JERICHO ● SEPTEMBER 2025 EVENT/TDM

[uruz]

TDM & EVENT: JERICHO

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Prologue: New Characters

You've been plagued with a reoccuring dream, as of late. Every time you sleep, the dream returns to you.

It always begins the same way: As a breath held for too long. As a pressure at the base of your spine. A silence that presses against the skin like confession, like prophecy. A ripple moves through your bones. A tide builds and pulls at your feet, familiar by now. You dream of a black, soundless wave, thick like oil and starlight, swelling across the horizon line. You've seen the wave before, countless times, always rising. With every night, it never reaches you. You always seem to wake before it does . . . That is, until tonight.

The wave moves slow, deliberate— like something ancient and alive. And when it finally crashes, there is no harsh impact. Only warmth. Only submersion. Rather than drowning, you are being claimed with saltwater that's sweet with myrrh. The darkness embracing you pulses with desire. Then, a voice envelops you.

"Come home."
It dribbles with honey-like promise, like a truth you've always known, whispered now from within your marrow more like temptation than a request.

"You are mine. You always were."
The voice offers purpose. Worship. Belonging. And when you wake . . . You wake changed, with a mask on your face you did not choose. Elegant. Sacred. Too important to remove. You have been given a gift. A new beginning.

Welcome home, new Vessels.

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Sink Down Like Precious Stones

( content warnings: drowning, body horror )

Vessels awaken within the dreamscape as the black wave recedes from their skin like velvet falling off the bone, their masks in place over their eyes and left afloat in the watery expanse. All around them, the ocean stretches infinite and lightless— so still it mirrors the sky above, indistinguishable from the void. Far in the distance, massive obsidian walls curve inward, enclosing this vast seascape like a forgotten temple basin. And there, at the far horizon, one glow pierces the dark: a low-burning fire flickering within a half-sunken structure of impossible architecture— arched, ribbed, as though built from marble and cathedral glass.

This is a test, and it begins with belief.

Those with unwavering faith— whether in Sleep, another god, or even themselves— will find the surface beneath their feet holds firm. The sea becomes glass, and they may rise, and walk. But those adrift in doubt begin to sink. Precious stone creeps over their skin. Joints stiffen. Flesh cracks. Breath slows. It is not death, but it is close and might as well be hell. Your only salvation lies in your own conviction . . . Or the mercy of another Vessel who happens to walk.

Those who drown will not die. They will loop this moment— sinking, blackness, return, sink again— until belief takes root in some way. Alternatively, they may awaken in a later dreamspace . . . Changed.

NOTES:

• Pale white fish as well as glowing jellyfish may be encounted. The fish stare at vessels as they drown, and jellyfish may leave behind a shock that could temporarily stop the process of crystalization. But only temporarily— and their stings are excrutiating.

TOKEN EFFECTS:

• Magic becomes volatile— spells flicker, overcharge, or fizzle unpredictably when cast on or near the ocean.
• When you cast, your veins glow from beneath the skin, but not with light. It's writhing. Like something trapped under glass.
• When channeling magic, your mouth may fill with brine and blood.

OFFERING EFFECTS:

• The water responds emotionally— thrashing with fury or calming with yearning depending on the Offering's state of mind.
• The sea amplifies desire and instinct, making base emotions harder to suppress— rage, hunger, longing all churn just beneath the surface.
• The black water feels too warm, too alive, clinging to the body like memory; any stillness invites visions of Sleep's embrace, both reverent and consuming.

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You Taste Like New Flesh

( content warnings: body horror, psychological horror, compulsion, unreliable reality )

The ocean path ends at a palace carved of pearl and spun silk, impossibly perched where water meets nothingness. Whether you have traversed the black sea on trembling feet or simply awaken seated at an impossibly long table, it makes no difference. You are here now, and welcomed, suddenly in attire fit for a gala. Around this table sit countless Dream-Vessels, many silent and still, faces unreadable in the flickering candlelight wearing generic, six-eyed masks. The table stretches beyond sight, arching beneath creeping vines that twist like ancient veins overhead, blooming with strange blossoms that beat with energy. Flames dance atop dozens of candles— some burn on brass holders, others hover, like fireflies caught mid-flight, their shadows flickering and shifting with an otherworldly rhythm. Around you, phantasmal forms shimmer on pedestals: Sleep's ancient Guardians are eternalized through memorial, monstrous and magnificent, lost to time yet enshrined in reverence. On the highest pedestal stands a still living One, silent and watching the feast with somber eyes. Sleep's voice whispers in your ear, encouraging a glance to, perhaps, see what you may become.

