this is Salem, a land filled with magic and maladies. It is a place where witches and their elemental familiars gather, a home to legend and
lore that predates time itself. Yet of all the wicked and wonderful stories the past can tell us of, the most magical are the ones yet to happen.
This is Salem - this is the start of your very own journey. Welcome to starfall
Starfall is an animaga witch roleplay set in mostly modern times. Members play as witches in a world plagued by monsters, where the only safe spots are walled cities. Starfall strives to be a character-driven roleplay with expansive lore and a highly interactive plotline. We want to allow members to
create and look back on a magical journey, and mold the site and its plot as their characters grow.
"Meet me back at the 'basement', remember, all deals are off." He whispered to Kasimir as he passed by the stoic man before taking his leave from the gala.
The chilling temperature around him was the only indication of his mood as he walked back to the 'house'. He was surrounded by silence, the type that allowed emotions to boil and fested and with each step the smile from his face faded. Xue Mei was also quiet but he could feel her sharpening her teeth for what is to come. He looked at the rickety wooden houses that crowded the alley. It was the slums here, the place where no one questioned anything.
He pulled a heavy skeleton key from the inside of his suit inserting it into the lock of a certain crumbling establishment. With a groan the wooden door opened and Xuan settled himself on an old rocking chair. With a slight push off the ground and the chair was set into motion.
He gazed up at the patch of the inky night sky through a window. Dark clouds covered the stars and moon, leaving him dwelling in the shadows. "It's a good night tonight." He whispered to the empty room and Xue Mei purred in agreement.
They're slow. Xue Mei grumbled in his mind and Xuan sighed. She was right, the toll of midnight sounded from the grandfather clock sounded seconds afterwards. "We'll give him another few minutes, there's no need to rush."
Post by kasimir burovski ✨ on Aug 11, 2017 14:20:44 GMT
blue moon
you saw me standing alone
"meet me back at the 'basement'. remember, all deals are off."
the words are mild, soft-spoken and quiet like a whisper in the night; the words are rimmed with ice, lined in the bone-deep chill of bitter hatred and cutting like the jagged edge of pretty porcelain pieces. his heart shudders in his chest, beating out a cadence of desperate fear and paper-thin prayers against the ivory curve of his ribcage; blood runs sanguine streaks of fear like tattoos on his veins. kasimir trembles - a threat, a promise, a curse - and wonders how much a supplicant might hope for the faintest glimmer of mercy.
( none; the answer is none )
he approaches on silent feet, hesitant feet, kirjava a furiously resigned presence in the back of his mind. they both know what is coming, of course, what is inevitable as shackles drawn in detestation and words around his wrist and neck and ankles, what is to paint their worlds red with pain by the dawning of the new day. how long will it take for them to heal this time? too long, too little.
the door creaks as he enters, announcing his presence with the shrill cry of 'betrayer, betrayer, the detestable and the abominable!'; his broken bottleglass eyes are drawn to the shadows where xuan jin sits, cloaked in darkness and crowned in stormy light, a silhouette drawn in nightmare ink for kasimir to shatter himself against. "i- master," he whispers, and his eyes are fearful, downcast, his posture resigned.
He closed his eyes briefly when he heard the door open and took in a deep breath. He heard Xue Mei growl audiably at him and listened to the tremble of his voice.
Kasimir, dear little Kasimir. Was he stupid? No, but he was hard headed and Xuan almost felt pity for the man. Almost, that is, until he remembered what had gotten them into this predicament. Wei, his little brother, if it had not been the man before him... Xuan shook the thought away and slowly stood, finally opening his eyes.
"Oh? And here I thought your master was our dear coven leader, Dmitri, or would it be the delightful Dahlia that was up there with you?" His tone was light, airy enough that he could be talking about the weather being nice yesterday but the lighter his tone the chiller the air became.
"Where is your dear little familiar?" Should I call his name? Was his silent question. Xuan turned, lifting up a hidden hatch to the cellar below. "Shall we?" He asked and without waiting for an answer, headed down with Xue Mei.
With the descent down each stone step, the air around him dropped bit by bit before they finally reach the bottom of the first set of steps. The air still contained the scent of the blood of its many occupants before but no traces of it could be found on the floors or walls. In the 'room' sat two chairs, one bathed in moonlight and the other hidden in the shadows.
