Chapter 7 Blog: “The Bleeding Walls of Memory”

Joshua Bish
Sep 14
3 min read

A blue-lit tunnel with wet, translucent walls and icicle-like tendrils, mist pooling at the far end over a slick stone path—an eerie gateway into the Shadow Realm. — The corridor tightens into a mouth of light.

Teaser For the Bleeding Walls

The Shadow Realm isn’t a setting—it’s a stomach. Chapter 7 swallows Wenonah and spits out the Lady in Flesh, archivist of agony, keeper of Room 316’s future.

Circular stone chamber lit from a ceiling oculus; viscous strands hang down as the vein-like walls display hundreds of faintly glowing glyph plaques. A low round altar etched with sigils sits at the center amid drifting dust. — The walls that remember—an archive of names and hunger surrounding a waiting altar.

Quick recap (light spoilers)

After stepping through the Tear, Wenonah enters a place that behaves like a wound: corridors that pulse, doors that whisper, walls that bleed names. She moves not as a pilgrim but as the realm’s chosen function. In a chamber of living flesh, she traces new and familiar names—Kayla, Zoe, Madison, Steven, Clara, Evelyn—and feels the world outside drifting toward a numbered door that hasn’t been built yet: Room 316. The Lady in Flesh breathes out smoke full of names. The realm trembles. It’s not time… but it’s coming.

Dim, fog-filled corridor lined with decayed, mismatched doors; faint red light leaks from a glowing doorway at the far end. — Corridor of malignant doors: every threshold whispers, and a single glowing exit waits ahead.

Why this chapter matters (themes & tone)

Place becomes predator. The realm isn’t geography; it digests memory. Horror shifts from creature-feature to ecosystem horror.
Curation of suffering. Names carved into walls—some warm, some cold—turn pain into record-keeping. Memory is a machine.
Identity unstitched. “Wenonah” is now an office, not a person. She’s both author and archive.
Destiny with an address. The myth tilts forward: all roads point to a concrete room numbered 316.

Dark cavernous chamber with a ring of jagged stone cairns around a central pit; pale light pours from above, illuminating thin coils of smoke rising into the beam. — Cathedral of the wound—stone sentinels ring the pit as names curl upward in smoke.

Lore connections & foreshadowing

The Lady in Flesh: full mantle assumed; she’s the Womb/Keeper tied to the Tear.
The roll call: Kayla Bishop (fresh), Zoe Lin (etched deep), Madison Holt (resisting), Steven Kent (misfit thread), Clara Ellison (branded), Evelyn Granger (the escape scar).
The Door Network: endless malignant doors = entry points across time; one blank door pulses with futures.
Room 316: blueprints are “already” scarring the soil—time folds to meet it.

Dark blue-black wall with a single jagged crack faintly glowing like a seam of light. — The wound remembers—one escape leaves a scar that never heals.

Favorite line

“The Shadow Realm is not a place. It is a wound.”

It redefines the cosmology in seven words—where setting, body, and theology collapse into one hungry system.

Dim concrete hallway ending at a heavy metal door, slightly ajar, with a thin blue-white light leaking around the frame. — The door waits—unnumbered, already leaking tomorrow’s scream.

Behind the scenes (craft & intent)

I wanted this chapter to read like an anatomy lesson disguised as a haunted-tour. Architecture becomes viscera, corridors breathe, and doors feel like sutures that won’t hold. Prose leans on sensory contradictions—light that oozes, floors that remember—to keep your brain misfiring. The names are doing double duty: character ledger and moral indictment. If Chapter 6 was the threshold, Chapter 7 is the residency—how a human becomes an institution.

Dark, vaulted hall with a glowing arched doorway at the far end; slick stone floor reflects the cold light. — The realm’s nave: stone, silence, and a single invitation—enter and be erased.

Content warnings

Body horror, psychological horror, dismemberment imagery, children in peril (referenced), religious themes, claustrophobia, existential dread.

Dim hallway lined with old wooden wardrobes; peeling paint under weak fluorescents; pink and blue vapor leaks from opposite doors and meets in the center. — The corridor of closets—years and names sealed in wood, memory-smoke crossing the aisle like nerves firing.

Call to action

If Chapter 7 got under your skin, share this post, join the mailing list, and leave a quick rating/review wherever you follow indie horror. Word of mouth is the artery that keeps this monster fed.

Massive stone arch crowned with tangled root-and-bone carvings and a central skull; a sagging, flesh-like curtain veils the opening while cold mist drifts and a faint amber glow leaks from within. — Bone crown threshold. A veiled arch where the Realm inhales.

Question for the comments

When the walls remember the names, is the Lady in Flesh preserving the victims—or imprisoning them forever? What does remembrance mean in a realm built to digest?

Endless, cracked slate-blue terrain under a storm-heavy sky; on the distant horizon a thin incandescent line flickers like an ECG heartbeat, sending faint ripples through the gloom. — Heartbeat on the horizon. Proof the wound is still alive.

Release update: dust-jacket edition & audiobook

The dust-jacket hardcover of Psalm of the Tear: Book I — The Lady in Flesh is almost here. Final files are locked and headed to print; I’ll announce the on-sale date and share the jacket reveal in the next post. If you want first dibs when it drops, join the mailing list and you’ll get the link the moment it goes live.

The audiobook is in the last stretch of production (final edits and mastering). I’ll share a free sample chapter as soon as it’s approved. If audio is your haunt, keep an ear out—release details are coming very soon.

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