Introduction 3

Iyla hurried back to her apartment. After she got home, she left her purchase on the coffee table, and got to work.

Once work had finally finished, she got up from her desk and threw herself onto the couch. It wasn't a particularly stressful day, but she felt weirdly exhausted, for some reason. Laying on her couch, she saw the shopping bag that she had left there earlier.

She started pondering what she could use it for. Honestly, she had just bought it because the binding had been beautiful. But she couldn't bring herself to just use it for normal notes or diary entries. It felt like the book deserved to have some more meaningful contents written inside.

She grabbed the book out of the bag, and looked it over again. Blank, as expected.

There were no great ideas that came to her, so she set it back down on the table and got up to prepare dinner.

After her evening routine of dinner, TV, and some light reading in bed, she fell asleep, hoping to feel better tomorrow.

Iyla woke up the next day, not feeling any better than the day before. A great fatigue had set in to her body, causing it to feel sluggish.

However, although she had been expecting to find out that she had a mild fever, the thermometer had only shown normal results.

Maybe she just wasn't fully sick yet! Not wanting to take the day off, she persevered and logged in to work. In the rush of her morning, she hadn't noticed that the book she had bought from "The Corvus" wasn't where she had left it last night, but was instead sitting on her bedside table, nonchalantly without a care in the world.

She might have noticed if she had a reason to use it, but currently it was just a decorative piece, blending into the background of her everyday life. That would soon change.

Iyla started work that day, unaware of the changes that were taking place in her body, and her life. 

* * *

Working until lunch time, Iyla craved sugar. She was feeling so shitty that she felt she deserved the treat, so she popped down to the boba cafe downstairs. It was within the same building, so it was quite convenient.

After receiving her drink, she sat down at the table outside, intending to people-watch a bit. It was a sunny day, but a large shadow passed overhead. She looked up at the sky, and noticed a huge shadow of a bird passing overhead.

It was huge, the size of a large airplane passing low to the ground. But it was unmistakably a bird, with feathery, eagle-like wings and a long, colorful tail with electricity sparking down its length. She barely saw it for a second before it accelerated, leaving only the faint ghost image burned into her eyes.

The contrast from the shadow to the bright electric afterimage blinded her temporarily. Iyla closed and rubbed her eyes, and then looked around at ground level.

A veil had been burned off by the presence of something outside her comprehension, and now, she could truly see.

Among the normal crowds out and about today, she noticed that some people looked just a little off. Horns here, scales there, some a little more transparent when you looked closely. It was like everyone was dressed for Halloween, except that the skill level for the costuming was off the charts. And beyond the odd looking humans, there were other creatures mingling amongst the masses. A fairy, small enough to fit into the palm of one's hand, was flying above carrying a bouquet flowers.

Am I…. going insane?

She wondered if she had somehow developed schizophrenia, and this was merely the result of her delusions, but then she saw a vampire walking what looked to be a small dragon on a leash. (It was flying, but it didn't have any wings!)

There was no way she could have imagined that!

She grabbed her drink and ran back to her apartment. She thought about calling one of her friends for moral support, but there was no way that they would believe her. At best, they might think that she was trying to play a prank on them by "pretending to be crazy".

She ran back to the computer and started searching for any mention of that giant bird in the news. Nothing had come up.

The next thing she tried was "exorcists in my area", hoping to find some weirdo that could maybe say a couple of Latin phrases and scare whatever demon was causing her to hallucinate like this. Funnily enough, The Corvus showed up in the results. Their website claimed that they specialized in "occult consultations".

Remembering what the shopkeeper from The Corvus had said, she decided to go back to that curious little store.