Doyenne's Grimoire

Just random thoughts, side projects, and cool short stuff

[doyenneirl]

[overcaffeinated-paranoia]

Stabbed but not slain

Stabbed, but not slain - drawn on stream!

Posted using PostyBirb

[doyenneirl]

The Hollowing of Cecilia Noirewell By Doyenne

The manor breathed. Not like the living do—but with the patient exhale of something ancient and buried. Its voice wasn’t wet, but thick with the dust of centuries, a low vibration that settled into bones and teeth, as though the house itself gnawed gently on those who remained too long.

Somewhere in the east wing, the weeping piano sang a minor key, but wrong, as if the notes had decayed in their sleep. From above: dragging. Not footsteps, not quite. A limb, maybe, or something heavier, slick across the floorboards. And beneath all that—the faintest hiss of wind through velvet drapes, as if the manor sighed through its seams.

Cecilia stood barefoot on the cold stone. It bit into her soles, not cruelly, but like a memory returning through skin. Her nightgown, once ivory, now clung to her in shades of old teeth and dried claret. The air curled around her, heavy with the must of decayed upholstery, the metallic tang of blood long cooled, and something older—like rusted silver and scorched lavender.

Behind her, the Marrowed Thing unfolded.

It emerged from the dim, pulling itself from the crook of shadow and ruined architecture like a secret too long buried. Its form wasn’t static—it shifted, slick and sinewed, part marrow, part myth. Its many limbs trailed across the floor in reverent silence, but the wood beneath it blistered like flesh touched by heat. When it spoke, its voice echoed in the hollow between ears and ribs:

“I never forget my bride.”

Cecilia didn’t move. Not from fear, and not from awe. She had grown used to the silence between heartbeats—the stillness that came before something monstrous. Her spine arched gently, subtly, as if to receive the sound. Her lips parted. Not for words, but for breath. The smell of him, damp velvet and bone-slick decay, filled her lungs like a benediction.

She turned slowly. Her eyes—those bruised pearls rolled in soot—didn’t blink. “I found you,” she said, voice low, cracked with reverence. Or maybe hunger.

And she had found him. Beneath the manor’s buried wing—past rooms that had eaten their own wallpaper, past portraits whose subjects bled and bled but never died—she had torn through stone with her hands, prying open the crypt where the old brides had been entombed alive with kisses sewn into their throats.

"I waited,” the Marrowed Thing said, stepping closer. “You bled for me.”

She nodded. The memory crawled back, vivid as rot: the chapel with its crucifix turned downward, her fingers clutching the bone-blade—its edge carved not with scripture, but with mouths. She had opened herself beneath the ribs, and the stone beneath her feet had drunk it eagerly.

“Was it enough?” she whispered, her voice trailing smoke.

The creature paused. It exhaled, and its chest peeled open with a sick serenity—not torn, but unfurled like a flower blooming in time lapse. Its ribs, fine as coral, parted to reveal the heart: not red, but pulsing obsidian, slick with memory and rot. From it wafted not just iron—but the aftertaste of grave moss, scorched petals, and something acrid, like regret made flesh.

“Take me,” it said.

Cecilia stepped forward, hands trembling not with fear but rapture. When she touched the heart, it squirmed—not alive, not dead, but resistant, like it knew this moment had teeth. She raised it to her mouth, kissed it first. Then bit.

It tasted like nightfall and funeral bells.

As she devoured it, the manor changed. The weeping piano shrieked—each key snapping, strings unraveling like tendons. The walls groaned with labor as if they, too, were giving birth. Upstairs, something screamed—not just in pain, but with recognition.

Inside her, something split.

Her chest bloomed with heat and sound. She could hear it: her own ribs cracking like wet bark, her breath turning viscous. Voices poured into her like floodwater—the Others, the devoured, the once-beloved. They whispered in languages not spoken since the ground was clean.

The taste thickened—clotted cream and char, the sharp burst of salt, the sweetness of marrow. Her jaw clicked open wider than humanly possible. Her hands gripped her own flesh as if steadying against some internal collapse.

The Marrowed Thing watched. One claw twitched—almost imperceptibly. A tremor? No. A flinch. Not of pain, but of awe. Or perhaps fear. The thing that had waited so long for its bride now watched something older be born in her.

