The abandoned warehouse's main doors had long since been sealed shut. Thick wooden planks had been nailed haphazardly across the frame from inside, with old sailcloth stuffed into the gaps. From outside, no one would have guessed the doors could still open.
The pirates had left only the rear entrance accessible, concealing it behind overturned empty crates and a heap of moldy fishing nets. Anyone passing through the alley would have assumed it was simply a place to dump junk.
Several smashed matchlocks lay piled in a corner, their barrels bent at strange angles and their wooden stocks broken into pieces scattered across the floor. Someone had clearly destroyed them deliberately after capturing them.
Their former owners had already become part of the ritual pattern, and their guns had been reduced to scrap along with them.
The warehouse interior was almost pitch-black. A few oil lamps rested on overturned crates and stones at the foot of the walls. Their shades had gone uncleaned for who knew how long, caked with thick soot and grease that reduced the light to blurry patches of orange.
Several roof beams had snapped. Makeshift wooden supports leaned crookedly beneath the sagging ceiling, while drafts blowing through gaps in the wallboards carried the salty damp of the sea, making the lamplight flicker constantly.
The dismembered remains of more than a dozen corpses covered the warehouse floor. These bodies had not been dumped at random. Every severed limb had been carefully positioned.
At the very center lay a completely stripped torso, faceup, its abdominal cavity hollowed out and its ribs pried apart to expose the dark red space within.
Seven bare-chested pirates knelt around the flesh-and-blood pattern. Their trousers were soaked with blood and seawater, and below the knees, the fabric's original color was completely unrecognizable.
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