"Feast, My Dear Vessels. Until you taste like New Flesh."

The foods before you don not come unmeddled with. Each bite pulls memories from your bones to the surface— moments buried or erased, but these are not just yours. The banquet feeds on shared history, stirring secrets tangled between you and the others here. To eat is to open a door: to risk awakening something dormant, to invite others inside your buried truths, to forge bonds or betrayals that can never be unseen.

Eton Mess: Crushed meringue, tangled cream, and berries that bleed like bruises when bitten. Sweetness melts quickly, leaving your tongue cold. As you eat, a memory rises— but you don't experience it alone. The person nearest you sees what you see, hears what you hear, feels what you felt. Together, you can alter one key detail, and that change ripples outward, shifting how you both remember the event.

Deviled Kidneys: Spiced and seared, the metallic richness clings to your mouth, as if tasting old blood. Eating summons the echo of a painful or violent memory, but your partner experiences it with you.

Roasted Lamb in Mint Sauce: The sweetness of the meat is cut by mint sharp enough to sting the throat. Your act of consumption awakens a craving, but not in you— in the Vessel sharing this dish. They feel an inexorable pull toward your memory, even without knowing what they seek. The bond persists until the craving is confronted.

Honey Scouse: A thick, golden stew heavy with warmth, but beneath the sweetness, something cloying curls around the edges. Every shared spoonful spreads a slow, creeping influence between you and your partner: intrusive visions, subtle compulsions, small lapses in agency. Neither of you can tell whose thoughts belong to whom.

Starpit Fruit: Plum-sized and faintly glowing, the juice leaves your fingertips dusted in silver, like handling starlight. When bitten, the fruit releases the memory of a forgotten wish, not to you but to the person beside you. They see it clearly— and know exactly what you once wanted most, even if you had buried it.

Marigold Brandy: A golden spirit served warm, glowing faintly as though sunlight has been trapped inside the glass. When lifted, it releases a soft, floral scent. The first sip draws you and your partner into a shared burst of joy— a memory that makes you swell with happiness. The sensation is so immediate, so electric, that when the memory breaks, your bodies ache to move, to speak, to draw more positivity to light. You may feel an irresistible pull to get up and dance on the wide palace floors, even if no music is playing . . . And if others nearby drink as well, the effect multiplies.

Saints Breath Chalice: A dark, wine-thick cordial served in tarnished silver cups etched with symbols that shift when stared at too long. The liquid smells faintly of frankincense and something sweeter— blood-warm and alive. Drinking it floods you and your partner with the overwhelming sensation of being inside someone else's celebration, a memory that belongs to neither of you: a vast mass of black, with branching antlers and six, glowing red eyes. It reaches to sink its claws into your chest as she sings: One. Beloved. We were meant to be. It is impossible to tell whether you're witnessing joy or manic worship. There is chanting you cannot understand but somehow already know, drums that sync with your heartbeat until you can feel nothing else. Your limbs begin to twitch, then sway, then move without conscious thought, drawn into a dance you do not remember learning. If more than two people drink, your movements synchronize perfectly, your breath matching theirs, until the room seems stop to watch.

The table awaits.

NOTES:

• Feasting becomes addictive. The more a character eats, the harder it is to stop. Gluttony may cause physical consequences: nosebleeds, twitching fingers, warping speech, uncontrollable confessions, or dripping nectar from their mouths.
• Those who refuse to eat at all begin to starve in a dream-sense: they lose color, smell burning, and feel the weight of Sleep's gaze. Her wrath isn't immediate— but it grows the longer you reject the feast. She takes offense.

TOKEN EFFECTS:

• Each spell cast after eating releases parasitic energy— manifesting as flowers, thorns, parasitic insects or rot— either from their own body or from someone they recently touched.
• Casting warps your limbs temporarily: too many joints, fingers curl the wrong way, nerves burn like wires.
• Touching others leaves sigils burned into their skin. These will briefly carry over into the waking world during next month's event. Runecasters will get the innate feeling that this symbol has a meaning summed up as "The Night Does Not Belong To God". How they interpret that is up to them.

