Alphonse Beauchamp was a tall woman, nearing the two meters mark she hated enclosed spaces, making the situation all the more unbearable. Seated in a sleek limousine, she was surrounded by tons of luggage, each suitcase and bag containing unimaginable amounts of wealth. But while being rich was great, she was currently seething. Fully knowing the accommodation would satisfy neither her height nor the colossal amount of props she had brought, they still sent her in a limousine.

  'Deep breaths Alphonse, deep breaths,' she reassured herself. Preparing her mind for what was about to come she waited, knowing they were nearing destination. And as soon as the car stopped, she bolted out, not waiting for the driver to lift the handbrake.

  As she sighted the towering hill looming over her she heaved in a deep, content breath. Since she was driven to the outskirts of the suburban area, to a supposedly well attended estate, she expected a flatland. But instead, what stood before her was a monstrosity of a mountain, adorned with an equally gigantic fence. That was so cool!

  Completely enthralled, she immediately turned to the parted gates of the domain, preparing to enter the grounds. Excited, her body inched closer and closer to the gardens, her right leg ascended, and as she was about to take a step forward, her instincts kicked in, loudly screaming at her.

  It came in a flood of insights.

  She felt it.

  This place, it was wrong.

  Taking a deep, calming breath, she scanned the place with her right eye, the left one, a hole covered by flesh.

  When she thought about it, the estate was completely out of place, as if someone had displaced the whole mountain for the sole purpose of living precisely here. Questions filled her mind, but only one was relevant at the moment: 'What the hell is that mountain doing so close to the suburbs!?'

  Alphonse Beauchamp was an impulsive woman running on pure instincts only. If something didn't feel right then it was wrong, such was her mindset. It made her stubborn and unmoving from her positions. But it was extremely rewarding. And today, she was rewarded as well.

  Contemplating whether entering was a good idea, the patch of skin that replaced her left eye rippled. Taking the shape of a hemisphere it bulged outward like an eye going out of its socket. And suddenly, it darted around at uncanny speeds. Stretching farther and farther away from her face, the column of flesh scrutinized the place. When it finally returned to its rightful spot, the patch of skin hummed, but nothing happened. Until,

  *Click,*

  *HUM!*

  Sounding like a long lost key finally opening its desired door, the world shifted. In a moment, Alphonse went from standing in front of a mountain to being right before the deranged sight of a door carved out from human flesh. It was nothing short of gut-wrenching.

  Weirdly forgetting about the impossible movements her flesh had displayed earlier. Alphonse heard the wails of the souls trapped inside the door, like shrieks they echoed. Forming a single high pitched, cacophonous sound akin the to easternmost note of a piano, they wept in an uncanny beauty. Their tears smelled like a sweet perfume. It was as if the door didn't want their pleas to be heard, as if it desired the souls' suffering from its core, relishing in the taste of their harrowing suffering. The souls' feelings reached her, making her stomach churn.

  But to a Beauchamp, this only brought memories. In a wave of nostalgia that perfectly hit home, a small tear flowed from the corner of her right eye to the side of her cheek before being reabsorbed by her skin.

  'Father would be proud,' she thought with an almost religious conviction.

  Shaking off unnecessary thoughts she turned to her surroundings, hearing a buzzing sound akin to an insect crawling underneath the skin emanating from all around the place. The very place felt haunted. Everything was completely different from earlier, the paved ground leading to the towering mountain had disappeared, leaving Alphonse standing on creaking wood. She was under a porch-like canopy, her eyes glued to the small glint of a crimson sprout, the door's handle. Taking hold of it she felt a beating cadence, instantly realizing what she was holding in her hand was a beating, living heart, molded into a door knob.

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  Living people, stuck in a piece of architecture made from their very flesh. The unimaginable pain coursing through them at every moment left them unable to escape. With no mind to break, their souls, indestructible, were trapped inside a prison of constant pain.

  As she unveiled the truth behind the works of **Art** standing before her, she hesitated. She understood there was no going back. But after steeling her resolve she twisted the handle, and then,

  *Woosh!*

  In a swirl, her form rapidly twisted and compressed vertically until she vanished from sight.

