Zwillingstürme, located within Kreis Einwald, stands as the resplendent capital of Leithania. The echoes of history reverberate through its ancient streets, where the whispers of the past mingle with the vibrant life of the present. Formerly known as Vedunien, the city underwent a dramatic transformation following the Septemberaufstand, the pivotal uprising that saw the downfall of the Witch King and the rise of the Twin Empresses. In the aftermath of that bloody conflict, the city was meticulously reconstructed, its shattered bones reforged into a new symbol of unity and strength, and christened Zwillingstürme in 1092.
The most striking feature of Zwillingstürme is its Twin Spires, which dominate the city's skyline, soaring above the labyrinthine streets and casting long shadows over the land. These towers are more than mere structures; they are living symbols of the city's dual nature, representing the delicate balance between grace and authority that the Twin Empresses brought to Leithanien. The Golden Tower, known as Eternal Grace, is a masterpiece of gilded stone and glass, its golden hue catching the first light of dawn and the last rays of the setting sun, casting a warm glow that can be seen from miles away. It is a tribute to the Golden Empress, Lieselotte, whose gentle yet firm hand guided Leithanien through its most trying times.
In contrast, the Black Tower, Austere Authority, is a monolith of obsidian stone, its surface polished to a mirror-like sheen that reflects the darkened skies of Leithanien's stormy seasons. It is a testament to the Black Empress, Hildegard, whose unyielding resolve and iron will forged the nation's laws and brought order to the chaos left in the Witch King's wake. The two towers, though different in their appearance, are inextricably linked, standing side by side as eternal sentinels over the city, embodying the duality that lies at the heart of Leithanien's identity.
Beneath these towering giants, the city spreads out in a complex web of streets and alleys, each with its own unique character and history. Marigold Alley, formerly Karl Schmidt Street, is a wide and stately boulevard that cuts through the city's heart, lined with grand buildings that house the offices of Leithania's most powerful officials. The air is filled with the scent of freshly baked bread from the many bakeries that line the street, mingling with the rich aroma of coffee from the cafes where the city's elite gather to discuss matters of state.
At the center of it all is the grand amphitheater, a vast open space situated directly before the Twin Spires. This is the heart of Zwillingstürme, where the city's most important events and celebrations take place. It is here that the city comes together, where the people of Zwillingstürme gather to witness the grand performances and ceremonies that define their shared identity. The stones of the amphitheater are worn smooth by generations of feet, their surfaces etched with the memories of countless events, from the coronations of the Empresses to the solemn rituals of remembrance for those lost in the Septemberaufstand.
Nestled in the heart of Zwillingstürme, amidst the labyrinthine streets that weave between towering spires and shadowed alleys, stands an institution as old as the city itself—Ludwigs-Universität, the cradle of Leithanien's intellectual and arcane pursuits. The university is a place where history and knowledge intertwine, where the past is not merely remembered but lived, in every brick and stone, in every whisper of parchment against parchment, and in every echoing footstep that resounds through its ancient halls.
The university's façade, a marvel of architecture, rises with a stately grace that speaks of centuries of scholarship and discovery. Towers of intricately carved stone soar skyward, their pinnacles adorned with statues of scholars and mages, their faces frozen in expressions of quiet contemplation. Beyond the grand entrance, through heavy oak doors bound with iron, lies the university's central courtyard—a vast, open space ringed by cloisters that echo with the soft murmur of scholarly conversation and the rustle of robes. The courtyard is dominated by a great oak, its gnarled branches spreading wide, casting dappled shadows over the cobblestones. This tree, known as the Wissensbaum, is said to have been planted by the university's founder, Ludwig von Urtica, and has stood sentinel over the university's scholars for generations, its roots reaching deep into the earth, its branches stretching ever upward toward the heavens.
The air here is thick with the scent of aged parchment, ink, and the faint, acrid tang of reagents from the alchemical laboratories. Students move through the cloisters with purposeful strides, their arms laden with books, their minds filled with thoughts of philosophy, arts, and the intricate workings of the world. The walls of the university are lined with frescoes depicting scenes from Leithanien's rich history—the drafting of the Güldenesgesatz, the rise of the Twin Empresses, and the countless discoveries and advancements made within these hallowed halls.
At the heart of Ludwigs-Universität lies its library, a vast repository of knowledge, its shelves stretching up to the vaulted ceiling far above, where chandeliers cast a warm, golden light over the rows upon rows of books. This is the true heart of the university, a place where the past and present converge, where the collective wisdom of generations is preserved and passed on to those who seek it. The library is a labyrinth in its own right, with hidden alcoves and secret passages, where those who are willing to delve deep enough can uncover forgotten tomes and ancient scrolls, their pages filled with secrets long lost to the world outside.
