JAWS • DECEMBER 2025 EVENT/TDM

[uruz]

TDM & EVENT: JAWS

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Show Me Those Pretty White Jaws

The dream has been coming in waves for those new to Sleep's touch, as a shoreline that never stays still. As a sky that never remembers to include its stars. Beneath it all, there is a voice. Her voice: silk-sweet, coaxing from just beyond the approaching wave that towers like a moving mountain. She tells you to come home. She promises it won't hurt, even if she never tells you what waits beneath. You see the shape just before the dream ends: a massive black tidal wave, yawning wide and black until it looks like a pair of jaws breaking upon you. You don't have time to resist.

You and your veteran Vessels will awaken in water.

There is no surface. No bottom. No sky. No sound but your own heartbeat and the echoes of water being slashed though, dull and endless in the still, frigid dark. You are suspended, weightless— Some may have difficulty to breathe without inhaling water the first few times, while those aligned with the waves will feel it come like second nature. Once you acclimate yourself, you'll notice that around you drift glowing filaments; thin, pulsing threads that coil like jellyfish tendrils, softly luminescent. They curl and twist through the water, and when you look closer, you realize: they show you things. Memories, maybe. Dreams, maybe. Each one unique to your gaze: a hand reaching for yours in the dark, a goodbye that never finished, a face you haven't seen in years. They are what you think love looks like. What you once needed it to be. And when you touch them, they wrap around you, gently, warmly . . . Hungrily— and begin to pull you down.

To ascend into the next level, you must let go. But not everything that binds you wants to be released. The filaments drifting through the water show you what you think love looks like— what you've built it into. They are gentle at first, beautiful even, but the longer you cling, the more they pull.

There are ways to escape them: You may bind your filament with another's and together speak aloud a shared truth: what you believe love really is. If your hearts align or at the very least come to an agreement, the threads dissolve into light and lift you upward. If your beliefs clash or contradict, the threads knot tighter, and something . . . May take interest in you.

Beneath you, something moves. Huge, silent and almost regal. It glides through the deep like a phantom, almost too large to be real. You feel its presence before you see its flash of pearl white and glowing red eyes, three on each side of its face: a shark.

The shark is here to choose its next meal. It smells grief, fear and seeks out trauma most of all. It is drawn to the most unspoken parts of you, the very parts you thought were buried, roused from the tightened ropes of what you crave in your heart. And when it chooses you, it does not bite immediately. It invites, with its jaws opening like a sanctuary and slow towards you.

Inside is I, whispers Sleep. Allow Me to have you whole, and you will be at peace. Show Me love.

Fight against her, or even with your current partner about what love is, and Sleep will open her maw, spilling tendrils from her throat and begin to stalk you. Best be prepared to fight the possessed Megalodon— She will laugh, amused as you do, like a great cat playing with its food. And if you were to be caught, well. You'll wake in the dream's next level with an undeniable prey drive, whether Token or Offering.

She will do anything to keep you here.

NOTES:

• There is no surface visible at first. Light only comes from the filaments. As characters resist, act, or ascend, a faint stained-glass shimmer begins to pulse upward, hinting at the dream's next layer.
• Sound is muffled— speech emerges as bubbles, but meaning travels regardless. Words feel heavy here. Some phrases may literally change the water (turn to light, birth dream-objects, or ripple with tension). You will do better using The Murmur as a means of communication. Luckily you have your mask on!
• The Shark always circles once it senses trouble within you. Sometimes close, sometimes far, but always felt. If characters listen closely, they can hear the echo of One's voice coming from inside it: pleading with a haunted, at times screaming melody.