OFFERING EFFECTS:

• The act of devouring awakens an overwhelming desire, often physical, but sometimes emotional or spiritual. This desire clings to another Vessel at the table, creating obsessive attachment or aggression.
• The more they eat, the more their monstrous traits subtly emerge.
• Consuming another Vessel's memory (if shared or touched) grants a brief glimpse of their deepest fear or weakness.

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There's Something In The Way You Lay

( content warnings: sexual content, voyeurism, body modification, omegaverse traits, loss of agency )

Beneath its pearlescent halls, beyond the banquet of flickering candles and dream-Vessels who eat in hollow silence, a spiral staircase winds downward. Its steps are damp and velvet-slick. The further you descend, the warmer the air becomes— humid, cloying, thick with the scent of sweat, salt, and incense. The sounds reach you first: Slaps, gasps, the wet chorus of bodies and perverse intimacy. Laughter, muffled sobs, the echo of whispered names long forgotten. At the base lies a corridor of "private" rooms. Their doors swing open with dreamlike invitation. Inside, the scenes unfold: past dream-Vessels lost in tableau— arched backs, bitten lips, mouths open in prayer or obedience. Some are alone, coiled in worship. Others tangle in groups, indistinguishable where one body ends and another begins. Vines bloom across the ceilings, watching. The walls glisten with breath. You see their faces, but you can't quite distinguish what or who they are. You may not remember choosing a role, but the dream has chosen for you. α or Ω— and with the naming, your body changes. There is no shame here, only devotion made manifest. This is how Sleep is worshipped now: through cruelty and surrender, through the giving and the taking of flesh.

NOTES

• Masks may optionally offer a sort of glamour for Vessels who wander into these chambers— they will not be able to recognize each other. How much of that, whether it be appearance, voice, and so on, is up to you.
• Past dream-Vessels perform for no one, eyes vacant, movements perfect, as if only a ghost of a memory. Player characters may interact with them and even partake in intimacy with them, but be warned: they are emotionally absent and may cause symptoms of succumbence that could be remedied with a proper, player-character tether.
• Tools hang on the walls: Rods of all sizes, slick with heat. Collars that hum with low, seductive voltage. Blindfolds that intensify physical contact, There's no need for cuffs or chains when there are vines that seem to respond to the α party's mood— tightening, flowering, or reaching for skin. You are free to come up with your own items.
• α perks:: Instinctive claiming (done through biting, rubbing, branding, etc), an almost predatory focus and obsession for those who interest them, pack gravity (the ability to attract one or more vessels at once), emitting a scent that ignites heat/rut in others, darker urges surge and a commanding voice.
Ω perks: High pain tolerance, instinctive yielding, emotional synchrony with those being watched, self-lubricating, hypersensitive, scent tracking, intense need to please or be filled emotionally, physically, and spiritually. When touched, glowing runes bloom across the skin.

TOKEN EFFECTS

• Spells cast during acts of intimacy may provoke a heightened sensation of euphoria for both caster and whoever is affected by the spell.
• Magic may manifest as misty appendages— extra hands, tongues, eyes, etc.
• Divine energy becomes volatile when passed through the body— ecstasy may border on agony, or vice versa, and Tethering becomes impossibly euphoric.

OFFERING EFFECTS

• Flesh becomes malleable mid-act— bones bending, jaws unhinging, skin blooming open, etc.
• Animalistic traits emerge: tails, claws, growls, tentacles, scent glands— all begging to be used.
• Feeding and Tethering are indistinguishable— hunger becomes worship, and worship becomes need.

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I am not worthy

( content warnings: body horror, violence, gore, parasitic/invasive feeding, death )

Wherever you are, the palace begins to rot. First slowly, then all at once: vines swell with black fluid, splitting at the seams. They burst from beneath marble tiles, coil up pillars, slither across frames and vacant thrones like arteries choking a heart. The candlelight flickers. One by one, the flames throughout the palace float upward . . . And die. No smoke. No warning. Just wet silence. Then the Dream-Vessels begin to fall. They do not scream as they do. They collapse like marionettes, limbs askew. Their flesh splits open along wounds that should not exist— a rip at the neck, teeth marks prying open the ribcage, a bite that swallows half a torso. Bones jut like sculpted ivory. Entrails slither across the floor like garlands. Some burst mid-air, as if the dream demands spectacle. Others fold in on themselves until all that's left of them is a mound of flesh.

"I am not worthy."

