[center][img]https://i.postimg.cc/rFqmKNsx/Orion-Nightingale.png[/img][/center][hr][right][sub]Location: Frostmoon Lake -> Town Square
Interactions: Céline ([@SkeankySnack]) [/sub][/right][hr]
[indent]Orion walked without hurry, his cloak trailing behind him, the tracks he left behind already beginning to fade. He didn’t look back. He made himself not look back. Whatever was back there, at the lake, was behind him now, the moment safely tucked into his memories for him and him alone. He had once believed it was control that made him strong—control over his body, his thoughts, his hunger. But the longer he lived in the stillness between man and monster, the more he realized that control was not a wall but a thread, tenuous and easily frayed. And lately, it had begun to pull. Not fray. But pull. 

Uncertainty nettled him, an echo of those first feral nights after his transformation—nights when his lungs burned for air he no longer needed, when mirrors spat back a stranger’s visage, and when each pulse of blood in his veins felt stolen. And now, standing in the middle of a land that barely remembered the sun, he couldn’t shake the feeling that something, quietly, was beginning to shift again. It made him more vigilant. It also made him, though he wouldn’t admit it, a little tired.

Still, he kept walking. The incline steepened as he ascended, boots crunching rhythmically into the permafrost. Ahead, the skeletal ridges of the mountains clawed at the heavens, their peaks framing the splintered silhouette of Aelios Temple. Its spirals, never once gilded by dawn, stretched toward a leaden sky, their grandeur reduced to a fossilized plea. Prayer had been his mother’s currency, not his. Yet in boyhood, when sunlight still kissed his cheeks and faith felt less like theater,  he’d occasionally whispered to his god. His mother’s rituals returned to him now: the incense coils spiraling upward, her palm warm against his chest as she spoke of light dwelling within, of shadows repelled by self-knowledge. He’d believed her then. Or perhaps he’d believed in the version of himself she saw—a boy untainted by the hungers that would later define him.

Now, the sun was a myth, and Seluna and darkness were the world’s true sovereigns. Orion’s mouth twisted wryly. He’d outlived his god, it seemed. Or perhaps he’d merely abandoned his post, leaving creatures like him to haunt the ruins. As he veered toward Dawnhaven’s outskirts, chimney smoke smudging the horizon like charcoal ghosts, he pondered whether divinity could atrophy—whether light, once extinguished, left any residual warmth in the stones it had once blessed. Or were they all simply…unwatched? Trusted to use whatever light was left buried inside themselves to guide. To live. 

And it was with these thoughts in mind that he saw her. 
Or, better yet, saw [i]them[/i] taking notice of her. 

Two guards, posted near a half-cleared stretch of the main road, had straightened subtly at the sight of the tall woman approaching from the temple’s path. Orion caught the way their postures shifted just enough to suggest alertness, not enough to draw attention. One nudged the other with a flick of his elbow. No hands went to weapons,  but their eyes tracked her with the careful weight of men who’d been warned to expect danger, and perhaps didn’t quite trust themselves to recognize it.

And to be fair… she was hard to miss.

Purple and green hair spilled from beneath a hood lined in worn fur, and her features—what he could see of them—were arresting in a way that didn’t seem wholly mortal. Her skin bore the faint luminescence of something touched by the blight. Her eyes, when they briefly turned his way, were clear as glass, and unreadable as a frozen lake.

Blight-born. No doubt about it.

Orion’s gaze narrowed. The guards were in the same posture he'd seen too many times over the years. In Aurelia. In the north. In places where people hadn’t yet decided if they feared his kind more than they hated them. No one dared say it aloud anymore, not here in Dawnhaven—not with the prince's politics as they were—but tension lingered, all the same. It crept through sidelong glances and idle stares that lasted one beat too long. The guards didn’t move. Not in any way that could be faulted. But they watched her.

He didn’t rush. Didn’t draw attention. He simply shifted his path—just enough to intersect hers. When he reached her, he fell into step beside her as if by chance, his voice a quiet hum beneath the winter hush.

“[color=#0054a6]You’re not from around here.[/color]”

There was no judgment in it—only quiet observation, colored faintly by something gentler. A thread of empathy. He let a pause linger, long enough for her to dismiss him, before adding, “[color=#0054a6]If you’re heading into town, I can show you the way. The streets wind more than they should for a place this small.[/color]”
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