TACHIBANA CITY - A CITY LOST

[ ITEM DESCRIPTION -- "A CITY LOST", AUTHOR UNKNOWN ]

Its cover is a soft, weathered shade of midnight blue, reminiscent of the sky just before dawn. The texture is slightly rough as if it has absorbed countless whispers from the city’s labyrinthine streets. The title, embossed in a subtle silver, shimmers faintly under the light, as though reluctant to reveal its secrets too easily.

When you open it, the pages are a curious blend of ivory and gray, each one edged with a delicate pattern of faint, swirling lines that seem to dance just out of sight. The ink, a deep indigo, flows across the pages with a gentle fluidity, as if the words themselves are part of a dream, moving and shifting ever so slightly. The text, though clear, has an almost liquid quality, inviting you to lose yourself in its paragraphs.

There is a certain weight to the book, not in its physical mass but in the sensation it imparts; a feeling of having stumbled upon a hidden portal to another world. Each chapter begins with an intricate border, reminiscent of old Japanese woodblock prints, hinting at the timeless quality of the knowledge within. Occasionally, a small, cryptic illustration appears, almost like a faded memory, which seems to shift subtly when viewed from different angles.

The book is bound in a way that suggests it has been cherished and handled by countless hands over the years, each adding to its aura of mystery. When you close it, the sound is soft and final, like the closing of a secret door, leaving you with the sense that, though the book is now closed, the world it describes continues to hum quietly in the background, ever elusive and just out of reach.

[ CH1 -- THE CITY WHICH SLIPPED FROM REALITY ]

There is a place in Capria that once hummed with life; Tachibana City. People used to say it was a city you could taste before you even arrived, its aroma carried on the wind: roasted peppers, clove-laced steam, fried lotus root dusted in sugar. The open-air markets sang with the chatter of hagglers and schoolchildren, the sound of fish flopping in silver bowls, the slap of silk laid flat for inspection. Magic leaked from the cobblestones like morning dew; quiet, invisible, but always there, humming at the edges of one’s vision. And then, quite suddenly, it wasn’t.

Tachibana disappeared.

Not in an explosive, world-ending way. It was more like a breath held too long. The maps forgot it. The roads that led there turned in on themselves. Griffolk who had once lived there began speaking of it like a dream they could almost remember. And yet; it continued. Somewhere. Elsewhere.

Tachibana still stands, nestled now in a dimension not quite parallel, not quite apart. What was once a sunlit paradise of spice and spell has become something stranger; a city wrapped in its own shadow. Its skies are always overcast, heavy with a red-tinged light that stains the buildings the color of dried blood. At night, a swollen crimson moon floats in a sky darker than ink, casting long, unnatural silhouettes across deserted plazas. You walk its streets and feel watched; not with malice, but with a kind of patient curiosity, as if the city itself is waiting for you to say something meaningful.

The city has grown quiet, but it has not stopped growing. The sea around it, thick and black as wet coal, shifts imperceptibly, inch by inch, as if reclaiming lost time. Apartment towers stand tall but hollow, missing floors that still appear from the outside. Sometimes, a spirit wanders into your path during a drizzle and asks for the time. You give it, though you’re not sure it matters. The alleyways wind forever. The vending machines hum in languages you don’t understand. You’ll swear you’ve seen your own shadow walk ahead of you.

And yet, life endures. Item Bagbeans hang potted herbs in their windows. Hollow Bagbeans leave food out for the ghost cats. Witchlees run late-night clinics that treat wounds caused by nothing you can name. Jestertoxes perform on corners to audiences of flickering lights. In their own quiet, tangled way, they live. They adapt.

No one speaks of returning. No one speaks of leaving. You simply arrive, and then one day, you realize you’ve always been here.

[ CH2 -- THE BANISHMENT OF TACHIBANA ]

There was once a giant; not the kind that breaks mountains or eats clouds, but a quiet kind. It lay at the center of a city, its body unmoving, its heart vast and patient. The people didn’t speak to it. They didn’t worship it in any grand way. They simply lived beside it, and in return, it breathed magic into their lives. It was an unspoken agreement: you exist, and we exist because of you.

That was Tachibana’s beginning; a city that wasn’t built so much as grown, from the breath and blood of a slumbering Yotun. Every spell, every lucky coincidence, every impossible coincidence that no one could explain; all of it hummed from the giant’s slow, deliberate pulse. It was a city in rhythm with something ancient and kind. Magic poured from the cracks in the pavement. The griffolk danced in it, worked in it, grew up in it. The city pulsed. The people pulsed with it.

But somewhere far away, in a place where cities are measured by fear rather than rhythm, someone grew concerned. Magic of that magnitude, left unchecked, would eventually draw eyes; dangerous ones. A decision was made. One person was sent. They had no name, only a mission: remove the giant, sever the pulse.

No one remembers exactly how they did it. Maybe it was a spell. Maybe it was a word whispered into the wind at the right moment. But the result was the same. The Yotun- gentle, eternal- vanished. And so did Tachibana. The whole city peeled away from the world like a page torn clean from a book.

When they landed- if one can call it landing; the city was different. The streets were intact. The buildings still stood. But something essential had shifted. It was as if the city had been turned inside out. The sky no longer followed the same schedule. The moon arrived when it pleased. Magic still existed, but it was slower now, more uncertain, like a dream fading after waking.

