Styxian vapours swirl languidly on the ebon plain, the distant forest a silent wall of night. Starlight washes the earth in monochrome, the moon veiled in black velvet. All things that slither on stone and brush the clouds are victims of Phobetoran whim. The land sleeps.
Folds of saffron stir the stagnant fog, as it caresses bichrome feet. Whispers echo across the plain like thoughts surfacing from a dream, the dry rasp of leaves in a sigh of wind. Golden yellow robes gleam in the stellar luminescence. The mist thickens.
Through tunnels in the shadows, threadbare patches in the fog, lunatic eyes gleam with chilling fervor. A pale cheekbone. A dark jaw. A bichrome smile. A dark maiden's hand stirs the silver vapor, a single omnipotent finger... beckons. Her saffron raiment glimmers in the monochrome night.
A pale maiden's hand stirs the dark water, onyx rippling in the gloom. Shafts of adamantine brilliance pierce the shadows, refracting from the river's lacquer surface. Masked in the glimmering, the depths of the water stir, and calm. Just beneath the surface, the pale hand wraps gentle fingers around a grey stone, wavering like a mirage beneath the still waves.
The dainty hand lifts, ripples blooming from her touch as crystalline drops glitter in the night, glistening rivulets streaming from her grasp in a pearlescent waterfall. The pale maiden's prize is presented to the cold stars.
As cold as they, the grey lifesource lies quiet and solemn. Veined with white like long-forgotten bones, the color of a dead lover's cheek. In the maiden's cupped palm rests the coveted bane of shades, morbid and moving, fascination and denial. A human heart.
The dark maiden's cheek emerges from the fog, bichrome smile inviting. Her beckoning hand unfurls like a dark lotus, waiting. Twin white orbs blaze eagerly, alight with ancient power, cold with time. Searching, as patient as Death. Knowing, for Fate is inevitable.
All that remains is to choose.