#The Forgotten and Purged | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

nottsangel · 3 months ago

Text

blood moon — t.n. & m.r. part 2

pairing: dark!theo nott x reader x dark!mattheo riddle.

warnings: smut 18+, dubcon, violence, blood/bloodplay, knifeplay (carving into skin, cutting off clothes), threesome, painal, double penetration (vaginal and anal sex), stockholm syndrome, cigarette play and branding, mask kink, hair pulling, face slapping, degradation, spanking, threats of murder, creampie. do NOT read if any of these topics are triggering for you.

word count: 4.5k. THIS IS A REUPLOAD

summary: purge night— a night you’ve feared all year despite coming from a rich and powerful family. but when six masked men show up at your door, are you really as safe as you thought?

PART 1. the purge au… moodboard . more

“What the fuck is going on here?”

Even muffled by the mask, you instantly recognised the voice. Mattheo. The same Mattheo you’d heard downstairs earlier— the same Mattheo you did not want to find you. Not after the way he’d been yelling that you were going to die.

“You fucking pervert.” He chuckled, striding into the room with an air of confidence and carelessness. He swung the baseball bat over his shoulder, dark red blood splattering across your once-pristine white walls. His gaze flickered between you, still on your knees, and Theo— who stood frozen, his cock still out.

“You’re in so much fucking trouble, you know that?” Mattheo drawled, amusement dripping from his tone. He was already fantasizing about telling Tom exactly what was playing out before him, you could tell. And so could Theo, his eyes narrowing behind the mask.

“You better shut the fuck up before I slit your throat right here and now.” Theo’s voice was threatening and fierce, the tight grip on the knife turning his knuckles white as he glared at his friend.

“Relax, tough guy.” Mattheo’s brown eyes flickered towards you, darkening with something unreadable— something that made your stomach churn. “You want me to keep my mouth shut?” A pause. His tongue swiped across his lips.

“Then let me join. We’ll use this slut before we gut her like a fucking fish.” Theo scoffed, shaking his masked head in disbelief while Mattheo leaned lazily against the wall, his bat resting beside him, arms crossed as he waited for an answer.

For a quick second, your eyes were drawn to Mattheo’s arms which were covered in platters of blood, flexing slightly as he folded them, revealing his toned muscles. But your gaze was instantly captivated by his eyes— so soft-looking, such a gentle shade of brown, yet something maniacal lurked within them, making you deeply uneasy.

Between the two of them, Mattheo was clearly the deranged one out of the two, while Theo seemed more composed, more calculated. And with that knowledge, you stayed perfectly still, not daring to move an inch, not wanting to attract any unnecessary attention as you listened to them bicker. It was almost as if they’d forgotten you were even there.

“Let you… join? Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Theo muttered irritably, taking a moment to think before stepping closer to Mattheo, knife pointed right at his throat. “Fine. But let me make one thing fucking clear. We’re letting her live. Capito?”

Mattheo groaned dramatically. “Oh, Jesus Christ. Theodore Nott found the love of his life on purge night, ladies and gentlemen!” He gestured wildly, as if speaking to an invisible audience.

Theo’s jaw clenched. “You fucking idiot. Now she knows my full name.” His voice was dangerously low, his face mere inches from Mattheo’s. Their dynamic was strange— one you couldn’t quite place. They seemed like close friends, yet also like they could kill each other at any moment.

Mattheo rolled his eyes. “Oh, please— Here! I’ll take off my mask.” Before Theo could stop him, Mattheo reached up and pulled it off in one swift motion.

Oh.

He was unexpectedly handsome— his dark locks were tousled from the mask, his stunning features complementing the deep brown eyes that had already been exposed to you earlier.

“My name is Mattheo Riddle, I went to Cresthaven high school… what else, uhhh… Oh! I had a really cute cat named Whiskers, which disappeared one day—“”

“Idiota del cazzo, shut the fuck up!” Theo snapped, his voice laced with exasperation. You could see the sheer panic in his blue eyes, but Mattheo— he relished riling Theo up like this, his pretty eyes glinting with amusement as he glared at him.

“You’re such a pussy, man. Calm down”

“Yeah… that’s what I said.” You softly murmured under your breath from across the room, still on your knees— but they didn’t even acknowledge you. Theo’s fiery gaze was locked onto Mattheo, while Mattheo’s mischievous one was equally fixated on Theo’s.

This was your chance. Now or never.

Carefully, you shifted onto all fours, keeping your gaze trained on the two bickering men as you slowly crawled towards the open door, inch by inch. It was risky—you were on the far side of the room next to the bed, meaning you had to slip past them—but it wasn’t impossible.

“Can you put away your, you know, weapon? Feels threatening.” Mattheo then said, causing Theo to narrow his eyes in pure confusion. Your heart pounded as you hyper-focused on every tiny movement, making sure they didn’t notice you. You could practically taste freedom.

“Che cosa? I’m not even holding a—” He began, his eyes shifting to the bloody knife laying on the carpet, staining the white fabric red, before his gaze flicked downward— landing on his half-hard erection. “Oh.” He scoffed in disbelief.

“Yeah, well, can you like, I don't know, point it the other way?”

“You’re a fucking dramaqueen.”

“Listen, I’d rather take a bullet right now than be covered in your cum!”

“You think I’m gonna cum while looking at that ugly face of yours? Please. You’ve got nothing to worry about ‘cause you’re making it soft already."

“That’s only because—”

Perfect. Fucking perfect.

They were so wrapped up in their argument, it gave you the perfect opportunity to sneak away. And fuck—you were so close. You could nearly hear the bloodcurdling, agonised screams echoing from outside the still-open front door. You could almost smell the fresh blood of the poor souls being slaughtered in the streets. That’s how close you—

“Oh, would you look at that? Your pet is running away.” Mattheo’s dry tone sent a chill down your spine, the euphoria you’d felt mere seconds ago instantly shattering.

Theo hastily pulled on his boxers before storming towards you and yanking your head by gripping a fistful of your hair, causing you to let out a sharp scream. You could feel the warm trickle of blood running down your skin again, as he carelessly reopened the wound on your neck.

“Did I say you could leave? Huh? Quit being a fucking brat if you want to stay alive.”

“You’re too fucking nice to her, you pussy.” Mattheo growled from across the room before approaching you as well. You swallowed hard, unsure what he meant by it before he quickly picked you from the floor by effortlessly swinging your body over his broad shoulder. He walked towards the bed and aggressively threw you on it, your body bouncing from the impact.

Mattheo’s hand inched closer to you before his firm palm harshly met the skin of your soft cheek, making your face whip to the side. Tears pricked your waterline from the dazzling stinging sensation, and you were dumbfounded— not necessarily by Mattheo slapping your face, but by how much it turned you on.

“That will shut her up.” Mattheo murmured, his self-satisfied grin evident. Theo’s jaw clenched as he glared at him, disapproval written all over his face before he glanced back at you, his eyes softening slightly through the mask.

