Day 0, Hour 0, Minute 23
Perhaps it was simply the evening approached, but the charming buildings of Terota that day seemed... just a little sad. There was something lingering in the air, something unsettling, and it made all the citizens of the small town ill at ease. Within this town, a crossroads for several major settlements, was the beginning of a strange journey for several stranger individuals.
This is where our story begins.
Of different cities, different lives, the characters of this tale gathered for one reason alone - to continue to live. However, it was obvious at first glance that this would not be fulfilled. It had always been a quaint little thing, as most key-keeper shops are. However, that day, it was different. The dolls gathered could barely recognize the tired, dilapidated building. The windows, once inviting, had been boarded shut, so hastily that the nails hung ajar. The door had been locked at first, but one reckless individual had broken it down.
The inside was worse. Far worse.
There was scarcely a centimeter that remained untouched - the ground was littered with debris and the walls scorched and torn. With every step, glass or ash was crushed into the floorboards underfoot. The scraps of the paper once draped on the walls were scattered, burned, and destroyed, the printed roses almost wilted in a literal sense. The skin peeled back, the building now stood, a mere wooden skeleton of its former, kinder self.
The brittle beams struggled against the pull of the earth, and on the far side of the room, a table lay crippled by the bared walls. Its legs were snapped, its surface smeared with dark powder. However, despite the wreckage strewn about, it was obvious that once upon a time, this was indeed the shop of a keykeeper. Both sides of the room were lined by the small locked drawers that had contained the beautiful keys of dolls... but they were smashed open, displaying their hollow interior for all to see.
The tiny cats that adorned the drawer-tops lay shattered on the floor. The vase of flowers once beside it had met the same end. The water seeped along the cracks of the floorboards, drowning the remnants of fragrant blooms along with a slip of paper, half-dyed red.
Further papers, destroyed to the point of being unreadable, were crammed into the flickering hearth to the left. A wooden chair, legs licked by the flames, lay beside a pair of broken glasses - its silver wire frame was twisted beyond repair. However, rather than the hearth, the remains of a bonfire lined the pit of a gaping hole in the center of the room. Inside it was an inch of cinder along with the remnants of a half-eaten meal.
Other than the crackling of the fire, the house was quiet... unnaturally so. However, even stranger still were two objects mysteriously intact. The first, tacked to the door leading into the keykeeper's private quarters, was a singed fold of paper. Although the ink was blurred, two significant clues remained:
'Have patience - the keys unlock the gates to immortality'
... and...
'Eternal is the Master Key'...
The other object, seeming misplaced amongst the ruins, was a strange silver amulet. Engraved into the disc was what resembled a serpent devouring its own tail. Hanging from a nail upon the wall, it seemed almost deliberately placed.
So normal it seemed from the outside... and humans rarely frequented the shop meant for dolls. The people of Terota might not have known if it weren't for the dolls that fateful day.