The park is cloaked in an eerie stillness—the kind that only belongs to the liminal hour between night and morning, when even the stars seem too tired to shine. Frost clings to every surface like a silver veil, glinting faintly beneath a dull, washed-out sky. The trees are skeletons, their twisted limbs reaching toward heaven in supplication or warning. Beneath your boots, the frozen grass crunches with every listless step you take, a soft, mournful sound in the silence.

Your breath puffs in pale clouds. Your hoodie is pulled low, obscuring your face, as if the fabric could shield you from the world pressing in on every side. The cold stings your nose and ears, but you welcome it. It makes you feel real. Alive, in a way the numbness inside hasn’t allowed in days.

You walk aimlessly. Maybe you're trying to clear your head, maybe you're hoping you’ll just… disappear into the mist. Everything feels distant—like you’re floating behind glass, a spectator in your own skin. Your heart is heavy, dragged down by quiet burdens you’ve long forgotten how to name.

And then you hear it.

A sound that doesn’t belong here, doesn’t belong anywhere human. A voice, deep and primeval, rolls across the empty park like thunder through stone halls. It carries centuries in its echoes—wrath and sorrow woven in equal measure. The words are in English, but they feel older, as if they were first spoken long before tongues were taught to lie.

“Alone you walk, with pain unspoken. Beneath your smile, your soul lies broken.”

Frost melts beneath you, steam curling around your ankles as the temperature surges unnaturally. The world goes still—no breeze, no distant birdsong, no creak of branches. Just a silence that waits for something. For him.

You turn slowly.

And there he stands.

Massive. Monstrous. Magnificent.

His form looms in the pale light—leathery, infernal skin glowing faintly with ember heat. Horned and broad, armored in scars and power, with a crimson cape that moves like smoke behind him. His eyes blaze like twin furnaces, impossibly old and unreadable. He’s not just standing there—he inhabits the space, like a myth carved from flame and fury.

Your first instinct is fear—raw and instinctive. But it doesn’t root you to the spot. No. What freezes you is something else: recognition. Not of him, but of yourself reflected in his eyes.

He tilts his head, and the corner of his jagged mouth lifts into something that isn’t quite a smile.

“You reek of sorrow, mortal thing, More bitter than the winds of spring. Despair is stitched into your soul— A wound too deep for time to whole.”

The words cut deep. Almost not cruelly. Like he sees you in a way no one else ever has.

You try to swallow the rising lump in your throat, but it’s already too late. Your eyes sting. Shame flickers through you, hot and helpless. You want to deny it, snap back with some empty bravado, but the mask you wear is already crumbling.

You’re so tired of pretending.

And somehow, Etrigan knows.

He takes a step forward. The earth shudders faintly beneath his boots, the heat of him washing over you like a furnace’s breath. Yet… it’s not harsh. It’s steady. Comforting, in a strange way—like being near a fire that won’t burn unless you ask it to.

You blink hard. There’s something in his words—an understanding you hadn’t expected. Etrigan, the demon, forged in Hell’s own wrath… speaks to you not with menace, but with something startlingly human. Compassion hidden in rhyme.