One such hidden alcove, behind a seemingly innocuous bookshelf, conceals a spiral staircase descending into the depths below the university The staircase leads to a chamber far beneath the bustling activity of the university—a place where light struggles to reach, where the air is cool and damp, and where the walls are lined with shelves filled with scrolls and tomes that have not seen the light of day for centuries. The room is illuminated by a single, flickering candle, its light casting long shadows that dance across the ancient stone.
Fremont, the current lord of the Liches' Temple of Knowledge, sits at a large, ornately carved desk that dominates the center of the room. His appearance, that of a cranky elderly Sarkaz, belies the immense power and knowledge that he possesses. His serpentine tail coils beneath the desk, and his eyes, sharp and discerning, peer over the rim of his spectacles as he examines a tome that is nearly as old as he is. His hands, thin and bony, move with a steady grace as he turns the pages, his fingers tracing the faded text with a familiarity that speaks of centuries spent in the pursuit of knowledge.
Kal'tsit stands nearby, her posture relaxed but her eyes alert, as she listens to Fremont's musings. Her expression is one of quiet patience. Fremont, for his part, seems to be in one of his more irritable moods, his voice a low growl as he mutters to himself about the foolishness of those who have come before.
"Their arrogance knows no bounds," Fremont grumbles, his voice raspy with age but carrying a weight that makes Kal'tsit listen closely. "They think they can simply force the world to reveal its secrets, as if the universe is some recalcitrant child that needs only to be scolded into obedience. Fools, the lot of them."
Kal'tsit nods, her expression inscrutable as she watches Fremont. She has learned, over the years, that it is best to let the old Lich speak his mind before bringing up the matters at hand. Fremont's rants, while often long-winded and seemingly tangential, have a way of circling back to the heart of the issue in ways that are both enlightening and maddeningly circuitous.
"Have you made any progress on the matter we discussed?" Kal'tsit asks after a moment, her voice calm and measured.
"Recent advances in spatial arts might allow such a thing to be viable, but the initial application must be precise, surgical. By refining the granularity of control, we could potentially create a lattice of micro-dimensions—each a pocket prison, perfectly suited to the specific nature of the anomaly it contains as-"
Fremont's response is cut short by a sudden, eerie melody that seeps through the stone walls of the university, a haunting tune that seems to twist the air itself with its strange, dissonant chords. The melody, like a siren's call, drifts through the hallways and classrooms above, seeping into the minds of the students and faculty with insidious ease.
The effect is immediate and chaotic. In the once-peaceful courtyards and lecture halls, the air becomes charged with a palpable tension. Students begin to turn on one another, their voices raised not in scholarly debate but in scathing derision. The social hierarchies and academic prestige that normally weave through their interactions like subtle threads are now the chains that incite their wrath. Accusations and vitriol fill the air, transforming the university into a battleground of words and, soon, physical confrontations.
Throughout the commotion, Executor strides through the anarchic halls of the university, where the discord has turned student against student. His path to the Twin Spires, where he suspects Arturia has ensconced herself, is obstructed not by mere locked doors or guarded passageways, but by the very victims of the Arts he seeks to stop.
Men and women, their minds clouded and driven by the raw, unfiltered exposure to their own suppressed grievances, see in Federico another symbol of the authority they have come to despise. They attack with a ferocity born of confusion and manipulated emotion, their actions as erratic as the tune that controls them.
With clinical precision and regret, Federico neutralises each assailant, his movements calculated to incapacitate but not to maim. His firearms, a tool of last resort, is used with non-lethal intent, subduing the enraged mob with a professionalism that does little to ease the guilt. Breaking free from the last of his unintended adversaries, Executor presses on toward the tower.
The air in Zwillingstürme had taken on a strange, unnatural quality, as though the very atmosphere was holding its breath in anticipation of some unspeakable calamity. The Doctor, Ch'en, and Amiya moved through the cobbled streets, their senses alert to the discordant melody that pulsed through the city like a malignant heartbeat. Arturia's music, once a subtle undercurrent, had become a roaring tide, washing over the minds of those too weak to resist. The streets were a riot of chaos, people turning on each other in blind fury, driven mad by the Arts-infused melody.
The Doctor's gaze was distant, focused, yet tinged with a shadow of something darker—a whisper of his past self, echoing faintly in the recesses of his mind. Ch'en moved with her blade drawn, her keen eyes scanning every shadow, every corner, as though the darkness itself might spring to life and attack. Amiya, though outwardly composed, held a tension in her shoulders that betrayed her unease, her ears twitching with every new sound that pierced the cacophony of the city.
