Disclaimer / Disclaimer:
This entire article is purely fictional — a work of creative horror imagination and dark satire. It does not depict real events, real people, or real organizations. No such practice exists, has existed, or is endorsed in any form. The content is intended for mature audiences who enjoy extreme speculative fiction in the vein of dystopian horror (similar to works by writers exploring cannibalism as metaphor in "Soylent Green", "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover", or certain extreme horror subgenres). Reader discretion is strongly advised. If you are sensitive to graphic violence, gore, exploitation, or themes of debt bondage / human commodification — please stop reading immediately.
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In the shadowed penthouses atop Obsidian Spire — where the city lights bleed into an endless platinum haze — the true elite no longer settle for ordinary extravagance. They have moved beyond terrestrial delicacies. They have moved into significance.
They call it the Covenant Harvest Initiative.
Nobody utters its real name in polite company. On the matte-black vellum invitations (delivered by silent couriers who vanish before you can thank them), it is discreetly labeled “The Nocturne Table – An Exclusive Sensory Communion”. But within the uppermost wealth stratum, everyone understands exactly what composes the centerpiece.
Tonight’s offering rests on mirror-polished titanium in the sub-level preparation chamber directly beneath the grand dining vault. She is twenty-three. Her covenant document — heavy archival stock bearing the triple-foil seal of the Debt Resolution Authority — itemizes her burdens in clinical precision:
- Deferred Education Debt (defaulted): $187,400
- Catastrophic Care Liability (parental terminal illness): $94,200
- Provincial Homestead Encumbrance (remote northern delta): $41,800
Total compounded obligation: $323,400.
She signed with indigo ink that still carried the tremor of final tears. The terminal clause, set in modestly smaller type, reads:
“I hereby irrevocably and of my own volition donate my mortal form, post cessation, for culinary processing and consumption by sanctioned participants in exchange for complete extinguishment of all listed liabilities and a posthumous value transfer of $350,000 USD to designated recipient.”
The remuneration always exceeds the debt by a deliberate margin. They call this gesture compassion. A parting courtesy.
In the sterile glow below, the artisan processors — once celebrated in forgotten guidebooks, now clad in obsidian aprons and bound by lifetime secrecy oaths — work with ceremonial exactitude. Each dissection follows sacred geometry:
- Loin fillets sliced translucent, flash-seared for twenty-eight seconds per surface, presented as raw elegance with shadow-garlic reduction and aurum dust
- Rib sections parted and matured seventy-two hours within crystalline salt monoliths sourced from the Abyss Range
- Marrow columns slow-roasted within their own bone ossuaries, served upright like alabaster torches
- Signature offerings: velvet-braised foreshanks, cheek confit rendered for thirty-six hours, cardiac muscle paper-thin and salt-cured under lunar-phase timing
Adjacent lies the secondary presentation tray — already composed. Generous cutlets, roseate knuckles, perfectly spherical roasts. A small obsidian tablet beside it bears only:
Tonight’s Covenantor: Elara V. (23)
Value transfer executed at 21:47 UTC
“Gratitude for your transcendent offering.”
Upstairs the participants glide in on whisper-quiet auric limousines. They are draped in void-silk and wear chronometers that have never seen daylight. Conversation drifts across quarterly singularity yields, helium-3 seabed claims, stratospheric habitat futures. The covenantor is never named. To them she has already undergone apotheosis — no longer flesh, but narrative, terroir, sacrament.
The opening course arrives beneath ebon cloches. When the domes rise, a hushed collective breath ripples through the chamber — not revulsion, but veneration. The portions gleam under needlepoint illumination. A voice murmurs, “Immaculate intramuscular fat.” Another replies, “You can taste the surrendered will.”
They partake with measured reverence. They analyze. They praise the mouthfeel (“like liquid silk”), the clean metallic finish (“pure obligation terroir”), the lingering ghost-note of resolution.
Far below in the cryo-vault, fresh covenant parchments wait in ordered ranks. The line lengthens each fiscal quarter. Benchmark rates climbed again. Catastrophe bankruptcies surged. The matching engine that pairs anguish with reservation timestamps purrs softly in encrypted ether.
Somewhere a mother in a fog-shrouded coastal hamlet will refresh her account tomorrow at dawn and see the notification:
Credit: $350,000 USD – Final clearance – Tendered with reverence from Elara
She will weep until the well runs dry. Then she will redeem the family plot. Then she will spend the remainder of her life trying never to wonder about the precise origin of the funds.
And high above the skyline, another vellum sheet is already feeding into the private press.
The Nocturne Table never stands empty for long.
