hi! so i wanted to see if ais naming us sparrow was symbolic or not, so i did some research into japanese culture surrounding sparrows (since i’m pretty sure that’s where ais originates? we assume he is an oni, and they derive from japan)
so in japanese culture, sparrows are often associated with perseverance, resilience and adaptability because they can thrive in many climates and overcome different challenges.
mc does do that in every origin- oracle mc escaped the cult they were worshipped in, exile mc lived without civilisation for the majority of their life and alchemist mc fled a mage who saw them as a test subject and presumably experimented on them.
sparrows are also seen as messengers of joy and happiness, bringing good fortune to those who encounter them
this i’m not sure applies to ts mc. if we go down the LI’s routes successfully and save them, then it may apply, but the other four LI’s who we do not chase never find the answer to their problems- and in the worst case scenario, die.
if we think about this from ais’ point of view, then it may make sense why he named us sparrow. sparrows are associated with the arrival of spring and hope for the future, their cheerful presence believed to bring harmony to people's lives and bring community.
ais is LONELY. he wants community, people around him free of the sea springs grasp. conscious people who can form their own opinions.
in a way it is him hoping we stick around, as our first day in eridea already reunites the five main LI’s for the first time in who knows how long.
my last point is that having sparrows nest near your home (or garden) is considered auspicious. they are believed to protect against negative energies and bring you blessings from above.
i’ve seen some theories on here that say our touch can minimise the hold ocudeus has on ais for a short time, and i think it makes sense.
cw vomiting, emetophilia ? (dw it's not that gross... i think)
You can only focus on one thing: the sensation of knives twisting in your gut.
By the time you stagger into the washroom, your vision has begun to blur at the edges. Your knees strike the floor hard enough to sting, but another violent retch doubles you over before the pain can fully register. You barely manage to catch yourself on the rim of the toilet as you vomit up the remains of dinner in thick, yellow chunks.
Dear Allmother, was the man trying to poison you?
The next several minutes pass in miserable fragments.
You lie sprawled beneath the bathroom’s harsh lanternlight, while your stomach churns ominously. Sweat gathers beneath your arms and along the back of your neck until your tunic clings damply to your skin. With trembling hands, you wrench your cloak off and let it crumple beside you.
The knock at the door is soft enough that, at first, you mistake it for part of the throbbing in your skull.
Kuras steps inside carrying with him the clean scent of dried herbs and winter air, sharp and sterile against the sour reek of vomit and stale alcohol saturating the cramped washroom. A glass of water gleams faintly in his hand. His golden eyes settle on you where you lie on the floor, and he offers it to you with a look of concern on his face.
“Thanks,” you mutter hoarsely, forcing yourself upright enough to take it. “I don’t know what happened. I think Leander’s trying to murder me for refusing to sing along to whatever awful chorus he was leading downstairs."
A weak laugh escapes you, embarrassed by how pathetic it sounds. Another violent wave of nausea twists through your stomach. “Sorry,” you mumble as you bend hurriedly back toward the toilet. “I really don’t want you to see me like this.”
Kuras says your name quietly. “You needn’t apologise.”
You barely manage to brace yourself before another bout of vomiting tears through you. When it finally subsides, you cough raggedly, choking on saliva. Your throat and nose burn from the acid, and tears sting at the corners of your eyes.
When you glance up again, Kuras still stands in the doorway. The washroom light renders him luminous as he studies you carefully.
“Your face is flushed,” he observes.
You cough weakly into the toilet bowl. “Think I’ve got a damn fever.” A dry gag wracks your stomach, but nothing comes up.
“May I?”
To your surprise, Kuras kneels beside you.
You nearly flinch when the back of his hand brushes your forehead. He is close enough now that you can feel the soft warmth of his breath. Instinctively, you avoid his gaze. Looking directly into those strange golden eyes feels too intimate in your current state.
“The fever is mild,” Kuras says after a moment, though the crease between his brows suggests he is far from reassured. The backs of his fingers linger briefly against your forehead before he withdraws his hand reluctantly. “But you are running warm.”
