Consciousness returned in burning shards to Gregor's flayed nerves. The scent of warp phantasms still choked the air as newly manifested spirits capered and shrieked into the darkness around him. The 13th Hour had birthed fresh nightmare in abundance.
He had thought the spectral assault an unbearable apex. But seeing the cold reality of the planet stripped from illusion was a vision that shattered mortal minds. Things indescribable flew and flopped and crawled where familiar towns once stood. The veil's tearing left only chaos.
Gregor's gouged arms stretched upward, chained to the towering wicker colossus at the ritual epicenter. Its form seemed to shift, sprouting new limbs and faces that leaked alien thoughts into reality. He was but one cell in its anatomy.
The Librarian still lived, though his corpse-white eyes leaked blood continuously from overloaded synaptic pathways. Psychic gibbering spewed from his blood-flecked lips. Lord Orias was lost to them now. As they all would be. As all were.
Around the effigy, cultists swayed and chanted mindlessly through blood bubbles as favored vessels. Once dead Brothers now wore impossible shapes, delighted by the sensations of their newfound flesh. Laughter carried on the swirling gases.
Pustulant fluids rained down as the engorged black moon pressed against strained barriers overhead. Its writhing surface rippled in anticipation of the coming harvest. At its touch, reality would unravel into singular madness.
But the ritual required cyclical completion. As the moons aligned for countless generations, the Great Rite called the damned legions back to offer up the fattened harvest. The ancient pact persisted.
Processionals of misshapen creatures emerged from the veil cracks, wailing and keening their promised arrival. Drifting spirits flocked to them, melting into the skins of their new fleshly raiments. All matter was theirs to wear.
Upon a palanquin of flayed victims came the high acolyte, chanting fevered supplications. His skin run through with pulsing warp worms, the priest in ragged orange robes clutched a writhing squash-like sacrament aloft.
This was the tithe that bought protection for untold thousands - the dread icon whose awakening they celebrated in blasphemous fashion. By anointing the dread totem, they turned away its paternal vengeance for a time.
None had spoken the cursed name aloud for generations. Yet all knew it and lived in dread of its owner's return. For on this night of Samhain Eve, the Great One rose once more to reap His promised bounty.
None could oppose its hunger when finally manifested fully. But in their desperation, any respite was welcomed. And so the cycles continued, through ages uncounted. The damning pact persisted.
Gregor's mind recoiled as the high priest drew near and held the wriggling gourd sacrament above his head. Warp-nourished vines snaked from the rough orange rind, delighting in exposed nerves.
A rasping voice chanted from within the flickering vegetable maw. "MINE...RETURN...ALWAYS MORE..." Gregor convulsed as oily tendrils sucked hungrily at cortex lobes, gorging on memories to fertilize the spreading seed.
With horror he perceived the meaning of this rite. The planet's spirit was bound to this singular corrupt harvest, and depended on their worship to persist. It was the death that sustained all death.
"Praise the Great Pumpkin Lord!" intoned the Elder priest, carving sigils through his cheeks that wept auric filth. "Tonight shall see Him manifest!" Hexed blood spattered Gregor as the knife dove anew.
It shall not come to pass, Gregor swore in grim defiance, even as needle tips probed at the base of his skull. The Inquisition's holy charge was to oppose all heathen powers. Manifesting such evil was unacceptable.
Mindful of the familiars taking root in his gray matter, Gregor intoned a banishing rite that set the Thing screeching and flailing. Psychic fire purged its burgeoning neural infestation.
The wicker colossus juddered, efflux spewing forth as screaming spirits were unbound by Gregor's ritual. The towering edifice began to list, drawing panicked screams from the horde at its base.
The warp-gourd tumbled from the priest's grasp as backlash knocked him sprawling. before Gregor's blistering gaze, the icon seemed to deflate into mere rotting squash. cut off from worship, it lost cohesion.
A deafening psychic shriek akin to shattering glass resounded across the shadowed landscape. The black moon wavered, its surface no longer bruise-colored but revealing octarine sky behind lattice fractures.
Across the planet, curses rose to screaming crescendos as bound spirits saw promised existence unravel. But louder still was the retreating vortex as banished forces were sucked back behind the tattered veil.
Above the wicker colossus the tear closed with a thunderclap, dropping Gregor into sudden silence. The dust of ages settled over empty ruins no different than before the hordes emerged. No spirits remained to haunt the night.
Gregor gasped great lungfuls as sensation returned to his flayed limbs. By some providence beyond hope, reality had been wrenched back from the precipice by his desperate ritual gambit.
But even as the wounds began to close, Gregor knew respite was temporary. The cycles would continue. Halloween would come again to All Hallows Eve World. They had won only one Night of Nights.