//: [Baptism in Blood]
[felichin8] | [13/01/2026]
I write this not as a journal or as testimony, but as an imprint of memory—set down to preserve what the flesh no longer carries after its first reshaping. I do not expect to succumb to insanity; on the contrary, I find myself excited by what awaits me. However, as a precaution, and as an attempt to keep my sense of self intact, I must set down my memories, and store them in one place.
It began with curiosity—innocent curiosity. Then came observation. Research. Interaction. Devotees of Nälkä appeared to be an eccentric bunch, but their ideas resonated with me. They said they would not force me to do anything I did not want to do; only faithfulness and understanding were required. At first, that restraint felt like reassurance. Over time, it began to feel like distance. Devotion, I learned, was something else entirely. I wanted to earn respect. More than that, I wanted to be seen as one of them—to belong to something that claimed purpose rather than comfort. It was presented as simple: forfeit conventionality and embrace the strength and capabilities of flesh.
I didn’t accept immediately. My eagerness faded slightly after I inquired about the specifics. The thought of having my body permanently altered frightened me—especially after I learned the process, or at least a crude idea of it: a sacrifice, the renunciation of one’s body and a form of rebirth, meant to happen deep inside their Kiraak, their home.
Of course, doubt didn’t last long, because the feeling of being an outsider was suffocating. I didn’t feel like one of them, I couldn’t relate to them, and my experiences were nothing like theirs. Yes, they were accepting, they allowed me, and others like myself, in their home. And they even seemed to enjoy our presence. But their eyes didn’t sparkle with camaraderie when they were on me. It made me feel lesser and inferior. I didn’t know why.
Eventually, after spending some time drowning in nervousness and anxiety, my thoughts decided to settle. It wasn’t too long until I was standing next to a few other eager fellows like me. My stance was firm as I listened to some kind of priest speak. He welcomed us without warmth, but his words didn’t carry hostility either—they were careful and measured, as though recited countless times before.
I remember the carnous scent of flesh and the pulsing veins beneath my feet more than I remember his speech. Only fragments of it come to mind, none important enough to write over what followed. The priest walked away from the pulpit, and told us to follow him, so we did. He stopped next to a depression in the floor—a pool, sunken and wide, filled with dark liquid. In the dim light, with everything already red, I couldn't be certain it was blood. But the smell—metallic, thick, unmistakable—left little doubt.
The edge was ringed with what looked like teeth—inverted incisors jutting outward from the gums of the floor. It was clearly a fence to keep the careless from falling in. Only one section remained open, toothless, where a long spine extended over the liquid like a diving board. The vertebrae were worn smooth from use. The priest stood next to the opened section, and told us to form a line. I was second.
The priest’s brief invocation that followed was too short for me to finish processing what was going to happen. Next thing I knew, the man in front of me stepped into the liquid and rapidly sank into it. It was so fast, I started to think maybe something pulled him in. At that moment, my mind started to race faster than I thought it could. Was that going to be me? Was it all a trick, and I was actually going to be sacrificed and die? The priest’s words broke my thoughts in half, he was urging me to go forward, so I did. Weeks of walking through those pulsing corridors, past exposed organs and living walls, and I had never turned back. Not until then, when it was too late to matter. But even so, I was scared, my heart raced, my mind wavered. My limbs almost gave up, the pain in my head was so intense it felt like tendrils spreading all over my body, desperate to pierce through and escape. Maybe I should have tried to escape too.
Next thing I knew, my body accepted things faster than my mind did, and I was sinking.
The liquid was warm—too warm, it pressed against me from every side, thick and clinging, forcing its way into my nose, my mouth, my ears. I should have choked, I should have drowned. But my lungs filled and I was still fully conscious.
I tasted copper. Rot. Something else I couldn’t name.
The pressure increased. I thought it’d crush me, but it just felt as if I were being consumed. My entire body rebelled against itself; I could feel my skin softening, the boundaries of my body losing definition. I couldn’t tell where I ended and the liquid began. My fingertips had gone numb—or maybe they'd dissolved entirely. For a moment, I thought that maybe that was exactly what was going to happen to me—my body was going to be consumed and added right into a pool of revolting, viscous liquid made out of probably hundreds of human corpses.
But it didn't take long for my faith to resurface. It was all a process, I was sure of it. I just had to endure it. Even drowning in living blood, my willpower refused to let me break. That didn't mean I wasn't terrified.
Then the pain started.
My bones cracked. Not bending—breaking. I felt each one snap in sequence, and heard them splinter inside me. They displaced, pushing against my lungs, puncturing things they shouldn’t be able to touch. Then, all of the sudden, I could feel them sliding back into place. But it felt wrong, as if they were angled differently, an anatomical aberration.
My spine twisted. Vertebrae rotated against each other, grinding, dislocating. I felt each disc compress and rupture, felt the column of my back come apart piece by piece before snapping back together in a new order. Just writing this threatens to make my bones ache.
The pressure inside me built until I thought I'd burst. My pores opened—all of them at once. I felt my skin weep, felt something seeping out or maybe in, I couldn't tell anymore. Then they sealed shut again, trapping whatever had changed inside me. I wasn’t sure if my eyes were open or not. I hoped I still had eyes. Not like I wanted to see what was happening to me.
Everything felt systematic, first were my bones, then my skin, and then I could feel my organs wrong themselves too. My stomach folded in on itself, dissolved, reformed into something denser. It was mockery—being able to feel every single thing that happened to my body, to the smallest detail. Maybe it was on purpose, maybe they wanted me to know what I was going through while it happened.
My liver split and merged back together. At the same time, I felt my kidneys shift positions, felt tubes and vessels disconnect and reconnect in different places. I could feel my viscera taking abnormal shapes, my veins opening up to let the extrinsic liquid pass through.
My lungs collapsed and reinflated wrong, but I couldn’t breathe to test them—I was drowning, after all.
My heart stopped abruptly.
Then it started again—but the feeling was alien, the beat felt foreign. What else can I say? Everything felt wrong. My body was being dismantled and rebuilt into something else against my will. Though, it was by my will, wasn’t it? I chose what happened to me. I chose what I am now.
I don't know how long it lasted.
Time shattered when my bones did. Every break felt like an eternity. Every reconstruction felt instantaneous. The pain didn't even come in waves, it felt layered, building on itself until I couldn't separate one agony from another. It seemed like some kind of plot to make me suffer as much as possible, but I knew it wasn’t that, it felt like everything had purpose. If it was truly a trick, then faith meant nothing. But if faith meant nothing, then I meant nothing. And I couldn't accept that. Not after getting so far. But acceptance wasn’t mine to give anymore. My body made the choice for me. Then I felt nothing.
I don't remember waking up, because I'm not sure I was ever truly unconscious. One moment there was nothing, and the next I was lying on the warm floor of the Kiraak, surrounded by other devotees. I had no idea how I got there. Maybe I swam back up, maybe my unconscious body did its best effort to float, or maybe the others were kind enough to pull me out.
I tried to breathe. It worked—but it felt wrong, like I was remembering how instead of just doing it. My heart beat steadily, but the rhythm was foreign. I looked down at my hands. They looked the same. Everything looked the same.
But I knew, even before anyone spoke, that I wasn't.
"Welcome to the Nälkä."