"It’s in poor form, you see,"

A voice, soft, lilting, and strangely unhurried, whispered through the grotesque miasma.

"To dine before introducing oneself."

The words seemed to linger in the fog, carried low against the moist soil that clung desperately to her toes. Her lithe, slender legs wound through the thinning pines to reveal the shadowed silhouette of her body standing at the precipice of the stranger's contorted frame. Somewhere beyond the ruined stones and the weeping bone-circle, the faintest glimmer of blue stirred with uncanny, haphazard rhythm—just enough to catch the wet gleam of this brute's eye.

A pause. Silence breathed between them, and Niriel continued to watch the large soul-wanderer feast.

His silhouette convulsed behind cracked masonry, casting eerie shadows against the ruined walls of a bygone era. The Priestess cleared her throat abruptly.

"I hope you’ll forgive the intrusion. I find this display... educational." A smile pulled at the corners of her lips now, an unsettling sweetness of honey coating her voice. An assured brow cocked high. "Your appetite is—" she paused delicately, as if playfully weighing the cost of her verbiage,
"—memorable."

Another step.

"Tell me... why do you feast upon this rotting flesh? Was it hunger that led you here, or curiosity?"

As she awaited his response, the woman reflected for but a brief moment. She couldn't deny the effects of the fog. Daggers wedged themselves into her throat, and yet the poison air brought forth a desire, a lull of comfort. A siren song she could not bear to pull herself from. Like him, she was unmistakably hungry. And yet, for some unknown reason, there was consciousness. Once she had emerged from the fog, her sinuses cleared, and her senses had been restored. From the looks of it, however, the brute had not been so fortunate. Or perhaps he was truly just some sick individual.