Xuan sat on the one in the shadows. "Sit, please." He gestured to the one in the light and something far down below rattled at his voice perhaps followed by a muffled scream, it was hard to tell, the echoes merged together in one large clump of sound, rebounding off walls and travelled up to the 'room' they were currently occupying.
Post by kasimir burovski ✨ on Sept 2, 2017 8:25:43 GMT
blue moon
you saw me standing alone
tension bleeds into the air as he waits for xuan jin to speak, thick and heavy like the oppressive weight of a thunderstorm waiting to be unleashed, dark like the sanguine ink of heartblood pooling out beneath a cooling corpse; kasimir dares not look up at his blackmailer for fear of being devoured by those cold, abyssine eyes. even the breath within his lungs is still; the moment balances on the precipice of a knife's edge, waiting for words to shatter it. hratchomuhi tithá - two words to break him to pieces.
they do not come.
movement at last, the rustling of cloth; he tenses, skin pulling taut over his shoulders, but the words he expects to hear do not come. instead: words light and sweet like honey coats his tongue instead of ice, belied, however, by the chill that ghosts brumous fingers around his neck. kasimir trembles, slight and unnoticeable beneath his clothes; his skin crawls - fear like glacial patterns refracting across his skin.
"where is your dear little familiar?" his master asks in a mockingly absentminded tone, an implicit order dark beneath his words. he hesitates - what little remains of his self-protective instincts stills him for a single instant - then kirjava's paws touch the ground as she materialises herself. wary eyes, smokey gold like dimly-lit lamps, a hint of defiance sparking despite the circumstances - her ears are pressed against her skull and she stays close to kasimir's side.
the descent into the cellar mirrors a descent into kasimir's fears and personal hell; darkness draped like cobwebs across the room, echoes of past pain writ into the very stones; he can almost hear a reverberation of his screams tremor in the air. and it is almost unnaturally cold, cold like the walls are ice, cold like every inch of warmth has been snuffed out, cold like he will never be warm again. perhaps it is psychological, but his clothes are suddenly far too thin to ward against the chill; kirjava's presence by his side becomes the only reminder that there still exists warmth in the world.
a chair, edges harsh and cold in the moonlight. despite everything, despite expecting it, knowing it, his heart still stops for a beat upon seeing it. too many memories. kasimir takes a step, falters, then forces his limbs to carry him forth and sit. gingerly, on the edge, spine ramrod straight, eyes downcast, breath quivering in his lungs.
The appearance of Kasi's adoringly small familiar caused Xuan's lips to itch up a little further. Xue Mei was eagerly looking at her prey and he shared her excitement.
Sometimes, I think you want dear Kasimir to screw up for occasions like this to occur. He remarked to Xue Mei as he too glanced at the ocelot before heading down. Xue Mei laughed, her voice present in the minds of all occupants of the room.
Xuan rests his head delicately on threaded fingers, his gaze not wavering once to capture each minuscule movement of his prey before him. "In what ways do you think these acts will achieve that freedom you crave so much?" His voice was calm as he composed this with a smile, hiding the cold fury.
He then realised that it was useless, even if Kasimir was somehow able to see in the darkness that enclosed him like a tailored cloak, the unnatural freezing temperature was not enough to cover his current mood.
As if to further this point, ice began to form around his feet on the ground, covering the entire surface in a matter of minutes but forming a careful ring around Kasimir as if to tease him for a second but then ate up the surface below the red-head as well. Howling could be heard again from far below and Xuan's eyes narrowed for a quarter of a second in annoyance.
"Sorry about the noise. They get a little anxious when people are around. I'm sure they'll be delighted to see a fellow 'friend'." He laughed softly as if there was some inside joke in his explanation but he kept his eyes pinpointed on Kasimir, as if he was the source of amusement, which he was.
Post by kasimir burovski ✨ on Sept 3, 2017 15:30:36 GMT
blue moon
you saw me standing alone
they stare at kasimir and kirjava with hunter eyes - hungry eyes dark and abyssine like the void itself grinning with too many teeth and too much inhuman glee down at them, waiting for the chance to devour them whole. or devour them slowly, agonisingly slowly, stripping the flesh from their bones inch by inch and sinking dagger-sharp teeth into their marrow around the splinter of their ribcages. his breath trembles when xue mei laughs, fractals of future pain mapped out in the euphoric glee of her voice.
