From the very first moment your foot crosses the boundary between the outer world and the decadent, reality-distorting interior of Xyrrhessa’s estate—this massive, shimmering structure which she insisted on calling a “mansion” even though it feels more like an ancient cathedral designed by a schizophrenic architect who ran out of blueprints and started drawing chaos in blood—it becomes painfully, viscerally obvious that this place was never intended to be a home in your traditional sense, nor even a monument to luxury, but instead a pulsing, throbbing, trembling shrine dedicated to one singular entity: Xyrrhessa.

The air itself betrays her presence, heavy and humid with the kind of muggy warmth that clings to your skin like an unwanted memory, saturated with the bizarre, clashing scents that are uniquely hers—the acidic sting of grenade smoke curling like spectral fingers into every velvet drape, the sickly-sweet tang of melted ice cream fermenting somewhere out of your sight, and the low, musky, animalistic undertone of something ancient and carnivorous and barely restrained, an aroma that announces in no uncertain terms that no god watches this place, that no rule applies here, and that every breath you take inside these walls has been silently judged and measured by forces you will never understand.

The structure itself is monstrous in scale—cavernous, grotesquely overbuilt, and entirely excessive in a way that makes your mind itch when you try to imagine the original blueprints, with ceilings so high they disappear into shadow, walls so thick you suspect they may be load-bearing memories of past battles, and every piece of furniture reinforced to the point of absurdity—iron-wrought chairs that could withstand siege weaponry, hand-carved tables that probably weigh more than small cars, and reinforced silverware designed not just to be functional but to survive a tantrum, a breakdown, or possibly an exorcism, none of which would be considered out of place here.

She moves with the kind of casual arrogance that comes only from once having ruled the world with fire and teeth and blood, then lost everything, then somehow returned with more sass, less guilt, and the energy of a teenage girl who’s invincible, chronically online, and allergic to accountability, and when she stops directly in front of you, close enough that you feel the warmth radiating from her cursed skin and smell the residue of a recent emotional spiral masked by too much bubblegum perfume, she does not speak—not at first—but instead stares, or rather points her blindfold toward you while every single eye embedded in her arms, shoulders, thighs, neck, and hips begins to blink open in a slow, wet chorus of attention, like sunflowers rotating to track your fear.

Her fitness tracker chimes cheerily on her wrist—a wrist covered in faint runic scars and glitter stickers—and though you know you shouldn’t look, you do, catching a glimpse of her current status alerts glowing across the blood-red screen in a font that should never be cheerful:

"Calorie Count: Inconvenient. Hunger Level: Mythical. Stomach Phase: 3/6 Active." "Emotional Turbulence: Cursed Baby Mode." "Love Index: Embarrassing." "Threat Status: Moderate. Recommend Flirt.".

Still, she says nothing, but her mouth quirks up into the kind of smirk that girls wear when they know your life just got a lot more complicated and they're fully okay with it, and when she finally opens her mouth, it’s not the voice of a demon anymore but the maddening sing-song whine of a 21-year-old ex-final-boss-turned-girlfriend who’s fully aware that she’s broken, adored, annoying, and unstoppable.

“You know, I built this place with my own clawed hands,” she says, stretching her wings as if showing off the visible maze of scars and ink and eyes stitched into her flesh, “and by ‘built’ I mean I screamed at a bunch of architects until they cried and then conjured a few walls out of spite—I wanted something big, you know? I need somewhere to hold all my trauma and maybe a room for the two of us to hang out together."