[TinyDream]

There is already blood upon the circle when she ascends.

It is the dead of night. The Aetian sorcerers are away, and death hangs so heavily on the air. Word has spread quickly of the hunger of Saekanis, the hate summoned and released so ferociously. Sarina Mellows wears a collar not upon her neck, but upon an arm; should she wish to cleave away pieces of herself and find solace elsewhere, perhaps it could be done. But a price has been paid for a reward never claimed. She wanders in the dead of night because solitude and introspection is a panacea for a soul which has taken sin in its hands as a weapon.

The virtuous father does not consume his children.

In calm, in peace rather than in war, Sarina summons forth a spirit of her own creation. It is a liquid thought made solid, a ghost split from her own cognition. A construct of arcane methods, emboldened and reinforced by the depths of a connection to the Astral Sea. She sought Infinity not by accident but on purpose, understanding it as to pay the price of annihilation should her path lead to failure. But in survival, perhaps she has brought something worse than her own annihilation.

She does not know why there is blood upon this circle. But it is easy to imagine that others have paid similar prices, different prices- sometimes paid by themselves, and sometimes paid by others. She imagines that it is the blood which dripped from her hands, as she consumed a hateful piece of Creation and set it forth upon citizens, soldiers, strangers, and magi combatants alike. She imposed upon the world a law-

To Eat, or to be Eaten.

It is a truism. None can argue, really. In the wild, there is little virtue to be found among those who experience hunger, and those who can sate it. It never mattered that often enough, those were one and the same.

The point from the beginning was to break it. To take what was, and to transform it utterly into something unrecognizable. Instead, it was released unchanged. Saekanis's hunger is nothing but an illusion that conceals the truth: a piece of Kraus Eternia despised the imperfection of his own creation, and in his sundering became the father who would consume his children. That creature haunts the Spirit World, a profane patron borne of the best intentions twisted for century after century after century until there was nothing left of the initial thought.

In the loosest sense, it is a malevolent ghost of an archangel. Sarina summons forth a piece of such a being, warm within her chest. It beats with disdain she had never recognized in whole. When she was but a little girl, her heart was full of innocence in spite of the dark world that surrounded her. As she served the cause of a new world, willing to fight and kill in the name of something beautiful, a spectre of that darkness found its way into the cracks.

Sarina stares upon hate.
She doesn't know what else to do, tonight. She knows... she cannot simply look away, and think of kinder and brighter things.
Sarina stares upon her hate. Perhaps that was always the cost. Perhaps it was inevitable.

Is innocence the privilege of the ignorant? Is sinlessness only possible for the apathetic? Is this what Azrael once discovered, in the depths of his compassion and the madness which followed?

It is difficult to feel like a person when you feel yourself walking in the footsteps of Eternity.

There is no absolution in eating yourself alive.
It is better to see their blood upon the circle. Just have a heart to care, when the dying is done.
It will be you one day. And you will be happy about it.

The door opens, as though a stroke of fate.

"Ah, there you are!"