The Yotun had not died. No, that would have been too final. Instead, it had sunk deeper, folding into the city itself like a memory buried just beneath the surface of consciousness. And its heart; its vast, echoing heart; still beat. Slowly. Dreamily.

People say the city dreams now. That at night, you might hear it breathing through the steam vents or whispering through flickering television sets. Some say the Yotun walks the streets in dreams, searching for the thread that will lead it home. Others believe the city has no desire to return; that it has grown fond of this half-sleep, this in-between existence.

Either way, the griffolk remain. They walk the same twisted alleyways, live in buildings with names that no longer mean anything. And at night, when sleep comes gently or not at all, they sometimes find themselves in a dream that doesn’t feel quite their own; a dream with endless hallways and a sound, deep below, like a heartbeat waiting to be remembered.

[ CH3 -- THE WOUND THAT WEPT MAGIC ]

The magic in Tachibana doesn’t follow the rules. It bends them. It forgets them. It folds them into origami cranes and sets them afloat in the black sea that surrounds the city.

There are spirits here; not ghosts in the traditional sense, but beings caught in a loop between what was and what is. Some were once Griffians. They lived, died, and should have moved on. But the city, with its crooked gravity and sleeping heart, holds onto things. It remembers too well. When a Griffian dies within Tachibana’s borders, their soul is snared by the city’s strange rhythm, like a radio catching a signal it was never meant to receive. Instead of fading, they fill with something new. Magic seeps into the cracks left behind by death. The result is not quite life, not quite afterlife- something in between.

These spirits walk and speak as if nothing has changed, though a quiet heaviness trails behind them. Their magic, unanchored by a living body, warps into reflections of who they were. A quiet librarian becomes a ghost with pages for wings. A child who loved storms summons lightning when it cries. They cling to the familiar: corners of old apartments, faded café booths, rusted swings in forgotten parks. Some of them search endlessly for the thin, flickering doorways that appear without pattern or promise- doorways that might lead back to Capria, or somewhere else entirely.

But not all spirits were once alive.

When the Yotun was banished and the city tore loose from the world, something raw and terrible was left behind. That wound bled magic. Not the gentle magic of healing or light, but wild, impulsive magic- emotion made manifest, energy without a name. From that came the second kind of spirit.

These are spirits born of chaos; dreams that never settled, fears left unspoken, laughter too loud to vanish. They have no origin story, only a feeling. Some resemble animals, others strange machines or abstract shapes that shift when you aren’t looking. They perch on rooftops. They whisper to vending machines. They trail behind people like shadows with a sense of humor. Many choose companions. They follow griffolk, live in their pockets, curl up in their shoes. Sometimes they help. Sometimes they only observe.

And then there are the rare ones; spirits born from the deepest ruptures in Tachibana’s soul. These don’t follow anyone. They don’t seek attention. They simply are. Some say they carry pieces of the Yotun’s consciousness, fragments of a dream too large to hold. Others believe they are the city’s own emotions, made flesh and fog.

You might see one, if the light hits wrong at 3:03 a.m., or if you take a wrong turn and find yourself in a street that doesn’t exist. You won’t remember much. Maybe the smell of stone after rain. Maybe the feeling of being watched by something too large to fit in your mind.

[ CH4 -- THE ENTRANCE AND THE EXIT ]

Far from Tachibana’s bleeding skies and soundless towers, back in Capria where the sea still knows how to sleep, there is a shrine that no longer remembers its name.

It rests beneath the waves; half-buried in sand, veiled in slow-growing algae and the indifference of time. The fish do not bother it, and the currents treat it with a peculiar reverence. Most Griffians have forgotten it ever existed. Even the old maps have stopped pretending to know where it is. But the shrine remembers. It remembers a city that once stood at the edge of the sea, and the giant heart that pulsed beneath its streets.

If one were to find the shrine; not with maps, but by feeling; and offer something meaningful in silence, the stone breathes. Not loudly. Not enough to stir the water. Just enough to loosen the tether between here and there. For a moment, Tachibana’s slumbering pulse flickers, and a seam opens in the fabric between worlds. The air ripples. The ocean forgets it is wet. And a portal, thin as glass and soft as breath, opens.

Getting into Tachibana is easy, almost deceptively so. Like stepping through a dream you didn’t know you were having. Getting out, however, is another matter entirely.

Tachibana, bound to the dormant Yotun, resists departure. The city has grown attached to those who wander its halls; its spirits, its strangers, its seekers. It keeps them close, like a dream you wake from but never quite leave behind. The exit requires magic of rare precision and even rarer strength. Not the kind taught in classrooms, but the kind earned over lifetimes.

Every so often, a retired Yotun- one of the few who have stepped down from their cosmic roles and chosen stillness over dominion- emerges from obscurity. Or a mystic, old enough to have forgotten their own name but not their power, agrees to intervene. These beings speak to the shrine in a language older than sound. They coax it awake. They call to the Yotun's half-sleeping heart.

When a portal does open, it is never wide. It is never open for long.

And yet, when it appears, the city stirs. The spirits gather. The wind changes direction. People line up with suitcases packed decades ago. Some hope to escape. Some simply want to see sunlight that isn’t stained red. Others wait for a chance to follow someone they lost long ago.

The portal shimmers like a mirage. For a brief moment, the world splits; one foot in silence, the other in memory.

Then it closes. Always.