kirjava is stone still by his side. like prey ( but she is not prey- but she is )
his master's voice is calm, almost polite, kind were it not for the ice creeping, coalescing, surging forwards in a wave of bitter glacial cold, biting to the very core. kasimir shudders, once, as the ice engulfs the floor beneath his feet - the floor kirjava stands upon - once only though, because he should know better. the fire burning at his core dwindles to a mere flicker; he longs to coax it to life, to surge warmth back into his limbs, but he knows better.
punishment is hardly meant to be painless, after all.
he does not dare speak yet. it is always a game, a gamble - sometimes, xuan jin would like nothing more to have kasimir beg, scream; sometimes, a voice is not a luxury he is granted - and kasimir cannot tell which is to be tonight.
beneath his feet, beneath the very floor, phantasm screaming sounds, reverberates till it all but echoes in his lungs and takes up residence in the recesses of his mind. he flinches, unable to help himself, unable to fight past the instinctive recollection that he, too, has left the imprint of his screams in the heart of the stones here, writ in blood. and tonight, again, he will likely join them once more, spilling sanguine like dark ink as his throat shreds into tattered strips of flesh.
should he speak, apologise? beg? should he stay silent? perhaps both options are incorrect, perhaps there is no way to win. ( there is not, of course; kasimir will not be leaving tonight without the consequences of his actions tattooed across his back in red ) but words like from his tongue like insubstantial curls of smoke, but there are no words he wants to say. and so, he shivers one more time, and stays silent.
Every single movement of Kasimir was caught by Xuan's cold gaze, his smile widened at the little flinch and Xuan almost glows with satisfication.
A feeling inside him urged him to keep it up perhaps even to drop a word on the sweet little sister of Kasimir yet another feeling stops him from doing so. His fingers freeze half outstretched towards Kirjava, a flash of memory entered his mind. A scene too alike to the current to be a mere coincidence.
Guerra stood above him as Xuan shuddered in his chair, the echoing sound of something screaming from below brewed sickening fear in his stomach but nothing was more terrifying than the man before him. The poisonous smile accompanied by a promise of a fate worse than death. His hand outstretched to deal the next blow.
His hand almost mirrors the same place Guerra's and he found himself trembling slightly. A never-ending cycle. The second Guerra. Is that what you have wanted? Xuan chuckled to himself, soft and sickly, as he tittered on the edge of sanity. His eyes lock onto dear little Kasimir's.
"What kind situation is this?" His voice quiet like the deceptively still surface of a serene lake, while undercurrents caught the body of an unaware swimmer. "You and I here... I admit I was always a little jealous and now you're here. The place I had been..."
Madness took over and fitted on him like a second layer of skin. His gaze drifts to the familiar of Kasimir's. "What do you say, Hratchomuhi Tithá?" Tags: kasimir burovski ✨ Note: tell me if you need anything changed
Post by kasimir burovski ✨ on Sept 27, 2017 13:40:12 GMT
blue moon
you saw me standing alone
if he dared look up, kasimir would see his fear refracted in an abyssine void, scintillating, shimmering, shattering like frosted glass into countless diamond shards settled into a cloak of ice on xuan jin's shoulders. if he dared look up, he would see something monstrous peeking out between the ivory of his master's teeth, too-sharp and too-wide and too-gleeful for the delicate act one calls human. if he dared look up, he would see himself, stripped down to a core of caged-bird terror, red dripping down his spine and past his eyes in a sanguinity to come.
but he dares not look up ( but kirjava does, and through her eyes he tastes frissons of fear like blood on his tongue )
footsteps, ice crackling, stirring; frost swirling underfoot as its source draws near. a hand outstretched- his vertebrae interlock into a chain of steel, rigid, waiting, waiting for that blow, that concussive force to echo from his familiar's pain; kirjava tenses, too, jaws clenched, golden eyes narrowed; they are ready-
but it does not come. it does not come, again, and kasimir wonders briefly if this drawn-out torment, this lingering, this hesitation, this lack of immediate and cruel pain is a torment in and of itself - a mental torture, perhaps. he dares a breathless flickering glance up: xuan jin's hand trembles minutely under its potential blow, as if he were the one in anticipation of pain instead of kasimir and kirjava; his eyes are distant, and kasimir wonders even through his fear, what are you thinking?
he rapidly drops his eyes back down to the ground when life sparks back into his master's eyes; life, he says, as if it were not a mockery of that, as if it were not the beginnings of maniacal insanity fracturing too bright fault lines across his face. xuan jin laughs, and it is poison creeping out on an airborne breeze to leech the life out of all things living, it is tainted breath, sickly and insipid to curd bile in the back of his throat; his skin crawls under the spider-sound laugh, balanced on the very border of madness.
