[center][h1]The Hours of Dami and Ipte[/h1][img]https://i.imgur.com/O6XrMec.jpg?1[/img][/center]

An uncomfortably warm Stresia day had given way to a cool night, the way that days often did at this time of year. A fog had rolled in across the city, granting it an almost ethereal feel. Streetlamps glowed faintly within it, ghostly globes of light shimmering in the darkness. Voices could be heard in the arboretum and clusters of shadowed figures filtered through the streets. These soon went silent. Candles and lamps flickered in windows. One by one, they winked out. In contrast to the roiling, colourful sea of sound and motion that had gripped the city mere hours earlier, a stillness and darkness that was… almost eerie descended over Ersand’Enise. 

Presently, a cart clattered solemnly down Parade Street, its owner busy sweeping up rose petals from the day’s celebrations. Geese nestled in the banks by Hedda’s Lake and lesser birds hunkered in the tree branches, clustered together for warmth and protection. The eyes of owls snapped open and their nocturnal hunts began. This would be a good night for them. The Grand Plaza was crisscrossed by rats, roaches, and other scavengers. The city’s cats and foxes had already been active, but the fruits of human excess had left more than enough detritus for all animals to profit.

Ersand’Enise had gone down for rest - blessed rest - and yet, there was one holdout: a mystery impossible to ignore. Ancient and gnarled, the Forked Tower loomed above the rest of the city in silent sentry, seeming almost to lean depending on the angle from which one gazed upon it. A lone light blazed in its uppermost window, slicing through the fog and shadow. What was taking place there so late into Dami’s hours, one could not say. It was only clear that something [i]was[/i].

Eight cloaked figures made their way through the darkness, their footsteps strangely inaudible. Threads of energy writhed and snaked around them: krakens’ arms visible only to one highly trained in the magical arts. These reached into homes and businesses, probing them, slithered into bedchambers, libraries, and privies, searching for something. Nobody would remember them the next morning but, for hours, they scoured the city. Then, they disappeared, back behind silent keeps, stoic pines, and tenebrous towers. It was unclear if they had found what they were looking for. Flags lay limp in the listless, shimmering air. Horses whinnied with soft unease in their stables. As Dami gave way to Ipte, the city slept.

Yet, just as there was more to Ersand’Enise than the academy, there was more to the city than what existed within its walls. On beyond the Forked Tower, the silent streets, and the cloaked figures lay the coast, where the plummeting temperature had called forth pounding waves that bashed against the cliffs and breakwaters. 

The light of Cap de Bon Port reached out like a great, ghostly arm into the distance, guiding sailors brave enough to navigate the shoals by night. Caravels and galleons creaked tiredly at their moorings, barnacles reaching out from their sea-worn timbers with feathery tendrils to feed on the nighttime bounty of the ocean.

In the shadow of the light, at the convenience of the ships, lay a collection of huts, inns, and warehouses. There were no streetlamps here; no cobblestones or towers. They hunkered together around the harbour that made the city wealthy: essential to it and yet not part of it. 

It was through here that a lone figure walked, a tall, crooked wizarding hat perched atop its head. To all the world, she might’ve looked like any other girl her age: a student out for some ill-advised fun or adventure in Mudville, but to one deeply versed in the magic of alchemy, she was a human inferno. Catecholamines and norepinephrine blazed within her mind and coursed through her arteries. That the day’s festivities had not gone well for this student was plainly evident. Yet, it was clear that she had a purpose for being here beyond mere anger. She, too, was looking for something. The light at Cap de Bon Port arced across the ramshackle collection of dwellings that sheltered around the harbour, its aged bronze bearings letting out a keening groan of metallic frustration as they continued their endless orbit. 

The student stalked along the muddy streets, eventually turning off of them. A brisk breeze blew up by the coast. Waves pummeled the limestone cliffs and spray reached up to lick at her face, but she saw it: tall and thin and elegant. A slice of the purest blackness, absorbing all light, as if cut from the very fabric of reality itself: it waited by the coast, in the shape of a beautiful man, arms open in welcoming embrace. Excited, still burning with the emotion of the day and determined to make right that which she viewed as wrong, she began running to it.

There were precious few souls awake at this hour, even in Mudville, but one or two had noticed the student, so out of place here, so burning with energy. Had they followed her - had they looked her way, they would’ve seen her start running. They would’ve seen her disappear beyond the veil of mists and, sometime later, felt the cold sting of the wind as it blew that mist away. There was no girl, however, who emerged from it. There was nothing but the crash of the sea, a chill in the air, and a dim glow on the horizon.
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