You let your head tip wearily against the side of the toilet. “It’s just drink.”
“Mm, Leander handles alcohol with the same confidence he brings to spellcraft. It is rarely wise for anyone nearby.” There is the faintest trace of dry amusement beneath the remark, quickly overtaken by concern again. “I would feel more at ease,” he continues carefully, “if you allowed me to bring you back to the clinic for the evening.”
Leaving the Wet Wick like this while Kuras hovers anxiously beside you sounds like a humiliation devised specifically for your torment.
“No,” you murmur. “I’m alright.”
Kuras says your name softly. “You are lying on the floor of a tavern washroom.”
“I noticed.”
His mouth tightens almost imperceptibly. “You look genuinely unwell.”
You exhale slowly through your nose, already tired of your own stubbornness. “Kuras, it’s fine. I just need to wait for it to pass.”
What you do not say is: please stop looking at me like that.
That quiet concern in his face feels worse than disgust would have. For a moment, he says nothing. You hope he finally understands the dismissal for what it is.
Instead, Kuras gathers the long white folds of his coat and lowers himself fully onto the floor across from you.
Lanternlight glances across gold embroidery and polished buckles as he settles down, as though this grimy washroom were no less appropriate a place for him than his clinic. “Very well,” he says calmly, folding his hands loosely in his lap. “Then I shall remain here until it does.”
You blink at him. “Kuras—”
“I assure you, this is not the least dignified place in which I have kept watch over someone.” His gaze lifts to yours then, steady and warm despite the exhaustion lining your face. “And I would rather you not suffer through this alone.”
Something tightens unpleasantly in your chest.
Kuras reaches for the washcloth draped beside the basin. Long fingers smooth the fabric flat before he runs it beneath the tap. He wrings the cloth once, neatly, before stepping toward you.
The cool cloth presses against the back of your neck, and relief shudders painfully through your overheated body. You had not realised how warm your skin had become until that moment. Heat-soaked skin drinks in the cold while Kuras’ hand lingers briefly at the nape of your neck.
“It may help bring the fever down,” Kuras murmurs.
You glance up at him despite yourself.
Concern softens the elegant lines of his face. For one disorienting moment, you are no longer crumpled beside the Wet Wick’s toilet with sweat soaking through your tunic.
You are back in his clinic on your first night in Eridia, waking half-delirious and frightened beneath clean sheets while Kuras looked down at you as though your suffering pained him personally.
You cannot reconcile the sight before you with anything you know about the world.
You remember the endless prayers whispered into cold stone halls until your throat went raw. The certainty that if anything divine truly existed, it had long ago turned its face from you.
But Kuras…
Kuras kneels with you beside a fouled toilet as though there is nowhere else he ought to be.
You do not understand him at all.
Your vision blurs suddenly. You blink hard, once, twice, viciously scrubbing at your eyes before the tears can properly gather. The motion only makes your headache throb worse. You turn your face away with a sharp sniff, pretending an interest in the cracked mortar between the stones.
Of course Kuras notices. “What is wrong? Are you in pain?”
You shake your head too quickly. Your eyes fix stubbornly on the far corner of the bathroom where a pale spider works diligently at its web. Anything is easier to look at than him. Your fingers worry restlessly at the bandages around your forearms, tugging at frayed linen until it bites into your skin.
His gaze flicks briefly toward your hands twisting helplessly in their bandages before returning to your face again. Slowly, carefully, one of his hands shifts across the floor between you, uncertain whether comfort would be welcome from him.
Before he can decide, another violent twist wrings through your stomach.
You lurch forward over the toilet with a strangled sound, gagging hard enough to make your ribs ache. Bitter saliva burns your throat as you retch helplessly around nothing.
A hand slips gently through your sweat-damp hair, gathering it back from your face while another rests against your cheek. The coolness of his palm seeps deliciously into your flushed skin, grounding you in your own body again piece by piece. Without thinking, you lean into it with a faint, exhausted hum, settling back onto your heels.