It was an intimidating sight— both men staring down at you, their towering, intimidating frames looming over you, with darkened, piercing eyes fully fixated on you and you only. Your panties were soaked by now, but still, you desperately tried to hide it.

Mattheo noticed the way your stare lingered a little longer on Theo— specifically on his face... or rather, his mask. Making you gasp at the sudden movement, Mattheo reached for his own mask, which he had tossed aside earlier, and swiftly placed it back over his head again as he marched towards you. He bent down, tilting his masked head slightly as you could hear the slow, muffled breaths against the material, adding to the chilling scene.

“Does Miss have a little mask kink?” he growled, his voice low and taunting. You gulped, but kept a poker face, not giving him the satisfaction of a reaction, though your cheeks heated at his words. He was right, after all.

You narrowed your eyes at him, the fire in your gaze surprising him for a moment. It was a stark contrast to the fearful expression he was used to seeing in his countless victims. But he wasn’t one to back down from a challenge.

“You’re a little slow sometimes, aren’t you?” you taunted, daring to raise an eyebrow. But even as the words left your lips, a tiny bit of fear still bubbled up inside you. The mischievous grin on Mattheo’s face only grew wider, his piercing eyes staring down at your swollen lips.

It was difficult for Mattheo to pinpoint exactly what it was, but there was something about you that pulled him in. Something that intrigued him. Something that made him want to keep you forever.

“You’re something else, you know that?” Mattheo said in a hushed tone, his voice muffled by the mask, an alluring gaze in his eyes. He swiftly seized the blood-soaked knife from the floor and inched it closer to your stomach, exposed by your lifted shirt, causing you to inhale sharply, your eyes flickering with fear.

You expected to feel the sharp blade dig into your flesh again, but instead, he swiftly slid the weapon under your tight clothes and cut them open in one quick movement. You yelped at the sudden motion, your shirt ripping open, exposing your red lace bra.

“Jesus, calm down. I’m not even hurting you.” Hearing the derision in his voice, you realized you were holding your breath. You let out a shaky exhale of relief— until you heard his chilling voice again, “Yet.”

Theo still loomed over you in front of the bed, his sharp eyes closely observing the scene. He seemed mesmerised, watching Mattheo cut off each article of clothing from your shivering body. You felt more and more exposed with each passing moment as goosebumps covered your bare figure, now only clothed in your underwear and bra.

Theo drew closer, the sound of his heavy footsteps and your pounding heart the only noise in the room, his tall figure casting a dark, intimidating shadow right over you. He took the knife from Mattheo, eager to finish the job, and slid the blade under your bra while leaning over you. You locked eyes with him, and he was so close that all you could see in front of you was the bloodstained, white mask and his captivating blue eyes.

A gasp slipped from your lips as he sliced your bra, his fierce gaze not leaving yours once. Strangely, you couldn’t break eye contact either, as though some invisible force was pulling you in, drowning you in the depth of his stunning ocean eyes.

After tossing your bra to the floor, he dragged the knife over your delicate skin, the blade leaving superficial marks in its wake, down to your dripping cunt. You cursed yourself for not pushing him away and seizing the knife, but you couldn’t— in fact, you were craving more. And he knew that. He didn’t need to hear the words when your sparkling eyes told him everything.

Growing impatient, he quickly snapped the straps of your lace thong, the sharp blade so dangerously close to your most intimate spot. Still, you only felt yourself grow more aroused because of it, and the shame and anger towards yourself gradually faded, as lust, yearning and desperation overtook all other senses.

For the first time, Theo slowly broke eye contact, his hungry eyes scanning every inch of your fully naked figure— every mole, every imperfection, every detail that made it yours. He couldn’t seem to look away, his pupils dilating and his pants growing tighter at the breathtaking sight. Slowly, he inched closer, and you could smell that delicious, musky cologne again, calming you down instantly.

“Like I said, such a pretty little thing.” he whispered, and you felt your cheeks heat up, your core throbbing with how badly you craved to feel something. “You’re all ours tonight. We’re gonna fucking ruin you.”

Before you could question his statement, he pulled you towards him by your hips and swiftly flipped you over, eliciting a shriek out of you as your body bounced on the mattress. He propped your hips up, leaving you ass up, face down in front of them. Embarrassment washed over you, being in such a vulnerable position in front of two men, and you could feel your arousal trickling down your thighs, only making you feel more humiliated.

“She’s dripping, mate. Fuckin’ pathetic.” Mattheo remarked, a condescending chuckle escaping his lips as Theo handed him the knife.

“‘Course she is. Have you seen the way she’s been looking at us?” Theo replied, watching Mattheo move closer to you. Your whole body tensed as you felt the blade running over your exposed skin once again. You didn’t need to see Mattheo to know he was smirking at the sight of you trembling in a mix of fear and arousal.

“Don’t got much to say now, huh?” He taunted, dragging the knife down your bare back to your ass, the cold metal and sharp edges making you shiver.

“Fuck you.” You spat back at him, but even as the words left your mouth, you felt yourself unable to fight back. You were terrified, yes— but that wasn’t why.

“There she is.” Mattheo said, his tone pleased, before harshly slapping your ass and leaving a stinging mark on your sensitive skin, making you jolt forward.

Immediately after, you felt the icy knife dig into your flesh, deeper and deeper, until your warm blood trickled from the open wounds, making you hiss at the sharp pain. Slowly, you felt the letters M and R being carved into your ass on one side before Mattheo handed the knife to Theo.

Theo did the same to the still unmarked skin, but this time you felt the letters T and N being cut deeply into your delicate flesh, making you grip the sheets from the sting. Mattheo leaned down and eagerly licked up your blood from the wound, and you inhaled a sharp breath at the feeling of his tongue lapping at the deep cuts.

Theo abruptly gripped a handful of your hair and yanked your head back, holding the blood-dripping knife close to your face. “Clean it up.” he instructed, and you complied, your tongue gliding carefully over the sharp metal as the bitter, metallic taste of your own fresh blood filled your senses.

“Atta girl.” he grunted in approval, as he dragged you off the bed and onto your feet by your hair, making you yelp at the pull. Theo now stood in front of you, and Mattheo behind, your lips set in a grim line at being so close to both men, feeling their burning gaze through the masks, on you and you only.

Theo lowered his boxers again, his cock still painfully hard, the tip pink and swollen, leaking with precum. His gaze lingered on you, devouring your form with hungry eyes, as his hand moved to your head, gently cupping your flushed face.

For the first time on purge night, something stirred inside him— a warmth, a tingle that gnawed at his chest. It was unfamiliar, unsettling. He had never felt anything like this before. In the past, the screams and pleas of his victims were nothing but background noise, just another part of the night. But with you... it was different. The faces of those he’d slaughtered had always blurred together, reduced to mere objects. But he saw you as a person, a human being— and it terrified him.

