[Some backstory, to anyone reading: Melor lives in an alternate earth where the Black Death makes zombies of people. That is all.]
Getting to Gaia from a quarantined world was no easy matter, and Melor would have preferred not coming at all. For one thing, Gaia was loud and confusing in its mysterious ways of illuminating moving pictures with electricity, its tiny colorful plastic objects held up to the ear that allowed people to talk to an absent person, its wild and scandalous fashions, and -- he would not go as far as to say that the people who lived there were occasionally monstrosities, with animal limbs attached or hair of unnatural and innately unholy colors -- but when he saw them, he was disturbed anyway. Gaia, as a world, made absolutely no sense, and most people were content to ignore or forget it ever existed.
And because of the Black Death, they were prohibited from traveling to Gaia anyway. Even such a place that reeked of magic and knowledge had no idea what to do with their disease that made people's bodies rot around them while the terrible desire to commit the taboo grew in them -- and for fear of the Black Death spreading, had closed and locked any natural rips in the fabric of space that would have allowed his people to travel there. But the nature of his work occasionally brought him here to consult with those who knew more than he did.
It was not hard to find who those would be. Lost spirits who found themselves trapped in the labyrinth of the living world -- somehow -- had a sense of who to find among the living who could help them, a sense not unlike that of a cat's making its way across the country to its home. It was not uncommon for them to repeat the name of a single place they meant to find, which he then found later to be that which belonged to Cain and Amaris. And the darker, more twisted things, the ghosts and the demons and the spirits, bore the marks of those that had banished or fought them earlier -- and again it was not uncommon to find Cain's handprints upon them. It seemed that they would likely to have some insight, if not an answer to his unique situation. He had never met them personally, but arrangements through a mutual third party were made and they seemed agreeable to a meeting.
The scent of gunpowder and ash lingered heavily in the air, and the surface of his skin pricked with a sensation not unlike being burnt. The key that served as a contraband portal hung heavy around his neck, and behind him, he could faintly make out his study through a crack in the surroundings that fit the exact shape of his slightly open study door.
He was unfamiliar with the area, but the castle in front of him -- with its high towers and gothic architecture -- reminded him vaguely of the morbid tendencies of his own world, and was comforting. Checking the time, he slipped his pocketwatch into his waistcoat pocket and began to venture forward to knock on the door.