“Let me help,” Kuras says quietly.
You force your eyes open.
Up close, Kuras feels unreal through the haze of sickness. Harsh light catches in his golden eyes, lashes shadowing their strange glow, while loose strands of dark hair brush the white collar at his throat. Even kneeling beside a toilet, he possesses the terrible, unearthly beauty of something not meant to belong to this world at all.
Kuras’ gaze lowers to your mouth with disarming focus, studying the tremor in your lips. The examination is clinical in intent, but there is something intimate about the attention all the same.
Kuras cradles your jaw more securely in his hand. His thumb passes slowly across your damp lower lip, brushing away saliva.
“Let me ease some of your suffering,” he murmurs. There is nothing forceful in the way he speaks. If anything, the softness of it unsettles you more. His thumb presses lightly against your lower lip, drawing it down just slightly. You think you understand what he wants before he says it aloud.
“Open your mouth for me.”
You obey before pride can intervene. Bracing your palms weakly against the sticky floorboards, you part your lips with a shaky breath. Something strange flickers beneath the molten gold of his eyes; a sharp curiosity that makes your pulse stumble.
Kuras tips your chin slightly upward, cool fingers pressing lightly against your tongue, examining rather than invading. His skin feels unnaturally smooth against the wet heat of your mouth, the pads of his fingers slightly calloused from years of work, tasting faintly of the cold air after rain. He traces along the inside of your cheek, the shape of your teeth, the trembling muscle of your tongue. Before you can dwell too long on how strange this all is, Kuras’ fingers press a little deeper and your body reacts instantly.
You gag sharply and jerk back, coughing into your sleeve.
“My apologies,” Kuras says at once, though a faintest flicker of fascination in his expression, quickly hidden again beneath professional calm. “Your reflexes are rather sensitive at present.”
You blink rapidly against the tears stinging your eyes and drag in a shaky breath. “Sorry,” you rasp weakly.
Kuras hushes you immediately, his fingers combing carefully through the tangled strands to keep them from your face. “There now,” he murmurs. “Relax for me.”
Humiliatingly enough, you obey.
“Open,” he says gently. You part your lips again, wide enough to fit two fingers this time. “Good,” he coos, the praise warm and absent-mindedly tender. Your throat flutters involuntarily as he slips further in, brushing the back of your tongue. “Try not to fight it.”
Your stomach twists anxiously at the sensation of his fingers pressing deeper and your eyes squeeze shut. Every inch further draws another helpless contraction from your throat, and Kuras feels all of it.
“There,” he says reassuringly. “That’s it.”
He adjusts his fingers as they reach the downward slope at the back of your tongue.
Your throat tightens convulsively around his fingers and a shiver wracks through your entire body. Kuras holds steady, thumb anchoring carefully against your chin while the other hand remains threaded through your damp hair.
“Breathe,” he instructs quietly. “You’re alright.”
The bathroom fills with ugly, humiliating sounds, swallowed beneath the muffled roar of drunken laughter and music bleeding through the walls of the Wet Wick. Somewhere beyond the washroom door, men are still singing and shouting over one another, blissfully unaware that you are deepthroating the long fingers of an angel.
Kuras strokes his fingers once more against the back of your tongue. Your stomach heaves instantly. You wrench his wrist away with a wet sound just as vomit splashes into the toilet bowl.
You sputter through another fit of coughing while Kuras rubs slow and steady between your shoulders. “Do not force your breathing. It will pass.”
You cannot stop thinking about how wretched you must look sprawled across the floor like this; bitter bile clings to your tongue, saliva cools damply along your chin. You spit the last of the bitterness into the bowl. Your stomach still aches, but the terrible twisting has finally begun to ebb.
After several miserable minutes of dry heaving, you sink fully onto the floor again. The harsh bathroom light feels unbearable now, exposing every weakness. You wish you had not discarded your cloak earlier. Instinctively, you turn your face aside, trying to hide yourself as best you can.