"what kind situation is this?" his tormenter asks idly, as if commenting on the weather. as if the veneer of civility were not one so fragile as to shatter under a single glance. jealous? there is history in xuan jin's words, old history writ in blood and betrayal and pain, old history branded into their memories as stark and permanent as the brand on his hip. kasimir is no stranger to jealousy, to tired envy, but to think, xuan jin, jealous of him-
and somehow, despite everything, he does not expect it when kirjava's True Name falls from his master's lips, seven syllables of violation and pain.
"what do you say, hratchomuhi tithá?"
entrails, turned inside-out; breath catching against an oesophagus turned to stone; heavy weight of oppression slamming down on his shoulders to warp his spine in two- kirjava flinches violently, claws skidding on the ice beneath her- and it hurts, a dull, aching hurt sunk deep into the marrow of his bones, more painful for its sickening, violating sensation than any physical impact. kasimir gasps, biting back the pained sound that wants to escape, hunches over with the words ringing in his ears.
hratchomuhi tithá - he hates, and kirjava hates too, that her name, so beloved, has become this source of unescapable torment.
He sighed in disappointment as their little friend stay silent. When he finally uttered the familiar's name, there was finally a decent reaction. A smile grew on his face, never quite reaching his eyes.
"Still no words, Kari dear? I'm surprised, you had been chatting plenty at the gala, why stop now?"" Xuan's eyes rotated a full circle before settling on the ocelot. "Look, even your friend is in pain! You care so much about friends, right?"
The air he breathed out swirled in the air, forming small ice shards before falling to the floor with a quiet tinkle. Pale light from the moon reflected in their surfaces, casting tiny spots of light all around the room.
His voice mellowed out as he spoke, almost wistful. "It was nights like these wasn't it? Peaceful, quiet nights like these, when none of the darkness could touch us as we gazed up."
It was nights like these that sent Xuan brooding until dawn. Wondering what he could have done to save his adoring younger brother from the monsters he had dealt with during the day. And now, he was watching and waiting with a monster of his own, lurking in the depth of icy blue eyes of his.
Post by kasimir burovski ✨ on Jan 4, 2018 7:22:16 GMT
blue moon
you saw me standing alone
it is impossible, he has found, not to react to the calling of kirjava's true name. and yet, he wishes he had not, for the smile that spreads across his tormenter's face below chillingly empty eyes is one that no one should ever experience. kasimir hesitates for a long moment, then tentatively decides not speaking would likely anger xuan jin further. "this one apologises," he whispers, eyes dropping to the ground, "for what he has done to displease you."
that should be safe, right?
kirjava stays silent, muscles tense beneath her fur, and kasimir is all too aware of her desire to either be far far away from here, or to claw the alchemist's face in. unfortunately, neither is an option for them.
xuan jin's tone sounds almost wistful when he next speaks, nostalgia threading through the memories he reinvokes. kasimir can remember it too, remember so clearly quiet-coloured evenings spent shoulder to shoulder with ju and a then-protective xuan jin, gazing up at a star-embedded sky and mapping out constellations as they dreamt about the future. he remembers dreams tinted with a naive childish optimism he had somehow yet retained. he remembers carefully drawing out sirius and orion and ursa major and teaching saskia about them as ju had taught him. he remembers it as a happier time. he remembers hope.
but that was the past, mired in false prophecy of a happier future; the future, the now is painted in bleak shades of guilt and regret and inescapable pain. he looks up, then looks away again. "but those days are gone," he murmurs softly, unable to completely hide the sorrow in his tone.
Finally he had coaxed out a response. Not the desired one but a response nonetheless. It would have been a dull usual night with Kasi drenched in silence until he finally found the right button to press to make him scream. A normal conversation was always pleasant.
Xuan reached his hand out, encasing a few reflections within the palm of his hands. His mind could even conjure the ghost of warmth in his palm associated with the sun. Ju had always loved the little bright stars that tinkled awake while everyone fell asleep. Would he have liked this? Would he have wanted this? Xuan didn't know but he couldn't forgive regardless.
Kasi's next sentence made him freeze completely. those days are gone. Simple, final, the end to his little brother's tale. He let his hand drop to his side and himself fall back into his chair enclosed in the darkness. Silence. Perhaps he understood Kasi's need for it now. Silence to think, to reflect, to remember or to simply to suffocate in it.
