Location: City of Myst (The Foothill Gates of Mount Rhagas)

  Time: 20:00

  That evening, the City of Myst was violently alive.

  Nestled directly within a plunging valley beneath the looming shadow of the Sagara Temple mount, the city served as the nearest beating pulse of civilization. In stark contrast to the dead silence of the peak above, Myst was a gargantuan, boiling cauldron.

  Its primary arteries, paved with slick, wet cobblestones, reflected the bleeding light of thousands of suspended crimson and amber lanterns. Scalding steam billowed from roadside stalls, coalescing with the thick woodsmoke of chimneys and the collective exhalations of thousands of souls packed into the night market.

  Merchants roared, hawking their wares—ranging from cheap, fraudulent warding talismans to skewers of char-roasted venison. The sharp clinking of tankards from overstuffed taverns clashed with the raucous laughter of hardened adventurers and local denizens alike.

  Amidst that churning ocean of humanity, Arka Sagara walked utterly alone.

  He wore a long, charcoal trench coat with the collar turned high, obscuring the lower half of his face from the biting November wind that had begun to bare its teeth. Both hands were buried deep within his pockets, his shoulders hunched slightly as he aggressively shouldered past the meandering crowds without a single word of apology.

  Physically, Arka was present. But his mind?

  His mind remained marooned far above. Entombed within a small wooden hermitage beside a scalding thermal pool.

  He attempted to surrender to the throng. He desperately tried to let the city's deafening cacophony drown out the phantom moans and whispers still clinging to his eardrums.

  It was an absolute failure.

  Arka halted before a stall peddling sweet, toasted bread. The vendor, a portly and amiable woman, was generously slathering butter and palm sugar.

  "Warm bread, My Lord? The scent of cinnamon is absolutely divine tonight!" the woman offered cheerfully.

  Arka took a shallow sniff.

  His nostrils flared.

  It was not the scent of cinnamon that assaulted him.

  Jasmine.

  That fragrance again. Sweet, dense, and piercing.

  Arka scowled, shaking his head violently. He accelerated his pace, abandoning the stall and taking a sharp turn into a narrower, lightless alleyway.

  He brushed past a noblewoman drenched in an exorbitant rose perfume.

  Sniff.

  Arka smelled it again. Jasmine.

  He stepped over an open gutter reeking of rotting refuse.

  Still Jasmine.

  "Damn it all..." Arka hissed, his hands violently gripping his own hair in sheer frustration.

  That fragrance was not bleeding from the air of Myst. That scent was welded to the very lining of his nasal cavity. The aroma had permanently branded itself onto his brain cells, haunting every single breath he drew.

  Arka slumped against the brick wall of a decaying building, sliding down slightly. He stared up at the bruising, overcast night sky, devoid of any visible stars.

  The phantom image of Aira’s face—when she laughed crisply, when she moaned, when she stared at Arka with half-lidded eyes brimming with intoxicating devotion—reeled like a fractured kinetoscope within his skull.

  The ghost of Aira’s silk-smooth skin still lingered upon Arka’s fingertips. The taste of her lips remained branded upon his tongue.

  Arka struck the masonry behind him with a muffled thud.

  "Fuck..." he muttered hoarsely.

  His defenses were in ruins. His denial had shattered into dust within this suffocating alleyway of Myst.

  "I actually fell in love."

  The confession felt leaden, as crushing as a death warrant.

  Falling in love with a Rahessa.

  Falling in love with the ancestral nemesis he was sworn to butcher.

  Falling in love with the very woman who might, one day, drive a dagger through his heart while offering a devastatingly sweet smile.

  "Everything reeks of jasmine..." he babbled softly, squeezing his eyes shut against a rising migraine. "This city, this coat, my own breath... everything is jasmine."

  Arka let out a low chuckle, a sound that was dry, hollow, and profoundly tragic.

  "Damn it... damn it... damn it."

  He cursed himself. He cursed his twisted fate. He cursed Rahessa’s lethal pheromones.

  Amidst the roaring revelry of a city welcoming the winter frost, the Heir of House Sagara felt as though he were burning alive, utterly alone, within a hell of yearning he had forged with his own two hands.

  Location: "The Rusty Lantern" Inn, City of Myst

  Time: 21:30

  Arka stood before a dust-choked ATM tucked into a street corner.

  The machine's display bled a sickly pale blue, the sole illumination washing over his haggard face. His fingers violently jabbed the withdrawal buttons in rapid succession.

  Whirrr... clack... clack...

  The terminal vomited a thick stack of banknotes. Arka did not bother to tally the sum. He snatched the cash, shoving it haphazardly into his already bulging coat pockets, and marched swiftly through the creeping drizzle toward the nearest inn.

  He procured the most exorbitant suite on the uppermost floor. He possessed no desire for luxury; he required absolute isolation.

  The moment the heavy door clicked shut and the deadbolt was thrown, Arka hurled his coat onto the floorboards.

  He strode into the cavernous bathing chamber. There, a massive, floor-to-ceiling mirror clung to the wall, reflecting his form with brutal, unforgiving honesty.