“So fuckin’ pretty.” Theo groaned, his voice rough with desire as he abruptly gripped the back of your thighs and lifted you, your cunt hovering over his leaking erection. Instinctively, you wrapped your legs around his muscular torso, and he effortlessly held you up, his biceps flexing, his fingers digging into your flesh.

That feeling— it was back again. That disgusting, hollow sensation. You thought you had pushed it away, but how could you, when you’re about to have sex with a fucking murderer? Theo noticed the slight tension in your body, your brow furrowing as you nibbled on your bottom lip.

“I promise I’ll make it worth it.”

Your pulse raced, the blood-curdling screams outside the house, combined with being sandwiched between two masked killers, making you feel… unsettled. Yet Theo’s deep voice, laced with his thick Italian accent, was enough to pull you in, distracting you from the terror.

You wiggled your hips, your pussy aching with need, craving him. The head of his cock nudged against your wet entrance, making your body shudder in anticipation.

“Tsk, so impatient,” he taunted, his voice laced with amusement, but there was an edge to it. Before you could reply, he pushed you down fully onto him, filling you completely, stretching you in a way that made you hiss. His breath was uneven in your ear as he murmured, “You feel so good, bella. So damn tight.”

Behind you, you heard Mattheo free his erection from his pants, the tip brushing against you. “Not even waiting for me, huh? I see how it is.”

The sudden pressure of Mattheo’s cock pushing into your ass made you gasp, your sharp nails digging into Theo’s arms as the sharp, stinging pain hit you. Tears welled up in your eyes as Mattheo, unrelenting, spread your cheeks and pushed in deeper.

He didn’t give a fuck that he was hurting you— in fact, it turned his sick brain on even more. He was only after his own pleasure, using you like a toy to get what he wanted.

“It— It hurts!” you cried out, the sensation of being filled by both men stretching you beyond what you could handle, making you bite down hard on your lip until you drew blood from the thin skin, but it also fueled an unfamiliar hunger within you. You wanted to fight, to push Mattheo away, to scream for him to stop— but the combination of the sharp pain and the overwhelming pleasure made it almost impossible to resist. It was intoxicating.

“Shut up and fuckin’ take it,” Mattheo growled, thrusting in with brutal force. “This night could’ve been a lot worse.”

Through your blurred vision, you locked eyes with Theo, and for some reason, that gave you a sense of grounding. You had met Theo right before Mattheo barged in, but with Mattheo there, Theo felt like your safe space, as if you had known him for years.

“Fuuuck, you feel— god, you feel so good, baby.” Mattheo muttered, setting a brutal rhythm. You squeezed him so tightly, he couldn’t hold back. Even though it hurt, the mixture of pain and pleasure made you even more wet, arousal leaking all over Theo’s cock.

But then, a sharp chill ran through you as you felt the cold blade pressed against your throat.

“One wrong move, and it’s over.” Mattheo grunted into your ear, once again relishing the fear it stirred in you, pushing him closer to the edge. His cock pushed deeper in and out of you, rubbing against Theo’s, separated only by the thin wall of your flesh.

Theo kept a close watch on your facial expressions and body language, alert and ready to intervene if Mattheo went too far. He didn’t know why he felt protective over you, but he did, and he felt himself relax as more pleasure than pain radiated from you.

Theo began thrusting into you as well, his pace significantly slower than Mattheo’s, who was nearing his release. Mattheo’s hands gripped your hips, holding you firmly as his thrusts became rougher, bruising you with every movement. You felt so tight around him, the knife at your throat unsteadily shaking as his thrusts grew sloppier, making your whole body freeze at the danger.

Luckily for you, Mattheo came deep inside you a few thrusts later, strings of curses falling from his lips. Theo had expected him to come fast. He’d been waiting for it, craving to feel you on his own. All to himself.

“Just what I needed… Fuck.” Mattheo groaned breathlessly as he abruptly pulled out, the sudden emptiness feeling strange for a moment, but you quickly felt his warm cum drip out of you, dripping down all over Theo’s cock. Behind you, you heard the mask drop to the floor, followed by the familiar click of a lighter, cigarette smoke quickly filling the air.

“You’re mine now,” Theo whispered into your ear, his voice low and possessive, drawing your attention back to him. With his arms still holding you up, he effortlessly walked you both over to the bed, sitting on the edge with you on top of him.

“Come on, pretty girl. Make me feel good,” he ordered lazily, settling back on his elbows, his eyes hungrily raking over your naked body, from your perfect tits to the way your cunt still tightly gripped his hard cock.

You felt hesitant at first, self-conscious under the weight of their eyes, waiting for you to fuck yourself on Theo’s cock. But then, a flicker of something other than lust caught your attention in Theo’s eyes— desperation. He wanted this badly, more than anything, and it made you feel powerful in the situation.

“How about you beg for it first?” You blurted out, immediately gulping hard, not knowing if you killed yourself just now by saying those words. Theo cocked his head to the side, the silence only making you more nervous.

“Such a dumb girl, isn’t she? She’s lucky she’s this pretty.” Mattheo remarked, the sound of him exhaling cigarette smoke carrying his amusement with it. But Theo ignored him, all his focus on you, your unexpected request clearly intriguing him.

“Please.” He murmured with a smirk. His rough hands gripped your ass, the sharp sting of the fresh wounds on your skin being stretched overshadowed by the feeling of his cock buried deep inside you. The word felt foreign coming from him— usually, it would be said to him, not the other way around.

Mattheo’s eyes widened, watching the scene unfold. “What the— you know what? Not my problem.” He shook his head, taking another drag from his cigarette and observing the two of you with a mix of curiosity and disinterest.

Slowly, you began to move up and down on Theo, your hands resting on his chest as his cock slid in and out of you, massaging your walls so perfectly. Low groans escaped his lips as he watched you, his eyes filled with lust, one hand roughly guiding your hips.

Mattheo handed him the cigarette, and Theo took a slow drag, his eyes darting all over your body, unsure where to look. With one hand still gripping your flesh, he exhaled, blowing the smoke right into your face. He smirked at the way you coughed against the thick cloud, his eyes squinting in amusement.

You were too focused on the way Theo’s erection stretched you open to care about anything else, your head thrown back as you rode him, chasing your own orgasm. Theo was holding back his moans, not wanting to reveal how much he was enjoying it, but your pussy felt like heaven to him. This might even be better than killing on purge night, he thought to himself.

“You gonna cum for me, baby? You gonna cum all over my dick?” Theo groaned, handing the cigarette back to Mattheo. Both of his hands now gripped your hips harshly, guiding you up and down on his cock. You felt disgusting—covered in blood, bruises, cuts, Mattheo’s cum, and your own arousal—but still, this night could’ve ended a lot worse.

“Mhm... mhm,” you softly murmured, nodding and unable to speak, your movements increasing as you neared your climax.

You felt Mattheo creep behind you, the scent of cigarette smoke filling your nostrils once more. “You better cum for us, princess. Or we might have to kill you after all,” He threatened, his hand brushing your tousled hair from your face as he mischievously gazed down at you.

