>>6333494# # # # # #
music, if I may.
>https://youtu.be/7A6cA6B0BiY# # # # # #
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You cover your eyes.
The light is blinding.
Past the threshold, there is a sort of shimmer that still makes you blink, flutter against the palm of your healthy hand. Your right hand, the burned one, pulsates with sympathy.
As the brightness recedes, the inside is revealed. You expected the floating island on an endless sea, rather—
It’s some sort of square, encroached by yellow buildings on three sides, while the fourth one is open in the distance, towards some sort of hill upon which lays a red tower, its masonry a mortar red in the strange hue that paints the scene.
Every shadow is stretched, pulled thin and long like it was sunset, but the sky is a dull cerulean, thick and heavy like paint.
<span class="mu-s">Nostalgia does not fit an interloper</span>, Merope quips from her sneer, pulled on Bragia’s face, while her green eye searches for signs of life and—
There is only one. The stark-black silhouette of a girl, running after something as she chuckles. She disappears behind a corner.
Merope snarls.
<span class="mu-s">Come out now. You have been hiding all this time. Hiding behind your betters. Face your doom, interloper. For all your plans and schemes you are naught but a rat squirming in the shadows.</span>
From above, the only answer comes from the top of the tower.
It sends out a sharp toll, an invisible bell that calls to gathering.
<span class="mu-s">So be it.</span>
[cont.]
