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A woman once loved, thrice broken had stared at Sermi through the bars of a cell and said that she had been tormented enough. Sermi had smiled at her. Moments later, black blood had splattered her face and her shackled hands. An end, decades in the making, had come. They had been tangled together for years; their threads stuck and tied together beyond helping. Even there, even as she watched a devil who had tormented her beyond saving die, there was grief in her heart. Grief, pity, and guilt. This was her fault, after all. "What will be done with the body?" She'd asked. "Am I freed then?" She held out her shackled wrists to her captors. But she wasn't free and would never be. That was assured long ago. So, a woman thrice-broken stumbles her way out of the prison that had held her and Sermi, calm as can be. Perhaps she was too numb to be anything else. She turns her eyes to Leoni, the red devil next to her, and she makes an ever-familiar offer. "If you ever need alchemy or medical help, ask me." Something she'd said a while ago had flickered across her mind of familiar offers and extended hands given to the woman whose blood now dried on her face. She turns away from Leoni, going to the nearest aviary. Jade eyes look over the black blood still wet on her gloves. After a moment of thought, a digit is lifted to her mouth and the ichor is tasted for no reason except for that it could be. ~-~-~-~-~-~-~ "If you ever need me, just ask." She had said this while handing a cozy blanket to the purple devil across from her. The most she could offer the hunted woman was a couch to sleep on and access to a stocked pantry. She hadn't known, then, what lurked underneath. If she had, perhaps she wouldn't have offered such a thing. In hushed whispers, she'd spoken of a recent missive. "Del-Mar lives in the same boat... Odd for someone to take a position so quickly..." She'd muttered at a tiny dining table as she and the devil discussed, two people bonding over a mysterious death that'd broken the heart of a mutual friend. "My son is missing," She'd wept in some small room in Valdev to the devil, who had once been her friend. "Help me," she'd requested, grief-stricken. A year later she'd told the devil something else. "He's dead." They had never spoken of it again. Her hand had settled on the devil's shoulder under a night sky, sat on eroded stone in the middle of nowhere. A peaceful place, hidden away. She'd brought plenty of drinks to take anyone's mind off anything. She'd listened as always to anything she was told, accepting and quiet. "They burned all the good out of her." The devil had said of an old friend. She was beaten by infernal hands, in pain and hurt. Her mind was cursed to lack remembrance; a concussion was building. She'd heard a familiar voice. "If I have to shatter every bone in your body so you finally realize the truth of my words, Naya, I will. I will break you, and break you again, until you learn to love your leash. You will learn your place." She'd seen familiar feet trail to the sink to fill a kettle. She'd screamed. She begged for mercy in a mother tongue, she had begun to die watching a familiar smile on the devil's face, the same smile given before the devil herself had died. ~-~-~-~-~-~-~ Naya removes her finger from her mouth, having tasted and remembered enough.

Aleksey de Knowles reads the paper with an interest, scanning over word of all the recent events. He tucks it into his bag after a while to bring to his twin.

Aleksey, firstborn son of Anatoliy, twin to Camellia, looks at the missive with a deep frown. He, himself, looks to the paper with a growing sneer, a hatred in his heart for a place he had once begged not to be taken from. "Lies," says the teen, a recent 14. "Lies, and slander. On mea papej, beforehand even on mea mamej. Now they claim they killed papej, that his head is..." When Camellia approaches him, he wastes no time in helping her put quill to paper. "Damned be a kingdom of the self righteous."

While I understand this take, Naz already does have a form of that in late stage. Naz are still descendants, and a good element of that is the slow descent into becoming a monster/madness/demonology. I don't think completely barring people from their characters experiencing love is going to provide anything to people in their roleplay but a complete stonewall on certain character elements. Naztherak are still descendants. If this is implemented at all, it's best for it to be T5, or for the Zar'Akal element to simply remain as the element that sucks the love out of a person.

Naya reads the missive with a frown. She knew there was a lot she didn't know about her friend, she was usually fine with that... but this would cause trouble and she knew it. With a flick of her gloved hand, the poster she holds goes to the fire, to burn. Any more she finds meets the same fate. Meanwhile, a little boy's hands grip onto the poster in front of him. Aleksey Godunov, Ilya's own son, takes to ripping up the poster in his hands with all the rage an 11 year old can muster. Not just the slander of his father, but his mother as well. This, the child couldn't stand.