Theo hit all the right spots, the pleasure becoming overwhelming as he thrust upward, the head of his cock brushing against your most sensitive parts. Just as you were about to cum, a sudden intense burn spread across your thigh, followed by a sizzling sound. Your head jerked to the side as you watched Mattheo press the end of his cigarette into your skin, a wicked grin spreading across his face.

“Look at you, all fucked out for us.” He chuckled, and at that moment, your orgasm uncontrollably rushed through you, clenching around Theo’s cock as he groaned deeply at the sensation.

Your knees buckled, your head thrown back, and the unbearable pain from the burn only heightened your pleasure. Your lips parted in ecstasy as you came, and quickly after, you felt a pool of warmth spread within you as Theo’s grip tightened on your hips, his own deep groans muffled by his white mask.

“So fuckin’ perfect…” were the only words Theo could manage, his breath shallow as he leaned back on the bed, eyes shut in the afterglow. It had been by far the best orgasm he’d experienced, and he refused to pull out, unwilling to miss the comforting warmth of your pussy around his cock.

The morning sun slowly rose, marking the end of Purge Night, and Theo reluctantly pulled out, watching as you collapsed against him— exhausted and ruined.

Mattheo smirked, amused by the sight, flicking the last embers of his cigarette onto the floor as the same ominous sirens blared violently through the walls, echoing over the blood-covered streets. “Yep, that’s our sign to leave.”

“You hear that? Purge Night is over,” Theo murmured, stroking your bruised skin possessively. “But that doesn’t mean we’re done with you.” Your eyes widened, and you couldn’t help but feel a rush of excitement surge through you. You weren’t ready to let go just yet.

Mattheo chuckled darkly, “You think you can go back to your old life after this? You’re ours now.” As the sirens signaled the end of the chaos outside, the two exchanged a look— one that promised you were theirs, whether you liked it or not. Little did they know, that’s all you wanted.

“We know where to find you now, piccola,” Theo said, his voice low and intense. “Any second of any day, we could climb through these windows… or break in through the back door. Who knows?”

With those final words, they walked out, leaving you naked, wounded, and stuffed with their cum, feeling the emptiness slowly creep up on you. Your eyes drifted to the two blood-soaked masks they left on your bedroom floor— souvenirs to remember them by, reminders of their power over you.

Purge Night was just the beginning.

reminder: reblogs and comments are greatly appreciated and keep me motivated. ♡

a/n: i understand that people might ask for a next part, but for now, i am not planning to write more full lengths fics for this. however, i will continue writing drabbles and creating more content in this au with the any of the slytherin boys! more.

taglist : @satosugu4-ever @juliet-017 @freak-of-hawkins @slyth-lolo @jetblackpayne @shartnugget26 @gipsonnikki @missdior222 @splzq @rafesbunniebby @theosswhore @drewsbraziliangf @droplikeconfetti @urfavmar006 @nothingbutfilthx @thequeenofcurses @decthaxhrcv @bitterspoons @redros3y @Thecraziestcrayon @downbad4reid @slythetic @nottslove @azzberry @tantrumbaby @nottsstar @justreadingficsdontmindme @hvgwartss @bunnyweasley23 @watersquirtpewpewboomm @bigtiddywench @etolies-garden @rafesslxt @rafesgiirl @youroptimisticblackhole @blackthunder137 @rafesthroatbaby @helendeath @llpovi @slytherinshalo @k-2319 @thelostsea @moonpascal @literally-a-ferret @lazybitch06 @beyond-the-ashes @scorched333 @singingonmydrivehome @gothpyr @pey2618 @gay-espresso-depresso @songwizard @dizzylmwahh @mimsfaerie @giasus- @gibsluv

2K notes · View notes

dclovesdanny · 6 months ago

Text

Time loop x Dead Serious

Damian had been in a time loop for 99 days.

It had taken 40 loops for him to realize Phantom, the newest member of the Justice League, was looping as well. When he finally managed to corner him, Phantom was as confused as he was. Apparently, Phantom’s mentor, who was the embodiment of time, was unable to be contacted.

Damian found out about Phantom’s civilian identity in loop 45 after he joined Phantom on a patrol.

Loop 56 was when they started getting closer than just allies. That was the loop where they saw someone die for the first time.

(Damian was too distracted. He didn’t realize Timothy was behind him. He had forgotten about the goons behind him. He didn’t see the bullet coming.)

(He couldn’t meet Timothy’s eyes when he was at breakfast that morning.)

It was loop 85 when they finally found out that someone had apparently found clockwork summoning circle. It took 3 more days for them to locate the cult and discover the cult was working with the League of Assassins.

(Damian could feel the eyes of his family, but he wasn’t willing to pretend he was the same. He had seen each of them die on patrol and knew each of their deaths was due to his actions. He refused to act the same.)

They spent two loops doing reconnaissance, and eight days of planning.

(Damian and Daniel-Danny, he had asked to be called Danny, were becoming codependent. Damian knew the signs of it. Danny had even brought it up. Still, they both had seen their friends and family die and wake up in the morning without any recollection. They were the only other people who understood what they had seen, the changes that happened in their minds.)

Loop day 99 was their “purge day”as Danny called it. Danny had taken him for a day of freedom before the fight, somehow, knowing that Damian couldn’t bear to look at his family right now.(He knew Danny felt the same. Danny had been the one who called him in a haze on loop 62 when his parents discovered who he was and tried to kill him. Danny had apparently had that happen once before during this loop, and it happened one other time after Danny and Damien became allies. Both times ended with the two of them silently cuddling through the night.)

The fight had been remarkably easy. Undoing the summoning circle was… more complicated.

Clockwork looked genuinely sorry. He apologized to them, and gave them both necklaces of time medallions, so that things like this or like speedsters would leave them unchanged.(Danny laughed a little after that, though it seemed partially hysterical.)

Danny spent that night in Damian’s arms in silence. Damien couldn’t fathom letting him go.

(the loop was ending, but what did that mean for them? They couldn’t pretend to be strangers again tomorrow. Were they supposed to be back to normal? how could Damien scoff and call Timothy by his last name when he had seen Timothy die for him? How could Danny act as if he trusted his parents when he had seen them find out he was a ghost and try to murder him? How were they supposed to move on?)

As Damien awoke to the sound of his door being opened, his arms still wrapped around Danny’s sleeping figure, he slowly realized that he had gotten into the habit of not setting his alarm anymore.