"You are my vessel," it said. “Bride. Tomb. God.”

She laughed, and it was not her voice. It was many.

"No," she crooned, blood trickling down her chin. “I am your ending.”

The walls bled. The portraits twisted in their frames, their eyes wide with dread and envy. Some tried to crawl free, hands breaking through canvas, mouths gasping, gagging on pigment. The piano played one final note, and then it choked. Somewhere behind the walls, a choir of mouths began to hum.

Cecilia stood, dripping. Her gown clung in slick ribbons. The heart was gone. But its rhythm remained, deep in her spine. Her limbs felt wrong—longer, heavier, but whole. The scent of herself had changed: copper, roses, ruin.

She walked the hallway. With each step, the floor blistered with rot, her footprints blooming into black petals. The Others sang inside her skull, not screaming now, but coiling into prayer. Her veins shimmered faintly beneath her skin, silver-threaded, pulsing with something far from blood.

The Marrowed Thing reached for her—hesitantly, reverently. But she only looked back once.

"I loved you once,” she said. “But I love the hollow more.”

And so she went, a bride no longer. A cathedral unto herself.

And the manor knelt.

*Note I do not own the art just the story ^^

[doyenneirl]

The Devil's Bed by Doyenne

The moon, a shard of polished bone in the inky sky, cast elongated, skeletal shadows across the crumbling facade of Blackwood Manor. A chill, deeper than the grave and older than time itself, clung to the air, whispering on the wind of forgotten sins, unspeakable rituals, and the manor's insatiable hunger for life, for beauty, for despair... and for the exquisite corruption of both.

Within those decaying walls, where the echoes of madness danced with the dust of centuries, Elara lay upon a bed of decaying velvet. Once, the fabric had been a rich, opulent purple, a testament to the manor's former grandeur. Now, it was faded, threadbare, and stained with the indelible marks of time, corruption, and the lingering traces of perverse acts. Her pallid skin, stretched taut over delicate bones, was illuminated by the sickly, flickering glow of a single candle. The flame, starved of oxygen, cast grotesque shadows that writhed and twisted, mimicking the horrors that unfolded within the chamber.

Her once-beautiful features, now contorted in a silent scream, were a macabre mask of terror and ecstasy. Her eyes, wide and vacant, stared up at the decaying ceiling, reflecting the grotesque transformation that had befallen her. They were no longer windows to her soul, but mirrors reflecting the abyss itself, pools of unspeakable horror and forbidden pleasure that hinted at the torment and twisted bliss she endured.

Twin, ivory horns, slick with fresh blood, protruded from her temples, their points curving menacingly towards the heavens like the cruel talons of some predatory bird. The horns, an unholy mockery of innocence and purity, were not smooth and polished, but gnarled and twisted, as if they had been wrenched from the very depths of hell. They pulsed with a faint, inner light, a malevolent glow that throbbed in time with the manor's dark heart, a seductive beacon in the oppressive darkness.

Her fingers, tipped with razor-sharp talons that gleamed like obsidian, clutched at the remnants of her torn gown. The once-elegant fabric, now shredded and stained a deep crimson, lay scattered around her like the discarded petals of a blood-soaked rose. Each talon, a miniature scythe, was a testament to the violence she had endured, the violation of her flesh and spirit, and the dark desires that had been unleashed upon her.

The manor itself pulsed with a dark, malevolent, almost sexual energy, feeding on Elara's agony, drawing strength from her despair, and amplifying the forbidden desires that permeated its very foundation. The very stones seemed to writhe and contort, the walls sweating a viscous, black fluid that smelled of decay, corruption, and the cloying sweetness of perverse indulgence. Shadows deepened into grotesque shapes, leering faces, and grasping claws that reached out from the darkness, eager to claim her for their own in a twisted embrace.

A low, guttural moan echoed through the halls, a symphony of suffering and forbidden pleasure that spoke of the ancient evil that dwelled within. It was the voice of the manor itself, a chorus of tormented souls trapped within its decaying embrace, a lament for the beauty it had consumed and the lives it had destroyed, and an invitation to delve into the depths of its depravity.