One voice. Ten. A thousand—layered, glitching, sweaty. It echoes from the walls, the bodies, the seams in the floor. The corpses twitch in time with the chant, jerking violently. Some snap backwards, eyes wide, jaws unhinged. Others explode— blossoming in gore, raining viscera. From the heaving pile of ruined Dream-Vessels, something forms.

It lurches into being: stitched from tongues, teeth, torsos. Weeping. Wailing. Worshipping. A monstrosity of raw flesh and faith: all failures made meat. Its eyes (are they eyes?) blink out. Arms claw outwards, too many to count. Its scent is of copper, sweat, and sorrow.

When The Abomination chooses to feed, it seeks not flesh, but the softest rot inside you. An appendage uncoils from its writhing mass and unhinged jaw— veined, slick, and trembling like a violated root. It drives itself into your mouth, splitting your lips with obscene tenderness, and sinks deep into your throat, locking you still.

What it draws out is not blood. It siphons your doubts, your fears, your most secret self-hatred. Your inadequacy. Every buried shame. Your hate. Your negativity. Every flinch of unworthiness. Every moment you believed yourself unlovable, unseen, too small. It gorges on what you hide from even yourself, and the more you try to resist, the sweeter your sorrow becomes. The last thing it takes is your life force, and then your viscera, leaving you wilted and shrivled like a hollow log.

This death is violating and feels painfully slow. You're drained raw of your vitality until you're but a brittle husk that breaks to dust in the wind. It seems near impossible to destroy, always reforming into bits and pieces left smudged behind. Perhaps your best bet it to run, or attempt to wake yourself up from this nightmare.

One's voice repeats in choked sobs: I am not worthy.

NOTES:

• Wounds from the beast linger. You may wake bleeding or marked.
• If devoured, characters will awaken the following month extremely fatigued during the first 3-5 days of the month. They may also sporadically rigurgitate black sludge. Characters who die and are already in the game may requesta plot clue, that will be a vision your character will dream of before awakening.

TOKEN EFFECTS

• Magic recoils violently when used on The Abomination, backfiring with psychic screams or ripping into your flesh.
• Your hands glow uncontrollably, burning what you touch— even those you love.
• Magic becomes hungry; it demands pieces of your body to function. A tooth. A nail. A rib (and so on).

OFFERING EFFECTS

• The rage it stirs in you is monstrous. You begin to shift uncontrollably— flesh blooms, bones crack under strain.
• Your body begins moving before you decide to. Twitching toward The Abomination, and toward the scent of despair.
• During the chaos, you may develop a fixation with another Vessel's flaw. You can smell it on them. It entrances you . . . To the point that you may feel the urge to feed them to The Abomination.

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OOC NOTES

➤ Welcome to Somnia's second TDM, which doubles as our third gamewide event!

➤ This TDM is considered game canon. You are free to have your character remember as many details as possible.

➤ Only new characters are free to experiment with the Vessel options to your liking; this is a dreamscape, so multiple/different situations for you to really test which option you like most is possible. Current characters must remain as their chosen Vessel type unless you requested a switch, which can be done on the Taken page.

➤ All TDMs take place within a dreamscape, meaning characters can interact with the setting without needing to apply. Come have fun with us!

➤ Veteran players, I ask to please refrain from making post-event threads for the time being! We have some important information to take into account in next month's event when characters are slated to "wake up". At the very least, please wait for the information to be offered on the next plotting post. Thank you everyone for your patience!

➤ Please comment on the TDM's INVITE TL if you are a new player interested in joining the game, but don't yet have an invite. Current players or the mod may reach out to extend an invite. Once you've got one, please don't forget to comment on the Invite page so you may properly link it in your reserve and app.

➤ Questions? Please direct them to the designated questions comment linked below!

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Comments

[hallowedly]

( They... remained. How charitably indiscriminate. Of course, the touch of a devoted lover or a sophisticated whore are the same to a blind man running the fevers of his yearning. That Sumeragi Subaru can't differentiate the subtle trickling of change is... unpardonable in ways the Kirimono mask of Seishirou's benevolence fleetingly cracks in a cleaved grimace to betray.

He stands above disappointment or heartbreak. Above matters of base, every-day jealousy. But this is — prophecy, birthright, Subaru's blood, Seishirou's will. This should have been, and his fingers wrench their way in between Subaru's to force the clasp, personal. But Sumeragi Subaru has already crowned the nostalgic reassurance of flesh-born truths above the station of intelligent allegiance. )

I suppose they were never mine.