#this turned into angst #time loop #dead serious #i’m sorry this prompt is so angsty #angst #Dead serious is codependent now #Damian is dealing with emotions #the batfamily is confused #and concerned #dcxdp

2K notes · View notes

mrsvante · 2 months ago

Text

Stolen Orbit

pairing: jungkook x reader

genre: yandere au, dark horror, sci fi

summary: you were meant for eradication with the rest of your planet—erased without a trace, just another speck in the galaxy's endless purge. but jeongguk saw you. fragile, insignificant... human. and something his kind had long forgotten stirred in him. instead of erasing your existence, he took you, stole you from extinction and made you his. now you live in a celestial cage, adored and possessed by something not quite capable of love, but desperate to keep you. he doesn't understand your fear, your resistance, but he craves your surrender all the more because of it. and if it takes breaking you to make you his completely... he will.

warnings: slow burn, mass extermination, alien jungkook forced captivity/proximity, psychological manipulation, stockholm syndrome, dubcon, smut, ritualistic copulation

word count: 7,805

The Forever

It happens too fast.

Or maybe… not fast enough.

You don’t plan it.

You don’t think.

You simply run.

The opportunity presents itself like a gift from gods long since abandoned. A subtle error, a flicker in Jeongguk’s routine.

You both rise from your shared meal, or what passes for meals aboard this ship of whispered threats and suffocating tenderness, and for once, he doesn’t immediately shepherd you back toward the sleeping chamber.

Instead, his attention flickers toward the far wall, speaking softly in a language you still do not understand, giving brief commands to the ship’s interface.

You move before logic can catch up.

Your bare feet slap against the cool, pliant floor as you dart past him, weaving through the open doorway just as it begins to ripple closed.

He doesn’t shout.

He doesn’t chase.

Not immediately.

But you feel his gaze snap to you, heavy and sharp as a blade pressed to the back of your neck.

A low sound follows, not a roar or a curse, but something worse.

Amused. Displeased. Intrigued.

You don’t look back.

You can’t.

You sprint down the corridor, lungs burning, pulse roaring in your ears as the ship becomes a blur of seamless walls and softly glowing paths.

You have no plan.

There is no escape, you know this, every part of you knows this.

But still… you run.

Because something primal and furious still lives inside you, something untouched by his hands, his whispers, his unbearable tenderness.

Something human.

—

You don’t realize how far you’ve gone until the hall begins to change.

The sterile white smoothness gives way to darker hues. Soft matte blacks and deep blues that drink in the ambient light. The air shifts too, warmer, faintly perfumed with something that makes your head swim.

Your frantic steps slow.

Confusion tempers panic.

You’ve entered a different part of the ship. Instinctively you know this space isn’t meant for you.

The hall spills into a vast open chamber.

At first, you falter, confused by what you’re seeing, and then your breath catches painfully in your throat.

This… is his. His quarters.

It couldn’t be more different from your confined room.

Where your space is neutral, clinical, designed for compliance and simplicity, this is… lavish.

Dark, seductive textures fill the room. Draped fabrics that ripple faintly despite the still air. Walls that hum with deep sapphire light, pulsing softly like a heartbeat slowed to slumber.

And at the far end, dominating everything, is a window. You stumble toward it before you realize you’re even moving. It stretches from floor to ceiling, impossibly clear, revealing endless, horrifying, beautiful space.

Stars burn quietly beyond, infinite and cold, scattered like spilled diamonds across the ink of the void.

Nebulae drift in slow spirals, glowing faintly like ghost lanterns hung in darkness.

There is no horizon.

No anchor.

You are untethered.

Insignificant.

It is the most beautiful thing you have ever seen.

And it makes you want to weep.

But you don’t.

Instead, you turn, and your breath catches again as your gaze lands on the bed.

Massive.

Far larger than necessary. Nestled in dark fabrics that gleam faintly in the soft glow. The sheets shimmer subtly, changing hues as though alive. Deep purples, smoky silvers, midnight blues.

A place meant to hold something precious.

Or trap something unwilling.

Your stomach twists sharply.

But what steals your breath completely is beyond the bed.

A garden.

Or something like it.

Alien flora grows behind a translucent partition. Glowing softly, leaves curling lazily as though breathing. Vines drip with luminescent petals, strange fruits pulse faintly like tiny beating hearts. The air is rich and heavy with fragrance, sweet and intoxicating.

You move toward it, hand lifting, unable to resist the strange compulsion to touch.

But before your fingers meet the glass, the temperature shifts.

The room grows colder.

Not literally.

Energetically.

Like being plunged into deep water.

A shadow falls over you, and you don’t need to turn to know. You feel him behind you, close, silent, and very displeased.

His voice breaks the heavy air, low and dangerously quiet.

“You ran.”

You close your eyes, throat tight. Your fingers curl slowly into a fist, hovering just short of the alien plant. “You’re not my keeper,” you whisper bitterly.

Silence stretches taut between you, vibrating with tension.

And then, movement.

His hand slides over yours, pale, long fingers curling delicately around your knuckles, pulling them away from the glass with infuriating gentleness.

His other arm slides around your waist, tugging you back against the solid wall of his chest.

You feel him exhale, slow and controlled, his breath ghosting over the curve of your throat.

“You do not understand.”

His lips brush the edge of your ear, a caress disguised as a reprimand.

“This is not defiance.” His voice darkens slightly, tightening with restrained frustration. “This is denial of what already is, little star.”

You tense, shivering slightly beneath his hold, but he only draws you tighter, guiding you slowly away from the garden and toward the enormous bed.

His hands never leave you. They mold and coax, turning your resistance into something pliant and unwillingly receptive.

“I am not angered,” he murmurs as he sits on the edge of the bed, pulling you easily between his knees. “You misunderstand.”

His eyes glow softly in the darkness,pale, sharp, but impossibly tender in their intensity.

“I am… disappointed.”

The words hit harder than threats. He says them softly, but they slice clean through you.

“I allow you freedom within reason,” he continues quietly, hands stroking your sides, soothing and punishing at once. “But you abuse it. You flee. You risk harm. This… displeases me, deeply.”

You clench your jaw, but the defiance feels hollow now.

Especially as his touch becomes softer, more insistent, sliding up your arms, down your back, curling possessively at your waist.

“And now,” he whispers, voice thick and dark with promise, “I must correct this.”

Your stomach flips violently, but he doesn’t strike. Does not raise his voice. Instead, he shifts, drawing you down with him until you are pressed fully against the bed, against him.

Pinned by nothing but his body and the oppressive weight of his gaze.

“You will not leave my quarters,” he murmurs, words sealing like chains around your wrists.

“You will not sleep apart from me. You will not run again.”

His lips brush your temple softly, terrifyingly gentle.

“You will remain where you belong.”

You try to twist away, you have to, even if only for pride, but his arms tighten, and his mouth finds the curve of your throat.

A soft, open mouthed kiss.

Not hungry.

Not violent.

Claiming.

Your pulse skitters wildly.

“Stop—”

“You do not wish me to,” he says calmly, his lips moving against your skin. “Your body no longer fears me. Only your mind fights.”

He shifts again, sliding you fully beneath him, his weight caging you without urgency. He watches you, eyes glowing faintly, face inches from yours, utterly calm as you tremble beneath him.

“You will stay,” he murmurs again, softer this time.

