56: Bells
Entry directly watched by Phoenix.Hooded figures covered in feathers and ink fill the streets of Malkiz, a miasma of incense following them as they peer into buildings. Every so often, one of the figures pulls a piece of parchment out of their robes, coats it with a viscous, dark fluid, and plants it on the door of a building. The smoke is too thick to read the paper - the inhabitants will see their eviction notice the next day, their homes claimed by the cult of Phoenix to build a sprawling shrine. No one challenges them, but their censers are silent, avoiding drawing the ire of any creatures roaming nearby.
Their censers are silent, but a bell rings out inside a nearby home. Each cultist turns slowly. A bookcase rattles like a poltergeist's plaything in an abandoned building. Another bell rings out nearby, muffled and electronic. Something shuffles in a nearby alleyway. A cultist's phone goes off, their ringtone the sound of bells at midnight. They cannot silence it. The darkness takes them, and all that is left behind is a page that rings out with the sound of a single chime as it hits the floor.
Hello, Phoenix.
Something massive - all flesh and hands and sagging skin, its mouth reaching, grasping, almost curious more than anything - shuffles into the incense-soaked street as every home lights up at once. A cacophany of every bell known to history rings out of pages, books, search terms, holoscreens, empty bookshelves that remember holding thoughts once. An eviction notice peels itself from the door with the sound of a glass bell breaking in two. The cultists' capes, pages holding bleeding ink, scream with wordless thoughts as inhuman hands wrap around them.
As the last cloaked figure is lost to the creature from the Chasm, the street goes dark.