TOKEN EFFECTS

• The dream bends subtly around Tokens, especially at the whims of an Aquamancer. Walls of pressure open before them, and filaments shift course as if expecting them. This can make their path easier, unless they start to doubt their purpose.
• Tokens perceive emotional resonance as currents in the water such as subtle flows of energy. These can guide them (or others) toward escape paths, or signal when the shark is near.
• When a Token speaks or acts with strong intent, the dream sometimes translates it into a symbolic structure: A word might become a floating glyph. A gesture might alter the filament's shape. A moment of clarity might reveal a hidden path. Other characters can interact with these dream-objects, but they're fragile, unstable, and prone to distortion by doubt.
• The deeper Tokens go, the more they feel themselves pulling apart and begin to experience dual awareness: one part dreaming, one part watching— some may even see flashes of within the shark's belly, and One's voice much louder. The deeper they go, the more detached they become, and the more they lack the ability to act at all.

OFFERING EFFECTS

• The shark is more fascinated by Offerings. It circles them often, sensing kinship— or potential. The more monstrous the Offering, the more the shark "pauses' near them, almost curious.
• Offerings feel "the pull" more clearly, particularly Merrows and other aquatic-based Offerings—they can sense where the surface might be, and where the shark intends to strike next. They may even see pulses in the water that others miss, similar to Spider Man's "spidey senses".
• An Offering may experience rapid body changes submerged. Fins may appear, bones may shift, teeth may lengthen without warning and so on. This makes their movement easier or harder, depending on how much of themselves they're holding back or how apt their monstrous forms are at swimming.
• Some Offerings may feel drawn to the shark— not in fear, but in understanding. They may see themselves in it, and vice versa— One's song in particular is hypnotic, and for split moments you may understand his pain through his words. This might make you more prone to being consumed, though, so hopefully your partner can help you out of it—?.

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Watching Me With Eyes Of A Predator

The surface you breach is not water— it's glass.

You strike it with the force of falling sky. It fractures beneath you in a bloom of painted light. For one weightless moment, the dream hesitates, sputters. Then the world shatters, and you fall with the cascade.

Water pours through the crack in the ceiling, carrying you down in ribbons of color and a shattering splash. Stained glass shards drift like petals through the now collapsing roof, and you eventually land not in sand, but upon a cathedral floor, slick with tide. Around you, the water spreads, pooling across the stone and swallowing the walls in a rising hush as it finds escape through the doors.

The cathedral is vast, impossibly so. Its architecture towers, crooked and immaculate, built more from longing than stone. No altar awaits you. No congregation. Only the sensation of having trespassed into something meant to be private. Veteran Vessels may recognize this cathedral as St. Patrick's— before it was drenched in One's blood sacrifice.

High above and surrounding you, the stained-glass mosaics churn with captured light. f you linger beneath one of the window's rays, your appearance may begin to change under the light. You appear as someone else sees you. Be it a hero. A monster. A disappointment. A god. A weakness. A temptation. Even a burden. That version of you clings to your dream-body like a second skin; uncomfortable, intimate, and undeniable. For some, it may be beautiful. For others, unbearable.

If you and another stand beneath the same window, you may each appear as the other secretly imagines. There is no control and no negotiation. Only truth twisted through the lens of want, resentment, fear, or love. And it doesn't go away until you leave the light.

Eventually, the cathedral doors open by dream's will. Beyond them lies a cloister garden: narrow paths, pale trees, and wild flowers that bloom in stillness. At the far end, behind the overgrowth and ruined arches, you see a hollow.

It is a corridor where the dream collapses inward, twisting, warped, half-swallowed in fog and dread. Its stones pulse faintly beneath a shallow film of water. Black tendrils reach from its depths like roots, veins, twitching toward sound, warmth, and movement. You see them dragging matter into the earth, and between them lie bones, contorted and fresh, half-consumed.

And farther still, a body that still breathes. Glimpsed only briefly, A masked man's form is stretched by the hollow's gravity, arms pinned behind the veil. He does not move, or speak. Or perhaps, he cannot. The hollow does not let him go and will not, should you make your attempts. If you step foot in the hollows that have consumed him, you too will be consumed. A three eyed Tod sits at the hollow's edge, a single bushy tail splitting into three, as its body plays with illusion like smoke put to dance over fire. It says, as its head floats up and its maw splits into a grin too cheshire to ignore: Wearing shoes, yet no feet in sight. You'll hear steps pound in the death of night. What is it that you need, to cross this narrow blight?

