#lychorus

You feel stillness and motion pressing upon you from all sides. From this, you are stirred, and spurred by your awakening, you step from the long quiet.

You, PHROLOVA, find yourself standing before the Temporal Tower, in a garden seemingly tucked away from the seasons of time. Still, people flock here beneath the borealis that lights the sky above, here to greet you. A Guardian approaches.

Hello…. Echo. Well don’t look so confused, everything is exactly as it was made to be in preparation for your arrival. I would know. Yada yada yada, we hope you enjoy your stay… don’t break anything.

You receive the following:

A House Key. Emblazoned upon it is: 203, Seaside Province

A Standard Issue Phone. It lights up when it manifests in your hand.

A BOUQUET OF BLACK ROSES, that never seem to whither or die no matter how you take care of them. The guardian watches you closely, handing you the flowers and making a bow. 'Encore' it says, 'We love a performance here.'

Welcome to the Aevum Isles.

It is perhaps unsurprising that, when he finally decided to leave the strange garden and stranger tower, the echo of faint music is what guides him onward. Even if it's not another Saja, or the hunters Zoey, music is familiar and as close to safe as he's been in hundreds of years. Music had been at the forefront of the only good times he can remember in centuries, and it would be a decent backdrop of calm to use to get his bearings.

There are many people and many buildings, though not the same kind of either he's used to. The people stare too, which makes an uncomfortable prickling sensation spread over the back of his neck. Shoulders hunch and he slinks through the most narrow and dark streets he can find until he reaches an amphitheater.

It's huge, imposing, but there is music and a stage, and thus backstage and places to hide away from prying eyes.

Making his way back there is easy, but when he slips into a quiet practice room, he freezes at the door. Someone else is already there, a woman in strange dress, as red as his outfit is black, like blood. She smells a bit like it too, though something otherworldly lingers in the air around her. Sweet and sickly, akin to death.

Not a demon, but something else. Not human, for sure.

As she turns her attention to him, he slowly tilts his head and inclines it the slightest bit, the edge of his gat and his bangs hopefully enough to cover the tusks emerging from his lips.

"Apologies," he says, slow, soft, careful. "Didn't hear you."

@lychorus