#mute city heaven is based on a vry old concept that then collected dust for 10+ years. until recently :3

[nerice]

mute city heaven !! full lore time !! this goes out 2 the anon who asked ♡ sorry that tumblr yeeted that msg to fuckwhere when i tried to reply OTL

mute city heaven

is part of my unfortunately neglected side-verse a/s. it’s abt a small cult far away from golden court shenanigans, established by a tracker-gone-rogue + the rabbit beast that was sent to kill them, who put aside their difference 2 take down the academy instead. their lil settlement is called the ‘heaven estates’ a collection of family manor houses that ring a central arena, the cataract, where they make their kids fight to the death. :’3<

there is. a lot of fucked up eye aesthetics in this story bc apparently main verse + screenplay are not enough 2 fully scratch that eye gore itch i have. pun intended. in the sanctum beneath the arena they keep a muted true ruler whose blood they use as eye drops on newborns to give them powers (resulting in either death, or the eyes being branded with peculiar patterns) these powers come w fairly vague terms such as “balance” “seeing” “floating” but can get quite wild. the tiers are:

base (non-combat tested)

mid/moderate, which just means the power-user has been in combat but nothing has happened 2 their power yet

high (changes the pattern to a more elaborate one, boosts power)

exalted (divine pattern, extremely powerful. that’s the state they are going for, and has only happened once on record)

then there are the fucked up states: dire (unstable power mutation) and fatal (extremely corrupted power state that trumps exalted but will kill the user in some fucked up rebound way)

what causes the power shifts is unclear but the tournament seems 2 be the most effective way to draw out alternate power states (though some kids will shift literally during breakfast on a random day) the ultimate goal being the cultivation of a private army for both infiltrating + one day obliterating the academy. the matches aren’t necessarily to the death (kids have a low turnover rate after all) but death does happen a little more often than it does not,, also final fact before i talk abt the story,, th main appeal obviously is fucky eyes and even fuckier powers; most of the kids are masked or veiled (bc u can tell the power from the pattern if you are familiar with it) and some users like fauve (”knowing”) can derive all intricacies of your power from a single glance. also this is my one story where i get to write big family feuds n all the intrigue that comes w it :3!!

ALL OF THAT BEING SAID. here’s what it’s abt (under th cut bc we’re running longgg)

eoshin

half brothers both gifted with the power of “seeing” eo + shin got pitted against one another in the tournament, and eo ran from it. he is the first and (officially) only person who ever manage to escape the heaven estates. shin was sent to bring him back (dead or alive) a chase during which both their eyes shift to “high seeing” but, ultimately, eo escapes and shin returns to the estates empty handed, still locked tightly into the cult to this day, while eo started his own settlement in an abandon quarry not too far off. in the years since he’s tried his best to smuggle children out of the estates, with lackluster success, but the quarry houses a little bandit camp of misfits whom the families wanted to be rid off, succeeded in running off on their own, or those who eo was able to salvage after they had been left for dead in the arena. he’s determined to get them even farther away but few of the kids want to leave since they all have unfinished business with the heaven estates.

minvenn

min is the only person whose powers ever exalted. nobody knows what her powers were because she wore black contacts at all times & nobody lived to tell the tale of fighting her. min is also dead. it’s a murder mystery that falls on the shoulders of her younger sibling (venn) who wakes from their debut tournament with no memory of the fight & runs away from the estates after discovering their sister’s body. all of this happens almost a decade after the eo/shin mess n venn ends up at the quarry, determined to unravel who’s behind the death of their sister.

odds n ends

this story is an absolute disaster currently n i have no idea where it’s going but here are some other fun aspects: very rarely kids get two different powers, one in each eye. officially this is impossible n the families that have such children closely guard that secret. there’s an “armory” user who can pull weapons out of their eye, bc i love my eye gore. some of the fucked up power state patterns expand over the face or even farther across the body. also this story intersects with the main verse via miro (”floating”) and fauve (”knowing”), who are sent to infiltrate the academy only to meet eliada nd while miro gets caught up in old queen murder/golden court plot, fauve accompanies eliada on his universe research quest and has the joy of getting stuck there w him & getting 2 meet my fav soulless bastard(s). it also intersects (possibly) with my witch boy story (touching fire) whose protag rue might be the kid of an eye-power user n retain some of that funkiness while having none of the eye pattern, as well as my necromancer story but it’s hard 2 tell if vi’s gift for resurrection can be ascribed to mch heritage since they are missing their head. lol

a/s is a forest grown from all my old story ideas tenuously crammed under the moon system umbrella and i’m struggling 2 stick the landing here. but we got eye gore n child murder, uwub