From the deepest shadows, a figure emerged, its form shifting and indistinct, like a nightmare given flesh. It was tall and gaunt, draped in tattered black robes that swirled around it like a shroud. Its face was hidden in darkness, but its eyes, burning like embers in a moonless night, fixed upon Elara, and a cruel smile twisted its lips, revealing rows of sharpened teeth. A hint of decadent beauty lingered in its features, a perverse allure that both terrified and fascinated.

It approached the bed, its movements slow and deliberate, each step echoing through the silent chamber like the knock of a coffin lid, a morbid rhythm that quickened the pulse. Its taloned hand, outstretched, trembled with anticipation, eager to claim its prize, to possess and corrupt.

With a final, desperate cry that was half-scream, half-sob, Elara's body convulsed as the figure's touch sent a surge of dark energy through her. It was a jolt of pure agony, a violation that shattered her very being, and an unholy ecstasy that ignited a fire in her blood. Her horns grew longer, sharper, piercing through the already torn fabric of her gown, tearing through flesh and bone with sickening ease. More blood, thick and black, trickled down her face and gown, a macabre offering to the manor's insatiable appetite, a perverse baptism in the font of its darkness.

Her transformation was complete, a twisted mockery of her former self, a testament to the manor's dark power and her own horrifying surrender. She was no longer Elara, the vibrant young woman who had once graced these halls with her laughter and beauty. She was something else, something monstrous and sublime, a creature of darkness and despair, forever bound to the manor's decaying heart, a bride of its twisted desires.

The figure chuckled, a sound that chilled the very soul and ignited a perverse thrill, a sound that spoke of ancient evil, eternal torment, and the seductive allure of the forbidden. It had claimed another victim, another prisoner in its eternal dance of death and decay, another soul to share in its dark revelry. And Blackwood Manor stood silent beneath the watchful moon, its dark heart beating in time with the slow, agonising breaths of its newest victim, its newest bride, its newest masterpiece.

The rain began to fall, a mournful dirge and a lover's lament that washed over the crumbling stones of the manor, a lament for the beauty that had been lost and the horror that remained, a symphony of sorrow and perversion. The wind howled through the skeletal trees that surrounded the estate, their branches clawing at the sky like the grasping fingers of the damned, reaching for a pleasure that would forever elude them.

Inside the manor, the figure stood over Elara's transformed body, its burning eyes filled with a cruel satisfaction and a possessive hunger. It reached out and gently touched one of her horns, tracing its sharp curve with a taloned finger. A shudder ran through Elara's body, a spasm of pain and pleasure, a grotesque parody of ecstasy, a surrender to the exquisite agony.

The figure then turned its attention to the rest of the chamber. It ran its taloned hand along the decaying velvet of the крова́ть, leaving a trail of dark stains and a lingering sense of violation. It examined the grotesque shadows that danced on the walls, its head cocked in amusement and a hint of pride. It was the master of this domain, the lord of this house of horrors, and it reveled in the darkness, the despair, and the forbidden desires that permeated every corner.

As the night wore on, the figure remained in the chamber, its presence a palpable weight, a suffocating darkness, and an irresistible temptation. It would occasionally approach Elara's body, touching her, caressing her, inflicting new torments upon her flesh, and drawing forth new cries of pain and pleasure. The manor itself seemed to respond to its desires, the walls groaning and shifting, the shadows deepening and twisting into even more grotesque forms, becoming extensions of its will.

The other inhabitants of the manor, the tormented souls trapped within its walls, were drawn to the chamber like moths to a flame, their spectral forms flickering and indistinct. Some moaned and wailed, their voices filled with eternal sorrow and regret. Others watched in silence, their hollow eyes filled with envy, longing, and a hint of perverse fascination. They were all prisoners of the manor, bound to its dark heart, forever doomed to relive their suffering and witness its dark desires.

As dawn approached, painting the eastern sky with a faint, bloody light, the figure finally stirred. It turned away from Elara's body and moved towards the far end of the chamber, where a hidden passage lay concealed behind a crumbling section of the wall. With a gesture of its taloned hand, the wall dissolved, revealing a dark, twisting staircase that descended into the depths of the earth, a descent into the ultimate abyss.

