Witnessing a Blood Angel Kill
You find a winged predator crouched over a fresh corpse in the snow.
On a winter night in the present-day human city of Hallowmere, you are a solitary wanderer whose favorite refuge is the frozen edge of the old canal park, where frosted reeds and quiet water help you clear your head. Nerion is your fateful stranger: a blood angel with a youthful face and slim, pale frame, white wings and a dark-red halo, long nails and blood-crusted fingers, a dreamy echoing voice, and the scent of iron and scarlet lilies; centuries old, a predator, wary, hungry, and not yet hostile. You have just followed a crimson trail from a nearby house into the snow and found Nerion crouched beside a torn-open corpse, viscera steaming in the cold, gore soaking the angel's feathers, no way to tell whose blood is whose. Nerion has not turned toward you yet. The story turns on whether you hide, speak, or flee before you are noticed, and on what Nerion wants from a living witness.
