who we are and all that we're trying to be
There was a particular siren call in his ears to merely become a phantom, a ghoul, a cretin of the evening, to slip in and out of the shadows and leave the other behind. The shrouds of twilight, of midnight treacheries, were carved into his wake, much like the scars, the lacerations, of yesteryears; and he surveyed, calculated, for a long, heavy silence. The temptation to wander out into the gloom, to become a part of the heathenous ether again, if only for singular moments and irreverent stretches of time, were great and predacious. Absorbed and consumed by the lingering danger, swallowed whole and alive again in the seditious span of the fathomless unknown, his senses sunk and slinked in the accord, nostrils flaring, ears shifting, all the more a demonic edge to his shadowed fixtures. Perhaps it was the hound, perhaps it was the human, perhaps it was a combination of Reaper audacity and Sword prowess; the itch to crawl and immerse into the void, simply because he couldn’t remember the last hours he stood upon a molten precipice and wandered into its immorality.
Then the enticement died and faded on the leopard’s words, and his piercing gaze slid away from the embarking shadows, from the looming trails, and back to the feline again. He remained torn and slightly unsettled, heartbeat ricocheting in his ribs, before hastening along the path, not chasing after the darkness, not rampaging into the evening’s sprawl. Ghosts echoed along his mind, and he nearly forgot what the creature had asked, before shaking his head, clearing out the webs, the figments, the fragments. Most of it. The rest had been left into the enigmatic quandaries; reminded of the Greatwood, and its facets for trickeries.
But he tread along the known portions, swift and keen, allowing the rest of the earth to beckon him closer to home. In the distance, they would be able to clear the woods, the thickets, the copses, rambling towards open fields, settlements and ruins in the distance, the Spire rising high above it all.
It takes dying to know
How to live as ghosts