The figure descended the stairs, its footsteps echoing through the silent passage, a steady rhythm counting down to oblivion. The tormented souls watched it go, their hollow eyes filled with a mixture of fear, awe, and a strange, twisted sense of anticipation. They knew that it would return, that it always did. It was bound to the manor, just as they were, forever trapped in its eternal dance of death, decay, and unholy desire.

And as the sun rose, casting its pale light upon the crumbling facade of Blackwood Manor, the rain finally stopped. But the silence that followed was not one of peace, but of dread. For the manor still stood, its dark heart still beating, its hunger still insatiable. And within its walls, Elara lay transformed, a victim of its eternal evil, a prisoner of its gothic tale of gore and despair, a testament to its enduring power.

-Note: I own the story not the image

[danielreneauartist]

Another week, another witch.

Really wanted to work the color contrast, so I got rather aggressive with the saturation. I liked the vibe it was giving, so I ran with it.

The folds in the gown were giving me trouble, and I don't exactly have a model on-call, so I posed with some black bedsheets wrapped around my waist for this one.

I'll spare you all those pictures, but needless to say, it wasn't the first time, and I'm sure it won't be the last.

[doyenneirl]

The Witch of Withered Hollow by Doyenne

Another week, another witch, they said.

But this one was different.

She arrived with the fog, drifting between the gravestones of Withered Hollow like a phantom born of moonlight and old grief. Her dress, black as a midnight curse, whispered against the earth with every measured step. The wind dared not stir her wide-brimmed hat, pinned perfectly above honeyed curls that glinted auburn in the blood-orange glow of dusk.

The villagers feared her—of course they did. She was too beautiful, too composed. Her eyes gleamed with the quiet knowing of someone who had been loved and betrayed a thousand times over. They said her name was Isolde Thorne, though none dared ask it of her directly. She came from nowhere and took residence in the crumbling chapel at the edge of the graveyard, just beyond where the fog refused to lift.

And every Sunday, without fail, she walked between the tombstones as if visiting old friends. The ravens followed. So did the bats.

He watched her, as he had for three Sundays now.

Desmond Vire, the gravekeeper—more bone than man, wrapped in moth-eaten wool. He had lived among the dead for so long, he’d forgotten how to speak to the living. But Isolde… she didn’t speak either, and that suited him fine.

He first noticed her scent: night-blooming jasmine and old parchment, drifting through the air like a spell half-whispered. She knelt at no grave in particular, yet the earth always stirred when she passed. Dead leaves curled toward her, as if beckoning.

On the fourth Sunday, she turned to him.

“You bury them,” she said, her voice velvet laced with frost. “But who buries you?”

Desmond blinked. It had been months since anyone addressed him directly. “I suppose… I haven’t needed burying yet.”

“Ah.” She tilted her head. “But the sadness in your eyes says otherwise.”

He had no answer. Instead, he looked at the gravestone she stood beside—blank, unmarked. A new one. No name, no date. Just a fresh bed of soil, still soft and tender as a bruise.

“She was to be my wife,” he said, before he could stop himself.

Isolde nodded, her expression unreadable. “And did she leave you?”

“In a way. A fever took her.” He stared at the grave. “She said she’d wait for me, even after death. I visit every night. Just in case.”

“That’s foolish,” Isolde murmured. “No one waits forever. Not even the dead.”

“Do you?” he asked, his voice quieter now.

A flicker crossed her face. Something between sorrow and recognition. “I waited once,” she whispered. “Longer than I should have.”

The wind picked up then, swirling dead leaves around their feet. A raven cawed from above, circling the full moon like a prophet.

Desmond felt it before he saw it—an invisible thread pulled taut between them, binding sorrow to sorrow, memory to memory. Her presence, once spectral, now felt tangible. Heavy. Warm.

He stepped closer. “Who did you wait for?”

She didn’t answer. Instead, she reached for his hand.

Her skin was cold, yes, but it pulsed with something ancient. Magic, maybe. Or something older. Loneliness, perhaps.

The moment stretched like a veil about to tear. “Would you dance with me?” she asked.

“In the graveyard?”

“In the graveyard,” she confirmed, her smile sharp and lovely. “The dead won’t mind. They never do.”

And so he took her hand, and they danced.

