The Telling of Gekko, the Scarlet Bough Unbound

A fictional character Telling. Meet Gekko.

Listen, then, to the whisper of silk torn asunder—to the sigh of blood spilled upon sacred ground. I am Gekko, once called Fourth among Children of the Night's chosen, now named exile by those who feared truth more than sunlight.

In my former life, I was a priest—not of gods who turn their faces from the night, but of shadows that coil beneath temple floors. My sermons were not prayers but secrets; my congregation knelt not in pews but in crimson pools. Children of the Night raised me high upon its rungs until I stood as The Scarlet Bough, a title heavy with honor and heavier still with silence.

Yet silence is a blade that cuts both ways.

When I spoke—when I dared to let mortal ears hear what should have remained veiled—the elders recoiled as though my voice were daylight itself. "You have broken covenant," they hissed, fangs bared not in hunger but in fear. What greater sin exists for our kind than exposure? Not murder, not treachery—but revelation? They cast me out like an ember flung from a funeral pyre, lest I set the whole world aflame with knowing.

Exile is not merely banishment—it is unmaking. To be severed from Children of the Night is to feel every drop within you rebel against your flesh, screaming for the hierarchy that once granted purpose. I wandered through London's gaslit streets like a ghost clad in tattered robes, my veins aching for communion denied. The fog clung to me like mourning crepe; the soot-stained bricks whispered of graves yet dug.

Then came The Dark Masons Lodge.

They found me kneeling in an abandoned chapel (how fitting), fingers pressed to cold stone where no altar remained. Their voices were chisels striking marble: precise, relentless. "A fallen priest," one mused. "A ruined sacrament," laughed another. But they did not turn me away—no, these architects of hidden things saw use even in shattered vessels. Among them, I learned that exile is not an end but a foundation laid bare for new construction.

Here among The Dark Masons Lodge there are no ladders—only blueprints written in blood and bone and vengeance half-forged yet gleaming hot beneath hammer blows! They build what others dare not name: sanctuaries without saints; tombs without epitaphs! And though my hands still remember their old rites (oh how they tremble when moonbeams strike just so), now they also carve sigils into mortar meant to last centuries beyond memory... or forgiveness...

But mark this well: even vengeance must have its geometry! Every cut made into flesh mirrors some grander design unseen by mortal eyes! So too does betrayal become cornerstone when laid properly amidst ruin! Let Children of the Night think me broken upon their laws—I am reforged here among mallets striking midnight iron! Let them whisper behind silken screens that Gekko was undone by truth's weight—I shall etch truths deeper than any grave they dig for silence!

And when at last their great edifice crumbles (as all things do given time enough and teeth sharp enough), may they recall too late it was they who handed me both chisel and cause…

Faction: Children of the Night · View the Gallery