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JAWS • DECEMBER 2025 EVENT/TDM
TDM & EVENT: JAWS
ᛗ
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:
OFFERING EFFECTS
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.TOKEN EFFECTS
• 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.
• 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—?.
ᛗ
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:
TOKEN EFFECTS
OFFERING EFFECTS
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.
ᛗ
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
TOKEN EFFECTS
OFFERING EFFECTS
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.
ᛗOOC 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!
➤ 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!
the life of a clamp and at What Cost
wake up. if it's. a dream. if. contaminated? true? a lie? but this feels like subaru. all that mosaic with its vague scent of cherry blossoms and blood and why can kamui smell all of this? what are the other scents? nothing? the water that isn't water as he would know it... where she persists in her interest.
focus.
point. a point. one. just.
the touch to his jaw. the touch of his voice. all touch. if kamui were a cat he'd all but lean into that 'touch'. for now, he trembles. for now, he breathes. for now.
If...then Subaru has it too, right?
sometimes an adolescent messiah is just an adolescent, for a nanosecond, for a wisp of a dream wherein shirou kamui asks without asking: it's really you , isn't it.
while the filaments do not yet release, they do not tighten further either. the knee jerk reflex to fight, to oppose, can only be soothed by someone kamui trusts. is it coincidence that he meets such a person here? is there even such a thing? kamui's pale fingers loosen, letting go of subaru's sleeve as he peers up at him through the dark and tries to understand more than he's told.
fails, inevitably.
thinks, 'says',
Tell me you're alive.
means: please please please.
i can't...because when this dream kept coming before finally taking more hold, part of kamui could not help but wonder: the shore that isn't a shore, the sky that isn't a sky -- these mean things, thresholds. paths of change.
of doors that only lead away, exit sign caught off kilter on the edge of too many near-misses.
how deep is the dream?
how hungry the water? this...Sleep?
yet kamui's wish in and of itself would not let this happen and so he must ask even as his love aligns wordless as a parallel heartbeat, and not nearly as mortal as one might fear. waves that push and pull with a false moon with no matter of earth or heaven, and stillness now around them like some chrysalis. that kamui focuses on the wrong thing is no surprise, maybe, or that it's not even wrong but not right enough. ]
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Not coincidence. Not fate, strung, wire-cutting through wing, holding him to the cross of his love. Kamui alone commands choice.
Subaru startles for the brief moment in which their heartbeats align, the ache of it like a low, cataclysmic clap, its resonance muffled by aquatic heat and leering. His ears ring with it before its cadence rifts, misaligns again. Subaru can't blame his instinct to struggle, to exercise suspicion when faced with the improbability of someone he knows (and loves); how many times has he had to look his harbinger in the eyes, the one who wears the face of Monou Fuuma? How many dreams has he been confined to the depths of? How many where he's subject to the meted archeology of fate and its seers?
Make your choice, they say.
Make your choice, she says.
Too many. Too many, and Subaru cannot change those tides any more than he can ease the burden of those choices.
All he knows is the way through.
This dream is too deep and too hungry for him to succumb to his confusion. Subaru has less dominion over this depth than he did over the inner pools of Kamui's soul. But Subaru's heart has never suffered atrophy, a fatal exploit he brings down in pursuit of every doubt and ephemeral in-between that chases Kamui's heels. Here or there; now or then. Subaru navigates opposition like he navigates energies with the edge of a sacrificial blade.
I have it too, he confirms. And I gave it to you once.
Even Sleep can't hope to replicate a heartbeat like his. He is alive and here and brushing the threads of his heart into his delicate fingers. For Kamui, Subaru gives it too easily. It thrums on something that brims sheer instinct.
His love lies in these tangles. If Subaru can give him nothing more than this, then it's choice denied to him by messianic influence.
Will he look? Will he cast them away? ]
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knew.
knows.
chooses: yes --
you did; you have; you are.
watches: a garden, a face he trusts above all and can trust never the same, and subaru.
cold.
he's cold.
even if it will hurt people.
at a table in a diner. side by side on a seashore. legs hanging off stars that face not each other but parallel directions. in the depths of kamui's own soul. "nowhere. nowhere.
now,
here."
as someone else wrote once and will write again and kamui may be born burnt bled into the shape of it all: nowhere now here here
now.
open your heart to the kingdom and the hell beneath it? close it and...nothing.
but if only that, kamui understands 'nothing' can never be the answer.
fate. choice. kamui's tapered fingers caress the filaments and angle them in close closer closest until he's touching subaru's face not in echo or ripple but answer. he knows what this is; he knows because
it's subaru.
smoke adorns him. blood bequeaths him. kamui thinks of that memory he could do nothing about, of subaru's twin star and love. kamui thinks of how he felt subaru on that bridge and that other person and knew.
