@jainah ( . . . ) starter call.
in the ill-light, brightened by the screeching, screaming steel of a ship as it sets ablaze in the near-dark distance, a metal chasm’s blank gaze cuts down to blood, bone, and below. the shadow cast by the veiled creature looms taller with every stride he takes closer, jagged cloak dragging across the beating ground, sweeping with itself this amalgamation of dust, gore, and debris. ( his gaze wavers in its turbulence, when he sees her. alas, the mask does not betray him. ) the haunting is death in its most grotesque form : concretely, the prolonged state of dying and the decay of the self, a phantom’s sense swaying at the threshold like a pendulum — left to right — right to left. the tethering is neither here nor there, neither past nor present. the figure before him — she is a ghost at the demesnes of some decomposing dream, remnant of a lost past life, no more real in his mind’s eye than any of the other apparitions that haunt his peripheral. vexation entwines between each ribs, a serpent of spleen. like a pendulum — backward and forward — forward and backward. then, amidst the rain of ashes, gloved hand tightens around the saber, which remains breathing with its incessant buzzing, kept ignited, still hissing from where it had cut into the edge of her ship. ❝ your rebel compatriots — give me their coordinates, and i shall ensure their executions are swift. fail to comply, and i'll hunt them down one by one, bone by bone. the choice is yours. ❞
