1. In Nero’s rotting Rome, Campanula Necatrix—a cursed scar by the Lupercal groves—sealed shut at dusk. Marcus Aelius, Praetorian centurion forged in Colosseum bloodbaths, scoffed at wife Flavia’s dread as their son Titus toyed with a bone-etched anklet. “Ghost tales for cowards,” he growled, gladius ready.

Giggles pierced the air first—childish, cracking like snapped spines from the blackwoods. Titus echoed, eyes glazing milky, fingers twitching to an unseen beat. Flavia bolted the holly-beam door, chanting Trivia as laughs twisted to hyena shrieks gouging eardrums raw. Mothers’ wails followed: throats frothing infant-gore, caesarean nightmares made echo.

Then apocalypse: cymbala anklets thundered—bronze death-rattles jackhammering stones to craters, ghost stomps grinding bones to slurry in quake-orgasms buckling walls. Titus’s feet blistered red, stomping sync’d, skin cracking to veiny meat. Hours of limbo: wet slaps of flayed faces pirouetting in blood-pools, dermis zipping from muscle. Titus clawed ankles bloody, bone peeking through gashes pulsing bells’ rhythm.

Dawn silenced hell. Marcus led the brave to Lupercal’s heart: shattered cymbala slick with gore—toddler fingers nails yanked inside-out, lips skinned to fang-grins, eyelids flopped like blood-petals. Birds exploded mid-peck, maggot-swarms lunging alive. Titus’s bone-toy lay drowned in alien blood, twitching. Faint clink from shadows promised worse.