[i]-------- This is the introductory post for Akio and Ose Haru --------[/i]

Unease has followed you like a shadow ever since you reached the fabled City.  The ground here is polished to such a degree that you can see your own reflection on its glassy surface; a reflection that has been your only companion through these wide, foggy streets.  Towers -- uniform, seemingly endless -- carved of solid jade loom above you, their tops lost to the fog.  For all you know the city could be miles long, but you have not walked far from the stairs that led here from the mountain.

The City has been completely silent, and you have not even felt the wind on your back since you took your first steps into its streets, it seems almost as though the entire place has been frozen in time for thousands of years.

You had seen no familiar architecture, just these featureless jade towers -- until now.  Before you is a traditional wooden temple wall, the kind built anywhere in Waidi to keep bandits at bay, but here it looks as out of place and alien as you must.  There is no gate here, but surely there must be one further along.

What was that?  A footstep?

You turn your head and in the distance, further down beside the wall, you can just barely make out the silhouette of (hopefully) another human being.