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Lamento: Dies Irae is a webtoon series created by Maerichii in February 2023 and published in XXXX 2026. The story features elements of dark fantasy and Catholic horror, set in 14th-century Italy. This story features biblical references and a classic retelling of the Sleeping Beauty fairytale.
A witch seeks to fulfil the purpose of her cursed immortality, while a grieving young priest must investigate the strange murders of his brothers. When the two cross paths, they uncover each other's true natures while partaking in a sacred ritual that will determine the fate of a world abandoned by God.
Genre: Dark Fantasy, Romance, Tragedy
Date Created: February 2023
Date Published: 2026
Chapters: TBD
WIKI Status: WORK IN PROGRESS…
In a small rural village, the villagers suffered from the Black Death and were desperate to search for a cure that did not exist. One night, a blood moon rose, and the villagers heard wailing in an abandoned chapel where they discovered an infant. The plague stopped the moment the infant stopped crying, and the villagers believed that the infant was sent from God. They named the infant ‘Maria la Fata’. Maria grew up and developed the ability to grant miracles. When she turned 19, she was gang-raped by the Vella Malvagia cult that raised her after she refused to conceive the ‘second christ’. Horrified by their betrayal, Maria manifested a deadly curse, claiming many lives. This deemed her a witch, and she was sentenced to be burned at the stake, where she declares the arrival of ‘Dies Irae’—the day when God’s wrath will occur and burn the world, before meeting her demise. Maria’s remains caused the blossoming of the ‘Atropa Angelo’, a floral plant that can cure diseases and serve as a drug to forget one’s sorrows.
Two centuries later, the small village was established as a town called ‘Gardenia’—ruled by the House Amante, a prominent family of saints and winemakers. Seven brothers of the family: Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, Barachiel, Selathiel, and Jhudiel were born, but the two eldest twins, Michael and Gabriel, were considered to be saints for their abilities to recall the past (Michael) and the future (Gabriel). Despite having been treated with disdain by the town and their parents, the twins remained loving towards their brothers and maintained their ‘saintly’ image. Michael shared with his twin brother about having a glimpse of one of Maria la Fata’s memories, which inspired Gabriel to write a fairytale about the latter, ‘La Storia della Santa’. The story became popular in Gardenia, which nearly led to the exposure of the family’s secret about being descendants of the Vella Malvagia cult and their abuse of the Atropa Angelo, eventually resulting in the twins’ discovery of their family’s corrupted nature.
After witnessing Maria’s traumatic experiences caused by his ancestors, Michael became driven to take control over Gardenia as the next high priest to expose his family’s sins and alter the town’s devotion system from his family’s control. Gabriel was then pleaded by his parents to kill Michael to stop the reveal until they started going mad and died from an unknown illness. Gabriel soon receives a prophecy of Maria la Fata’s return and the awakening of Dies Irae, and he exposed his discovery during Michael’s papal coronation and challenged his authority, only to be condemned as an alleged possessed cultist. Gabriel’s paranoia from the death of his parents turned him excessively self-righteous, convinced that he held more forbidden knowledge than anyone else, and the exposure of his prophecy would have protected Gardenia, rather than letting Michael take control over the people.
When Michael confronts Gabriel in his cell, the deranged Gabriel demands his truth to be revealed, to Michael’s rejection, as he believes it would not change anything but guarantee Gabriel’s execution. Gabriel meets the spirit of Maria la Fata in his dreams, and he learns that a way to stop the arrival of damnation is to sacrifice one of the twin Amante Apostles. When Michael visited Gabriel to send him to a trial, the twins got into a violent fight until Gabriel knocked his brother out with a stiletto dagger before returning to his senses. At that moment, Gabriel took Michael’s name upon himself to get rid of his guilt. The youngest brother, Jhudiel, was caught in the scene of the crime when Michael was found decapitated. Hoping to erase his traces, Gabriel, now known as Michael, deemed his younger brother the murderer and sentenced Jhudiel to an eternal punishment. With Raphael’s help, Gabriel dosed himself with the Atropa Angelo and his memories were altered after adapting his deceased brother's behaviours and manners, completely turning deluded into becoming his very twin.
The arc of Lamento begins with the first chapter of a fairytale, ‘La Storia della Santa’, when a saintess named Maria la Fata was born from a red moon and grew up to become the embodiment of perfection and the catalyst of salvation. The scene shifts to a silent night in reality, focusing on a young disfigured sacristan named Jhudiel, who has been singing in a filthy and barricaded chapel, until he is interrupted by the arrival of a young woman, who soon reveals herself to be the resurrected Maria la Fata. Recalling traumatic events, Jhudiel attacks Maria only to discover that she is immortal. Maria explains that she came to grant him a peaceful death as a part of her goal to deliver ‘salvation’ to the world, but Jhudiel rejects this at first out of fear. She questions the boy, to which he responds with his wish to live until he feels the warmth of sunlight and experiences being treated as a human being for a day, as he is chained to the altar. Jhudiel tells Maria that he barely remembers his past, but he knew he once murdered a ‘good man’.
