The Cathedral of Blackmere

In the middle of the swamp lake of Zwartmeer stands a cathedral, sunk to its waist in black water. At low tide only the broken spire breaks the surface; at high tide the water washes in through the stained-glass windows and, from deep beneath the church floor, a song rises, a choir of women's voices so enchanting that whoever hears it too long wades smiling into the lake and does not return. Four fishermen already this month.

Beneath the drowned cathedral lies the crypt where an order of sisters was once walled in when their faith was declared heresy. They drowned singing, and their song has never stopped. Something in the depths has taken up that song and deepened it: the dead now sing for a mistress who lets the water rise higher with every tide, and with every drowned soul her choir swells.

A half-blind ferryman brings you as far as the spire, but not a foot further, however much gold you offer. You descend into the flooded passages, where candles float on the water without going out and every echo of your footsteps returns a beat too late. You swim through sunken side chapels, decipher the heretical writings of the order, and fend off the singing drowned that rise from the pews.

Deep beneath it all sits De Kantoreske, First Sister, in sodden robes, singing in an infinitely sweet voice as black water keeps pouring from her mouth. She keeps her sisters not out of vengeance but out of love, and she wants to add your voices to her choir. To silence the singing you must reach the crypt and release De Kantoreske, while the water rises and the song undermines your own will. The climax plays out in the sunken crypt, where you fight against the choir with almost no breath left.