( A boy a woman and a monster take center stage )
The words are drawn from the lips of a monster and coated in a thick layer of sin that seems to permeate the atmosphere surrounding the three.
The monster himself balances upon an impressive and imposing gravestone that is wider than Cain is tall.
Cain is stood nearby, casually leaning against another far more dilapidated gravestone, his figure hidden by creeping insidious shadows. The hands that reside in his pockets secretly fiddling with a few of his smaller, more inconspicuous knives.
( The third member of their performance is a woman looking to be in her early twenties who remains unknowing to his presence, so wrapped up in her own indecision that she is )
He is not outright fearful of this creature, of this man, how can he be after seeing his face in his dreams for as long as he can remember? He knows every line of that face, sometimes better than he knows his own features.
Nevertheless, he is undeniably suspicious of this, seemingly, supernatural entity that stands before him whispering tales of forgotten promises and unreachable dreams into the young woman's ears. The knives are simply a comfort, a coping mechanism if you will.
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( Their audience stirs uncomfortably from where they lay, beneath mud, memories and rot. They are fearful of the being with the impossible smile. He is dangerous )
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All too soon, but not soon enough, the performance reaches its climax as the woman bows her head in acquiescence to the man in the white suit. Proof of the woman's foolish and misguided faith in the monster is crystallized into the strands of history forevermore with the simple utterance of a name.
The name of her dearly beloved and recently deceased lover, to be exact.
The wooden contraption that the name is promptly etched onto looms ominous and sinister before them, an unwanted atramentous ink blot upon otherwise pristine parchment.
There is a sense of wrongness around the doll that seems sink into Cain's blood and dig sharp claws into his stomach, leaving him feeling nauseas. The feeling is unfortunately rather familiar and so, as much as he wants to be, Cain is not overtly surprised when the puppet lurches forward, blade like arm already raised in preparation, toward the woman who had quite literally sold her soul.
No that's not quite true, Cain muses as he closes his eyes and tries to block out the sounds of the woman's shrill screams and the relentless, desperate begging of the seemingly unwilling but unstoppable contraption.
It wasn't the woman's soul that had been sold. It was her lover's.
In trying to retrieve the one she adored from death the woman had instead cursed him to exist in permanent torture. Cursed him to kill that of which he had died for not a week previously.
Oh how fickle is fate.
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( Within the stands the audience stills, falling silent in the face of travesty and recognising within the female's eyes the cold realisation brought about only by the frigid embrace, death )
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Opening his eyes Cain is greeted by the suspicious absence of a certain wooden puppet.
His confusion is soon aleviated as a single glance at where the woman is climbing to her feet brings startling clarity.
An akuma has been created of the man's soul which now resides in the woman's body, which means, his eyes turn to the monster as realisation dawns.
" Millennium Earl, "
( A boy a woman and a monster bow to their audience before exiting stage left )