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"What secrets will you carve?" Inessa projected all of her surety into the words and all the strength her spine would yield. They came out as only a whisper. A sharp point touched against her back, a mossfly's weight poised on bare skin. She could not see the knife, but it was a thing all knew from the time they were children. A thin blade, flexible and sharp as light itself. Her skin prickled and she drew herself straight. The day lay silent, and time did not abide this place. Though she stood bare, none would see her shame.
"They are old secrets," the dead god whispered, his breath warm at her ear. "Thirsty secrets which wish to be known, to taste blood once more." Warmth spread over Inessa's back as her body was prepared. Dark ichor washed away the sins of the moment, even as time stood still, creating a canvas as blank as the dead god's eyes. Upon it he would draw his burden, and pass that knowledge into being.
The thin blade pricked and she gritted her teeth, a confused groan escaping her lips. Amid the warmth there was blessed little pain. It drew lines across her skin and dark ichor filled its tiny trenches, dying her skin and creating wounds that pierced beyond her flesh and carved into her soul. Inessa closed her eyes. It was a gift, even as it marked her for death with patterns of intricate blasphemy.
She softened the steel of her spine and relaxed into the creature's strange embrace. "Carry these words," the creature whispered, and there was sorrow in his voice. "Carry them in life, and deliver them in death. Know that your last breath spits in the eyes of usurper gods, and in living you have purpose."
"I will," she said, her voice a mere breath without sound. "And in that moment I will speak your name." She spoke his name now, but as it left her tongue it was lost to her. It was a name to be known only twice. Once at the moment of its first speaking, and moments later at her death.
A large hand gripped her waist and Inessa resisted the urge to look down and see its tattered flesh. The dead gods were broken beings, rendered by artists in nightmare shapes, with hollow, unpainted eyes.
"And what will become of me then?" Inessa said. "What gift will you bestow upon me?"
The dead god paused, his blade hovering over her back. It was not a question that was asked, and she feared she had angered the creature. She knew the price she may pay for his anger. That same thin blade across her throat before the pattern was finished, her soul still bound to the world.
The creature resumed, and she felt a smile in his voice. "Escape," he said. "From this world that has betrayed you. That is why you are here, is it not? We are not your gods, but the gods of those before." The knife pressed against her skin, deeper than before. "You abandon them and swear your soul to us."
"And in your palace I will live," Inessa said. "Away from hurt. Away from memory. Away from all this world has taken." She had heard the words before, spoken by R'Shana. In a violent world, they were a dream and shone a light behind her sister's eyes. As the world fell to ruin, the dead gods took many.
"Yes," the creature said. "No memory. No pain. No life. In our palace you will begin again in a world that will accept you."
Tears wet Inessa's cheek, but they were not from the pain of blade or the twisting sting and numbness of black ink. Her heart filled with hate and anger at the world that had destroyed her, and the people she had lost. The pain that made them seek the gods and accept their offer. The image of her sister's tattooed back and her throat slit with the thinnest wound.
R'Shana waited in the world beyond, where pain had made her flee. "You promise so much," Inessa said, her head lowering, a tear dripping from her nose.
The god stopped cutting. The marks lay complete upon her back, marking her for entrance to his fabled afterlife. She felt his weight shift on his feet, and felt the blade creep toward her neck.
She turned and screamed in the creature's face, reveling in his shock. His skin was pale but not tattered, and his eyes holes of dark abyss. Her knife entered beneath his chin, pressing upward into his skull and dripping blood upon her upraised hand.
He dropped his blade, and even without eyes she saw fear painted across his face.
The creature slumped to the ground, mortal as any god who no longer reigned. Time returned to the room with the sounds of commotion outside.
The dead gods took her sister, and so many she had known. She would destroy them. She ran her hand over the tattoo across her back. When she died she would enter their gates, but she knew she would not forget.
Until that day, she would fight in the mortal world.