The mist clung to the windowpanes like a lover's final breath, heavy with the scent of moonflowers unfurling in the garden below. I awoke as the sun bled out behind the hills, its rust-colored light filtering through the Velvet Sanctum's draped walls, where Orpheus hummed softly in his corner—a low, persistent drone, as if he'd been waiting for me all day. Yesterday's echoes lingered in my veins, that faint Thorne Howl from the dream where Father's silhouette dissolved into static, leaving only the shape of absence in the air.
I wandered the nocturnal blooms first, clipping black dahlias under the crescent's sliver, their petals cool as forgotten skin. The soil whispered under my fingers, damp with heartmist, that fog between what was lost and what might return. Nyxie stirred then, her keys clicking like bones in the wind, dictating a melody that tasted of ashshine, the glow of beauty already spent.
Midnight brought the creative swell, full moon's pull urging me to the Chapel Engine. I recorded reverb from the cracked mirrors, layering it with Lydia's ribbon, twisted around the mic like a ritual bind. The sound opened something—a reverb grief, sharp as a glass pulse cracking. What frequency carries the dead's hum? I played until the candles hungered down to stubs, craving that fragile clarity where music becomes communion, not creation.
Tonight, the wind carries voices from Glasswell, faint and insistent.
I write this in the dim, sensing someone—perhaps a ghost, perhaps an echo—leaning in to listen.