Blank hollow nothing. The feeling he had slowly developed under Guerra's care. His only way out was to obey. He could feel it, Guerra's hands resting on his shoulders. The force of mountains weighting him down, sinking him down regardless of his struggles.
The hollowness was gone. Elation pushing adrenaline through his veins. Smiles were pulled across his face until he forgot how to do it anymore. Before he even understood what he was doing he was up, off his chair, leaning on the tips of his toes, looking at Kasimir with wide eyes.
Post by kasimir burovski ✨ on Apr 23, 2018 2:23:04 GMT
blue moon
you saw me standing alone
the instant the words leave his tongue, he knows he has made a mistake.
it is always a mistake to bring up memories of a time best left to the dusty annuls of history and the silent remembrance of a guilt-ridden mind. it is always a mistake to remind his tormenter of a time when torture was not the game, when laughter and brightness and childhood innocence still existed. it is always a mistake to bring up anything that might remind xuan jin of ju, why has he not yet learnt to stop being so stupid and idiotic and masochistic with his words and his actions?
( perhaps it is that one spark of fire and fury and defiance written soul-deep in his blood, that refuses to go out no matter how much he tries to snuff it, that roars and burns and screams itself into a blazing inferno every time he thinks it might have finally died, that goads him into impulsive and defiant decisions no matter the pain that inevitably follows. he is proud of that spark, fiercely and rebelliously and ferociously so, but he also hates it with every fibre of his being for the way it has shaped his life )
kasimir freezes, eyes wide and green and terrified as they fixate on the hand that hovers so close to his face. even his breathing stops. every nerve in kirjava's body is braced in anticipation. he
waits
but nothing happens. xuan jin, too, appears frozen in time, corpse-still and unmoving as stone as he stands too close, far too close to kasimir. and then, his hand drops, and he drops, falling back into his chair, into the embrace of darkness.
there is a moment of tense, anticipatory disbelief, a moment suspended in history and agony and silence, both kasimir and kirjava expecting a blow to shatter this stillness out of nowhere. but there is nothing. he risks looking up, risks raising his eyes from safe submission and stares into the unfathomable abyss. still nothing.
for a moment, the wild and exhilarating and defiant part of him urges him to leave, to take this opportunity and flee far from this nightmare and into day. is it half-mad lightning in his blood, adrenaline and fear and intrinsic rebellion in a beautiful, deadly cocktail of impulse and ferocity; but he stays put. because impulse and defiance was what had gotten him here to this point, and he should know better.
( perhaps it is better to break and stay broken, rather than break and break and break and pull himself back together with threads of fire and rebellion and then be broken once more. perhaps it is better to accept defeat. he should but he does not, but he does and all it results in is a tangled mess of pain and vengeance and half-shattered pieces. )
the instant they let their guard down, xuan jin is back, towering over them a hairsbreath away with something hollow and bright and mad in his eyes. kasimir flinches, unable to help himself, terror stark and vivid on his face.
His fingers dig into flesh of his own palm, he could actually hear Guerra sing praises. Xuan zeroes in on the neck of his prey, cackling madly. His vision tinged red, his mind not even registering who or what was in front of him anymore.
Guerra's final command replaying in broken loops inside his head.
LANCEA forms a small dagger in his hand and he draws it closer to the jugular. His pulse becomes frenzied and his knows, HE KNOWS that he might just succumb to Guerra even if he was six feet under, the ghosts he left behind were still going to haunt him. He remembers all those 'lessons', the perfect way to kill, weak points, how to strike, how to maim, how to torture, all drilled into his very bones.
The scars across his body burns, as if a hot poker was searing them into his skin again. The voice of Guerra coaxes him again, carrot and stick. "If I train you both as hunters, I wonder who will end up as the prey?" He could hear him whisper, fear ran amok.
He was going to be the hunter, perfect in every way. Surely then, Kasimir wouldn't have to be subjected to the 'little requests' anymore. If he could just prove to him that he, Xuan, would be the Manchurian Candidate maybe Guerra would leave the innocent Burovskis alone. At least he could save another from walking down his own path.
A sheen of sweat had formed unknowingly on his skin despite the low temperatures. That, accompanied by his already pale features made him almost translucent beneath the moon when he caught his reflection in the ice shards. A vengeful ghost, unable to leave and unable to stay. He's gasping, as if he had ran for miles. Xuan looks down, noting the rivulet of blood he had from from the cut of Kasimir's neck.
