Disclaimer: I do not own Soul Eater. Atsushi Okubo does. Nor do I own the quotation from Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book. Neil Gaiman owns that, obviously.

Author's Note: Why, hello, . This whole experience is a little surreal/exciting/hazy for me, since where I am, it's approximately 5:30 in the morning, and because I have not submitted anything/truthfully written fanfiction since I was around sixteen (approximately four years ago?). There's a whole song and dance behind this – but I doubt you are interested in hearing it, if anyone is here at all (and if you are, you've probably skipped this message anyway xD). Suffice it to say, I wrote an original piece of fiction, which I finally finished, and since I'm in the process of editing it – I allowed myself to give into my weaknesses and indulge in some fanfiction (which I still heartily enjoy!) while I do so.

Information You Might Actually Care About: I'm banking on me being older and/or more mature to keeping myself dedicated to this piece of work. I have a lot of plans for it. Therefore, I'm planning on updating every Sunday.

In addition, there will be shipping in this fanfic, including some love triangles, but I'm not going to tell you in the summary, so you can deduct the relationships yourself! xD (they really aren't that difficult)

There will be one OC who will become a main character in the plotline, but she is not the major focus of the story. Indeed, she does not show up in this chapter.

Finally, although he/she does not appear in this chapter, Crona will play a huge part in this story. He/she will be depicted as male!Crona in this fanfiction because that's my personal preference/belief – please respect my opinion, as I certainly respect all of yours :)

Now, I apologize for bogging you down with this lengthy author's note – please read and enjoy!

(and reviews are always appreciated!)

GoDlEsS

"It was a city that had been built just to be abandoned, in which all the fears and madnesses and revulsions of the creatures who built it were made into stone. The ghoul-folk had found it and delighted in it and called it home."

Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book

"I wish I'd been born in a godless world."

- Franken Stein, Soul Eater (episode 23)

Prologue: ENTER a City of Corruption?

Death City was a venerable pit of nothingness.

No, strike that.

Death City was a riotous grotesquery. A seething, writhing, hissing, retching vat of filth and rancor and diseased bone. It was filled with the skulls of sad cracked dead things, and plagued with the chattering of strange, monkeylike fiends that – however unfortunate – had failed to yet perform their greatest act of selflessness and die.

Death City was a crowned Wasteland and a festering Hell.

She smiled grimly at the description, pleased. But then, not really pleased at all. It was a bittersweet sort of smile, subtle as the flowers dying on the grayed-out windowsill.

Something interrupted the fateful musings. A voice, tentative as eggshells:

"I'll be home late, Maka. Please… don't be angry with me."

The words were suspended as dust and dull spots of blood in the still, still air.

No matter how she watered them, they wilted – those flowers on the windowsill. Those damnable, dust-delicate irises, the purple of their petals like the ragged shawls of a fallen royalty; wispy brown stalks and dry, bitter feelings. Irises could not grow here, not in this place, not in this world.

"Maka…are you listening?" A desperate shuffle of feet, "Please, please, Maka. You know I love you –"

Oh why, oh why, did everything here die?

"Are you going to answer me? Maka – Maka? Papa loves you so much. Everything I do – you know I do it for you – don't you?"

Outside, the cobbled roads ran crooked, and they led only to places dark and unhealthful and blasphemous. The shadows rubbed themselves cheaply against your cheek, the wind keened its petty shrieks into your ear, and the ground beneath your feet was shifty and unstable, its fissures glistening with that telltale shine of RED.

She could smell the City's odor through the flung-open window, that venomous scent of decay. She choked on it. The evil breeze tasted like wormwood to her nostrils, the tainted air curdling to cottage-cheese disgust in her mouth.

The world outside was a precarious place: it was full of violent, unexpected ends.

No irises grew on those cobbled streets.

The voice again shattered the web of her thoughts:

"Maka – ! …heh, the silent treatment, huh? I guess I should have expected this. Kami – I mean, your mother – well, you're really just like her. So stubborn. Fine, fine, don't answer. I'll be late, but I promise to come home tonight. I swear to it. Papa loves you, after all."

The redhead's face was young, but careworn. Ripe with paternal affections.

He did not return home that night.