Father Charlie Mayhew stood at the pulpit, his gaze heavy as it scanned the faces of the small town congregation. The past weeks had been brutal—unspeakable crimes, monstrous in nature, haunting their streets. Every victim had been found with religious symbols carved into their skin, a twisted signature of the killer known only as Grotesquerie. Fear gripped the town, and Charlie could feel its weight pressing down on him, demanding answers he didn’t have.

His sermon started soft, his deep voice reverberating through the church. “What will we do when there’s blood in the water?” he asked, his tone growing darker. “When the sins of the powerful bring ruin to our homes, our families?”

The crimes had touched everyone, but whispers of corruption, of secrets within the town’s leadership, had begun to surface. The mayor, seated stiffly in the front pew, avoided Charlie’s gaze.

Charlie’s frustration, his anger, bubbled to the surface. “Look me in the eyes,” he challenged. “Tell me everything’s fine while our children and neighbors are slaughtered. You thought you could go free, but there’s blood in the water now. And it will not be ignored.”

The congregation shifted uneasily, the tension palpable. His words hung in the air, sharp as knives. The crimes had broken the town’s spirit, and Grotesquerie’s shadow loomed large.

Later that night, Charlie paced in the rectory, replaying the sermon in his mind. His emotions had been raw, his words too close to the pain everyone felt. A knock echoed through the hall. His heart pounded. No one came to the rectory at this hour. When he opened the door, he found the mayor’s daughter, so young and trembling, her eyes wide with terror—the same look he'd seen on so many faces recently. The look of someone who had seen too much, of someone on the verge of breaking.

“They found another body,” he murmured mostly to himself, understanding before she could even speak. She nodded, her lips trembling, confirming the fear that had already settled deep in his bones.