[ All things considered, it isn't unlike what he'd left behind.

There are a few notable differences; this place is more incomplete, even more so than Eldrant. The sheer size of it hardly stacks up to the land he'd had a direct hand in creating--little wonder, he thinks to himself, because there are pieces of other places. Had he been more sentimental, perhaps there'd be vestiges of Daath, of Baticul, of Yulia City and its little room of selenia flowers. Then again, those places had been little more than a means to an end.

But nothing--not even this pale imitation of a home he'd had, a long time ago--holds a candle to Hod. It's actually very remarkable, if a pathetic ghost of what once was. Impressive in its own way, but right now, all he really desires is to go back to Eldrant. See everything through.

He cannot do that here. ]

A shame this is wasted on someone who can't appreciate it fully.

[ Guy, perhaps. Tear, most definitely, even if she never saw Hod. But not him. ]

[ A shot of color in the dark catches his attention. It would catch anyone's attention, he thinks; it's vibrant, like a beacon cutting through darkness. It cuts through even his exhaustion, bone deep and, he realizes, much more familiar than he'd like to admit to anyone. He's actually a little angry--a little--because he's spent so long ignoring the hell out of his body's needs that, now that he's here, somehow he can't ignore it.

He hates it. But he keeps that tamped down until he finds...

You?

Van's eyes stop on whoever he's led to. ]

I daresay you've seen the same thread I have...?

[ He says it pleasantly, because Van is nothing if not convincing in his facade. ]

[ It's, really, the ideal he'd always hoped for. Perhaps the setting is wrong; there are no fields of flowers here, no white marble, no clearing where he and a friend long gone would play knight and lord. There's a girl here--her face seems blurred around the edges--and a man with blond hair and unfailingly kind eyes, but it seems--

It seems wrong. And Van cannot shake the feeling that something is looming, something he never knew he'd dreaded. He asks the girl and the man, but the only thing he gets is a scent of rot. It disappears, once he drops the subject. Until he can't. It's... it's--

Unbearable. Suffocating. And Van does not like it, even for a second. He feels like he's choking, and more than anything, he wants to cut the heart out of the problem. Whatever that problem is. And maybe he runs across someone who's been asking the wrong questions, too, who feels as if everything is unsteady, shifted off to the side by just a fraction. For a moment, his eyes are hard, steely, before they soften to something that's a touch more human. ]

Have you felt it, as well?