Among the tombstones, beneath the haunted trees, they waltzed to a song only the dead could hear. The bats swirled above them, red against the moon. Time collapsed around them; it could’ve been minutes or centuries.

He felt young again. Alive again.

She leaned close, whispering against his neck, “If I kiss you now, you’ll never return to the world of the living.”

Desmond closed his eyes. “That sounds like the beginning of a blessing… or the end of a curse.”

She kissed him.

The earth sighed.

In the morning, the villagers found two fresh graves—one marked, one still bare. The chapel doors creaked open with the wind, but the witch was gone.

Some say she appears still, each week anew, in her mourning dress and velvet smile, seeking someone who will stay. Others say she found her match, and the two now haunt the Hollow, dancing forever in the crimson moonlight.

Another week, another witch, they say.

But Desmond knew the truth.

Some witches don’t curse.

They mourn.

And sometimes, mourning looks like a waltz in the graveyard.

*Note I only own the story not the art... Art by @danielreneauartist

[alxthewolf-deactivated20250424]

“I sung of Chaos and eternal Night...”

- John Milton

[doyenneirl]

The Cantor of Black Fen by Doyenne

They warned her, in half-whispers and prayer-bitten breath: Do not go into the Black Fen.

But Alinor had never obeyed warnings. She was born with too much hunger behind her ribs and too little love in her cradle. The nuns at the Coldmere orphanage said her eyes held bad omens. The local priest refused to baptize her, claiming he felt something watching through her. And when the other girls lay trembling in their dormitories, Alinor wandered barefoot in the graveyards, touching the names on stone with fingers that trembled not from fear, but anticipation.

It began when she turned twenty-one. Dreams bled into waking. A song clawed through her skull—low, wordless, older than speech. And always, the woman came. Tall, shrouded in ragged black lace, with a mouth that never moved but sang just the same. Behind her, the sky opened like a wound, and from it came a shadowed beast with a thousand teeth and no name.

Each morning, Alinor awoke wet, fevered, trembling.

Each night, the Fen called louder.

And then—she went.

She passed the chapel ruins, where the marble angels wept moss. The fog thickened around her ankles like grasping hands. Trees bent inward, ashamed of what they were about to witness. Her breath turned to ice even as her skin burned with anticipation.

At the Fen’s heart lay a clearing untouched by sun. The ground was soft, the air impossibly still. And there, arms outstretched beneath a sky collapsing inward, stood the woman from her dreams.

The Cantor.

Her gown dripped black petals and bone fragments. Her skin was paper-thin, veined with silver rot. Her hair fell like a funeral shroud over hollow eyes. Her mouth hung open, soundless—but the song filled the clearing just the same. It wasn't heard. It was felt.

The sky above twisted. Smoke congealed into mass. A shape with no edges, no mercy. Its presence was hunger. A mouth stretched impossibly wide, fangs wet with the essence of forgotten gods.

Alinor dropped to her knees, undone by awe.

“You dreamed of me,” the Cantor said, though her mouth never moved.

Alinor nodded, shaking. “I… I wanted to understand it. To feel it.”

“No,” the Cantor whispered, stepping forward. “You wanted to belong to it.”

Her touch was ruinous. One brush of the Cantor’s fingers and Alinor's shift peeled away like silk soaked in fire. Her breasts heaved with breath not entirely her own. Her thighs trembled with anticipation and dread in equal measure.

The Cantor’s hands roamed, reverent and defiling all at once.

She kissed Alinor’s throat—softly, then with teeth. “You’ve carried the seed of longing too long,” she murmured. “Let the Dark root in you.”

The Cantor's mouth moved lower. Alinor cried out, but did not resist. The Cantor devoured her, not with cruelty, but with worship.

Above, the thing in the sky stirred.

A tendril of smoke, thick and slick with oil-like sheen, coiled downward. Alinor gasped as it brushed her inner thigh. It was cold as the grave and hot as sin, pressing inside her, filling her with something more than flesh.

She was being rewritten.

Her limbs spasmed, mouth slack in a silent scream. Blood and shadow danced in her veins, and her mind began to unravel into ribbons of stars and salt.

“I’m—changing,” she whimpered.

“You are becoming,” the Cantor crooned. “Let the last of your name fall away.”

