High above the streets, the doors of the Chapelle des Damnés stand open on certain nights. Voices rise from the rooftop, answering the hum of machinery. Before dawn, people emerge under heavy coats, walking carefully around changes to their bodies they are not yet ready to show.
The Kult took the city’s command to enhance and followed it somewhere darker. Its members believe the body must be remade before the soul can be free. A stronger arm means little to them when an arm can be reshaped beyond recognition. They pursue sensation, deformation and the terrifying pleasure of crossing a boundary that once defined them. In their rites, machines are revered, surgery becomes revelation, and pain is treated as proof that the transformation is real. The most devoted barely resemble the people they once were.
The chapel welcomes visitors, especially those desperate for a cure, an upgrade or a reason to endure. There are artisans inside with extraordinary skill. There are also people who will ruin a body for the sake of witnessing what happens next. A newcomer may receive intense attention and, for the first time, find others who look at their strangest desires without flinching. That sense of belonging can carry someone far beyond what they intended. By then, they may discover that the Kult’s idea of devotion leaves little room for doubt or retreat.
Some visitors return changed, speaking of what they witnessed with frightening certainty. Some join and vanish from the streets. Others simply disappear. Nobody outside the chapel knows how many chose to stay.
Outsiders call them the Twisted. Some members take the name as praise; others remember fearing the chapel themselves before they stepped inside. Mirage, known as Mira, feels at home among them. Whether she takes part in their rituals or merely visits remains a street rumour.