Not a threat.

Not a command.

A promise.

And something in the finality of it breaks the last fragile thread inside you. You close your eyes tightly, not in surrender, but in desperate resignation.

You do not want to yield, but you already have. Because when he leans down and presses his lips gently, adoringly to your brow, sealing the moment, sealing you.

You don’t push him away.

—

Days pass, or perhaps cycles. Time does not exist in this place the way it once did. There is no sun to rise, no moon to wax and wane.

No ticking clock to count down minutes and hours.

Only Jeongguk.

And you.

And the quiet, suffocating intimacy that has grown between you like ivy, curling slowly around your throat until it becomes easier to stop pulling.

You sleep in his quarters now.

Not by choice.

Not exactly.

At first, it was punishment.

You ran.

You defied.

You disappointed him.

And so he locked you here.

Not with chains or harsh restraints, no, Jeongguk has never needed such crude methods. He uses himself, his presence, his warmth. His voice in the dark, murmuring softly until the silence feels unbearable without it.

At first, you hated every moment.

You lay stiff in his enormous bed, refusing to face him as he wrapped himself around you each night like a living shroud.

But over time… something changed.

Not in him.

In you.

You grew used to the weight of his arm slung heavy across your waist. Used to the steady, soothing hum of his heartbeat against your back. Used to the soft rasp of his voice, speaking words in his language you could not understand but somehow knew were meant for you alone.

What you hate most…

What makes your stomach twist with guilt and confusion…

Is how much easier everything became when you stopped resisting.

—

He rewards you, of course, Jeongguk is not cruel. Not in the ways that would be easier to despise.

He is patient.

Measured.

Dangerously tender.

When you eat without argument, he sits beside you quietly, watching with faint approval gleaming in his luminous eyes.

When you speak to him, simple words, mundane thoughts, nothing of consequence, he listens as though you are unraveling the very fabric of existence.

When you no longer flinch from his touch, he becomes bolder. Fingers brushing lightly along your arms when you sit together. Knuckles ghosting beneath your jaw as he tucks stray hair behind your ear. His hand resting possessively on your thigh as you eat, unmoving, warm and heavy and there.

And at night…

At night, his hands become gentle chains.

They stroke down your spine as you drift toward sleep, curling at your hips, pulling you against the hard, unrelenting comfort of his body. He murmurs softly then, words you cannot translate but no longer fear.

They lull you.

Cradle you.

Somewhere in the dark, something in you gives. You no longer stay awake plotting, no longer pull away, no longer pretend you hate it.

Because the truth is cruel in its simplicity.

You don’t want the cold, hard ache of solitude anymore.

You want warmth.

You want softness.

You want… him.

And Jeongguk knows this.

Oh, he knows.

He doesn’t gloat, does not push. He simply waits, watching patiently as you unravel slowly, inevitably, beneath his endless, unwavering attention.

—

It’s during one of these quiet nights that the shift truly happens. The ship has dimmed to mimic dusk, casting his quarters in soft twilight. You sit together on the wide bed, your legs folded beneath you, Jeongguk lounging beside you like some dark, predatory god.

His hair spills across his bare shoulders, strands shimmering faintly in the low light.

He wears no robes now, only thin, dark fabric that clings softly to the lines of his body, leaving very little to the imagination.

You talk, nothing about Earth. Not about escape, or pain or loss. About nothing and everything. You ask questions you never thought you would.

What does his species eat?

Do they sleep?

Do they dream?

Does he feel loneliness?

What did he think when he first saw you, trembling and furious, caged in his ship like something caught in amber?

He answers softly, thoughtfully.

Not coldly.

Not cruelly.

He tells you he does not dream, but he wonders what it would be like to dream of you. He tells you he does not feel loneliness, but he aches when you look at him as though you do not see him. He tells you that when he first saw you—glowing, furious, refusing death—he felt something break in him that had never mended.

You say nothing to that.

You can’t.

Not when your chest tightens painfully and your throat feels too tight to speak. Not when his words slip beneath your skin like silk and root in the softest, most vulnerable parts of you.

Not when you realize you no longer want to argue.

Silence falls, not uncomfortable, but heavy with something unspoken. His hand rests lightly on your ankle, thumb stroking idly over the bone.

You should pull away.

You don’t.

Instead…you reach. You don’t think about it, your body moves on instinct, craving something you refuse to name. Your fingers brush his wrist softly.

A simple touch. Barely anything at all.

But to Jeongguk, it’s everything. He stills instantly, as though afraid to frighten you. His eyes burn softly, shifting to pale rose and molten silver, glowing faintly in the dark.

“You seek me,” he murmurs, wonder and hunger twining in his voice like threads of silk.

You don’t respond.

You can’t.

Your throat is too tight, your mind too full, but you don’t pull away.

Your fingers curl lightly around his wrist, a tether, a silent plea, a confession you don’t yet have the courage to speak aloud.

His breath catches, you feel it against your palm, soft and in awe. And then, slowly, he shifts closer. His forehead rests lightly against yours, and his voice slides into your mind like a whisper in a dream.

“You are becoming mine,” he breathes, so soft and so full of quiet satisfaction that it makes your chest ache.

“Fully. Finally.”

You close your eyes.

And this time, you do not argue.

Because beneath the fear, beneath the shame, beneath the fragile threads of your resistance…you want.

And wanting is far more dangerous than surrender.

::::::::::::

You knew you shouldn’t have done it.

Even as your bare feet carried you soundlessly through Jeongguk’s darkened quarters, the pulse in your throat hammering wildly, you knew this was foolish.

A fantasy.

An echo of who you used to be.

But somewhere deep down, beneath the soft weight of his endless touches and whispered promises, beneath the reluctant ease you’d begun to feel wrapped in his presence, a spark still remained.

And tonight, that spark burned hot.

You needed to run.

You needed to prove to yourself that he hadn��t hollowed you out completely.

So when he left for only a moment, speaking to the ship, or perhaps another Kaereth vessel, you slipped free.

It didn’t matter that there was nowhere to go.

It didn’t matter that the ship would not let you off.

It only mattered that you could.

So you did.

You ran.

Through softly glowing corridors, past shifting walls that whispered in languages you didn’t understand.

You didn’t make it far.

You never even heard him approach.

But suddenly his presence was there. Behind you, around you. Suffocating and cold.

Your breath caught as the floor beneath your feet pulsed faintly, alive, alerting its master. And then his voice, smooth and sharp as polished steel, sliced through the silence.

“You disappoint me again.”

You freeze, terror and shame colliding painfully in your chest.

Slowly he stepped into view. Jeongguk was radiant in his displeasure.

His dark hair hung loose, shimmering faintly with the ship’s subtle light. His robes are absent now, only thin layers of deep, clinging fabric draped across his powerful body.

His eyes glowed low and cold, pale silver and deep indigo, swirling softly like storm clouds ready to break.

You stepped back instinctively.

