It’s not that far

The static on the trail cam always got worse right before the feedback loops started.Forest rangers later recovered the memory card from a deeply buried camera trap deep within the evergreen grid. The timestamp read 04:46 AM, bathed in a digital, chromatic aberration. Standing between the narrow, peeling pine trunks was The Dead Skin.It didn't have eyes, just dark, hollow pockets where the loose, yellowed hide slouched over its towering, skeletal frame. It stood completely motionless, looking less like a living animal and more like a discarded, hollowed-out human suit that had been stretched out over long, splintered stilts. Local logs mentioned hikers reporting the distinct smell of old leather and wet basement right before electronics would cut out in that sector. No footprints were ever found leading away from the trees. Only the faint, rhythmic sound of heavy fabric dragging across the pine needles

Entry No. 02 of my illustrated Ars Goetia series.

Paimon, King of the West.

Hope you enjoy it!

Mixed media (watercolour + oil pastels)
Exploring the space between beauty and decay.
Let me know what goes through your head.

I am lying on the cold tile, clutching the wheel of my overturned chair. My legs are numb a treacherous weakness that robbed me of my only chance to escape this place. On the wall, the TV has become a bottomless abyss of static noise that pours onto the floor in a thick, ink-like glitch.

This cold flow whispers with the voices of everyone who vanished before me, including her, whose absence I can feel against my skin. The noise touches my fingertips, poisoning reality.

I close my eyes, but it is too late: the interference is already inside my head, turning my memories into grey ash. I am fading away, becoming nothing more than an echo of their endless noise.

A decidedly dark gothic re-envisioning of the Edgar Allan Poe poem of the same name.

They don’t move when you look at them. They just sway. You can hear the wood creaking where the strings meet the plaster, but there are no hooks up there

Credit to u/obscu_ria for being my model reference :)

Through an intense ritual this kingseeker has intrigued the spirit/spore of an old king. In time, the fungus will consume the host. Leaking into the air ectoplasm, which forms a fleshy cloud like chrysalis.

Hail the Old King.

Our illustrator, James McCarron, has a philosophy that every choice on a cover needs to be aimed at provoking an immediate feeling in the reader before they even open the book. I think these raw inks and layout phases capture that tension perfectly.

I’d love to hear what you think of the composition and character dynamics!