Kuras rises only long enough to flush the toilet and rinse the cloth beneath the tap. When he kneels before you again, he tips your chin gently upward and wipes your mouth and jaw.
“There you are,” he says quietly. “That is a little more dignified, I think.”
Your voice feels like it might crack apart entirely if forced. So when he asks, “Do you feel any better?” you only manage the faintest nod.
He draws you carefully upright, one steadying hand lingering at your waist when your knees threaten to give beneath you.
Kuras retrieves your cloak from where it lies crumpled beside the basin. The sight of him handling it—handling you—with such gentleness twists strangely at something deep within your chest. He drapes the heavy fabric around your shoulders before fastening it carefully at your throat, fingers grazing your skin in fleeting passes.
Then he offers you his hand.
You hesitate only a moment before taking it.
“I still believe you should come back to the clinic,” Kuras says after a pause. “You are pale, feverish, dehydrated, and unfortunately at the mercy of whatever poison Leander convinced you to drink.”
Despite everything, a weak laugh escapes you.
Kuras’ mouth curves faintly at the sound. “I would feel at ease,” he admits, “if I could keep an eye on you through the night, if only to ensure your condition does not worsen.”
You should refuse again.
You should insist you are capable of surviving one miserable evening alone upstairs. Yet the thought of climbing into bed by yourself suddenly feels unbearable in a way you cannot explain.
So instead, after a long moment, you nod.
Something warm flickers across Kuras’ face, gone almost as quickly as it appeared
“Very well,” he says softly.
His hand settles lightly against the small of your back as he guides you toward the door.
Outside, the Wet Wick still roars with drunken music and laughter, bright and oblivious. But Kuras shields you from the worst of the noise as he leads you carefully through the crowded tavern, one steady hand remaining at your side all the way out into the cold Eridian night.
My current hyperfixation is “Touchstarved” right now, so needless to say I’ve been overanalyzing things with nothing else to sink my teeth into. I have many theories, and may keep sharing speculations as I see fit or if I may be asked. Some are things inspired by others’ speculations, and I’ll do my best to find those original posts to provide credit. Others are from my own head and observations, and I’m not sure how much they have or if they’ve been mentioned by others within the fandom.
I’ll start with this one, as I think there are limited spoilers to it and it is something I’ve thought about since the initial Demo and lore drops:
MC is a Monster from the Shroud. They were either too young when they crossed from the Shroud into the mortal realm, or crossing over caused them serious trauma that inhibits memory. Or even both!
In the March 28th, 2024 post when asked about the power of Monsters, RSS states that Monsters who cross from the Shroud “undergo a dramatic transformation” and that they “adapt” the longer they’re here.
So, what if the MC crossed over when they were quite small? Either small enough to have no memory (like a toddler wandering away from their parents only to accidentally pass through in a Fogfall, but somehow not get killed by Soulless) or still young enough to be on the weaker power end. After all, each MC Origin, including the now defunct Hound, all describe the MC as having grown up from at least late childhood or a tween. Regardless, the initial transformation into taking physical form caused serious trauma to their hands (and potential memory blockage due to said trauma). In the Demo, the golden lines on MC’s hand are described as “glowing scars” and their cursed skin as “mottled.” The discoloration of the skin, in addition to the scars, implies serious physical injury.
Additionally, we see Japanese influence in characters like Ais (oni), Vere (potential kitsune), as well as the Seaspring’s architecture. For me, MC’s golden scars bring to mind “kintsugi,” the practice of repairing broken pottery with a sap lacquer dusted with gold (or other precarious metal). As well as some creation origin myths describe humans as being made from clay (a main source of pottery and ceramic). So, what if MC’s physical form was broken before completion, either a process disruption or other event? Obviously, their hands were still able to also take human form, but the physical trauma left is evident. Their “curse” may just be their Monster power/potential trapped in the surface area of their disfigured hands.