But he only followed, slowly, deliberately, until your back hit the cool, seamless wall.

“You still do not understand,” he murmured, voice dangerously quiet. “You still believe you possess will.”

You tried to speak, to beg or explain, but he silenced you with a single gesture.

The wall shifted behind you suddenly, hands of soft, malleable material winding around your wrists, pinning them above your head effortlessly.

You gasped, struggling, but it was useless. The ship responded to him, not you.

Jeongguk stepped closer, until his body pressed flush to yours. Warm and impossibly solid, his presence eclipsing every frantic thought in your head.

“You do not leave,” he whispered darkly, leaning close so his mouth brushed your ear.

“You do not flee.”

His hand slid down slowly, tracing your throat, your collarbone. Lower, until his palm cupped the heat between your thighs.

You stiffened violently, horror and shame crashing through you.

“N-No—” you gasped, writhing helplessly.

But he only hummed softly, pressing his lips to your jaw, his breath scorching.

“Your mouth says no,” he murmured.

“But your body…”

His fingers slid beneath the thin fabric of your shift, stroking through slickness you hadn’t even realized was there.

You choked on a sob—humiliated, furious, and aching.

“See,” he breathed, sounding deeply pleased.

“You hate me. But you crave me.”

You shook your head wildly, tears burning your eyes.

“That’s not true! I—I don’t want—”

But he silenced you again, this time with his mouth. His lips slanted over yours, soft and consuming, his tongue sliding past your lips as though tasting every last shard of your defiance.

You fought.

You twisted and whimpered and tried to hold on to the last threads of your hatred.

But his fingers never stopped moving. Slow, deep strokes. Unforgiving and tender, drawing the heat from you like a cruel promise. Your body trembled violently, shame scorching through you as pleasure tangled with humiliation in a suffocating knot.

You hated this, hated…him.

But your hips arched helplessly into his hand as your thighs shook. Your breath broke apart in desperate, needy gasps.

And Jeongguk knew, of course, he knew.

He pulled back just enough to watch you, eyes glowing like molten silver as he worked you mercilessly toward ruin.

“You are close,” he murmured, voice velvet and vicious all at once.

“Fighting still. How sweet. How foolish.”

You whimpered, high and frantic, as your orgasm crashed over you with terrifying force. You came hard, gasping, sobbing, and writhing helplessly against his palm as he milked every desperate spasm from your ruined body.

But he didn’t stop, even as tears streaked down your face.

Even as you weakly begged, voice breaking, words dissolving into soft, shattered sounds.

“J-Jeongguk— please— I can’t—”

“Yes,” he murmured darkly, removing his hand only long enough to tear your shift aside, baring you completely.

“You can. You will.”

“Yes,” he repeated simply, voice soft as silk and twice as binding. He lifted you effortlessly, spreading your thighs wide as though you weighed nothing at all in his arms. His glowing eyes devoured the sight of your trembling, naked form.

“You will take me now, my little star,” he whispered, impossibly tender, yet with an unmovable certainty that settled deep beneath your ribs.

“You will keep me inside you until you understand. Until you stop running… even in your thoughts.”

You sobbed helplessly, overwhelmed and trembling, as he pressed himself against your dripping heat.

And then, you felt him.

His cock—massive, foreign, and stunning in a terrible, breathtaking way—pushed forward with slow, patient cruelty. Bioluminescent veins shimmered faintly in the dim light, casting soft glows in intricate, elegant patterns across his flushed skin.

Ridges along the shaft shifted and flexed subtly, swirling upward in almost ceremonial tattoos that gleamed like runes, etched into his very being.

The head of it was darker than the rest. Flushed a deeper violet, slick with pearlescent lust that sparkled faintly, streaked through with thin, glowing veins of soft blue and white, like liquid lightning captured in crystal.

He pressed the head against your entrance, and you felt it throb, warm and alive in a way that stole your breath.

“This is what you run from?” Jeongguk murmured, his voice unexpectedly soft, as though you were an incomprehensible thing.

“This is not punishment, little one. Not truly. This is how I teach you. How I make you understand.”

You whimpered, hips arching involuntarily as his cock began to stretch you slowly open, each ridge catching deliciously against sensitive nerves that made your vision blur. The invasion was devastatingly thorough—deeper, thicker, more filling than any human man could ever hope to be.

“You will feel me here,” Jeongguk whispered, his lips ghosting over your cheek as he thrust deeper still, “long after this moment fades. You will feel me when you dream. When you wake. When you touch yourself, wishing you hated me still.”

You sobbed, body caught between devastation and unbearable need.

And he kissed your tears away—tenderly. Worshipfully.

“Let go,” he coaxed softly, rolling his hips with unhurried cruelty. “Cease your fighting, sweet treasure. Let me in.”

You cracked.

Your body shuddered violently as the ridges and heated, glowing veins massaged every trembling part of you. Forcing desperate cries from your lips. When his cock bottomed out inside of you, the pressure was indescribable. Filling. Claiming.

And then as his hips snapped forward and he began to fuck you properly, dragging the swollen ridges along your tender walls, his hunger flooded you in slow pulses.

It was warm.

So warm, like molten silk spreading through your core. Your abdomen tightened and tingled, the heat melting upwards, radiating outward like a drugged haze wrapping itself around your very soul. You sobbed brokenly as your womb clenched in greedy spasms, as though your entire body craved more.

“You feel it, don’t you?” Jeongguk whispered, awe thick in his voice now, tender and dark. “You feel me marking you. Taking root inside you.”

You couldn’t speak.

Too lost to the intense, shimmering pleasure that made your head spin. His cum drugged you, thick and electric and numbing all at once—like a lover’s cruel gift, locking you in ecstasy you hadn’t consented to but couldn’t possibly refuse.

“You will never forget this,” he murmured, slowing his pace only to grind deeply, forcing another shocked moan from your swollen lips.

“Even if you try. You will dream of the way your body melts when I fill you. You will remember how your womb warms and welcomes me. Forever.”

You gasped, locking up as another orgasm ripped through you violently—intensified, devastating, addictive.

“Yes,” Jeongguk groaned harshly, hips jerking forward one final time as he came deep inside you—hot and endless and thick, filling every desperate part of you with searing, possessive heat.

You shattered with him, writhing helplessly as your body drank down his essence greedily. So much that you swore you could feel the warmth blooming deep inside, hugging your uterus like a numbing heat pad pressed from within.

When it was over, when you collapsed against him, boneless and shaking, he kissed you.

Soft. Gentle. Almost heartbreakingly sweet.

“You will never run again,” Jeongguk whispered against your lips, cupping your jaw delicately even as his cock stayed buried inside you, keeping every last drop where it belonged.

And the way your arms weakly clung to his shoulders, seeking more, needing more, aching for more, made it clear…

You wouldn’t.

Not anymore.

—

You sleep deeply that night, for the first time since the sky cracked open and swallowed your world whole, you dream.