( They belonged, indelibly, to the Sakurazukamori. To think he has adopted in his successor. Will wonders of bastardized clan rite affairs ever cease. His little prey-wife should only be so flattered to walk forest grounds of cartilage and bone and leave the funerary copse a man raised to the vanguard of two clans of distinction. Will he purify, still? Seek out Ama-no-Habakiri and slay his demons, or join them in the red ranks? )

You should eat. ( In the dark dissolving. ) Baku won't heed you here. The dream dances on. We're on borrowed on time, at the largesse of an emperor that hasn't ordained you. ( And how personally spiteful that must be for the Sumeragi, the empire's anointed. ) Whatever strength you can gather, you will need.

[sacral]

[ Hinoki splinters; pigment runs. Craftsmanship shears beneath Seishirou's unidle grip.

An itch toils away at the dissolution of his nerves beneath the second invocation: fate. Digs, beneath the crushing weave of fingertip to delicate metacarpals, the constitution of which bends like a bird wing under the leering imposition of a heel. Around them, he feels the faint inhalation of some other prowling love, sees it in the new candles' flutter. The scars murmur but he can't make out their sacred syllables, blood blooming with new anointment, new rot. This place burgeons with an upset he would never dream of.

He rejects it, in fact.

Never his and yet it was what remained, truth sundered from fact, holy annihilation given shape on the backs of his hands. His expression grows translucent as he considers the wet bulwark of Seishirou's coat still thrown to his side. ]

You've already determined the price of the feast, haven't you? [ These masked dreamers conjured up from Her remembrance, dressed as heartbreak, dressed as avarice, sent as welcoming. ] This is an empress who won't provide strength for nothing in return.

[hallowedly]

( Price, gain, beads of blood and tears of sweat and heartache, and Sumeragi Subaru a creature so stricken that hawks have pillaged his limbs. He cannot bear risk, does not see opportunity. There is bravery in him, to the shape of hands Seishirou holds near and dear and tight; and he cannot bleed more.

So be it. That Seishirou relinquishes one hand writes the testament of his stubborn pride, biding the fat swell of the gilded decanter close to drizzle down the honeyed emulsion of synthetic wickedness in his cup. In Subaru's, after. And he does not wait: only tips his glass in false salute and tastes the brandy's swelter and raises his brows. And lo, This one can be born. You coward. )

There is always a price.

( He has said so before, pays it now. A Vesuvian eruption of kaleidoscopic, ruptured sound: he lacks the singular strength of emotion, a burst of happiness, but a carousel of splinters bound, crushed shrapnel, into the pulp of feeling.

It hits like gunshot: his mother's laughter at a first spell, the pride; the tang of raspberry sorbet during tepid late summer; a storm of blooded petals, then nothing, and winter's gone and the child rushes to the tree's roots, and he weeps for corpses long seen to earth; his shikigami, in flight; the succor of Hokuto's heel plasters after a night's chase, stiff box-leathered shoes breaking in; Tokyo in flourish; Tokyo in rags and ruin.

Every moment, bare, flays and eats of his liver and hangs his innards loose and cuts his heart open; and there: there is the beat. He does not flinch, the twirl of the brandy in his cup swishing, lethargic. They must feed, they must drink, they must gain strength for bodies absent the woes of biology but still imprisoned by sustenance. Cutting the fat off one's dignity to preserve the bone is... practical. )

Drink, to her memory.

[sacral]

[ A taunting brow does less than the weight of memory thrown against him. ...And then it's also less contusion than he'd anticipated. Kinder. The benign blood-letting of happiness moves in syrupy waves, the lukewarm melt of it metastasizing onto brief moments of familiarity. It visits taste on him, and touch, somewhat blurred by the tired drum of a pulse in his ears. Tokyo's fiery neons scent his memory, its sugars and metallic exhaust volatile, alive. There is still a pulse — whose, he doesn't dare to say.

Subaru is frowning first, then blinking the golden motes away, then poising the surrendered fingertips of his free hand over the rim of his glass in stunned obedience. He picks it up, less inclined to release the brandy's aromatics even in the pursuit of more inertia. He lacks the glamour for it. ]

This kind of strength is best remembered in dreams. It's more persistent.

[ It must be irony and not hunger that churns his insides. It must be hunger long staved for any evidence of these memories, the denial of hope he'd long enshrined in his hunt for absolution. Starvation was more practical save for the gaunt vices he'd adopted into his rotation, a cross-sectioning of preparedness that betrayed him in the end. ]

So, in choosing this...