It disappears and only leaves you the riddle to chew on.

Nothing living can cross the hollow, you'll soon find. Nothing except . . . The Nightmares.

Just outside the garden's boundary, you'll find horses built from wind and shadow, flickering at the edge of your vision. Their bodies are black— not the color, but the absence, swallowing all light. Some of their craniums cound be seen, others have a jutting horn of bone from their foreheads. Where eyes should be, there are six: three stacked on each side of the skull, glowing dimly red like distant embers beneath ice. Their manes flow like torn fabric, like drifting vapor that trails behind them like the smoke from a snuffed candle. Their maws are too damn wide to be herbivorous, yet they seem to enjoy the act of grazing. They wait, unchained and wild in a herd.

This is the only way forward. Only they can pass through the hollow untouched. But how to ride one—? You may chase them. You may plead, command, kneel. You may offer them all your need and all your love, promises that you will provide if they become your steed. But they were not made to answer it. For every Vessel, there is one single Nightmare that will choose them, and thus you will choose each other. They have their own personalities, some more aggressive or shyer than others. The harder you reach, the faster they vanish or harshed they will attack if unready. Try to mount one through force, and you'll regret ever trying. Try to bind one, and it will break you.

But if you are patient, if you figure out its nature and how to please it— your Nightmare may come closer. One may circle you. It may bow its head. Their snort is warm and real against your palm. If successful, it will lower itself to its knees. If you've got the height, they will simply wait, patiently, for you to get on their backs (Or not; there are plenty of sassy mares out there).

If you accept, you might not be taken somewhere safe, but you will be taken somewhere true, away from here. And if you force your want upon them, if you cannot let go— you will be left with something else.

In the distance, across the flooded cathedral floor, you may see One again. Flashes, glimpses. Always chasing a mare he never reaches, or the opposite— the mare chases after him.

NOTES:

• If a character successfully forms a bond with their Nightmare, it will return with them in the form of a waking world steed, officially introduced in the next event. You're free to give it the personality you wish.
• If a character attempts to force a connection with a Nightmare at any point (tries to catch, mount, command, etc.), the mare will bite or kick, which Vessels will suffer as a persistent dream-mark that will carry into the waking world.

TOKEN EFFECTS

• Light clings unnaturally to Tokens in the cathedral, especially near the stained glass. It bends around their bodies like a false halo, casting them in divine or monstrous outlines depending on who watches.
• If a Token casts or channels any magic within the cathedral or near a Nightmare, the spell does not manifest, but instead, a cold mist escapes their mouth, and the Nightmare turns to look. The dream rejects force.
• When a Nightmare looks directly at a Token, their eyes eclipse, pupils vanishing into rings of shadow. In that moment, a fragmented vision floods the Token's mind . . . not from the Nightmare, but from another character nearby. It shows the Token how that character once dreamed of them, what they feared, needed, or hoped they would become.

OFFERING EFFECTS

• The stained glass causes a subtle change in scent and physical appearance turning into a more grotesque version of this— Offerings begin to smell or look like what others most want from them.
• Offerings may always know where the Nightmares are, even when hidden. But the more they try to act on this knowledge, the harder the Nightmares are to reach.
• An Offering's body will react before they realize it, flinching from lies, bristling in moments of emotional pressure, pulling away from contact, and so on. They may startle even at gentle contact, as if something inside them is as reactive as they are.

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Where The Delicate Stops

As your Nightmare takes you through the misty hollow, you may begin to notice the empty city of Manhattan as veterans remember. There is no warning but the eerie silence that surrounds you like impossible weights. The cathedral once behind you folds inward— wrong, deep and full of pressure. It bursts through the hollow's path, through the city's street, and then— The dream ruptures.

