Chapter Text
Canvases, brushes, and strings lashed violently through the stale air, their motions erratic and unnatural, like insects caught in a dying web. The Workshop itself was a void of colour—every surface drained to shades of grey and bone-white, shadows stretching like ink stains across the cracked floorboards. Half-finished paintings slumped against the walls, their lines blurred and bleeding as if trying to escape their own frames. Strings writhed overhead in tangled knots, marionette limbs twitching on their own with faint creaks that echoed too long in the cavernous space.
At the centre of the storm crouched the creature—her creature. The beast she had once carved and painted, a foolish prank meant to haunt her brother’s dreams. But here, stripped of colour and warmth, it no longer looked absurd. Its hulking form loomed in stark monochrome, hollow eyes gleaming like cracked porcelain as it waited in silence, a guardian born of childish spite now warped into something unknowable.
Her entire body felt numb. Every movement sent cracks splintering through her fragile form, as if she were nothing more than a brittle sculpture held together by sheer will. Her small arms trembled, weakly clutching what little remained of her.
The Shattering had gutted her completely—ripping her from her other half, leaving her stranded and hollow.
Through the haze, she lifted her blank, featureless face toward her oppressor. A woman stood there, silent and still, yet heavy with contempt. She looked almost identical… the same delicate frame, the same sharpness to her outline—but older, colder, her edges honed like a blade.
The older one stared down at her with eyes that seemed to see straight through her. Disgust twisted across her lips.
She tried to speak, but her voice cracked, strangled, barely more than a gasp. Only fragments of sound escaped her broken form.
“W… why…?”
The single word fell into the Workshop like spilled ink, staining the silence
The woman paused, perhaps surprised that she could still speak—or even cling to a coherent thought in her fractured state. Her eyes narrowed with disdain, sharp and cold as broken glass.
“A foolish question.”
The words cut like a knife, final and absolute.
She turned her gaze toward the beast—a hulking, hollow-eyed thing that loomed in stark black and white. For a fleeting moment, confusion stirred within her. What was the woman planning?
Then she felt it: the air growing heavy, strands of Chroma coiling and twisting as they were summoned in great, suffocating waves.
And in that instant, she understood.
Her protests caught in her throat, too weak to escape. Fear seeped in around the cracks of her fragile form, but she could do nothing. No fight. No flight. Only stillness.
She was being sealed. Bound within the very creature she had sculpted—a childish prank meant to haunt her brother’s dreams.
How he would laugh at her now.
A faint, bitter thought stirred as the world around her folded in on itself. Karmic justice, she mused darkly.
The Chroma gathered in suffocating waves, black and white strands twisting tighter and tighter like a noose.
She wanted to scream, to beg, to fight back—but her broken form refused her. No voice, no strength. Only the weight of inevitability pressing down on her like wet canvas.
The first tendrils of Chroma wrapped around her wrists and ankles, burning cold. She felt herself being pulled apart—not in body, but in essence—as the Workshop tilted and twisted in her vision.
The world blurred, her thoughts slowing to a crawl.
And then there was nothing.
“Well, that was almost too easy,” a low, smooth voice echoed through the hollow world, punctuated by the faint jingle of bells. “Hardly satisfying for a fight, wouldn’t you say? Shall we find something else to play with?”
A wry chuckle followed, this one warmer, with the faintest hint of an accent.
“Mon ami, as much as I’d love to indulge you, I think the others might not share your… enthusiasm. They’re about ready to drop.”
A light, teasing voice chimed in next—high-pitched and airy, carrying a laugh.
“Monoco… you’re insatiable. Aren’t you tired? My muscles feel like they’re about to snap.”
A sharper voice cut in with a laugh, half mocking and half exasperated.
“He’s definitely a Gestral. Nothing tires that one out.”
Their voices began to fade, echoing distantly into the greyscale void.
“Let’s not stay here any longer than we have to,” another woman spoke, her voice calm but edged with fatigue. “We’re spent after that fight, and I’d rather not test our luck against whatever’s stronger than that Nevron.”
Their footsteps faded, the faint jingle of bells and quiet laughter growing distant until only silence remained.
She stirred. Slowly, strength trickled back into her limbs like thick, sluggish paint sliding down a canvas. Her fingers twitched as sensation returned, her hollow frame knitting itself together with each shallow breath.
Steadying herself, she rose unsteadily and cast her gaze around.
The Workshop no longer writhed in stark black and white.
Colour seeped into the world—hesitant at first, then blooming in waves of deep crimson, ochre, and viridian. The walls pulsed faintly with life as stray threads of Chroma danced overhead like nervous sparks. Canvases once faded to ash now bled vivid hues, their subjects shifting in their frames as if startled awake.
A strange stillness settled over her as she took it all in. For the first time in what felt like eternity, the Workshop was alive.
She lifted her head weakly, her gaze drawn to the far end of the Workshop. Through the swirling haze of Chroma, five figures stepped toward the waiting portal—their forms briefly silhouetted against the pale light as they passed into the world beyond.
Her hollow gaze followed them, silent and searching. Two of their Chroma resonated faintly within her, threads of familiarity tugging at something long buried.
She didn’t know who they were—not yet. But whoever they were, they had disturbed her prison and pulled her back into a world she no longer trusted.
For now, she would watch.