  Alphonse Beauchamp had disappeared.

  --

  Inside a brightly lit but crowded elevator, a figure warped in. Clad in a surreal attire, a tuxedo painted in a splash of color surrounded by dark circles and misty white, the figure neared the two meters mark. She was a woman with a patch of skin in place of an eye. As she appeared, an area where she could comfortably wait was cleared for her by the other passengers of the elevator. An all encompassing, almost omniscient aura radiated from her body, more specifically from her tuxedo. It looked eerily similar to an eye, the splashing colors being the pupil, and the white the rest of the eyeball.

  She was Alphonse Beauchamp.

  The elevator reached her desired location just when the show was about to begin. The cacophony of murmurs previously filling the hall with noise stopped instantly as the event started. Arriving at the same time as the starting point of the event Alphonse wondered if the quieting of the crowd was directed toward her, or the stage.

  But she soon dismissed it as irrelevant. The events that were about to unfold would be world changing, she saw it.

  On stage, the figure, a man, slowly finished his ascent from the ground. His raven hair was long, so long they should have touched the ground long ago. But in an impressive sewing feat, it seamlessly clung to his frame like a second skin, leaving no part of his body exposed. One could make out some of his features through the mask of hair. A lean frame, invisible strength coursing through limbs and core alike. A square jaw that made the solid shape of his nose more believable. And lastly, a scalp that brimmed with power.

  Alphonse was focused, her gaze stilled as she prepared for the show's impending start.

  The host opened his mouth wide but, surprisingly, didn't speak. Instead he took a deep breath, calmly inhaling, holding it in, and then, in a gentle exhale,

  *WOOSH!*

  *BOOM!*

  It took a few seconds but it finally happened; in a sonic boom, a powerful gale swept across the hall shattering every fragile object in its wake. After an eerie silence at the display of power, some of the most undaunted members of the public erupted in a fit of anger and disbelief.

  "What the hell!" Someone with an androgyne voice exclaimed, their ears ringing. They had attended the event multiple times before but never had the reveal been so intense.

  "My dress!" A woman exclaimed. "My suit!" Her partner followed. As the shouting was about to continue with a fourth person, murmurs suddenly began spreading across the hall. Intelligible sounds of muttering under one's breath could be heard. The cause of the murmurs was the magical display of translucent strands of hair rapidly emerging from the host's mouth. Surging upward until they formed a massive, oval cocoon high above his head; the crowd was finally silenced. But as if it was not enough,

  *BOOM!*

  The cocoon exploded in a cacophonous growl, in slow motion it looked like a pair of black wings were unfurling themselves, getting out of their coiled position. Stretching far above the stage in a magnificent U-shape, they flapped,

  *FLAP!*

  Sending gusts of winds in every direction, the two symmetrical wings made of entangled hair lifted the cage of a powerful artifact. Ancient earth, seemingly uprooted from its resting place, converged into a human-sized island. Cruelly torn roots decorated the sides and bottom of the isle, creating an atmosphere of death and decay. On top of the small island, numerous fangs emerged from the earth, connecting into a toothy prison. Clouds of mystical runes revolved around the whole structure, securing the artifact in an unmoving position.

  Inside the cage, a empty-looking husk could be seen. It was sleek white and fluctuated in size and shape, as if having a mind of its own, it settled in an animalistic shape but then took the form of a tool, shifting into a humanoid figure next. Its state of constant and ever changing, ever evolving movement was perfect for nurturing growth.

  Without even the slightest hint of a warning, the host's voice boomed.

  "Let the auction begin!"

  --

  Long ago, when she first saw the *Entry*, the very door made with human flesh, her father's last words echoed in her mind: "Located atop a small hill, on the outskirts of the suburbs, an unattended estate radiated an uncanny aura..." Continuing on and on in cryptic messages. But as time passed the once incomprehensible message became an open book to her. They stated the future, the beginning of a story,

  The beginnings of Alphonse's odyssey.