By: Daiyu Tang – The Girl Behind the Lens.
Well all you Hathian Ghouls, Spooks, Cultists, Cops and Citizens, I hope you enjoy this sharp (like my false teeth I wore) article that covered yesterday’s (23rd August 2025) party!
Masks were made to conceal, but in Hathian they only ever reveal. Lace and velvet, fangs and smoke; the Sinners Room masquerade promised vampires, and while there were no real bloodsuckers, the hungers on display were very human, very Hathian and very very hungry.
The room pulsed with sweat and bass, a tangle of strangers and lovers pretending at immortality while trying to survive a Saturday night. I slipped through the crowd, listening, watching, collecting sins like the ‘blood’ drenched rosary beads that adorned my outfit. I was Toreador my dear readers and I slipped through the crowd with Presence and Alacrity that would have made an elder proud.
Some were masked, some were not. Some voices I knew, some I heard names whispered. Some remained faceless and a mystery.
At the bar, a man and a woman turned tequila into intimacy, staggering out with talk of Stockholm Syndrome and Tolkien chants; yes, Hobbits at a vampire ball. (Editor’s Note: nothing drains the gothic mystique faster than an impromptu “they’re taking the hobbits to Isengard” sing-along, but this is Hathian, so of course it happened.)
On the floor, a woman called Quinn swayed with friends, laughing too hard to notice one of her friends nervously popping one of the infamous gummies. An “oops,” was muttered and that Vampire’s night tilted into technicolor vampiric hedonism. I saw Bethari (never one easily disguised) staggering through what I imagined must have been another rainbow haze while another individual seemed (like the Wicked Witch melting with water) to melt into his chair muttering about the walls changing color. Our hostess, with the mostess… Trinket, toasted the crowd with a grin that to my wandering eyes said she already knew the outcome. When is spiking not a crime? When it’s gummy trips apparently. Still, one suspects like a vampire disintegrating in the sunlight, that any evidence of that crime is long gone.
Not everyone chose candy. Some preferred theatre. One man leaned in close to another, his mask slick with fake blood. I (when I had passed) had thought it was pretty good, but the man lurched backwards, was it fake? He swore it smelled rotten and recoiled as a crimson-stained finger was dragged across his cheek. “Pig’s blood,” the ‘Vampire’ smirked. Hathian never quite knows if it’s a joke. (Editor’s Note: in most towns that would be grounds for a health inspection but here it’s foreplay. We wish the happy couple well…)
A true showstopper was Nero Milano, who arrived like a sermon in shadow: black cassock bleeding smoke, mitre gleaming with false pearls, teeth like obsidian. He didn’t dance, didn’t speak, just stood and the crowd bent around him like he was a hole in the night. I don’t know this Nero by many stretches of the imagination, but Hathian, he seems like someone we should seek out and see what daylight brings him; swipe right, or run fast left? Hmm?
The Contest: Fangs, Flesh, And Velvet Crowns
The winners were announced with the kind of fanfare Hathian usually reserves for crime scenes. A man in a striped suit and oni mask claimed Best Dressed ((Shi Ryū Sato)), while another cloaked figure took Sexiest ((Noah)). Vampire Royalty, however, belonged to the gentleman in blood-red, horns sharp as his laughter ((Akira Takahashi)). Sadly, my Presence was wrapped so tightly around me, that my attempted costume blended into the background. Still, the winner’s were deserving and it shows that for some Hathian isn’t all bits and tits.
Then, because nothing ends politely here, Trinket climbed into a cage above the floor and offered herself as the final prize. “Whoever catches me doesn’t get skinned and wins a make-out session,” she purred into the mic before leaping into the arms of her would-be suitors. Best Dressed and Vampire Royalty caught her, barely… Masks knocked, kisses pressed, promises made. The bottle of whiskey held by Best Dressed did not survive the landing.
Final Thoughts
Yet amid the spectacle, something quieter stole the spotlight. A woman froze mid-dance, one hand on her stomach, eyes wide. Not pain… life. A first flutter. An unborn child kicking to the rhythm of Hathian’s chaos. The woman, strong in the chaos only laughed through tears: “She’s dancing too.”
Hathian, may you look after such moments, because without them… even through the masquerade, Hathian would be a pit.
((Photos & Editing by: Daiyu Tang with Hiroshi))
