[hr][hr][center][img]https://i.imgur.com/fqUPvJx.png[/img][/center][hr][hr] [center][i][color=lemonchiffon][sub][sub]…Tin… [color=2e2c2c][sub]......Tiiiin……[/sub][/color] …Ga… [color=2e2c2c][sub]......Gaaaaa……[/sub][/color] …Ra… [color=2e2c2c][sub]......Raaaaaaaa……[/sub][/color][/sub][/sub] Her name, whispered in a voiceless breath. It slipped through the skeletons of withered trees. It seeped through the ground like rainwater - like blood. She couldn’t move. She lay on her back, the earth leaching warmth from her with every crimson drop it claimed. It offered icy numbness in exchange, reaching up to curl around her bones, rooting her into the saturated soil, until all that was left to do was decay. She was dying. Her hand was clamped around her throat, trying vainly to keep the life from slipping out of her. It wasn’t going to work. Blood filled her mouth, her lungs, overflowed the tattered remains of her throat as she gasped. But she couldn’t feel anything. She couldn’t make a sound. The night sky above her was littered with light. Stars flowed across her vision, illuminating the darkness with a river of color. Aquamarine, pearl, emerald, lavender. There was no moon in the sky to compete with the galaxy the stars mapped out. No sun. There hadn’t been sun for months. And so the heavens shined. [/color][/i][/center] [i][color=lemonchiffon][right][sub]…Tin…[color=2e2c2c][sub]Tiin…[/sub][/color][/sub][/right][sub][color=2e2c2c][sub]Tiin…[/sub][/color]…Tin…[/sub][right][sub]…Ga…[color=2e2c2c][sub]...Gaaaa……[/sub][/color][/sub][/right][sub][color=2e2c2c][sub]...Gaaaa……[/sub][/color]…Ga…[/sub][right][sub]…Ra…[color=2e2c2c][sub]...........Raaaaaaaa………[/sub][/color][/sub][/right][/color][/i][color=lemonchiffon][i][sub][color=2e2c2c][sub]...........Raaaaaaaa………[/sub][/color]...Ra…[/sub][/i][/color] [center][i][color=lemonchiffon]Something lurked in the periphery. It stalked a wide arc around her body with silent footfalls. For brief, scattered heartbeats, it flashed through her vision like a wisp of smoke, like droplets of molten gold. She couldn’t see it. But its gaze was heavy as a brand. It burned and blistered where it fell on her skin. The cloud of stars glittered above her, pinpricks of light shifting one by one. They condensed, holes in the vast net filling in, the color rippling and iridescent. It settled into a violet fog, dense and opaque. It was as unknowable as death. As formidable as the sun.[/color] In the eternal one’s veins… [color=lemonchiffon]The voice that whispered to her bent like light, refracting a hundred different ways as it reflected back on her. It was the High Priest’s reedy whisper. Sister Fumi’s chirping rasp. The laughing boom of the soldiers she’d traveled with. The thin murmur of the coachman who’d held her wrist and wished her well. The writhing nebula fell. She couldn’t move. Her body was helpless as the fog collapsed over her, billowing out to consume the land. It filled her, replacing the blood that poured out of the gaping wound in her neck. It congealed in her veins, filled her heart until the organ was nothing but a solid mass that pushed the blight through her limbs. It was death. That was all she could think as it warped her, stealing her breath away, burrowing a cavity deep in her gut until all she knew was hunger. A shape passed over her - a person. Backlit by the moon, it was nothing but a pair of glowing eyes in a shadowed silhouette.[/color] Seek the violet flow. [color=lemonchiffon]It was her mother’s voice. She didn’t know that she’d even remembered the sound of it, before now. She- [sub][sub]…Tin… [color=2e2c2c][sub]......Tiiiin……[/sub][/color] …Ga… [color=2e2c2c][sub]......Gaaaaa……[/sub][/color] …Ra… [color=2e2c2c][sub]......Raaaaaaaa……[/sub][/color][/sub][/sub] [/color][/i][/center]