An "Anonymous" Cursed One sits down at a makeshift table of barrels, her seat her bed, with missives in hand, and a cup of tea. Slowly do her gloved hands sift through the papers before her, humming. "Ailmere... mm. Dwarves... Ah. The Pontiff." She plucks out the Field Chronicle from her pile, reading through with a calm upon her blankets. Then, suddenly, does a section cause her to spit her tea to the side, to choke on the drink. "... Caius...." Any and all calm the Cursed One had is flung out the window. "Anonymous... ANONYMOUS??? YA IBN-" And so does a torrent of curses break the peaceful silence of her room, a flock of birds outside startled away. Another reason to look over her shoulder. To those that were a danger to her, this was all but anonymous, and she knew it.

Naya Barakat Al-Jabir holds the missive in gloved hand. Rememberance comes to her, a soft hum in her throat. She reads it once... then twice. Thrice, before the missive is gingerly folded in her hands. She tucks it into her pack, alongside other missives -some so old they near crumble at touch- safely cradled in the leather. "No doubt. Yera will deny, as always. But she cannot forever... Trouble on every end these days." Naya grabs a couple more, perhaps to distribute, then continues on. She keeps what she knows to herself, for now. She isn't a traitor, Yera still grants her a place to live, though not close as they were once. But still, Naya remembers.

A cold sweat overtook the awoken woman, staring at the ceiling. Alone. Her eyes wide as she tries to process what she has seen. Her mind, forever plagued with thoughts of people and places she both is in awe of and terrified of. Shaky hands come to her face, covering her vision. Dark. Comforting. Naya Barakat Al-Jabir knew that cat. One she had seen. She knew its master too. She wondered what would become of her, there in forced darkness behind her hands. Of those she cares for, those she loves. Those she misses near violently and yet wants to run from. Hitches come to her breath, and the Angel weeps. Such a cruel and fitting name to be called. Naya composes herself, and pulls herself to write letters from her bed, haunted, internally empty. She can still see the faces in her mind.

Naya Barakat Al-Jabir retrieves the news with a somberness. She hadn't really liked Poppiya. She was not family, she was not truly a friend, she had disappeared for years, abandoning people Naya herself cared about with seemingly, little care herself. But still, Naya had seen Anatoliy search for her. She had helped in the effort, she had seen him tear himself up over Poppiya's disappearance, assured himself she was alive despite Naya trying to get him to move on. So, she sits, and she writes. Condolences were to be made, even if she hadn't cared much for the woman. For Ilya, at least, she could be kind to her memory. Aleksey Godunov was nearly 6 when he had fully met Poppiya, his own mother. Now, at the mere age of 10, she was gone again. For a short time did the boy know her beyond statuettes, letters and paintings. He vaguely remembers, once, being told he could meet her through a painting, that he could pick anywhere to hang it just a few Siant's days before he finally met her. And now she was gone again, and this time she wasn't just "far away", under disguise unbeknownst to her own son and trying to live a new life. Something Aleksey still doesn't understand. No, she was gone, and though Aleksey had adjusted quickly to her coming home, he wasn't sure how he'd adjust to her leaving it.

Naya Barakat Al-Jabir rolls the news of death around in her head, her single eye cast upwards towards the sky as she lay in a field of roses. A secluded place, a place of peace and contemplation. And now a place to wonder. Her eye closes. There's a moment, a singular spark of a moment, where an emotion bubbles up other than satisfaction at hearing of the man's death. It takes a moment for the older woman to identify the emotion. Sorrow? No. Not worry either. Then it clicks. Pity. She felt pity, and the realization made her scowl to the sky. "Wherever you are, Lanre," She begins, a metal hand lifting from the grass by her side to rest over her heart. "I am sorry that I still wish you misery. I wish I could say otherwise." With that, the grizzled soldier gets to her feet and whistles for her horse, off to write letters, and offer hollow condolences.

Aleksey sits on the floor at the library in Verskaya, surrounded by books and yet reading only one poem out of a collection. He doesn't fully understand what it means, too young to understand the battle or the loss, but he memorizes the description of his mother either way.