude – Soul Echo
Inspired by: “Ribbon in the Sky” by Stevie Wonder
🎵
There’s a child in your shadow, love,
Made of roots and flame above.
He is not ghost, nor curse, nor lie,
But a ribbon torn across the sky.
Where you break, he begins to grow,
And through him, she still flows.
🎵
Chapter 10: Levi, Rewritten
A Boy and a Name
He sat in the chair by the fire, legs curled beneath him like he’d always belonged there.
Levi.
Small, calm, quiet as fresh snow.
His hands trembled when he touched the mug Venus gave him—chamomile and bloodroot—but his eyes? Still.
Unblinking.
James watched him from across the room.
“I feel empty,” he said softly.
Levi looked over, head tilted.
“You’re not empty,” he replied.
“You’re available.”
Jean-Pierre grunted from the corner.
“God help us, he talks like Levi already.”
Venus didn’t smile.
She saw it too.
The echo beneath the boy’s voice.
The familiarity of grief re-wrapped in new skin.
The Spiral Between Them
They sat across from each other that night—James and the boy born from him.
Ellis sharpened the thorn by the window, just in case.
“You remember what she made him do?” James asked.
Levi nodded.
“Everything.”
“And you’re not her?”
“No.”
“But you came from where she touched me.”
Levi met his eyes.
“She only made room. I was always there.”
James swallowed hard.
“What do you want?”
Levi didn’t answer.
He just breathed—
And the spiral beneath them flickered faintly into being again.
Venus Speaks
Venus stirred herbs over the stove, back to the boys.
“She doesn’t care about vessels,” she said aloud. “She cares about outcomes. If Levi walks this world again, it’s not resurrection. It’s inheritance.”
Ellis paused his blade.
James stood slowly.
“So what are we saying?”
Venus turned.
“She planted him in our blood. You didn’t free him. You watered him.”
James looked at Levi.
The boy didn’t argue.
Didn’t blink.
He simply said:
“Then give me a name that’s mine. Not just his.”
A Choice in the Wind
That night, the wind changed again.
Not direction.
Tone.
It sang low through the cracks in the house. It rang faint against the windows.
And in the attic, the covered mirror fogged.
James stood over Levi as he slept.
Ellis joined him.
“We give him a new name?” Ellis asked.
“We give him a new chance,” James replied.
Downstairs, the spiral on the floor lit again—
But only halfway.
Waiting.
Listening.
The Queen?
Silent.
But not gone.
Just… curious.
And Levi?
He smiled in his sleep.
And whispered:
“I don’t want to be saved.”
“I want to be chosen.”
🎵 Poetic Interlude – Soul Echo
Inspired by: “Superwoman (Where Were You When I Needed You)” by Stevie Wonder
🎵
You thought me shadow, thought me lie,
A whisper kept where fathers die.
But I am root and I am bloom,
The secret seed that outgrew tomb.
Don’t rewrite me out of fear,
Let me rise, and name me here.
🎵