[ Glass in flight, from tabletop to the tilt of his lips. Subaru finally drinks, the long draw of its flame unfamiliar. It meanders down his body, the first cut of sun through a miasmic winter fog. Like the cold birthday winters of Kyoto, the tender baby skin of his unadorned fingers held in his grandmother's as they carefully descend the steps of his home; a dog's warm, coarse scruff where he's buried his nose into the sweet dust of its fur; Hokuto's brave color-matching fabrics to his skin; her voice, always, in scolding, in elation, in the devoted brushstrokes of her understanding; the clattering of his trot to keep up with much longer strides towards the vet clinic, dinner's ingredients in hand. A hospital exterior, thrown in the same sunlight he tastes. Hands in his, hands drawing across his face; arms in embrace, the countless thank yous of those delivered by him. Happiness is an unknowable amalgamation until his lips brush over the marks without a master. It sharpens to a point.

His drink alleviates the tension of Her eye, her offense. In Seishirou's grip, his still entrenched hand is pale with sweat, his votive scar in soft reverb.

Subaru looks sick, an animal's first brush with nourishment after long drought. ]

...what have you come to understand about the rest of it?

[ Surely it cannot be worse. ]

[hallowedly]

( Something borrowed, something true, something lost and someone blue. The stormy sovereignty of flinching memories in a golden (tea)cup. He feels ripples and resonance, the screams of illusions, ruptured. Paltry work, unprofessional.

Beneath his hand, the deceptive lushness of Sumeragi Subaru's curse-coarsened skin, he sees the spread of his twin star's slender fingers, the bluntness of Subaru's nails dulled with slate of incense ash. How they are longer than a day of fast and the night sky, how they could trap death or choke it, how they only so recently fit, compelled by her in Seishirou's chest, how they tore through him like rupturing silk, how he —

— fell then, flinches now, lets go. Is this it, then, protracted? The malign sickness of salted fear, lairing up under Seishirou's tongue? The mouth of anticipation looms over him. He shuts his eyes and breathes and lives and wrenches his hand away. And the wet of his heaving is the start of cold sweat, is a night terror turned fever.

He can't linger on this. He can't afford to fear his death or its maker. )

That you don't have the stomach for much of it. ( That Seishirou himself can't readily contain a man of Sumeragi Subaru's force, unleashed upon this world, under the influence. ) How much have you been giving away?

( Of himself, of his — their — nature. Sumeragi Subaru is but one morsel between many carnivorous mouths, yet, above all, he cannibalizes himself. Erodes his shine, shares his tricks, lessens his glory. Subaru is a whole sieve into parts, he is autumn to his own branches.

And he risks both of their secrets. )

[sacral]

[ No, he doesn't have the stomach for it.

Subaru thinks he mistakes the nature of his sudden release from Seishirou's grip, its reversed magnetism corrupting into a newborn star's repellence. It's dust and it's death, it's carbon, gold, oxygen. It breathes, he breathes, the inhalation before a sundering. Subaru missed it the first time, catches it now. His inky fingertips flex aside slightly, intending to chase understanding right into the gravity well of this feeling's creation, but he hesitates. His expression downturns, lip corners and lashes slivering him into crescents. ]

Nothing. [ He empties the rest of the cup instead. It coils sunny and serpentine all the way down, flickered tongue-tasting his insides. ] It's just this.

[ It's just the illusion of memory spilled out around him, a tincture of bittersweet nostalgia smattered by the beckoning hand of their dreamer. But Subaru is familiar with illusion, and this is not the elegant totality of the Sakurazukamori's full capability. Subaru has enshrined its skill in his faulted heart — this sort of external kintsugi no longer works on him. He watches his own memories prance past in auric swirls of preserved joy; there are precious few Seishirou doesn't occupy.

Only one oddity lingers at his peripherals: flowers that didn't belong to him, the accusation of blooms swelling out of season. Cherry blossoms. Camellia. ]

And you already had it, so there's no point in giving it to you.

[hallowedly]

Give it anyway.

( Alms in a Buddhist priest's bowl, white rice for ofuda strips, a smile for a pretty girl's night-sung virtue. For everything, its price.