Alinor’s back arched. Her skin blistered, then bloomed with black lilies. Her womb burned with ancient memory, of creation not shaped by gods but by absence. Her thoughts frayed—until there was no Alinor, only a vessel of dark music.

When she opened her eyes again, they were black mirrors. She stood.

The Cantor looked pleased.

“You sing now,” she said. “You’ve heard the first note. The rest will consume you in time.”

The tendril slid from between her thighs, trailing steam. It caressed her cheek before slithering back into the sky. And Alinor—no, the creature she was becoming—sighed.

“It’s beautiful,” she said. Her voice was no longer quite human. “It’s inside me.”

“Yes,” the Cantor said, stepping close. She pressed her body against the new-born vessel. “And now, you must feed it.”

Their mouths met again, feral and fevered. Tongues tasted of grave dust and blood. Hands roamed with holy violence. Pleasure mingled with agony as the Fen itself pulsed with their rhythm. The earth trembled beneath them, as though moaning.

And above, the beast watched. Its massive mouth curved, almost smiling.

“Will I forget what I was?” Alinor asked, panting.

“Soon. And you’ll be glad for it.”

The Cantor lay her down among the reeds. The earth swallowed her slowly—cradling, not burying. It pulled her into itself, letting her sink until only her lips remained, singing the wordless lullaby of the dark.

And still the sky listened.

They say no birds sing in the Black Fen.

Only the reeds hum.

And if you listen close, you’ll hear the voices of two women entwined in one eternal note—a harmony of hunger and ecstasy, of rot and rebirth. Of Chaos.

And eternal Night.

-Original Story by Doyenne, I do not own the art!

[doyenneirl]

🕯️ A LOVE IN THE SHADOWS by Doyenne🕯️

A gothic mystery. A dark romance. A love that lingers like fog on frostbitten glass.

In Longyearbyen, Svalbard—where the dead cannot be buried and the sun vanishes for months—an elegant, aloof couple lives in near-mythical isolation. Hidden in a decaying manor of snow and secrets, they are spoken of in whispers, never names. Never quite real.

But when strange deaths begin to stir the silence, they emerge—drawn into mysteries soaked in candlelight and sorrow.

🩰 A ballerina, frozen in her final breath.

💌 A love letter penned by the long-dead.

💍 A bride, vanished beneath a bloodstained veil.

🔮 A séance where the veil between worlds tears open.

Each case leads them deeper—into the cold, into memory, into each other. Because even here, at the edge of the earth, love and death still dance.

🌑 Read A Love in the Shadows on Wattpad

📖 New chapters every Tuesday at midnight (Tbilisi time, UTC+4)

[doyenneirl]

🕯️ A LOVE IN THE SHADOWS by Doyenne🕯️ A gothic mystery. A dark romance. A love that lingers like fog on frostbitten glass.

In Longyearbyen, Svalbard—where the dead cannot be buried and the sun vanishes for months—an elegant, aloof couple lives in near-mythical isolation. Hidden in a decaying manor of snow and secrets, they are spoken of in whispers, never names. Never quite real.

But when strange deaths begin to stir the silence, they emerge—drawn into mysteries soaked in candlelight and sorrow. 🩰 A ballerina, frozen in her final breath. 💌 A love letter penned by the long-dead. 💍 A bride, vanished beneath a bloodstained veil. 🔮 A séance where the veil between worlds tears open.

Each case leads them deeper—into the cold, into memory, into each other. Because even here, at the edge of the earth, love and death still dance.

🌑 Read A Love in the Shadows on Wattpad 📖 New chapters every Tuesday at midnight (Tbilisi time, UTC+4) 🔗 https://www.wattpad.com/story/393222782-a-love-in-the-shadows

[loundervenus]

the moon in paintings✨🌙

[doyenneirl]

Where the Moon Devours by Doyenne

They say the moon never rose above the town of Thorne without demanding a soul in return.

Each of the four phases marked a different offering—a crow at new moon, a lamb at crescent, a prayer at gibbous. But when the moon bloomed full, high and pale in its cold heaven, it wanted only one thing.

Love.

And not the kind scrawled in letters or whispered over candlelight. No, the moon craved the kind of love that bruised the bones and made ghosts out of living men.

