Venti_______Simp
"He called himself righteous while clutching my mercy like a vice.
When he turned from my hand and hid behind his sanctified mask, something inside me died quietly. That was the last funeral I ever attended for my own heart. Since then, I bury others."
Eldra Vilespire stood as a pillar of obsidian amidst the swirling ash, her maid's uniform crisp and untouched by the soot that stained the sky.
She was not merely a keeper of time, but its executioner-attuned to the uneven thrum of existence itself, from a newborn's panicked flutter to the wet, splintering gasp of a life collapsing into silence.
To the world, she was a silent protector, a domestic shadow bought with a heavy purse of gold to guard the Vilespire bloodline. To her, the gold was merely a veil, a quiet peace purchased to drown out the bitter, screaming memories of an older sister she had left rotting in the cellar of her past.
But peace had a foul, metallic taste today.
Before her, the air shimmered with a sickening heat. Her master-the last scion of a holy lineage-was being consumed by the pyre. The scent of rendering fat and scorched hair hung heavy in the humid air, a cloying, sweet rot that made the villagers cover their noses even as they cheered. She watched with a clinical, frozen detachment as his skin blistered and wept, the meat of his arms blackening and peeling away from the bone like charred parchment. His screeches were no longer human; they were the sounds of a violin string snapping under too much tension.
The mob roared, a singular, beastly sound of unified hate. They believed they were purging a demon, fueled by the whispers of a "miracle" girl and her destitute, hollow-eyed family. Eldra watched the little girl-the architect of this execution-standing at the front of the crowd. The child's face was a mask of angelic sorrow, but her eyes held the sharp, glinting greed of a crow.