[color=4BBB7D]"Of course- of course, this shall be done,"[/color] Avenue said, suddenly unsure about whether or not Key was truly speaking to Hope, or to [i]something else[/i]... Hope had previously never asked for a death sacrifice. The only ones who had died had been the ones who weren't strong enough to endure. 

The rest of the day passed uneventfully. His followers were patched up, Key wandered around looking stunned and happy, and food was eaten. After the final meal of the day, when Avenue had retreated into his quarters in the back of the chapel, where nobody could see or hear, he was sat upon the floor holding a knife, bleeding from a slash across his chest. The blood ran in rivulets into the small steel bowl called [i]The Hope Chalice[/i], and he banged the edge of it in a slow, repeating rhythm. Every tap saw him breathe in, every other saw him breathe out. He opened his brain to see Hope, and ask her what is true.

Avenue falls, but the wind is silent. There are no whispers until he has been falling for several minutes. 
"An Avenue to show the path"
"A Key to unlock a door." 

Avenue sees the ritual as Key describes it. He sees himself and Key upon the center altar in a rutting act of depravity, their skin melting together as if to form one writhing , screaming being. The altar cracks under the beast, and many black tendrils of plastic and metal and dust and silicone and wood and paper and glass and steel and...

They bind the creature, and a great needle of white light impales it. 

Hope enters the world, resplendant and beautiful... until her face splits from her head with a sickening wet crack, and begins to slide off her cranium like a thick film. But Avenue cannot see what lies beneath.

Avenue hits the ground, landing upon a floor of meat. A being stands with him, looking as if made from many strands of black tape bound together. 

"This is you," Hope whispers, "the beautiful fate of my children...

He picked himself up off of the floor and twisted his head. This ritual would take a long while to complete, and the unbelievers would be difficult to gather. Steelbird Landing is not a very lenient place.