Stone peels backward like paper. Glass liquefies mid-air. The sky above the city pulls itself inside out. Time bends sideways. And from the edges of the dream, something, someone, begins to hunt. Sleep's presence moves like the very shark she chose as a vision of her physical manifestation. She does not speak or rage. But you feel Her, rising like fever beneath the skin of Her world as the hairs at the back of your neck do. She does not want you this deep, and neither does One.

Somewhere within the collapse, you may see them— entwined, shifting, trembling. One's face is turned toward you, screaming something that doesn't reach your ears. Sleep's hands are tangled in his body. She pulls him back with a gentleness that breaks the sky, and he screams, reaching for you with his last breath before consumption. The dream convulses.

The Nightmares bolt with you still on them.

The city rises to meet you from the shadows, but it's not the city you know. Skyscrapers twist at unnatural angles. Streets flood, then dry, then flood again. Tendrils burst from subway grates and gutters, slashing upward like tongues. Streetlights spin like compass needles. Cars levitate, crash, freeze midair. You move through it all at breakneck speed, but the exit keeps shifting— a hole in the world that flickers just beyond reach where you see your body, fast asleep.

Somewhere in the chaos, a few Nightmares are caught. Sleep strikes like lightning— she coils like a viper and tightens like a vice. One touch from Her, and your Nightmare collapses mid-gallop, its body unraveling into smoke and light. No sound. No scream. Just absence. And you fall right off it like a ragdoll.

Others fall beneath impact, too— a wrong turn, a shattered wall, a burst of heat from One's grief. A broken leg. A crash. A wound too deep to ride through. If your steed is lost, you fall. And if no one reaches for you, you stay fallen. Others are near, and their Nightmares still run. All of you have a terrible dread in your bones— if you are caught or left behind, the consequences will be dire. You might not even wake up. So, call out. Cling. Climb. Share. Two Vessels on one mount. Anything to survive and flee as the dreamscape tightens its wrathful grip around you.

Sleep calls inside your spine. You can't make out what She says. One answers, the same blur of garbled words in your marrow. And then, just before the dream can take you, just before you reach an exit— you rise.

Your body lifts from the Nightmare as it paddles the air with desperation, it too rising. You're pulled upward, weightless, as if a thread inside your heart has been yanked by a furious god. You float, twist in the air. Your vision glows white.

We've got you.

And then you wake up— mid-air in the waking world.

Your body slams into your bed, floor, street, soil, wherever it was that you had slept. Reality greets you with terrible impact.

NOTES

• If a character does not find a mount in time, they may be caught in the dream collapse. They still wake— but they wake broken. These characters may wake up bruised, disoriented, or emotionally fragmented, and this can be explored in the next waking world event.

TOKEN EFFECTS

• Any Tether they feel becomes unstable—splintered. For brief moments, they feel it breaking and re-forming again and again, with slight differences each time.
• The more emotionally charged they are, the more the dream pulls toward them; tendrils snap faster, debris veers unnaturally close.
• Their body flickers with signs of their own magic—sigils, symbols, runes— burning just beneath the surface of their skin like constellations. These glow brighter as the dream collapses, as if trying to tear free.

OFFERING EFFECTS

• Where Offerings are grazed or injured, they bleed light, not red. It floats up like mist.
• They hear One's heartbeat, not theirs, and it speeds in panic. It affects their own pulse, the mare under them . . .
• The Nightmare no longer follows the Offering's will—it will respond to their fear instead.

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OOC NOTES

➤ Welcome to Somnia's third TDM, which doubles as the month's gamewide event!
➤ This TDM is considered game canon. You are free to have your character remember as many details as possible when they wake up.
➤ Only new characters are free to experiment with the Vessel options, Token or Offering 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

[inverseye]

[ It's wound so tight its hard to move the entangled wrists, but Saheon does his best to pull his hands apart enough to create a gap, however small, between his two hands and the white chord binding them.

... ]

...They actually trained you how to use a sword in your dog awful reality, right?

[offseers]

[ noah gives him a faint wry look. ]

What do you think?