There may also be a “mind over matter” theme playing into MC’s character, and is partly why I believe they crossed over from the Shroud young. From what we’ve seen, MC has no biological parents. If MC crossed over from the Shroud along, and young, then all they would have contact with is humans. They think they’re human, and thus it tampers with their Monster power. In the old Demo, Vere describes the MC as “Not quite human, not quite Monster…” but now he states that he “underestimated” us. Keep in mind what the Studio said about Monsters adapting the longer they’re here. Children are more in tune with their intuition and imagination, and are also more impressionable. What if MC believing so wholeheartedly that they’re human has caused the dormancy of their power, except for what they cannot control in their improperly formed hands? What if when MC realizes that they are a Monster, they will be able to wake up and exercise their full power and capability? Or even evolve it, but that is a post for another day.
Now I’m going to step into something that is more of a stretch theory about MC.
MC is a divine Monster, but of different origin then a certain someone we know. Keeping on the topic of Japanese influence, what if MC is this universe's sort of version of a “kami” or localized Japanese deity? The first thing that pops up when you do a search on “kami” is that they’re believed to control nature, and then immediately points to weather and harvest. But… what if the “nature” that MC can control/ manipulate leans more toward a being’s nature and even aspects of reality itself?
In the April 15th, 2025 post about MC’s curse having long-term affects, the Studio stated that it "permanently destroys” human minds but “pacifies” Soulless (beings also from the Shroud but different from Monsters.
In the January 19th, 2024 post regarding Soulless, the little lore drop is that “they’re sinners reborn as punishment for their wickedness.”
So… MC is able affect the human mind, but due to the disrupted formation of their hands and the lacking understanding of their power, the only way they’re able to manipulate the “nature” of humans is to destroy them. For Soulless, if they are indeed reincarnated sinners, the fact that the MC’s curse allows them to pacify them is strange. My brain keeps wanting to say “a short form of forgiveness that eases their bloodlust as gods or religious faith may do,” but I don’t have the concrete thread yet to validate “why” I think that. Just throwing darts at a wall in regard to how MC could be divine Monster, or divine Monster adjacent, I suppose. Plus the religious imagery with both the option of a oracle origin and the Senobium as a centralized church.
(SPOILER AHEAD -
Not to mention the revealing of a Monster’s “true face” when coming into contact with them in some of the Chapter One previews. MC able to affect the nature/ rip away the mask shielding a Monster’s reality or true form.
- END SPOILER)
So, in summary, MC is potentially a (divine) Monster from the Shroud that crossed over when they were a child. The transformation from metaphysical to physical caused permanent damage to their physical form (their hands) where their power is not controlled, and potential memory suppression due to the trauma. Growing up in the mortal realm has led them to believe that they are human, and thus any actual Monster capabilities have become dormant, but for what is unchecked in their hands.
It is also my hope that once they come to realize they are more than a human, their Monster capabilities will start to manifest again and can potentially grow stronger. (Also, so in the endings where MC ends up with their LI, the two can be together for longer than a normal human lifespan because long happily ever after and all that jazz <3 )
Kuras - Warming up
The idea that Kuras chooses to stay in the same bed as MC (even though he doesn't need to sleep) just to warm him up seems good… They won't need a blanket, a hug is enough. If the MC can't sleep with the lights on, an eye mask would be a good option to place next to him, but a warm light like this can be nice to look at… Especially while he's staring at you, totally fascinated.
Leander - Resting
Leander doesn't seem to have much time to sleep or rest, so MC pulls him back to bed as soon as he tries to go back to work. This moment won't even last 5 minutes, he might not even need that time to make you change your mind…
Mhin - Getting closer
They never seem to like excessive affection, sleeping cuddled together seems almost impossible, but they try their best to show affection, even if it's with a dakimakura between their bodies.
Vere - Nesting?
Maybe it's his fox instincts speaking louder, but on rare occasions Vere is able to steal MC's clothes and use him as a personal pillow. Kinda cute, actually… He will never admit that happened, you were probably dreaming.
Ais - Comforting
His body is incredibly good to lie on (maybe because of the size of his chest that can be used as a pillow)… He's a little cold, however his arms are able to perfectly warm MC' body.
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