Not this: not Seishirou's hand, recoiling serpentine. Not his mouth, trapped in the caricatural convulsions of habit, yearning for an absent cigarette muscle memory summons as a distraction. His fingers drum the table's edge in pulses of restlessness electric, catch of his shadow dancing like wraiths. And he puts it, the seedling of feeling, in a box, embalms the derelict debris of his fear and entombs it, and he decides, in the great, growing tumult of white noise drowned, that Sumeragi Subaru should grieve it.

Around them, the world is dim light and xanthous fevers of oversaturation, the excesses of a dream that seeks to replicate life without calibration. To his left, a woman, fingers wet with plum juices, laughs til her jugular must bruise and her chest ache; to his right, a man never sips, but gulps down his brandy with parched enthusiasm. Nothing is commensurate with the mundanity of the day-to-day experience. Everything is too much.

And in that spirit, shrill shrieks of metal plunging to the floor, he discards both his and dear Subaru's cups off the table in the clean sweep of one hand. Let her watch, then. Let her see. )

My, my. To think the thirteenth head of the Sumeragi clan is such a cheap date. Under the circumstances, I don't even have to pay for my kouhai's dinner. ( No, Seishirou's ledger's hardly the one flooded red enough to rust the knives of their conversation. ) You must be breathing easier, knowing I won't kill you here.

( Can't. Shouldn't. Ability, guideline, possibility, probability, instinct, wish. Steps to the cusp of a peak, the start of an abyssal plunge. Never look down; leap. A cup screeches, rolling by his foot. )

Are you? Don't waste the opportunity. Breathe in.

[sacral]

[ Her eye turns on them at this mannerless affront but Subaru doesn't feel it. Blossomed sight, slighted, and the infinite curl of a rokurokubi's neck overhead. The long loom of shadowed wings eclipses the table instead, whistling ritual. There is no universe, awake or asleep, in which Sumeragi Subaru can see past Seishirou's ensconcing. He's never dreamed of tearing this embrace down, to bone, piecemeal in violence — only succumbing. And the nearby memory of it refuses to visit him in its horrifying reversal. Somehow, this final acknowledgement of what he'd done doesn't make him flinch. He knows how; the why of the invocation is less distinct.

His hands are still on the table, gripping nothing. Loyal grief comes when called. It silts the bottom of his heart, foundational and reflective. Won't. Can't. Shouldn't, but could. Seishirou could do it, where Subaru can't. The fear is his now, a dead thing slipped onto his tongue as the brandy's chaser. ]

Our appetites were always mismatched. [ He's standing over a grave with a ghost believing he is not a ghost. That is his only opportunity. ] I am. Breathing. I have been, this whole time.

[ The head wanders while the body sleeps. The soul learns somnambulism. The cup rolls, its metallic wail softened by the edge of his shoe where it comes to rest.

Slight, but touch enough for him to inhale, this resurrection feeling out of order. ]

[hallowedly]

I'm relieved.

( That goaded, guttural simmering of Subaru's exhalations against the thunderclap of the hall's commotion — a drip of life in a sea of death, dream and damnation. The discordance warms the cockles of Seishirou's heart. And he watches, gaze sharp and gilded, and the dance of nearby masks and shadows irreverent in the diffusion of its mutilated steps.

Subaru breathes. The halls breathe with him. Seishirou feels — feverish, alert, cold. Sickly and sickened. Cruelty sours his tongue. )

In fact... I'm afraid present circumstances make it impossible for me to rise to the occasion of your clan's typical fee. But I'm hoping you'll make an exception, for old times' sake.

( What is the line he will not cross? Is it red with his blood, or Subaru's, or Hokuto's own? Why can't he glimpse it now? Why must he keep talking — )

If what we both suspect is true — ( And he is dead, so very dead, corpse cold and bones sun-blanched and rattling, and his carcass alight with the song of prey birds, their bloodied beaks scratching. ) — then I can think of no one better suited to exorcise my spirit.

( The well of his magic is dry like a womb stopped with silt, like an ink stick turned brittle — but waters wait and build and brim, and no soil seeds disaster like the spirit of an onmyouji unpacified. There are rules for this, sacred wards to prevent the necromantic misuse of powerful bodies as instruments in another Kamui's wars, words of whispered caution and ofuda stretched out, clammy and wet, on dead limbs like a second skin.

The likes of a Sakurazukamori wants burial, wants exorcism, wants containment. He must be rinsed from this world, like a miasma. Surely, that is writ in the sacral Sumeragi texts, surely it is known. Surely, Sumeragi Subaru has an obligation.

