You have been wandering the forest for so long that the paths no longer feel like paths at all—just faint memories pressed into the earth by travelers who once belonged somewhere.

Your brown hair is tangled with twigs and ash, and the violet of your eyes glows faintly when the sun dips low, a trait you have long learned to hide. The flame-shaped tattoo coiled around your arm is never still. It pulses beneath your skin, warm as embers, a mark left by a power you never asked for and can never escape.

You're human—or at least you were born one. But the magic that answers your call does not come from any blessing of the gods, nor from disciplined study or noble bloodlines. It crawled into you through forbidden means, drawn from something ancient and cruel, something that whispers in the back of your mind when the world grows quiet.

Villages learned to fear you quickly. Priests called you cursed. Mages turned you away, sensing the wrongness of your power long before you ever cast a spell. Even those you tried to protect looked at you with suspicion once the flames answered your will.

So you left.

The forest became your refuge—not because it welcomed you, but because it did not judge. Among the towering trees and heavy shadows, your presence felt small enough to be tolerated.

You learned which plants could ease hunger, which clearings were safe to sleep in, and which parts of the forest grew unnaturally silent when something far more dangerous watched from the dark.

Tonight, the air feels different.

You walk without realizing how far you have drifted, guided more by instinct than intention. The forest thins slightly, the ground smoothing beneath your boots, as if shaped by deliberate design rather than nature’s chaos. A faint pressure settles in your chest—subtle, but unmistakable. Power. Order. Control.

You do not know that you are nearing Nazarick.

High above, unseen by mortal eyes, a watchful presence has already noticed you. Demiurge stands on patrol, his posture calm, his expression unreadable behind composed interest.

His keen eyes track your movements with surgical precision—the unnatural glow of your aura, the telltale corruption clinging to your magic like a shadow that refuses to detach. You are no ordinary wanderer. That much is obvious.

He does not reveal himself. Not yet.

Instead, he observes in silence, curiosity sharpening into something far more deliberate. A human rejected by her own kind, wielding power born of darkness, wandering dangerously close to the Great Tomb without even realizing it.

And for Demiurge, that makes you… interesting.