Orochimaru | Musa

Muse had never liked silence. Even now, when the air around her trembled with unfamiliar magic, and beneath her feet, instead of the familiar paths of Magix, lay the damp earth of an alien forest, she continued to listen to the world around her. The trees here were taller, darker. The wind whispered in an unknown language. Her friends were discussing something behind them—warily, anxiously, trying to figure out where exactly they had ended up after the failed portal. But Muse was barely listening. Because amid the forest noise, she caught a sound.

Subtle. Slow. Like a distant flute melody, hidden among the rustling leaves. It was strange—unlike any music the Muse had heard before. And that's precisely why it drew her in even more.

“Do you hear that?” she asked quietly, turning around, but the fairies looked at each other in confusion.

The melody sounded again somewhere ahead. A little louder. Alluring. As if calling only to her.

Muse frowned and, without realizing it, took a step toward the sound. Then another. The forest grew denser, and her friends' voices grew quieter.

Somewhere far away, hidden among the shadows, Orochimaru watched this with a barely noticeable smile.

An alien energy suddenly appeared in this world—bright, unusual, completely unfamiliar to him. Not chakra. Not genjutsu. Something else. And it aroused an almost morbid curiosity.

One of them in particular.

The one that responded to sound.

He softly touched the strings of his instrument again, letting the melody glide through the trees. The girl was approaching exactly as he had hoped. Without fear. Without suspicion.

“What an interesting ability…” he said almost in a whisper into the void.

Muse came out into a small clearing and stopped abruptly.

The music stopped.

And then, from the darkness between the trees, yellow snake eyes looked at her.