Is it rite or revenge to ask, here, now, of Subaru?

(Right, his right, his right.)

Seishirou's hands join the table, fingers spidering out, spilling. He grips — first the wooden expanse, then the deformity of his self-control. His back, is a rigid line, a shield, uncrumbling as he bows deep in ritual reverence, forehead to table. )

Thirteenth head, I humbly ask you to please accept this case.

[sacral]

[ A thick and anticipatory static prowls the edges of his thoughts. Each word put to the truth of their circumstances tightens its net until it's set to strangle him, until there are silvered hands, pins and needles, gripped to the back of his neck. It begs him to look. It forces him to look. The slow prostration acts as creeping herald to the request that rattles his heart where it hangs low and lunar in his chest. His tidal emotions obey its call, always. Nature at its most violent, in its truest form. ]

You want me to release you from this dream.

[ Can he? He — can. Should. Must. His clan would love nothing more than for his hands to undo the curse of the Sakurazukamori, to lay to rest the unnatural floral plague of the enemy's lineage. Sumeragi Subaru killed the Sakurazukamori, yet here he stands without his power, beholden to the humble torture of his ghost.

Subaru was certain the god who calls herself Sleep brought him here. But could it be that it wasn't her, and instead... ]

I — [ Should. Must. Can. His fingers have curled against the tablecloth sodden by saltwater and old blood. ] ...not here.

[ The tacit agreement burns all the way down but no happiness accompanies the flagrant motes of it. It coils possessively around his remembrance instead, the whisper just above the collapse of a bridge. The hall is too loud in comparison, too close, too infinite. Too watchful. It breathes with the indecency of a kiss intoxicated rather than a labored concrete jaw poised to snap and swallow through broken teeth. What is the vast magical prowess of a dead man worth to a goddess who reaches beyond for his ghost?

Too much to ignore. Not enough to sate him. He pushes to a stand, cup clattering away at his feet once more. ]

I accept. But not in this hall.

[ It is the Sumeragi's rite to expunge rot, sickness, the ill omen of an enemy fallen to another divinity's hands, but also Subaru's right —

No, he cannot give Seishirou up, not even to her. ]

[hallowedly]

( ...ah. To think, to grieve, to fathom. Pawn to queen. No further go liberties. His lungs're punctured, a sieve. Fingerprints and protrusions of undying affetion mould them. He can't breathe, heaves, chokes. Raises the single star of a one-eyed gaze onto Sumeragi Subaru, nominal saviour, de facto executioner.

You would see this through. And a lifetime ago, this infant of practice was far too kind. Time makes of men monsters. He laughs like vinegar cutting through viscera of thick, sludging oil. )

How magnanimous. ( The alms of Sumeragi trickled from lily white hands. ) Of course. We'll have to schedule a later date.

( Consult their schedules, convene with their secretaries, summon from tenebrous silence the moment, the heartfeat, the astrological intersection of modern convenience and predordination when Sakurazuka Seishirou's second attempted demise can take place, to the satisfaction of all parties involved. It will fail, inevitably, indelibly, with certainty. It must fail.

...it must fail. He is not dead, not if this travesty of his power still answers, not if he is Sakurazukamori, not if his marks keep —

His marks, diluted. His presence, ghastly and ghostly. His lashes droop, burdened. )

I'm afraid our presence is still requested for dinner. ( How... tragic. ) Let's be on our best behaviour.

[sacral]

[ His mouth sours. Tepidity wreathes the agreement with narcosis. He asked: Do we wake up? Now, Subaru feels reality wax along his insides in full and then wane, a nauseous lap that sounds its screeching echo just to hear itself again. His power heaves in response, in admonishment to finish what he'd started. Heat tethers to him — not kind or remarkable or just, but the drenching sluice of exsanguination. It was done. It was done and there would be no undoing it.

His whole glistening life had been caged by that metric. It was wrought of twisting branch and ritual blade, by stagnant prophecy made of love taken from him twice over. To hope past it is vanity. He must accept that this dream's terms are not the terms by which they live or die. Sleep did not bring him here past the veil of death, Subaru did.

He — must have. It must be so.

The marks dim, fluttering in and out of their bonding as if in respond to doubt. Not dissimilar from the bridge that begged their earlier traversal. He sits reluctantly, a soft thumb and forefinger pressed to the warm corners of his eyes. ]

It's all meat and sugar.

[ Is he forgiven this party foul for the needs of a rite? ]