[center][img]https://img.roleplayerguild.com/prod/users/68b39d4b-8bdd-4076-83d6-f7b626465c76.png[/img] [color=f7941d][s]2:57 PM[/s][/color] [url=https://youtu.be/-ODbE6OY0s8?si=e3jTbjb1Tyzd2kPV]ᔨᐧ[/url][/center] The world that lay deep within slowly began to stir... vague images becoming twisted and distorted yet so much more clear. Reflections of the realm of perception twisted by thought and emotion. Repression, masking, adaptation, this trinity holding dominion... The mirror's children. Shattered to splinters and spread far into the recesses of the darkened collective heart of humanity. Split and subdivided. Tainted. A hall of warping and shifting mirrors. A new awakening has caught the attention of something far bigger... The world itself awoke from its long slumber, the blackness rippling with apathy and empathy, distorting the raw concepts of time and space, of infinity and void. One of [i][sup]her[/sup][sub]his[/sub][sup]their[/sup][/i] children had been more active than the rest... They would soon follow suit, but was most interesting were these... [i]contracted[/i] souls, more intertwined than most... Best to see how it plays out.[hr] [i][b][color=ed1c24]The heat has risen.[/color][/b][/i] The waves of heat around the puppet cut loose bent and flowed in accordance with their will. As the words came forth, they exploded out of the marionette, a shockwave of power that emanated from them. [i]Commanding the very construction of the walls surrounding.[/i] The walls were pushed back, bending and warping at odd angles, yet held together by the absence of natural law. Empathy and Apathy. Life and Death. Repression and Expression. Thus were the only rules by which this place abided. A spectrum of absolutes and polarities, fraught with twisted truths and balancing contrasts. The spike of heat from within the dealbreaker's chest reached out, strands of ethereal thread, the strings of control that lay severed… Once used against them, now laid before him as a weapon primed for use. [@Baphomini][hr] [b][color=00aeef]Warped became rigid.[/color][/b] The pure sound of howling stopped the shifting walls in its tracks, a chilling brine radiating across the twisted walls, as the absence and presence of energy clashed within the room, the two third parties trapped in the center of both crowd control Artes. Fear. A feeling not unfamiliar, but introspective. The innards of the soul were torn outward, fighting for one's life with the demons that lived in the mind, a parasite transformed into a weapon. The frozen coating of the walls formed patterns, initially esoteric, before shifting and formulating one solid. Snowflakes, crystals. Fractals of the frozen substance hung in the air, the heat bending and flowing through the cracks. [i]Two absolutes held within perpetual balance through contradiction.[/i] [@Kronshi][hr] [img]https://img.roleplayerguild.com/prod/users/e05d2ee8-beeb-45b0-993c-b1b62a099433.png[/img] [b][color=a187be]Echoes of sound and power rang hard.[/color][/b] She felt it in her bones, a wave of heated words pushing her back as another sound sent an icy chill down her spine… She fell over by the combination, still unsteady in her footing with her new ‘hybrid’ body. Their body moved on its own, moving away to a now farther wall, before she halted, muscles tense as her heart hammered in her chest. Other than the blatant situation of danger at hand, she felt something even more unsettling. She felt unbalanced, a twist in her stomach, the dreaded sensation of tilting too far on a tightrope… She tried to steady her body, a tremble that shook them to the core… Standing again, she placed a hand/paw/thing on the wall to stabilize her footing… [i]Fear is a weapon. Something she could disarm.[/i] Her eyes drifted closed, a steady breath in, then out. Spectrums of color shined from behind her eyelids, darkening down to the peaceful blackness that she found calming. A spike of sudden energy, uncomfortable at first, but soon subsiding… Like a shard of glass embedded in her chest.[hr] The creature, manifestation of thought, fragment of masking, freezes at the sounds, glass cracking with the contrast. The fractured mirror that made up its ‘face’ rippled and shifted as it slowly turned to the marionette, the howl forcing it to look away from the frozen pelted predator as it fixed its gaze upon the white-clad wooden man. The glass that embedded itself into its body, prismatic in coloration as it cut through visage and the floor beneath it. The slightest glimpse of a face glinted in the reflective material, a shadow of whatever person created this beast. A creature that reflected a person's social mask. An aspect of repression and fake expression.[hr] [center][img]https://img.roleplayerguild.com/prod/users/54284b8c-66dd-4e89-b34e-0de20b03afb1.png[/img][/center] [color=fff200][b]Customers flowed through like water in a stream.[/b][/color] The festival still went on, people enjoying their orders in whatever dining space was allowed, as sunlight brightened and dimmed with clouds outside. It was like clouds blended and merged with the sky, light dancing through the cracks and tears of the blanket of vapor. The light seemed to last forever. Yet something felt hidden in the radiant streams, like something one couldn't begin to see by shining a light on it… [i]Something that didn't quite belong in this world.[/i] [@CorviDoggo][hr] [center][img]https://img.roleplayerguild.com/prod/users/717d09b6-4296-4247-8145-03b55c8a0478.png[/img][/center] [color=8e45c5][b]Human perception has always been a piece of work.[/b][/color] The masked man sat atop one of the many bright billboards that overlooked the district square, looking down at all the people scurrying about like ants. Within his gloved left hand he held a flower with six petals, of six colors. Red, Blue, Purple, Yellow, Black, and White. He looked at the flower in his hand, a representation of the balance and chaos of the mirror, bound by the principles of this world… [i]To think he was a representation of this filth.[/i] He lifted the mask with his right hand, revealing the smooth and featureless surface beneath, shadowy short hair that seemed to ebb and flow. The eyes were the only thing that defined his face. A bright prismatic hue that changed its coloration constantly… As the shining oculi were covered by flesh and blood, and placing the mask back onto his face, the outward picture shifted from one of theatrics, to one that struck fear. An oni mask. Black brambles sprouted from the man's fingers, a bud of a flower growing in his palm. A sweet seed to be planted… He let it fall. Fall far down to the flow of humans below. [i]For even the most beautiful of roses has its thorns. One would be a fool to think that such a beautiful mask had not consequences behind it's face…[/i][hr] [b]A new headline graces the opulent signs that hung above the district. “Strange vanishings shock Shibuya…”[/b] Cracks are beginning to form in the Veil of Ignorance. The creature's that reside there beginning to reach past their dominion… The lines are beginning to blur.