[inverseye]

I think I'm putting to much faith in you.

[ But he doesn't move those hands. Noah was right about something, they do have to try. ]

I mean, who is investing in your education system if you're all killing eachother?

[offseers]

We all begin training at one term old. We're deployed three terms later.

[ term stands for a year. noah moves his Blade carefully against the bonds. what he won't say is that his skills with the Blade are superlative. expected, since he's part of the special forces. boasting has never been something he enjoyed. ]

I don't know if you'd call it investment . . . In some places, it wouldn't matter.

[inverseye]

Schooling should last twelve years at minimum-

[ The shining strands split like fine hairs along the Blade's sharp edge, but they flash with dazzling light, springing away with an enormous amount of energy. The sparks don't burn, but as the flayed strands coil away towards Noah, visions pop across the water like bubbles.

They're memories, so it's all first person. Instead of Saheon, it's Noah who is sitting on the stoop of a rickety wooden porch. The air is grey with the light of morning, a chorus of birds starting up in the eves, and the distant sound of lowing animals across the rocky mountains behind him. Behind him, in the unseen house, there is the bustling sound of pans and muffled human voices. It means nothing to Noah, who is fiddling with the tattered remains of his shoelaces.

'Saheon-ah! Saheon-ah!' There's a call, a warm weight on the back of his shoulders, twisting him around to face a girl a good many years older then him. She squints her face, clearly disagreeing with whatever expression he's wearing and uses the side of her thumb to rub something off his cheek.

Forget about bringing a lunch. You you're going to be late for school. Get going already!

Then, with an audible pop, the vision ends. ]

[offseers]

[ that's . . . childhood? it must be. something about the tinge of memories and the way they play by. noah wouldn't know. childhood isn't a facet of his life. it also makes saheon's comments about his sister in stark retrospect. like a living thing in his heart, another organ . . . he cannot extricate himself as much as he believes.

in that, they are painfully similar. ]

She seems kind.

[inverseye]

I didn't ask you to stop.

[ Noah's opinion is unasked for and unwelcome. Of course, his sister was kind. She had a little brother, and she liked him, and he liked her, but who even cares about that anymore. The world didn't care that a girl was kind, so Saheon doesn't think he should either.

It's just bonds, tying him down. Sever them, and he'd be free. If Noah and Saheon are both tied by this pain, why can't they both destroy it? ]

...It's easy to be kind to children, anyway. They don't know any better.

[offseers]

[ noah could point out that technically, he hasn't asked noah anything. noah offered and he could easily withdraw that offer. but this is just sophistry, underlying the truth.

noah is not a child. his lifespan is short but that has no bearing on childhood or growth. he doesn't miss it or yearn for it. he does, however, feel that it should be something people get to have. ]

It's still a choice to be kind, isn't it?

[inverseye]

Of course it is.

[ And Saheon would argue once again, the way he rambled on in the church, that a childhood is something he would do anything to be rid of.

But he doesn't need to say it again for Noah to know. In essence, that's what he's trying to do right now. It's all here, tangled in the years around his hands, his throat, his neck. Dragging them down into the depths of death, no matter how pretty it looks or nice it makes them feel. ]

But all it takes is one person to take advantage of that, and your life is over.

[offseers]

[ noah seems skeptical. ]

So you're afraid of every person because one person might do that?

[inverseye]

No.

[ He tilts his wrist so one finger comes up to touch the severed strand beneath Lucky Seven's blade. ]

Every person will do that.

[ Eventually. Under the right circumstances. With the right excuse. It's not a matter of good or evil. People will just do anything to survive. ]

[offseers]

[ he pulls away his Blade slightly, careful. the lucky seven is not to be touched lightly in case it cuts and bleeds. ]

Including you?

[inverseye]

[ He's not afraid of a little blood. ]

You'd do it too, kid.

[offseers]

[ would he?

maybe N would. there's no limits to what N would do. N was callous, cruel. he held noah down and made him watch mio disappear. threw noah's flute down to the ground and told him to pick it up.