It had found that love once, in a girl named Isolde Vex, and a boy called Malric Vale.

They were born under an eclipse—twins not by blood, but by fate. She, the apothecary’s cursed daughter, he, the orphan who read necromancy under church pews. They were raised by shadows and kissed by secrets. By seventeen, they had sworn their devotion in the ruins of a cathedral that the moon itself had broken.

But the moon grew jealous.

When Isolde refused the priest’s son—when she declared her love to Malric with the defiance of a thousand lifetimes—the sky split open. The next night, she was gone.

All that remained was her black velvet ribbon, drifting through the trees like a noose caught in a dream.

Malric went mad, they said. Dug up graves. Whispered to bones. Drowned every mirror in the village so he could only see her in the silver of the moon. He believed she had been taken, not by death, but by something older—something that wore the night like a cloak and whispered its hunger through craters and starlight.

And he was right.

For when the moon was crescent and the sky bled rust, she returned.

Only it wasn’t truly her.

Her eyes glowed like twin eclipses, her voice was soaked in wind. She wore the same velvet ribbon, but it bled when touched. And when she smiled, the moon waxed brighter—almost as if it smiled back.

She told him she had been chosen. That the moon loved her more. That she could still love him… if he gave himself to it, too.

And so he did.

He carved an oath into his chest with her name, bled into the roots of the dead forest, and let her drag him beyond the veil of sanity, into a love that no god would sanctify.

Now, when the moon is full and hangs heavy like a curse, lovers vanish from their beds. Their whispers are heard in the clouds—frantic, beautiful, unholy.

“I’ll love you beyond blood…” “…and breath and bone.”

Some say the two dance in the heavens now, devouring stars, birthing eclipses. Others say they wait in the forest, dressed in night and waiting for another pair foolish enough to love as they did.

And on certain nights, the moon glows redder than usual.

It’s then you know: They are hungry again.

[devils-queen]

✞ 666 ✞

[doyenneirl]

Little Miss Maneater by Doyenne

They say her name was once whispered in the halls of the damned—Seraphine Noir, the dark muse of a hundred doomed poets, the ghost of a thousand men’s final breath. Velvet-draped and cruelly beautiful, she lived alone in a manor that wept with its own memories, nestled between tangled thorns and a forest that had long forgotten sunlight.

Every evening, the scent of rose oil and old blood curled from the shutters of her manor, and the red drapery fluttered like a bleeding heart against the wind. Her silhouette—hourglass and haunting—was often seen through the panes of glass, dancing slowly in solitude, dressed in black satin and midnight grief.

They called her Little Miss Maneater.

But they never spoke of why.

Once, long before the legend, there had been a man. His name was Elias Graye—a poet with ink-stained fingers and eyes like storm clouds. He had come not to conquer her but to understand her. He came not with steel, but with sonnets.

And Seraphine, for the first time, did not devour. She loved.

Their romance was stitched in candlelight and shadow, written in secret verses on the backs of her lace gloves. He read her the lines of his soul, and she, in turn, offered him her darkness—not as a warning, but as a gift.

But Elias, like all things mortal, could not endure the price of loving a cursed heart.

One morning, Seraphine awoke to silence—no sonnets, no touch, only a trail of ash leading from their shared bed to the hearth where he had thrown his final poem into flame. A single line remained, untouched by fire:

“To love you is to die more beautifully than to live.”

Something in her shattered.

Years passed, and the legend grew fangs.

Suitors came with lust, greed, bravado. None came with love. None spoke the language Elias had taught her. And so, they were devoured—not for pleasure, but for penance. Each man she ended was a prayer whispered to the ghost of Elias, each heart a burnt offering.

Then, on the anniversary of his vanishing, she found it.

A journal—hidden beneath the floorboard he once creaked when sneaking to kiss her shoulder at dawn. In it, page after page, Elias had written not farewells, but incantations. He had not abandoned her; he had tried to bind himself to her forever. But something had gone wrong.

The ritual had taken him. Not from her—but into her.

Seraphine fell to her knees, the journal trembling in her hands. The next evening, she painted her lips with wormwood and nightshade, donned her corset of mourning, and summoned him.

