#apocalyptic magic

Some places are not on maps. Not because they're lost—because they were erased. Poveglia is such a place.

Just off the coast of Venice, nestled in the lagoon like a wart on porcelain, the island never looks the same twice. Gray even on blue-sky days. Still even when the wind is screaming. Locals don’t mention it. Fishermen reroute without noticing. As if something in their blood knows better.

We were never told who initiated the request. Maybe the Vatican. Maybe a syndicate with sigils in bone rings and glass eyes. All we had was a name, a half-melted videocassette, and a police report made of blank pages. Literally blank. Clean, crisp parchment with an official seal—but no words. It smelled like hospitals and burned feathers. We burned it.

There were five of us. A priest with no collar. A skeptic with tattoos he swore weren’t his. I brought the gear. EMF scanners. Salt. A mirror covered in prayers. None of it mattered.

We landed at dawn.

And the island... breathed. Not like lungs. Like a mass grave.

Fog didn't rise from the sea. It rose from beneath our boots. The earth was too soft, too warm. Marcella was the first to break through—sank waist-deep in loam that clung like breath. When we pulled her free, her skin was covered in welts. Not burns. Not rot.

Impressions. Like something had gripped her with hands that never learned gentleness. Small. Countless.

The hospital ruins still stood. A skeleton of stone and rusted beds, gnawed by vines and time. But inside—there was no dust. The linens were folded. The air still smelled of antiseptic and violets. And the window bars were bent from within.

We heard the bell before the threshold. A single note. Then silence. No birds. No insects. Not even heartbeat.

The patient logs were in Latin. The ink darkened as you read. Names like Valentius, Seraphim, Experimentum 44B. It was never about healing. It was about containment.

We found the sub-level by accident. No stairs, no door. Just a corridor where geometry lied. The descent felt longer than the island allowed. Time stretched. Minds frayed.

There was a room down there. Cut from volcanic stone, ancient and wrong. The floor was layered in fine ash. Beneath it—bones. Fragmented. Too small to name. Too many to count.

In every wall: slits. Narrow as wrists. Deep as memory.

And then it spoke. Not aloud. Inside. Like a memory that didn’t belong to you. Words you had never learned but couldn’t unhear. A litany of wounds disguised as prayer.

One of us began to echo it. His mouth bled. His eyes rolled back. When he fell, the voice kept using his throat.

We ran. Left him there. Or maybe... it kept him.

None of us ever spoke again. Not to each other. Not to anyone. Not truly.

Some things linger behind the words.

Only this needs to be said:

Poveglia is not haunted. It is hollow. And hollowness is not absence. It is appetite.

They gave it names. They tried to classify it, chart its resonance, name its flavor, assign it a Pattern. As if labeling the abyss could ever cage it.

The mages called it a Null Zone. But that’s a lie. There’s no “null” here—only distortion, echo, multiplication. Spells bend backwards. Time curves. Thought coils. The dead feel it like a scream behind the veil. Wraiths vanish, or worse, they change. Werewolves? They don’t step sideways here. They vomit rage and rip their own reflections apart. The Kindred feel their hunger twist. The Beast doesn’t grow—it starves. Then it dreams. Even the angels fall silent. And when they speak again, their voices are not their own.

But these are just masks. Taxonomies to keep our minds from cracking.

You don’t measure this place. You survive it.

What it is… is old. Older than faith. Older than the lie we call the Consensus. It doesn’t haunt. It hollows. And hollowness is not absence. It is appetite.

🧷 If this shook you — good. Because this is how we play. Not with stat blocks. With dread. With silence. With stories that cling like fog to the soul.