She feels hunger blooming not in her stomach, but in her hands.

 Duscha tattoos the strange and the sacred in a cramped studio off Tverskaya Street, guided by a magic she barely understands. The ink—chudo-kraska, her babushka calls it—has always lived in her blood. But lately, it’s been acting on its own.

Clients come in asking for wolves, saints, symbols. They leave with something else entirely. Designs that twist. Changes that burrow deep. Duscha tries to control it, to cleanse the space, to carry on. But the hunger is growing—hers, and the ink’s.
And the bodies it marks are no longer just canvases.

They’re doors.