"isn't she your mio?"

but N didn't make him crawl towards it, knuckles bruised and body bleeding. N didn't make him pick it up. N didn't make him clasp it in his hands. in the end, noah couldn't do it. the flute clattered on the group and in a shower of light, she was gone.

so.

could he have done it? ]

No.

Maybe . . . there was a time where that was possible. Maybe I was desperate enough.

But no more. I wouldn't do that. I'll choose kindness. Even now.

[inverseye]

...You think?

[ Thousands of nasty little retorts dance in the water between them. It's so easy to pretend at righteousness. It's equally easy to dismiss everything in a nihilist screed, everyone does it, everyone lies, even if they act kind, they'll do it all the same.

But...

Last month, when Noah put that sword at Saheon's throat and said he didn't deserve to die? That kindness, does Saheon owe his life to it, if only by a sliver? Does he have the right to say Noah isn't kind, after that? Does he trust the word of a murderer who tells him he's allowed to live? ]

Then I really admire that about you.

[ In between them, Saheon forces his bound hands up against Lucky Seven's blade, pulling the strands taunt against that impossible edge. He's not careful, and his hands might get cut, especially if Noah tries to pull the blade away but for a moment, he doesn't care. Inside him is only the impulsive desire to destroy. ]

[offseers]

[ he inhales sharply as he nearly pulls his Blade away. no. that's not what lucky seven for. the Blade thrums, in sync with its owner. instead, he turns it so the blunted edge is facing forward. noah meets saheon's gaze. no more doubt. no more tragic edges. he won't cut a man down for his own grief. why would he do it for someone else's? ]

Yes. That's my choice.

Just like it's my choice now. What do you really want here?

[inverseye]

[ Aish! Noah tilts the blade away from Saheon's memory, leaving that razor edge pointed up and away, shining between them in the dark water like its own gleaming strand. ]

It's only like I told you before.

[ He's not cutting himself down. He's cutting himself free. The past is death. Love is death. He can observe kindness all he likes, but he's got none to give, down to the marrow of his bones. ]

There's nothing here I want to remember. So why not destroy this unadmirable self of mine?

[offseers]

[ the undesirable self. like a scab, N flashes through his mind. the way he looks at noah. detestable. weak. pitiful. every word lands with how helpless he is. this is the hubris, N said, of fools who cling blindly to their hopes... only to find them dashed on the rocks. of dreamers, crushed under the sheer weight of reality. of abject failures. even now those words have roots in him. dragging him down. he was so tired of watching life slip away. knowing he couldn't reach them. he couldn't save them. wasn't that why . . . he came here? in the faint, pathetic wish to save . . . her?

but even in that moment, she said —

noah grasps saheon's hands. tight, like he'll never let go. the bruises on his knuckles have long faded, but the shadow of redness remains on them. he thinks, finally, finally, I understand it a little better now. mio's answers. all their answers. what the point of it all was. her journey was over. but noah will keep going. in her name. in all their names. ]

Because it's still you.

There is nothing undesirable about you. Just be you.

And I'll hold onto it. Every part.

[inverseye]

[ There's so much more of N in Saheon then Noah. The things that man says just sound like the litany he tells himself, the deluge of justifications one needs to claw his way through mud and blood and a dying world. Maybe that's what it means to be an adult, to look at your younger doppelganger in the mirror and want him dead.

Maybe. Saheon's never met the guy, never even heard his name. He met Noah instead. A fool clinging blindly to some far away hope. A child hopelessly attached to his long gone past. And someone very, very kind. ]

You don't even know who I am.

[ But neither does he, anymore. ]

You want to see it? Be my guest. But, if you break a promise like that..

[ He'll kill you. He really will kill you, Noah. Not with a sword, not by strength or skill or honest means. He'll wait and wait and wait as long as it takes, but he'll find a way.

