[center]Music OOC[/center]
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[center][youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X74vNIRxvw4[/youtube][/center]
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Up the rotten wooden steps. Next step across the deck. Beyond the doorway. Into the hall. Between the walls. There was naught but darkness within; the remnants of inhabitants long since forgotten amid this abandoned residence. Forsaken, even, and there was a difference. Morning sunlight tried to slide in past the frayed drapes, ever defiant to a wet appetite, but the rain had taken this place like swords in a storm, and decay was not compliant—like a mother who mourned her slain babe but would never forget his name.

Though, no attempt to restore this shelter was in order. There were no elders in this forest fit for the purpose. The linen sheets that covered furniture had served their purpose to futility; ancient as aged skin. Underneath their equally flimsy structure, emboldened by the holes, crept insects. Maddened with a need to feed, they danced at the corners the way snakes slid between the blades of grass. 

This morning's visitor or, indeed, intruder, paid no other living thing any mind as much as he did to the dead abode. In the living room, a fireplace where the fire was once stoked remained ashen grey; cold, and even within this pit the mold was able to grow. A corner table, coated with the growth of dust that no lord could comprehend amid, had a complement of spider webs. 

[i]Take your blade to them[/i]. A voice beckoned within his head. Oh, he knew the stroke. He was trained to take the hide from a deer with his knife as much as penetrate a man’s bone with no fear. That sword in his scabbard was not for show. [i]No.[/i] He approached, not webs or memories as he glimpsed trees and friends between them, and enemies in the valley to defend the former by breaking them, but steps. 

[i]Remember the embers, my son[/i]. Another spoke. He remembered as flesh rendered with bone. [i]Wood and stone[/i]. Caught in this waking dream, it was all the son could do to envision the sun, and its rays were made to prevent him from sleeping. It was beyond dawn, the sun since risen in the sky outside this house, but a new dawn was yet to rise. 

He climbed. He advanced. He moved with purpose as much as by chance. He did not know where he was going but he knew he had to go—no, not leave, even if his horse chanted a chorus at his back, but advance forward. [i]Forward, Always[/i]. Brave. Foolish. It was the same fate anyway.

Bedroom. Window. Morning’s glory shone, its glow vacant of rain or storm, defiant to lightning, stubborn to thunder. [i]Cadrian’s Wall. Even today, may it never fall[/i]. Thoughts lost, but he walked on. Bathroom. His hand rested on the hilt of his sword at his hip as he entered, though he could not remember a maxim, nor did he know whether it was fate or accident that gave his gaze to a lady in a bathtub. Maybe it was magic.

But it wasn’t a skeleton. The figure was pallid in complexion, a ghost to the bone, and covered in the dirt of the earth as with the drapes and the furniture of this abode. It was if, at first glance and if one would pardon the darkness of the vision, this person had slit her wrists and let fate take her away like the blades of rain. 

Only there was no blood, not even coagulated, and no water in the bathtub. Knees bent upward, rigid as sticks, arms crossed over her chest, positioned with purpose. This was predetermined. Not languid. Not given to death, unless undead, what with her breath as faint as those blades on the window. 

[i]Is she asleep? Awake?[/i] He didn’t know. His words were light, though, like his pace, never mind perfection in a story or seamless scenes, for perhaps that would simply be boring, as his free hand gripped the edge of the tub and he leaned forward toward her. Though, he did not touch. 

[color=f7941d]“...Hello..?[/color]