The moon floated high above Drakamor City. Its glow spilled across an old street that seemed to have been forgotten by the rest of the world.
Weathered stones lay beneath a thin layer of fog, hiding whatever had once given this place warmth.
No footsteps echoed here; even the wind seemed hesitant to disturb the silence.
Into this stillness walked a lone figure. A girl, young and finely shaped, moved as though she had stepped from a distant memory rather than from any path nearby.
Her purple gown carried the quiet scent of morning flowers, and her wooden sandals tapped faintly against the stones.
She held an umbrella at her shoulder, not for rain, for the sky was dry, but as if she needed something familiar to anchor her. She felt lighter than she remembered being, and yet each small breath she took trembled with confusion.
She knew she was called Nova.
She knew this as clearly as she knew the cold against her cheeks.
Yet the memories that flickered behind her eyes belonged to a boy from another world, a boy whose name dissolved whenever she reached for it, like ink thinning in water.
She tried to summon his face and found only pieces—classrooms, art paper, the soft scratch of a brush, the plainness of an ordinary life. Only the knowledge that she had once been him remained, sitting strangely beside the fact that she now walked in a girl's delicate body dressed in ancient clothing.
The mismatch pressed against her ribs with every breath.
The world around her felt older than anything she had touched before.
The houses leaned in closely with their dim courtyards and white walls, their lanterns dark and still as sealed memories.
She felt watched by the silence, though no eyes met hers.
She pressed her fingers to her sleeve and felt the texture of silk, unfamiliar yet strangely intimate, and sensed that whatever life she had been living had been cut cleanly away.
Even time here felt distorted, as if she had stepped sideways out of her own story.
She tried to steady her thoughts.
Wandering alone at night was foolish even in her world, and here… where buildings belonged to centuries she had only studied in passing… it felt reckless.
Hunger and cold pressed quietly at her edges. She eyed the gates of the large homes lining the avenue, thinking of warmth and safety, but the stillness behind those walls felt heavy.
She imagined doors opening not with kindness but with suspicion or worse.
She continued forward, her sandals brushing softly along the unpaved road.
Fog thickened around her ankles, swirling faintly with each step. She tried to guess where the street might lead, but all directions looked the same, blurred and muted under the moon.
A sudden wind curled down the avenue. It carried a bite that slipped through her gown and along her spine. The lanterns hanging from the gates stirred, and before she could blink, one after another flickered to life.
Their pale flames swayed in the fog, glowing like half-open eyes peering through the veil.
A beat—deep, deliberate—rolled through the night. Another followed.
The sound of a distant drum pressed into her chest with each strike, as if the air itself recoiled.
Nova froze, her breath caught halfway.
The rhythms grew layered: the low thrum of drums, a wavering flute, strings plucked with a touch both mournful and strangely ceremonial. The melody seeped through the mist, spreading through the street like something ancient waking from a long slumber.
The fog parted only enough to hint at their forms. Some resembled people, silhouettes drifting with an unnatural grace.
Others towered too tall or bent in ways no human body could bend.
Some glided above the ground, their feet never touching stone. Nova's heart lurched painfully against her ribs. Her legs refused to move, as if the cold had fused her to the earth.
The figures grew clearer with each step they took.
The first to emerge fully was a wolf, yet no wolf of her memory. Its white fur shimmered faintly like moonlit frost, and three long tails arched behind it, swaying as though stirred by unseen tides.
Nova's breath vanished at its sight. Instinct screamed for her to turn and flee, but her body felt distant, unresponsive, trapped between panic and disbelief.
Somewhere near her ear, a soft voice spoke.
This one did not belong to the wolf, nor to anything she could see. The voice carried the calm of someone placing a steadying hand on shaking fingers.
It told her not to run.
It told her to open the Umbrella and hide herself within its shade.
Nova wanted to ask who was speaking, but the drumbeat pressed against her mind, dulling reason.
She lifted her trembling hands, struggling against the stiffness in her limbs, and slowly opened the Umbrella above her.
Warmth gathered around her shoulders the moment the Umbrella fully opened, faint but real. The voice urged her again to stay still, to keep every part of her body within the Umbrella's cover. She held on to that instruction with desperate focus.
The procession advanced.
The three-tailed wolf drifted past her, its fur brushing the air so near her face that she felt the faintest whisper of cold against her cheek.
A woman followed—a haunting figure dressed in an old gown, her skin pale enough to catch the moonlight. She carried a lute, and each step she took echoed the sorrow in the melody. Behind her lumbered a bull-like demon, its frame towering, its tusks dull and heavy as bones buried too long.
More shapes filled the fog. Nova could not count them, nor recognize them, yet each was stranger than the last. Some were massive, some small, some barely formed in shape at all.
A green-skinned spirit nearly brushed against her.
She felt its breath—a thick, rotting heat—pass her ear.
She forced herself to shift a single careful step, guided by instinct more than thought, moving in perfect silence though she had never trained her body this way.
More creatures drifted by: a lizard wearing a conical hat, chattering with sharp little sounds as it scurried;
a one-legged frog bouncing with wild energy, its tongue lolling unnaturally near her shin;
a raccoon dog larger than any she had seen, its round eyes strangely human.
A woman whose lower body coiled as a serpent glided just beyond her Umbrella's edge.
The night seemed filled with far more than a hundred ghosts, though she dared not count.
The voice whispered again when Nova finally managed to edge herself toward the shadow of a narrow alley.
It warned her that the leader of the parade would soon appear, and that no amount of hiding could protect her if she remained in the open. Nova slipped into the alley's mouth just as the ground trembled faintly.
Then he arrived.
A towering figure, clad in ancient robes, strode at the center of the procession.
His face was dark and heavy with power; his eyes burned with a fierce authority that stung Nova's own when she risked a glance.
She turned away at once as her heart thumped. The voice told her his name: Mythos, the Demon King, and the Leader of this night's march. Even warriors hid from him, it said. Even the bold closed their shutters and prayed not to catch his attention.
And yet, as he passed the alley, the giant paused.
His gaze shifted—just slightly—toward Nova's hiding place. For a heartbeat, something unreadable flickered in his expression. Not rage. Not hunger. Something older. Something wounded.
But the procession did not slow for long, and soon even the great ox-drawn carriage behind him rolled past, carrying a woman whose identity the whispering voice tried to name before fading away altogether.
Only the music lingered for a while longer, thinning slowly until it dissolved into the night.
With it went the fog's icy bite. The lanterns winked out as quietly as they had appeared. The street returned to its empty, breathless stillness, as though nothing had ever disturbed it.
Nova lowered her Umbrella at last.
The tremor of the ordeal still clung to her arms. She tried calling to the unseen girl who had guided her, but silence greeted her. No footsteps. No presence. Only the moon, distant and pale, was lighting the narrow street around her.
She stood alone, caught between worlds, with nothing but a rusted copper mirror at her waist and a Umbrella painted with falling blossoms.
The night had shown her its teeth. Whatever lay ahead in this strange land, it waited beyond the quiet, where shadows might shift again at any moment.
And yet she breathed. She was alive. For now, that was enough.