Medieval period. The air casts a shadow.
Among the group of attendants, the fear of one; that individual's teeth gritted in dread, expected of a doomed sacrifice.
All in readiness, the ceremony starts, all the sacrifice can do is wait, tears and pleas have no place here, the ceremony carried on some time.
Then it happened. In unison the group just ceased except for one figure who went on several seconds but halts too…under surprise.
Like that are seized, You're the one being sacrificed, comes the word. Disbelief drapes their face, next another unexpected. Something placed in their hand, a ring from the groom. His betrothed was the brethren. This a sick comedy? They wonder.
Struggle is no match for greater number as they are then secured firm, destined to suffer the terror waiting for what must come as their former comrades astonishingly continue the ritual doing it to them. They have time to flash back to the past and try but fail to contemplate why. Elapsed wait shows they weren't going to die, not too soon.
Chants, body movements, weird paraphernalia reflecting religion, topped by incense went the rite, all as the sacrifice knew they'd professed love for the other.
The bloody peak shouldn't surprise even the ignorant wholly – is loosed only to be hung upside down, slit throat's blood is painted on the participants bodies, that stylistic pattern the normal in the world can hardly be blamed failing to decipher, dark and bizarre.
Corpse's tomblike bog called Lindow Moss, beneath them would it be to merely dump instead conducted with all the civility their devilish rite calls for.
The doers concede they lost their humanity after the kill.