Maria breaks Jhudiel’s chains and lets him roam free around the nearby town as long as he is hidden by a cloak. He learns that he is targeted and mistaken for a demon for causing the plague that killed many in the town, until he is eventually stripped and exposed. He returns to the chapel, agonised by the realisation that he could never live as a normal human being on his final day. The angered rally invades the chapel, and Maria, concerned for the boy, convinces him that he should escape with her to fulfil his wish. However, Jhudiel decides to stay, hoping that his death would serve as a stepping stone to Maria’s goal, as his way of offering gratitude for showing him the warmth of sunlight and treating him with compassion. He spent his last words telling her that he remembered he killed the ‘good man’ because he was ordered to. Maria leaves the chapel as the rally dismembers the boy, and the chapel later burns. She experiences sorrow when an entity (Azrael) reminds her of the corrupt human nature and puts her to sleep.
The arc of Dies Irae begins with the funeral of the Amante brothers held by the high priest Michael, where Raphael deduces that the deaths of the brothers were caused by a type of witchcraft that forced them to commit brutal suicides. After the funeral, Michael spots a young woman who later disappears. The next day, Michael learns that the same young woman became desired for her ghostly beauty, which turned her into an object of hatred and envy by the town’s women, who accuse her of witchcraft. To protect her from public disdain while growing curious, Michael takes the young woman in, and she asks Michael if she could work as his maid, to which he agrees and hires her. She introduces herself as one of his late brother’s maids named Mary. Throughout Mary’s stay in the Amante Residence, Michael learns that she is unable to feel pain after he catches her severely wounded from touching a shattered mirror, but experiences extreme distress from the sight of a deceased lamb. Before Mary could confess her sins, Michael fainted from a sudden mental exhaustion.
Michael awakens to the care of Raphael, who suspects Mary of being a witch. He urges him to banish her, but Michael refuses, mocking his doubts as he intended to keep her close for reasons he could not even explain. Mary offers him a red rosary as an apology and kisses his palm. Michael soon finds himself falling in love with Mary, which Raphael considers a major threat to his family, so he poisons Mary and hides her body in an abandoned watchtower to rot. In Mary’s absence, Michael starts to hallucinate, often seeing a deceased man whose face is similar to his own and hearing Mary’s voice, until Mary returns alive, much to Raphael’s horror and Michael’s growing suspicions. To prove Mary’s witchcraft in front of the public, Raphael hosts a banquet to ‘honour’ his late brothers. Michael dances with Mary, who is later taken by the man he once saw in his hallucinations. He later finds Mary tied up in the middle of the ballroom, watched by the guests, as Raphael tortures her, but he gets shamed for his crime instead.
Michael chases after Raphael, who takes Mary’s body to his laboratory to dissect her heart to see if it still beats after her ruthless torture. Raphael rejoices at the discovery of Mary’s immortality upon her defiled body and beating heart until Michael murders him by stabbing his eyes with the rosary Mary gave him (that turned out to be a stiletto). Overwhelmed by the returning memories of his sins, Michael passes out and awakens to find that Mary is still alive, confirming her immortality. Frightened, he locks her in a cell where he was once imprisoned. Michael then encountered the man from his hallucinations. He tells Michael that the only way to kill Mary is to burn her heart. Michael declares Mary’s execution to the public, for her to be burned at the stake. On the evening of her execution, Mary sang the Dies Irae chant as the flames engulfed her—ultimately triggering Michael’s trauma and exposing his crimes to the townspeople.
Dismayed and furious by his fraudulent deceit, the townspeople surround Michael in the cathedral, where Mary awaits him and demands that he admit his sin before he dies. Michael, at the peak of insanity, swears that he is a saint and remains sinless until Azrael, who turns out to be the corrupted spirit of his deceased twin brother, appears to haunt him. The cathedral burns, and Michael stabs himself to death using the stiletto that had served as his materialised karma and the essence of Mary’s immortality. The story ends after Michael’s suicide with an open but wretched ending; either concluding with Dies Irae realised or the events occurring in Gardenia after its madness.
RAPHAEL
JHUDIEL
URIEL
BARACHIEL
SELATHIEL
Gardenia, also known as ‘Home of Eden’ and the ‘Garden of Rome’, is a rural town located in Vatican City—a sacred home to the Renaissance arts and culture, as well as the Roman Catholic Church. The town is ruled by the House Amante, an aristocratic family of priests and saints, claimed to have been born with holy blood, having the genetic trademark of silver eyes and golden hair. Gardenia is also surrounded by various flower fields, of which the ‘Atropa Angelo’ is mostly known as its native plant, as the ‘gift’ from God when Maria la Fata was crucified and sent to hell. These flowers were used by the family to make their specialty sacramental wine and drugs to cure diseases.