There are many ways to prepare someone for death. The Electi prefer ceremony. They favour long speeches, ancient books, and solemn declarations about destiny. They speak of honour and sacrifice as though these things possess meaning. According to them, the Immolesses are chosen instruments in a sacred design that stretches back through centuries of tradition.

I have always suspected that tradition is merely a polite word for a mistake repeated often enough to become respectable.

From the moment I was old enough to understand their language, the Electi spoke to me about purpose. They said I had been born for a reason. They said the world required balance. They said the Immortalis must be confronted and that someone must carry the burden of that task.

Curiously, none of them volunteered.

It is a strange thing to grow up knowing that your future has already been written by people who do not intend to share it. The Electi spent years explaining what I should believe, how I should behave, and what I should eventually do. They trained me in rituals. They recited passages from their ancient tomes. They told stories about the Immortalis as though they were characters in a morality play.

Their stories were very neat.

In those stories the Immortalis were powerful but predictable. The heroes understood the rules of the world. The villains followed those rules in predictable ways. The conclusion of each tale arrived exactly where the priests expected it to arrive.

Reality is considerably less cooperative.

The Deep is not a place that respects tidy narratives. Kingdoms collapse over trivial misunderstandings. Sailors swear they have seen monsters beneath the sea and yet no scholar can agree on whether those monsters exist. Messengers deliver warnings that turn out to be disasters in disguise. Even the gods appear to behave according to impulses that no one fully understands.

It is difficult to take destiny seriously in a world that functions like that.

The first time I realised the Electi might not know what they were doing was during a conversation with a fisherman from Sapari. He had been drinking heavily and was convinced that the Immortalis could hear every word spoken about them. According to him the safest course of action was to pretend they did not exist at all.

He then spent the next hour describing them in remarkable detail.

People talk when they are afraid. They talk even more when they are in pain. Over the years I have listened to many such stories. Some came from frightened travellers. Others came from vampires who had experienced the displeasure of the Immortalis directly. A few came from people who claimed to have seen things that no one else believed.

The stories rarely agree with each other.

What they do agree upon is that the Immortalis are not the creatures described in the Electi’s books. They are older, stranger, and far more unpredictable. The priests speak about them as though they are monsters that can be defeated with the correct ritual. The people who have actually encountered them describe something closer to a force of nature.

You cannot defeat a storm by reciting poetry.

The Electi also failed to mention something else. The Immortalis appear to enjoy themselves.

This is perhaps the most unsettling detail of all. If the stories are accurate, these beings do not simply rule their territories through terror. They treat the world as a kind of elaborate game. Cities become puzzles. Individuals become pieces on a board. Entire kingdoms stumble into chaos because someone somewhere decided it might be amusing to see what would happen.

I find that possibility strangely comforting.

A predictable enemy can be studied and countered. An unpredictable one requires creativity. If the Immortalis treat the world as a game, then the sensible response is to learn how to play.

That is easier said than done.

The Deep is filled with rumours about the three Immortalis who dominate its darker corners. Each of them governs their domain differently. One rules through calculated cruelty. Another through tradition and nobility. The third appears to have embraced chaos as a personal hobby.

Of the three, the last interests me the most.

Stories about Nicolas DeSilva circulate constantly among sailors and merchants. They speak of Corax Asylum as though it were a monument to madness. They say its halls are filled with mirrors and clocks. They say the director spends his evenings writing letters that no one will ever read. Some claim he considers himself a connoisseur of suffering. Others insist he is merely bored.

I have learned not to dismiss rumours too quickly.

If half of those stories are true, then Corax represents something unusual even in a world already filled with horror. It is not simply a prison or a palace. It is a stage upon which the boundaries between cruelty, satire, and spectacle become increasingly difficult to separate.

That alone makes it worth studying.

The priests would be horrified if they knew how much time I spend listening to these stories. They prefer certainty. They prefer the comfort of believing that ancient traditions still control the shape of the world. The idea that one of their carefully chosen Immolesses might question those traditions would likely trouble them greatly.

Fortunately they rarely ask the right questions.

What they do not understand is that the world they claim to control has already moved beyond their influence. Sailors trade rumours faster than scholars trade manuscripts. Travellers carry tales of dark fantasy and gothic horror across entire continents. Every new story reshapes the way people think about the Immortalis.

The priests cling to their books. The rest of the world listens to experience.

That difference matters.

If my destiny truly lies somewhere within this strange landscape of horror, then I intend to approach it with open eyes. The Immortalis may believe they control the board. The Electi may believe they understand the rules. Both groups could easily be mistaken.

In a world as unpredictable as the Deep, survival often belongs to the person who recognises that the game itself is still being invented.

Immortalis is a new horror book out August 2026. Watch this space.