Character from Pale by Wildbow
A living ritual with fifty singing children and bloody mouths — the strongest Other the girls encounter, and one of the investigation's most terrifying suspects.
The Hungry Choir is a Ritual Incarnate — a living ritual that self-perpetuates by recruiting willing targets via flyers. Once absorbed, members become Waifs: singing components of a collective entity that creates alternate dimensions monthly, synchronized to the moon's phases. These dimensions have no food, no water, and different time flow. It emerged approximately nine years before the story. During the awakening gift exchange, it was 'taking but not giving' and remained silent during the ritual — behaviors that marked it as suspicious in a community built on reciprocity. The girls maintained a separate investigation notebook dedicated entirely to its complexity. The Hungry Choir represents the series' most extreme example of the Otherverse's horror potential: a monster that is also a song, that recruits by asking nicely, and that is more powerful than anything else in the region.
Manifests as a storm over Ontario with child-like 'Waifs' acting as its eyes, limbs, and face. Fifty-plus people, mostly young, in varying clothes. Bloody mouths or broken/missing teeth. Constantly singing. The overall effect is a tornado made of choir practice and violence.
Also known as: The Choir, Ritual Incarnate