  Arka tore at his shirt. Buttons scattered across the tiles as he ripped the fabric away with excessive force. His trousers followed suit.

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  Within seconds, he stood entirely naked before the glass.

  His breath snagged in his throat as he beheld his own reflection.

  His body... the Sagara physique that was typically immaculate, marred only by the scars of grueling martial training, had been transmuted into someone else's canvas.

  A multitude of marks had been left by Aira.

  There was a glaring, crimson bruise upon the left side of his neck—a vulgar brand of ownership. There was a small, yet profound bite mark on his right shoulder, already blooming a sickly violet. And upon his back... as he twisted his torso slightly, he witnessed long, red lacerations—the tracks of Aira’s nails scoring his flesh during the zenith of their ecstasy that morning.

  Every single mark screamed: A Rahessa was here.

  "Damn her..." Arka hissed, touching his own neck with visceral disgust. "I need to scrub this off."

  He wrenched the bathtub faucet to its absolute maximum limit. Scalding water erupted from the spout.

  But mere water was insufficient.

  Arka snatched the complimentary bottles of liquid soap provided by the establishment. Not one, but three simultaneously. He snapped the caps off and upended their contents with manic desperation.

  The thick, gelatinous green and pink fluids poured heavily into the boiling water.

  He churned the water violently with his hands. Suds began to form. Thick. Voluminous.

  The white foam multiplied rapidly, overflowing the tub, bleeding out onto the ceramic tiles of the floor.

  The bathing chamber now resembled a churning sea of white clouds. Scalding steam billowed, forging a suffocating, makeshift sauna.

  Arka vaulted in. He submerged himself entirely beneath the mountain of foam.

  He seized a coarse loofah and began to scour his flesh. He scrubbed his neck, his shoulders, his broad chest. He scrubbed with punishing force, until his skin burned a raw, angry red, desperately praying he could physically flay the phantom residue of Aira’s touch from his body.

  "Get off... wash off, you cursed stench!" he snarled.

  He prayed this acrid, synthetic hotel soap could murder the jasmine aroma haunting him. He wanted his flesh to reek of chemical lemon, of absolute bleach—anything but the scent of Rahessa.

  After nearly an hour of boiling himself until his skin pruned, Arka hauled himself from the tub. The bathroom floor was inundated with overflowing water and suds.

  He did not care.

  He gathered his discarded garments from the floor—the shirt, the trousers, every last thread—and hurled them into the waste bin in the corner as if they were lethally toxic waste.

  He cracked open the small satchel he had just procured at the night market, donning a fresh, unadorned t-shirt and clean sleeping trousers.

  Arka marched out of the bathing chamber, abandoning the catastrophe behind him.

  He threw his exhausted frame onto the inn’s plush mattress.

  His eyes stared blankly at the unfamiliar ceiling.

  "It's clean," he whispered to the empty room. "It's gone."

  Physically, he was pristine. His skin radiated the sharp, cheap scent of synthetic lemon.

  But the very second he allowed his eyelids to flutter shut...

  Flash.

  The phantom materialized once more. High definition. Uncensored.

  Aira’s face tilted upward, her lips parted in ecstasy.

  The flawless, intoxicating arch of her spine as Arka crushed her against him.

  Her half-lidded, devotion-drenched gaze as she breathed the name Rahessa.

  That memory did not reside upon his skin. That memory was hardwired directly into the firmware of his brain. Burned in permanently.

  Arka snapped his eyes open, staring into the void. His heart began to hammer anew, not fueled by wrath, but by an utterly idiotic, paralyzing yearning.

  He smothered his face with a pillow, groaning his frustration into the thick, synthetic stuffing.

  "Fuck..."

  Thud! Thud!

  Arka slammed his own fist against the side of his skull. Hard enough to inflict genuine, throbbing physical pain, praying the agony could somehow exorcise the ghost of Aira dancing within his cerebral cortex.

  "Get out! Get out of my head!" he cursed.

  He violently tousled his still-damp hair in absolute frustration.

  "You fool, Arka... I was merely played, damn it," he berated his dark reflection in the windowpane. "It was just a cheap harlot's trick. A honey trap."

  He attempted to forcefully re-instill his ancestral doctrine of hatred. Desperately trying to reconstruct the mental barricades that had been pulverized into dust the previous night.

  "An enemy remains an enemy," he whispered with forced frost, his eyes glaring murderously down at the street below. "Rahessa blood must be spilled. One day... Sagara must butcher her."

  The declaration tasted like bile upon his tongue, as though he were swallowing crushed glass. But he forced the words out. He had to forge that conviction, or he would lose his sanity entirely.

  Arka pulled his coat tight around him. The air within the suite felt too suffocating. He needed the night wind. He needed the chaotic roar of the city to drown out the traitorous voice within his own chest.

  He abandoned the inn, descending back into the arteries of Myst.

  His boots struck the cobblestone pavement.

  Arka marched swiftly, his gaze locked blankly onto the toes of his boots. His mind was still adrift, waging a vicious civil war between the cold logic of a conditioned knight and the pathetic emotions of a man utterly enamored.