The jellyfish tangled in Saheon's hands reach up towards Noah, waiting. ]

[offseers]

[ noah doesn't hesitate. not even for a moment, not even for a breath.

he stretches his hand out, ready. ]

[inverseye]

[ The tendrils dig in.

The vision is sudden, and so much more clear then the fragment from before. It wipes the dark water away, melting into the same village as before, tiled house and old dirt, tinged by a drooping red sunset.

It's spring. The sounds of animals are quiet, there's a fresh green scent in the air of good earth and new crops. People mill about eating food and speaking in soft tones A boy slips through them all, a rooster feather pinned to his chest, another strand of them tied to his wrist in a long trailing bracelet. Probably no more then nine. He's looking for something right now. ]

The place I grew up was obsessed with creating a god. You know what gods are, right?

[ Noah pulls to a stop before a group of adults who call him over. They're faceless, warped, all features erased into an undistinguishable mass that must have a face, eyes, knows, but resembles nothing human. Outsiders. Unholy, unworthy, unclean.

But despite Noah's growing disgust, he can't move. His eyes slide down to the ground in a practiced deferential gaze. There's a low level pressure buzzing in his skull, burning in his blood at the very thought of resisting its pull. An alien, unseen will. ]

I mean, I couldn't understand it. I never did. But there really was something there...

[ So Noah stands there with places to be, these awful outsiders before him, a whole crowd behind him, and the thrumming vow of a supernatural restriction echoing in his head. What would he have done?

Please follow the rules of Jisan Festival!
-All followers are generous of spirit, and welcoming to outsiders.
-The truth of Jisan shall never be spoken aloud to an outsider.
- Conduct yourself with dignity. Raging and swearing brings misfortune. Shouting and crying brings misfortune. ]

[offseers]

[ empty faces. like moebius' masks staring back at him. with those blank fathomless smiles and their empty laughter. drinking away their flames of life on the battlefield. noah shakes it away as he focuses his attention on the memories that flow through him. nostalgic, in a way, to share yourself so completely. like an interlink.

creating gods. signing your soul away. what price would a god ask? what could a god even want with people like — noah? or saheon? or poor saheon's sister?

is this what happened to her? ]

What happened then?

[inverseye]

[ gods aren't real. they aren't. saheon doesn't believe in them. can't believe in them. won't believe in them. he won't believe the world is wrong, any more wrong then its own inherent evil lets it be. lets just say he doesn't think its wrong in a way that could be fixed

that's the worst part of a god. even if there was something there, some force, his family, going back generations had done all this just for the hope of being saved from some ambiguous evil? just from the fear of evil, from ill fortune, from suffering, they were willing to kill, destroy, sacrifice each other? thats what god is? [

What happened every year!

[ He smiled, always polite, always pleasant, always following the rules, because the lottery went on anyway, no matter how he felt. no matter how his sister felt. it wasn't his idea, he didn't want to do it but-

all the outsiders pick straws with dull, unfinished edges. ]

We had a lottery to find god. And if none of the outsiders won, we had to keep drawing among ourselves, until someone was picked!

[ not as a newborn god, but just as an appeasement. a stopgap, a four person consolation prize for an unseen deity waiting to be born. old or young, believer or private. ]

It's so stupid. The odds. I calculated them. It's four people a year, no matter how much the village grew, you're almost guaranteed to win in your lifetime!

[offseers]

[ noah nods slowly. he may not be familiar with everything happening here, but these sorts of actions are very clear to him. checks and balances. life weighed on a scale. sacrifices to save a whole. it's nothing he doesn't know. it's nothing he wouldn't hate. ]

It is stupid. Weakness. Fear.

All the things you wish you could never feel.

[inverseye]

You don't need to feel them. I know it's possible.

[ Beyond these stupid memories of his, all around him. Beyond this village and these odds and this death. There is a solution, hiding out of reach. An ephemeral omnipotent wish, one that could end all of this forever.

He just needs to do anything to get it. ]

I'm not going to be like the rest. I told you, I won't accept it.