the garden isn't a surprise, nor fuuma.
it's not about accepting or agreeing in the ways others would understand.
no light without the dark; impossible to know the latter without the former.
where do tears go in the water, float up like air bubbles into the stained glass to become other things? half breaths?
love. love. love.
and kamui does understand.
because he also won't relent.
these are tangles but they part and restring. enmesh.
neither one of them can save the other from their truth but it is the truth.
constellations thrown through a mirror and then pulled from the center like a trick of light and water and memory. where the pinpoints of light begin and end is impossible to tell but between a heartbeat, two heartbeats, resonance: i know i know i know--
show me love.
and as if out of his own control, kamui's eyes, full of one sumeragi subaru...start to lower, something like gravity or a whirlpool drawing him down: so lonely... ]
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Simply by existing and Subaru could only elude the call of him for so long.
And still he resisted. He fell, and in the end, he betrayed.
There is a garden here in perpetual full bloom. There is an ocean here swallowing ruptured wings. At its intersection: desire. At its intersection: that which neither can give up. Even if it means being hated. Even if they must shoulder the blame for the rest of their lives. Even if no one else will understand what they wished for and the reasons why.
It is the truth. A love mirrored — ]
[ Kamui emerges from flame with the blood of the earth on his hands and Subaru accepts the eye also with the blood of the earth on his hands.
Sumeragi Subaru will not let Sleep have him here.
Light shapes flay open as the filaments boil and the shark sears through the water. Subaru seizes them all in a handful, pulls them up in an arc like the sphere of a planet and rips them from wrists, ankles, out of skin, spilling the light into the sea. Below, cracking, and the thunderous sweep of an undertow. ]
Close your eyes, Kamui. [ He finally speaks aloud into the salted half-ocean of his tears, purpose wreathed with the bubbles. ] And hold your breath.
[ How ironic is it, to have to take a breath of water to survive the mirror's burst? It shatters into shards and feathers, blossoms and the shrapnel of all the buildings that fell beneath the guard of his kekkai. Subaru sweeps Kamui up by his back and beneath his knees, his gravitas enough to keep him upright.
Down, down, rushing long into the flume of this dream as it heaves them through the beautiful refracted light of the cathedral's stained glass.
And then the world sighs when they finally fall, shining, to the nave's marble floor below. ]
no subject
is it my fault?and here: the folded paper of subaru's light and his dark and his heart which is all of these things. and now: kamui too the fire and the shadow it casts and, perhaps, the paper it would protect if it could. memories and the discordance bearing the weight of a time difference kamui is not aware of, of this otherness both undeniable in its truth and unbelievable in its existence where a city he's never been to wears its scars as much through its stolen denizens as its lonely remnant infrastructure. of: open heart surgery made possible and most dangerous by the persisting existence of that which was denied until it was too late.
he could have been worlds away and would have still felt it. would have known.
kamui's perfect kekkai doesn't exist. he can't even make a normal one still. but if such a thing could happen it would protect not just the reality of the "outside" but that which happens "inside" as well, would not leave invisible graves unexplained and unresolved. permanently temporary.
if, if. if.
harder to move, harder to think, unavoidable: not all of this is mine.
loss. fear. guilt. regret. ocean waves fragments like glass.
not all of this is yours.
pain is a ricochet effect through him as the light spindles every which way. he barely processes subaru's touch or his words but it's enough.
a breath. held.
eyes, closed.
this heartbeat. he would like it to not be his own but he does not wish for it.
perhaps because it is a dream or perhaps because it is subaru or perhaps because it is kamui. perhaps none of these things. kamui feels the broken springtime made like a star crash-landing. but light is light, wont to play tricks even with someone's eyes closed; especially. the lacerating pain mutates until kamui is certain it belongs to subaru.
is it my fault?
not unlike a cat, kamui struggles and frees himself from the person he most wanted to see. not unlike a cat, he does not think about how that means now even more of a free-fall. not unlike,
waking up from a dream when he spasms and coughs the other half of his held breath out from his heartbeat. the marble accommodates, doesn't break any of his bones despite his perceived velocity on the way of what felt up but was in fact down. he does not know how long he stays there, prone and trying to catch his breath and understand the curious scent of things, the deep echo of it that balances between loneliness and hunger. too: vague sounds. above all of it, below, inside, outside, kamui is keenly aware of the truth, the truth that persists its blood red thread through his pulse, rattling as caged wings incessant against the bars:
you saved me
again.
the way kamui curls on the cathedral floor could be mistaken for prayer but it isn't and it never will be.
only this:
you're alive. i'm so grateful. i'm sorry. thank you. thank you.
i'm sorry. ]