  One step. Ten steps. A hundred steps.

  He continued his march, lost in a waking trance, drowning within the theatrical tragedy playing out in his own skull.

  Until suddenly...

  "Hold on..."

  Arka’s stride halted abruptly.

  Something was wrong. Catastrophically wrong.

  His razor-sharp instincts—which had momentarily dulled beneath the weight of his melancholy—suddenly shrieked a lethal warning.

  Arka snapped his head up. He scanned his perimeter.

  And as full, hyper-lucid consciousness slammed back into him, the blood in his veins flash-froze.

  Silence.

  The City of Myst that, a mere hour prior, had been detonating with raucous laughter, the bellows of merchants, the clinking of tankards, and the chaotic din of street musicians... was now absolutely, totally dead.

  Arka pivoted a full 360 degrees.

  The main thoroughfare was utterly barren.

  There were no street vendors. Their wooden carts remained anchored in place, thin wisps of steam still rising from cauldrons of broth, but the merchants had vanished into thin air.

  There were no staggering drunkards.

  There were no couples walking hand-in-hand.

  There was not even the bark of a stray dog.

  Not a single soul remained.

  Infinitely more terrifying... there was an absolute absence of sound.

  The howling wind had died. The rustling of the city’s foliage had ceased. Even the echoes of his own footfalls moments ago felt as though they had been smothered by an invisible, impenetrable layer of dense cotton.

  Arka stood utterly alone in the center of the vast avenue, feeling like the final survivor upon the face of a dead earth.

  The streetlamps continued to bleed a sickly, jaundiced yellow light, casting elongated shadows that remained unnervingly rigid and still.

  "Hello?!" Arka roared.

  His voice did not echo. The sound died the exact millisecond it cleared his throat, instantly devoured by an absolute, vacuum-like silence.

  Empty.

  Void.

  This was no mere deserted street. Arka recognized this specific atmospheric dread. The crushing barometric pressure, the sensation of gravity tilting marginally off its axis, and the sudden, violent wave of nausea in his gut.

  He was no longer standing within the mundane City of Myst. He had walked into—or been violently abducted into—a sealed, localized dimension. A Barrier.

  And within that suffocating void, Arka felt the weight of invisible eyes boring into him from the pitch-black shadows of the surrounding architecture.

  Arka’s combat vigilance spiked to its absolute zenith.

  The musculature that had been slackened by heartbreak instantly locked into rigid, coiled steel, primed to detonate into lethal motion at a microsecond's notice. His right hand snaked beneath his coat, fingers hunting for the hilt of the combat dagger he kept sheathed at his hip—his absolute last resort when the Karpharah sword was not drawn.

  He squeezed his eyes shut for a fleeting second, hyper-focusing his sensory perception.

  He violently expanded the radius of his Aksesa. He attempted to "hear" a heartbeat, the rush of blood, or the most microscopic spiritual footprint within a hundred-meter perimeter.

  The result was harrowing.

  Nothing.

  A total void.

  There was not a single trace of biological life. His spiritual radar registered nothing but flatline static or absolute, crushing darkness. It was as if the entire populace of the city had been vaporized in the blink of an eye, or Arka had been teleported into a dead, synthetic replica of the metropolis.

  Arka snapped his eyes open, glaring at the grotesque anomaly before him.

  To his immediate left, a bread cart stood abandoned on the curb. The iron griddle was still searing hot. Thick white steam continued to billow from a stack of half-toasted loaves. That meant the vendor had been standing there mere seconds ago.

  But now? Not a soul.

  Overhead, colorful festival pennants whipped wildly. The fabric danced, spiraled, and violently slapped against the wooden poles in a display of sheer visual aggression.

  Yet... there was no sound.

  The motion of the fabric was entirely mute. Arka visually confirmed the wind was thrashing them, but his ears registered neither the howl of the gale nor the sharp snap of the cloth. It was like watching a corrupted, silent kinetoscope reel.

  This reality was glitching. The physics engine was operational, but the acoustics had been violently terminated.

  Then, the final shift occurred.

  Arka felt a stinging bite across the skin of his face.

  The temperature plummeted.

  The ambient heat, which had been a brisk autumn chill, abruptly nose-dived to sub-zero within the span of a heartbeat. Arka’s exhalations now materialized as thick, dense plumes of fog with every breath.

  Arka stared up into the pitch-black, starless void above.

  A single, white particle drifted lazily downward, landing squarely upon the bridge of his nose. Freezing.

  Then a second particle. A third.

  Snow was falling.

  But this was no mundane snowfall. The flakes were an ashen, sickly gray, drifting downward with an unnatural sluggishness, as if gravity were reluctant to claim them. The snow did not melt upon contact with the asphalt; instead, it began to accumulate rapidly, transmuting the cobblestone arteries of Myst into a lethal, silent expanse of white.

  Arka stood entirely alone amidst that mute blizzard, the singular remaining nexus of heat within this flash-frozen, artificial dimension.

  "An ambush..." he hissed softly, his breath freezing solid in the dead air.