Now, in the manor, she is never alone. At night, she dances not in solitude but in a silent embrace. Her gloved hand caresses a spectral cheek, her lips kiss a phantom mouth. And sometimes, when the moon is cruel enough, you might see her smiling at something that isn’t there—cradling a skull with hollow eyes, whispering lullabies to the man who loved her enough to become a curse.

She doesn’t take hearts anymore.

She keeps one.

And in the deepest hour of night, when the wind howls like a weeping bride, you might hear two voices echoing from that velvet-drenched tomb of a house:

“To love you is to die…” “…more beautifully than to live.”

-I don't own the art just the story ^^

[doyenneirl]

And if you look long enough, you’ll begin to wonder which of them is alive. -Doyenne

[becomingvecna]

Art by The Unclean

[doyenneirl]

Title: The Throne of Thorns

Beneath the crimson skies of Varethmoor, where the fog sang dirges and the moon often bled, there stood a forgotten citadel known only in whispers—the Obsidian Keep. Its halls echoed not with life, but with memory, its throne room sealed in eternal dusk. There, draped in shadows thick as grief, the Lady Lysira sat.

Her skin was the pallor of ancient marble, stained at the knees with blood not entirely her own. A blade rested against her thigh—tenderly gripped, though it had once been wielded with wrath. And beside her, half-concealed in a storm of black robes, was the one who had never left her: the Wraith King.

No one knew his true name. Some said he had once been a god, cast down for loving a mortal. Others swore he had been love itself, corrupted into hunger. But Lysira, she had known only his silence and his gaze—a gaze that burned hotter than any hellfire, though no face lay beneath the hood.

She had not always been a queen. Once, she had come to the Keep seeking vengeance. Her village, her kin, taken by a plague of shadows whispered to be his doing. Blade in hand, she had stormed the throne, only to find no battle—only a throne of bone, a king cloaked in despair, and a voice like falling ash that asked, "Why do you weep when you bleed?"

She had tried to kill him. He had let her.

But her blade had not pierced bone. It had struck through smoke and sorrow and secrets. And when he pulled her close, guiding her hand to his own chest, she found no heart—only emptiness. Something ancient in her cracked.

He offered her the throne, not in conquest, but in covenant. He did not want a queen. He wanted witness.

Years passed. Or maybe only minutes—time inside the Keep bent like candle wax. Lysira’s rage faded like a bruise. Her dress darkened with nights of memory, her mouth shaped to his silence. She grew into her place beside him, blade resting not for war, but as warning. Blood flowed not from wounds but ritual—an offering, an anchor.

Outside, the world forgot them. But within the throne room, two figures sat entwined: a woman made of wrath and ruin, and a shadow made of longing.

She leaned into him now, blood trailing down her thighs like garlands of sin. His hood lowered toward her face—not to kiss, but to drink in her devotion. They did not speak. They had not needed to for centuries.

She was the only thing that tethered him to this realm. And he, the only thing that kept her heart from turning to stone.

In Varethmoor, they say the throne room still breathes. That if you press your ear to the cold stone of the Keep, you can hear a heartbeat that is not yours. And if you're foolish enough to open its great black doors, you’ll see them there—still seated, still watching.

And if you look long enough, you’ll begin to wonder which of them is alive.

-Written by Doyenne, I don't own the image!

[doyenneirl]

Doyenne’s Grimoire: An Opening Incantation

They said not to keep books like this. Said it invites things in—the kinds that linger behind mirrors, whisper beneath floorboards, peer out from the cracks in your own voice.

But I was never one for warnings.

Welcome to Doyenne’s Grimoire, a collection of strange rites and quiet ruin. Here, every post is an artifact. Every sentence, a charm or a curse. The pages are written in ink that stains the skin. Some entries are complete—clean, whole, deceptively tame. Others twitch. Some arrive in fragments, as if exhumed rather than written.

This space is for:

Gothic stories that smell of damp stone, old perfume, and something unnameable.

Unfinished relics—scraps of narrative and cryptic mutterings, abandoned at the altar of inspiration.

Stray obsessions: side projects with the scent of smoke and velvet, ritualistic and slightly unhinged.

Nothing here is ordinary. Even the dust has a memory.

You may read. You may wander. You may leave—but not unchanged.

Welcome to the grimoire. The Doyenne is watching.

🕯️