This is much worse than not-Velas. This is almost as bad as the Mark of the Erasure. Hadrian shudders and sloshes through the mixture of snow, water, and dirt covering the streets of Crises. He really wishes he still had his cloak. Tries not to think too much about what happened to it.

He arrives at the tower before nightfall, not that it makes a difference in daylight, but he can only imagine what kind of foul creatures prowl the streets after the moons rise. He casts a light spell on a poker he finds by the fireplace and begins combing the first floor, shuddering as he passes the creepy smiling portraits lining the walls.

It’s strange, but so far, this is the closest he’s felt to his old life. Slaying evil, looking for powerful objects at the tops of towers… At this point, it feels more normal than whatever was happening in Hieron when he left.

A man emerges from the library just as he’s passing, and Hadrian holds up the poker to get a better look.

Unsure what else to do, they decided to explore their living space. It seemed similar enough to some of the manors they had seen in Ishgard, or at least a grotesque parody of them. Not that Fray had seen the inside of many manors. As they rounded the corner, they saw a tall figure, seemingly similarly exploring the space. 

Alfred finally puts his finger on it. This entire place feels like a dollhouse. The clean and carefully-aligned furniture of the house where he’d woken up unnerved him, and the quaint forest with its woodland inhabitants made it worse. And the trains, traveling so quickly and smoothly! Empty trains, spotless and gleaming like steel.

Even this new place that he finds himself in, with its glaring red sun and rat-infested streets, is missing the dirt and fetid stink of something lived-in. It makes him want to break things, just to see what’ll happen. If he closes his eyes and dreams, will everything return to how it was? If he dies, will he come back again? (and again and again and again)

Every hunter knows of the Hunter’s Dream. This is not that dream, but it could still be a dream, the dollhouse of some Great One. Or a nightmare -- a jail, then -- if the rumors of the hunters’ sin were true. (Alfred knows he has sinned. Perhaps this is what he deserves. But for one burning, glorious moment, his life had been as perfect as the curve of a knife, honed to a single purpose.)