Anasztaz walked around the large musical instrument, like it was alien to him. He had been intimately familiar with its workings, but it was so far back...

He could remember sitting by it, and getting his tutor hitting his hands with a rod whenever he missed or mistimed a note. The pain was stinging, but the fear that then made him jolt every time now just pushed his Beast to tighten within his chest in irregular pulses.

He sits in front of it, not with little amount of hesitation, and closes his eyes. He remembers by habit where to put the fingers for a start, and then lets his muscle memory take over. His fingers being slower than correct, but quickly speed up to the proper tempo.

It was liberating, incredibly so. He finds tears of red begin to well, and then to stream down his cheek. It was not a flood of emotions in a way that he'd have felt them in his days of mortality, but instead he was just found exhilarated by the success. As he fought back the veil that clogged his memories and tore through them, cutting through the membranes woven through the corridors of his mind by his own Beast, he was caught in a trance-like reverie. Another kind of surrender, but not to his Beast - to his own will to fight it and emerge victorious.

The last note landed, and he felt more tired than he could remember ever feeling. He had found something he lost, snatched it from the vice-grip of time. It was his again.