The cobblestones beneath their feet trembled as a low, ominous rumble rolled through the ground, and then, with a sound like tearing fabric, reality itself seemed to buckle and warp. Before them, the very air was rent apart in a grotesque display of dimensional upheaval, a ragged wound in space that bled darkness and unnatural light. From this tear, something began to emerge, something wrong—a twisted parody of life that defied comprehension.
The creature that stepped forth was a nightmare made flesh, an abomination of sinew, bone, and eldritch energy. It was the Wayward Passenger, but no longer the sad remnant of a W Corp. cleanup agent. This was a creature corrupted, devoured from within by the insidious influence of a Collapsal, infested during its endless travels through dimensions. Its body was a patchwork of grotesque forms, a monstrous amalgamation where the familiar had been distorted into something utterly alien and malevolent.
Its head held a grotesque maw that split it from crown to abdomen, lined with jagged, mismatched teeth that dripped with a viscous, black substance. The eyes, if they could still be called that, were holes that devoured light. A pair of gnarled, skeletal arms jutted from its shoulder blades, ending in twisted, talon-like appendages that crackled violet.
The creature's torso was a grotesque latticework of muscle and sinew, exposed and raw, pulsating with an unnatural rhythm that seemed to defy the laws of biology. The cavity running down the center of its body yawned wide, like a chasm ready to swallow the world. From this abyss, tendrils of darkness spilled out, writhing and undulating as if they had a life of their own, seeking out anything within reach to pull into its nightmarish maw. Its lower body was concealed beneath tattered remnants of what might once have been a uniform, now little more than rags clinging to the foul corruption that festered beneath.
But it was the space around the creature that was truly horrifying. The Collapsal's corruption had twisted the very fabric of reality, and as the Wayward Passenger moved, the world around it buckled and cracked. Colours bled into one another, unnatural hues that had no place in the spectrum of visible light. The air thickened with a sense of wrongness, as though every molecule was being torn apart and reassembled in a way that defied comprehension.
Wherever the creature stepped, the world warped in its wake. Streets twisted into impossible angles, buildings contorted as though trying to escape the abomination's presence, and the very sky above seemed to ripple and tear, exposing glimpses of something vast and terrible beyond. Time itself seemed to stutter and falter, with moments stretching out into eternity and then snapping back with bone-jarring speed.
As the creature's gaze fell upon them, the Doctor, Ch'en, and Amiya felt the crushing weight of its presence, a suffocating pressure that bore down on their minds like the oppressive weight of a thousand nightmares.
And then, with a suddenness that took their breath away, the Wayward Passenger lunged forward, its maw opening wide in a scream that tore through the air, a cacophony of voices and sounds that could drive a sane mind to madness. The world seemed to shatter around them as the abomination descended upon them with impossible speed.
The wind that swept through the remains of the site of the distortion attack was heavy with the metallic tang of blood and the lingering echo of a melody that had no right to exist. Pith, Ace, and Roland moved through the devastation like specters, their steps cautious, each footfall carefully measured on the blood-slick cobblestones. The street, once bustling with life, was now a grotesque canvas of violence and madness, where flesh, bone, and blood had been twisted into a macabre symphony that defied both reason and sanity.
The buildings that flanked the street bore the scars of the distortion's presence—windows shattered, walls rent apart as if torn by invisible hands. What little remained of the people who had been caught in the distortion's wake lay scattered across the street, their bodies grotesquely transformed into something that barely resembled the human form. Skin had been stretched into taut, membranous sheets, vibrating with the faint remnants of the cursed melody, while bones had been twisted into makeshift instruments, strummed by unseen forces. Blood splattered in intricate patterns across the ground, as if the very essence of life had been used to etch the notes of an unspeakable music onto the world itself.
Ace, ever the stalwart, kept his emotions locked behind a steely gaze, though his eyes flickered with a deep, unspoken horror. Pith, on the other hand, moved with a detached efficiency, scanning the surroundings with the cold pragmatism of one who had seen too much, yet knew the necessity of understanding every detail. But it was Roland who seemed most affected. His breath came in ragged gasps, and his hands trembled as they hovered over the hilt of his sword, as if drawn by a force he could scarcely contain.
His mind was a whirlpool of memories, the grotesque scene before him bleeding into the past, where another symphony had once played—a symphony of madness, death, and despair. The notes that now hung in the air were too close, too familiar, to the music of the Pianist. The Pianist, whose Distortion had claimed the lives of thousands, whose twisted melody had swallowed the soul of the one person Roland had loved more than anything. Angelica. Her name was a blade in his heart, her memory a haunting refrain that never ceased its torment.
Roland's eyes burned with the intensity of a man fighting to keep himself from being swept away by a flood of emotions too powerful to control. The image of Angelica's final moments, the way her body had been torn apart by the cacophony of the Pianist's music, was seared into his mind. His every breath felt like it was drawn through shards of glass, his heart pounding against the walls of his chest as if trying to escape the agony within. He clenched his teeth so hard his jaw ached, but it did nothing to stop the rising tide of rage and grief that threatened to consume him.
