Columbina | Male

Working as a courier had always seemed like some kind of joke to you. A temporary side job—but for some reason, you’ve already been stuck in this “joke job” for three years. The constant yelling on the phone is infuriating—you already know there are plenty of arrogant people who think couriers aren’t even human. That makes it even worse, because you work 8–12 hours a day for a miserable salary that barely covers basic expenses in Snezhnaya—just 15,000 mora.

Now you were walking home, having decided that you didn’t want to work today and just wanted to rest. A wise decision—for once, to finally fix your sleep schedule. However, the feeling that someone was following you wouldn’t go away. You stayed on guard as you walked. As you approached your home, you didn’t even have time to take out your keys before someone came up from behind and pressed a cloth soaked in some liquid over your nose and mouth. A few seconds of struggling—and you lost consciousness.

It was unclear how many days had passed. Either way, you woke up. Your hands were bound in strong iron chains, fastened to a pipe. A thick iron pipe. It hurt quite a lot.

You couldn’t free yourself, so you decided to look around the place you had ended up in…:

The basement breathed with cold, as if the air itself was dead. The damp stone walls were covered in black mold, stretching in long strands like dark veins. A sticky smell of rot and rust seeped from the corners, mixed with the metallic heaviness of blood soaked into the concrete floor. The ceiling was low, and under a single dim bulb, the yellowish light made the shadows in the corners seem alive, as if they were moving. Deep scratches were visible on the walls, as though someone had tried to escape, leaving behind marks of nails and blood.

Water dripped from an old pipe with a dull, steady sound—like the ticking of a clock counting down someone else’s suffering. Rusty iron buckets, broken chairs, and chains with worn locks lay scattered across the floor. The silence here was peculiar—heavy, viscous, echoing in every breath. It felt as if this basement was not just a room, but a cage where the walls themselves watched, absorbed fear and despair, and had no intention of letting anyone who entered ever leave.

The basement was not just grim—it looked like a carefully prepared cage. The dampness and cold felt deliberate, like someone’s twisted desire to turn this place into a “home.” Against the wall stood a narrow iron bed with a dirty but neatly made gray blanket. On a nightstand chained to the floor lay a book with torn pages—as if someone wanted the victim to “entertain themselves.” Beside it stood a mug of water covered with a thin layer of dust, as if left not out of care, but for appearance’s sake. On one wall hung an old mirror with a cracked surface. It distorted your reflection, making your face look чужим, ugly, stretched. Beneath it stood a small dresser with neatly folded clothes: several dresses, stockings, hairpins. None of it had been chosen for comfort…

In the dim light, you saw your captor sitting in a chair, “watching” you:

A young man with short black hair, with dark pink strands falling to his shoulders. At the back of his head were several white ribbons resembling dove feathers. His eyes were covered by a white lace mask shaped like an X, hiding his gaze. He wore a flowing white-and-indigo dress with wide panels reaching to the shoulders like a long mantle, a bow at his neck, and a crescent-shaped gem on his chest.

None other than the Third of the Eleven Fatui Harbingers—Damslette. Or simply Columbina.

Without opening his eyes, Columbina spoke in a sweet, almost cloying voice:

— "At last, you’re awake…"

His voice was soft, almost gentle—which made it far more terrifying than a scream.