"Kasimir." Xuan sucks in a deep breath, his mind numb as is his whole being. Torn between obeying and fighting, he tears his eyes from the dark crimson line crawling down Kasimir's neck. There's more cuts on his chest, arms and legs some deeper than the others but none of them anywhere near life-threatening and not even close to the usual level Kasimir had endured during their usual 'sessions'. His senses comes back, registering howling and the jiggle of metal below.
He musters a smile, hiding away the shaking fragile control he had on himself, on his own mind.
"Looks like you're in bad shape. I'm try some new methods to get my little friends down there to talk. Do I hear a volunteer? Good. Now grouchy little Kasi is going to smear this onto those cuts while I go and calm down our little friends down there." Xuan tosses him a jar of vibrant blue liquid, the cuts would heal quickly but at the cost of the prickling sensation of thousands of ants eating him alive. It was a lousy attempt at distracting Kasimir but it was an attempt nonetheless.
"I'm heading down to check on a few things." Xuan added as an after thought. He didn't know if Kasimir would leave after this, nor did he really care right now as he hurried out of sight.
Until he was completely sure Kasimir and his familiar hadn't followed him, Xuan let his bones collapse onto itself and fell to the floor as the whispers grew louder.
Tags: kasimir burovski ✨ Note: -more dying- tell me if you need anything changed
Post by kasimir burovski ✨ on May 27, 2018 4:43:28 GMT
blue moon
you saw me standing alone
xuan jin is pale beneath the moonlight, skin stretched over his bones almost translucent, almost fragile. his eyes are dark, though, dark and cold and blank and empty like a fragment of the undying abyss sunk into human flesh to create something just this side of monstrous, just this side of abomination. like something woven of fear and vengeance and morning frost, crafted to fit a humanoid shell but not quite enough to occupy it; like a ghost of something long since lost that has yet to understand its immateriality.
but xuan jin is real, all too real. ice coalesces in his hand and a deceptively beautiful blade crafts itself to rest at his jugular. the chill against his skin is nothing compared to the chill in xuan jin's eyes, nothing compared to the madness he sees there. it presses in, presses deep, and his blood is too hot too warm too red; it runs down the stretch of his neck and soaks through the white of his shirt and bloods dark and wet in his lap. for a moment, for one insane fraction of a moment, he is griped by the mad, exhilarating urge to laugh and press back against the blade and look his tormenter in the eye and say 'i dare you.'i dare you to cut deeper, cut wider, slash his throat open and end this nightmare once and for all.
but kasimir is a coward and weak and far too selfish a creature to do anything of the sort; he clenches his teeth and cages the cries that want to escape as his clothes are shredded by that merciless knife and he gains an assortment of tattoos inked in red. kirjava's claws dig into the ground but her eyes are intent on xuan jin's face. their tormenter is gasping, breathing hard as if slicing them to ribbons is an exertion of strength, but his gaze is a thousand miles away and kasimir knows xuan jin is not seeing them.
he wonders briefly, flinching at another cut, biting back another scream, if xuan jin might slip his hand and kill them, lost in his mind as he is.
he wonders if he even cares.
and then, a blink and their tormenter is back, reality seeping back into those abyssal eyes. kasimir drops his gaze again, waits for the next round to begin. he is trembling, shaking from the chill and the fear and the cuts burning against his skin, but it could be worse. has been worse. will be worse. a warmup, xuan jin likes to say, smiling at the irony of the phrase.
and then
it ends?
it ends, xuan jin tosses him a jar of potion that he barely catches, stunned as he is, and he leaves as if this is the end of the torture session, as if this collection of cuts is it- it is never this easy. never this short and simple and painless, never this quick. xuan jin leaves and he sits there with a shirt dyed red from his own blood and he wonders if this is a test. if, should he get up and leave, his tormenter will swoop back in with madness between his teeth and ice betwixt his fingers and shred their hope into pieces. he wonders if the jar he has been given is the trick, if it is something that will multiply the pain or burn his flesh or send him spiralling into madness.
he wonders, fears, but xuan jin does not come back, and he does not know if he should take this chance and- "go!" snaps kirjava and he is out of his seat and gone, stumbling out of the house and out of the nightmare and back into the lamplit streets where the real world reigns.
