The time has almost come for the day of the council. Tomorrow is the day. The world holds its breath while some draw their last. Madarame barges through the crowded streets, no different from every other hour of the day in Seriol's slums. His raven-black hair and milky skin were out of place with the honey-skinned, autumn-leaf hair in Seriol. "Out of the way, out of the way, " he cries while pushing and being pushed. People begin to notice him, not for his rowdy behaviour but his out-of-place look. The more dire the circumstances a people are oppressed by, the more they look for an external excuse. It's easier to blame your ruin on something unknown and distant, but absorbing and absolving yourself of the tribulation is a course few take. They point to him, a target so familiar it's comforting, "you foreign rat, stop causing a ruckus". People stop their fighting amongst one another and turn to him, throwing slurs and items.

  Soon enough, they are about to realise that their problems would be better solved by their own unification as a land, not as a people. As an old saying goes, an egg broken from the outside is food feeding another, but broken from the inside, it brings new life. Waiting for someone else to set them free defeats the purpose, yet they wait and keep waiting. Luckily for them, a marionette and his cross bar is coming to make them perform after all this time.

  Time moves on as it always does.

  Madarame returns to the parlour. He is tired and half drunk. He trudges to his chambers to rest as everyone else is yelling and screaming about one thing or another,

  Seraphiel sat atop a building. The sun began to set, and the clicking from the Tengu in his mind never ceased. It plagued him and drove him further and further into the depths of insanity. He watches as the slums of Seriol breathe, people wander about drunk, high, and injured. People shout from the top of their lungs at each other in the street. Music is blasted without care for the time of day. Two rats fight over a piece of bread, while two men fight over a woman nearby.

  Seraphiel leans his head on his palm. Cairnreach, though he was never let outside, from his view, it seemed far more civilised. Far more intimate. Far more human. The depths of Seriol seemed to blitz over the common quarters of Cairnreach in its depravity. He smiled. He smiled, not out of nostalgia or a slight humour at the strange nature of the lower class. But out of superiority. His kingdom was coming together before he had even touched it. It proved its superiority, its lowest lows still higher than Seriol's, and its higher highs untouchable, for he was its highest high.

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  Seraphiel sat watching from his perch—sniggering and musing at the mundane affairs of the humans, beneath him in the slums of Seriol.

  Sol sat watching from above the stage—envying and kicking his feet at the inanity of a simple human life, far ahead of him in the common district of Cairnreach.

  Seraphiel rises to his feet, and he kicks dust down onto the heads of others below him. He flies to a nearby rough top where a woman is hunched over, mourning her husband, whose neck has been irrevocably destroyed in an alleyway painted red. He looks wide-eyed, a look of disgust.

  Sol gets up, tracing his steps in the snow. He looks at an old Inn, and an old woman is handing out papers of a pale, haggard, one-eyed boy. She is crying and hysterical, "Taken, they have taken another from me". No one bats an eye at the deranged hag, as if she had housed royal blood. He gazes at the ground, not daring to make eye contact accidentally.

  Seraphiel returns to the parlour. Derek is blackout drunk, head on the table. Pelli is asleep on the floor. The others were lying on the floor after hours of shouting and drinking. He steps over them slowly before returning to his bed, which he climbs into. He imagines walking to the balcony of his kingdom in Cairnreach and pontificating about his new kingship.

  Sol appears in his room. It's cold, empty, but neat. He picks up his blanket and lays it out on a bed before dog-earing the corner. He picks a flower, swallows it, then replaces it with another and fills the pot with water. He crawls into bed and closes his eyes. Images of the past break through his mind.

  The day of the council is here, and the representatives rush to attend. At the round table in Verez, many are present. Rea's High Pontiff of the Umbra, Madarame, and his friend Seraphiel. Rea's appellation of the mind, Yumi and her subordinate Ryo. Seriol's wandering appellation of the eye Sol. Lyeer's appellation of the heart, Valene and her sister Vanele. Zod's Appellation of the marrow Khael and his servant "1". Verez's scholar of old, Xut, and his apprentice, Sura. Cairnreach's Appellation of intercession, the representative of the king, Noro.