（ a knife is produced with somewhere with a slight flicker of his right hand, and then the left is cupped beneath sasuke's, supporting the back of it, slender fingers providing upward pressure against his wrist as he pricks the pad of his thumb. it is the first time he has touched him in a year, and still it is to draw blood. certain things are patterned too deeply between them to be so easily broken.

his attention is briefly arrested by the swell of blood — deep red and venous — spinning off into the whorls of sasuke's thumbprint. then his gaze flickers to the book, and he gestures at the seal at its center, his meaning clear. ）

There is a measure of interconnectedness in the worlds we have visited to this point. Certain people or concepts that are continually resurfacing. Pay especial mind to my notes on Remi d’Arbes.