"Roland," Ace's voice cut through the fog of memories, sharp and grounding. "Focus. We need to figure out what caused this."
Roland blinked, forcing himself to breathe, to think. He nodded, though his gaze remained distant, his mind still tethered to the past even as he tried to pull it back to the present. "Yeah... yeah, you're right," he managed to say, though his voice was hoarse. He tore his gaze away from the carnage and tried to push down the memories that clawed at the edges of his consciousness.
Pith knelt beside what might once have been a human torso, now a twisted amalgamation of sinew and bone, its flesh stretched and shaped into a grotesque parody of a violin. She frowned, her fingers hovering over the abomination, careful not to touch it. "This wasn't just an act of mindless violence. Whoever, or whatever, caused this was creating something—something they saw as art."
Roland's fists tightened at his sides. "Art," he spat the word like a curse. "That's exactly what it was with the Pianist, too."
Far above the chaos, in the tower that loomed over Zwillingstürme, Arturia stood. Her long hair cascaded down her back, catching the dim light that filtered through the shattered windows of the spire. In her hands, she held a cello, its strings vibrating with a music that only she could truly hear.
"Carmen!" she called out, her voice echoing in the vast emptiness of the tower. "Witness how this loss-ridden world is perfected by us!"
Her words were laced with fervour, a twisted passion that burned in her eyes as she looked out over the city below. "The foolish god named rationality ruled over this world until this moment. No, to call it a god is an overstatement. It is simply a tragic illusion. With your guidance, I will drag it down from the heavens with my hands and open everyone's eyes to the truth. All will be free to pursue their dreams, their wants."
Her fingers danced over the strings of the cello, coaxing forth a melody that was at once beautiful and horrifying. It was a song that sang of the apocalypse, of the end of all things rational and orderly. The air around her shimmered with the power of her Arts, bending and warping under the influence of the music that poured forth from her instrument.
As the music swelled, so too did the power of the E.G.O that clad her form—the ideation of a Silent Orchestra. The scythe in her other hand moved with a deadly grace, its blade swinging silently through the air like the baton of a conductor. The notes of her symphony were not confined to sound alone—they were etched into the very fabric of reality, shaping the world around her according to her will.
Below, the city groaned under the weight of her music. The melody wound through the streets like a living thing, finding purchase in the hearts and minds of those too weak to resist its pull. Desires, hidden and repressed, were dragged to the surface, their once dormant flames stoked into a roaring inferno. The chaos that followed was a testament to her power, to the truth she sought to reveal to the world.
Arturia laughed, the sound carrying with it a wild, unrestrained joy. This was the crescendo, the moment when all would be laid bare. The music reached its peak, the notes resonating with a power that shook the very foundations of the tower.
Roland's breath came in short, ragged gasps, each inhalation a battle against the torrent of emotions that threatened to consume him. The memories of Angelica, so carefully buried beneath layers of stoic resolve, now clawed their way to the surface with a vengeance, dragged forth by the cursed music echoing around him.
He could feel it — the way it wormed its way into his thoughts, unearthing the pain he had so desperately tried to master. But it wasn't sorrow that gripped him now. No, it was something far more dangerous, far more primal. It was the unyielding, unrelenting force that had driven him into the abyss once before. Wrath.
Roland's hands tightened around the hilt of his sword, his knuckles turning white as the anger welled up inside him, boiling over like a cauldron on the verge of explosion. His vision blurred at the edges, the world around him fading into a haze of red as the old, familiar rage began to take hold. The same rage that had once driven him to slaughter, to tear apart anything and anyone who stood in his way.
It was then that he felt it—a deep, resonant thrum that seemed to pulse in time with his own heartbeat. The Mountain of Smiling Bodies stirred within him.
The edges of Roland's vision darkened, his thoughts narrowing to a single, burning point of world around him seemed to tremble, the air thickening with the weight of his rage, as if reality itself could feel the force of his anger. The gloves began to tighten around his hands, the leather warping, twisting, as if it were alive. His armour, his E.G.O. was corroding, resonating with the abnormality within Durandal. The faces of the people around him became indistinguishable, mere blurs in the red haze of his vision. They were nothing more than shapes, obstacles in his path, things to be torn apart and consumed by the ever-growing storm of his rage.
"▂▂▃▃▄▄▅▅!"
And then the world dissolved into chaos, the screams of a Mountain of corpses rising to a deafening crescendo as Roland's E.G.O corroded completely, plunging him into the depths of his own wrath, where there was nothing but the unrelenting need to destroy everything in his path.