The Telling of Yesamine, the Unveiled

A fictional character Telling. Meet Yesamine.

Once, I wore the silken veils of The Hollow Court, where truth was a whispered sin and every face was a mask within a mask. We danced upon gilded floors that echoed with hollow laughter, our true names buried beneath layers of artifice. But I—foolish, reckless I—pulled aside my own veil in defiance. Not for pride, not for love... but because the weight of pretending became too heavy to bear.

They called it defiance. I called it breathing.

Now I dwell among The Dark Masons Lodge, where stone remembers what flesh forgets. Here, the exiled carve their sorrow into walls that will outlast them. My hands are no longer quick as they were in my former life—when I slipped through shadows as a thief in the smog-choked alleys of an empire crumbling under industry's fist. Back then, even stolen bread tasted sweeter than the honeyed lies of courtiers. But now? Now my fingers trace glyphs into cold mortar, etching laments that will never be read by mortal eyes.

I remember the night they cast me out—how the moonlight turned silver to ash upon my skin. The Masquerade had reached its crescendo: masks glittering like shattered glass, voices weaving truths so delicate they dissolved at a touch. And then... silence fell when I tore mine away. No grand speech left my lips; only exhaustion made visible in bare-faced honesty. The Hollow Court does not suffer such vulnerability lightly. They stripped me of rank, name, and shadow before casting me beyond their gates with nothing but this: "Let the world see you now."

Oh, but what is there to see? A poet without verses worth singing? A thief whose hands have forgotten how to steal warmth from another's pulse? In this age of steam and iron, even exile feels obsolete—just another relic discarded by progress' relentless march forward. Yet here among these stones and sorrows… perhaps there is purpose still in being unseen by all but those who understand absence intimately enough to shape it into something new.

The Dark Masons do not ask for masks or titles—only stories carved deep enough to endure when we fade away entirely (as all exiles must). So each day I work alongside them: chisel against rock until blisters bloom like funeral flowers on palms already marked by time's cruelty… And sometimes? Sometimes when dusk bleeds across skyline smokestacks turning everything sepia-toned memory—I swear I hear echoes from home carried on wind too tired to lie anymore either...

But no matter how much mortar binds us together here amongst ruins both ancient and recent alike—we remain fragments waiting to be whole again someday, maybe never quite managing it fully despite best efforts otherwise because some breaks simply cannot be mended back to original form no matter skill applied during repair process itself...

And so continues existence between hammer blows shaping destiny one fractured piece at a time while whispering old poems nobody listens to anymore except ghosts, maybe, if they're feeling generous tonight, which I doubt since most days even specters seem disinterested in melancholic ramblings of has-beens like myself anyway...

Yet still I persist, regardless, knowing full well the futility inherent in the act itself, because what else is left to do once everything else has been stripped away? Keep moving forward even if direction is unclear and destination nonexistent entirely?

Perhaps therein lies the greatest revelation granted to those forced to walk the path of banishment: the realization that movement alone might suffice when meaning perpetually eludes grasp, tauntingly close yet impossibly far, forevermore. Amen.

Visual

Slight, ink-stained figure with bare luminous face too honest for comfort, ash-pale skin with faint silver scarring where a mask once sat, dark restless eyes, cropped dark hair, dressed in soot-smudged workman's clothes, hands blistered from chisel-work.

Faction: The Hollow Court · View the Gallery