It is not of Earth. Not of family or freedom or loss.

You dream of him.

Of heat.

Of skin.

Of being filled so completely that even in sleep, your body aches in quiet, humming pleasure.

When you wake, it lingers.

The ache.

The need.

You shift beneath the dark, silken sheets, thighs pressing together instinctively as your body clenches softly around absence. You whimper without meaning to, soft and pathetic, the sound falling heavy into the dim, warm air.

He is already there.

Of course he is.

You are not sure if Jeongguk ever truly sleeps. Or if he simply waits, quietly vigilant, watching you slip deeper and deeper into his.

He watches you now, lounging against the massive headboard, hair spilling in waves down his broad bare chest, eyes glowing faintly in the low light.

Hungry.

Softly.

Patiently.

As though he knows, as though he feels what your body is quietly, shamefully begging for.

Your cheeks burn, but you do not look away.

You can’t.

He tilts his head slightly, dark amusement flickering faintly across his beautiful, inhuman features. “You ache,” he says softly, his voice sliding through the air like silk across bare skin.

You swallow tightly, fingers clenching the sheets.

“You—you made me—”

“Yes,” he interrupts smoothly, a faint smirk curling his lips. “I made you feel. I made you beg. I made you mine.”

Your throat tightens. Because you want to deny it. You want to cling to the last fragile shreds of dignity still hidden deep beneath your skin.

But you are so empty.

And he is so full.

Full of patience.

Full of heat.

Full of devastating knowledge about every inch of your trembling, traitorous body.

“Come here,” he murmurs.

You hesitate, not out of defiance, but out of terror of how much you want to. But your body decides for you as you crawl across the wide expanse of the bed slowly, soft gasps leaving your lips as cool air kisses your sensitized skin.

Every movement feels obscene.

Desperate.

Shameless.

By the time you reach him, your hands press against his thighs, broad, hard, and warm. And you can’t help the needy way your nails dig in slightly.

He hums low, pleased, fingers threading gently through your hair. “So eager now,” he murmurs, fond and filthy at once. “So pliant. Do you remember when you hated this?”

You glare up at him weakly, but the heat pooling between your legs betrays you.

“I still do,” you whisper hoarsely.

Jeongguk smiles, slow and devastatingly fond. “No, little star,” he breathes, tugging you gently forward until you straddle his lap, flushed and panting and already dizzy with need.

“You only hate that you love it now.”

His hands slide up your sides slowly, but firm enough to make you tremble. Thumbs brushing over your aching nipples, and you arch helplessly, a soft cry slipping past your lips.

“You crave this,” he whispers, voice dipping lower, turning molten and wicked.

“You crave me.”

You shake your head weakly but he only chuckles, leaning in to drag his tongue slowly along the curve of your throat.

“Your body says otherwise,” he murmurs against your skin, the words vibrating deep into your bones. “You are soaked, my sweet treasure,” he continues, switching now to his alien tongue.

The words ripple through your mind. Dark, erotic, incomprehensible yet intimate, sliding into your subconscious like smoke. You moan softly, the strange cadence of his language making your stomach flutter violently.

“You want me to fill you again,” he purrs, switching back seamlessly. “You want me deep, here.”

His fingers slide between your thighs, finding you dripping and already clenching desperately. You sob softly, biting your lip hard enough to hurt as he teases and toys with your cunt, stroking softly but refusing to push inside.

“Jeongguk—please.”

He groans softly, eyes burning now, pale silver and violent rose swirling madly as he watches you fall apart.

“Beg properly,” he demands softly, his voice suddenly sharp with command. “Tell me exactly what you want.”

Shame wars with need, but it is no contest. Your hips roll helplessly against his fingers, and when he pulls back slightly, you nearly sob in frustration.

“Please—please fuck me—”

“More.”

“Please, I need you inside me, need you to fill me, need to feel you— Jeongguk—”

He growls, deep and dark, before flipping you effortlessly onto your back, spreading your thighs wide with firm, unrelenting hands.

“So sweet,” he murmurs, lowering himself between your legs. “So open. So desperate. This is what I have wanted, what you were always meant for.”

You can only whimper in response as his mouth covers you. Hot, wet, and merciless. He devours you greedily, tongue stroking and swirling, teeth scraping softly in ways that make you writhe and gasp and cry out helplessly.

“Perfect,” he murmurs against your slick heat. “My perfect, pliant treasure.”

You come once, then twice. So hard and fast you can’t even form words, only sobs and gasps and broken sounds of yes, yes, please, more.

And Jeongguk gives you more.

He pushes inside you while you are still shaking, filling you in one slow, brutal thrust that steals every ounce of air from your lungs. “Mine,” he growls, hips snapping forward, dragging soft, wet sounds from where your bodies meet.

“Say it. Say you are mine.”

You choke on your own moans, but you say it, scream it.

“Yours, yours—fuck—I’m yours!”

His thrusts become frantic, deep and devastating, pushing you higher, further, faster than you thought possible. You sob and cling to him, nails raking his back, thighs locking tight around his waist as he drives you both toward madness.

“Never leaving,” he hisses, biting softly at your throat. “Never without me again. You are home now.”

You nod wildly, barely able to think past the relentless pleasure.

“Yes—yes—Jeongguk please—don’t stop—”

He doesn’t.

He fucks you through every orgasm, through every broken cry, through every whispered admission of how badly you need him. When he finally spills inside you, he kisses you softly, sweet and adoringly even as his cock pulses deep within your spent, ruined body.

“Mine,” he whispers again, softer now.

Forever.

You fall asleep against his chest, trembling and full, and do not dream of escape. You only dream of his touch.

And for the first time…

That does not terrify you at all.

::::::::::::

You don’t remember when the fight truly left you. It didn’t crack and shatter all at once — no.

It eroded.

Slowly.

Softly.

Like waves kissing the edges of a jagged stone until only smoothness remains. You woke one cycle and realized you had stopped counting how long you had been aboard the ship.

Stopped wondering if anyone would come.

Stopped missing the ache of gravity and sky and home.

Because your world had become him.

And Jeongguk, he made it easy to forget. He is always near. Not hovering, not threatening.

Present.

Everywhere.

Always.

When you wake, he is there. Smoothing his palm gently over your bare hip as he murmurs soft things in his language, coaxing you from sleep with kisses and slow, lazy touches.

When you eat, he is there. Sitting across from you, observing your every reaction as the ship’s interface morphs alien sustenance into facsimiles of the foods you once loved.

He listens when you sigh about fresh strawberries.

He watches when your eyes glaze longingly at the memory of soft, buttered bread.

He remembers.

And then, quietly and with no fanfare, he provides. The next meal, there it is. Not exact, not quite right. But close enough to make your chest ache and tears sting your eyes as you chew slowly, overwhelmed by the gesture.

Jeongguk watches it all.

Always watching.

Satisfied.

As though fulfilling you, piece by piece, is what gives him purpose.

And perhaps… it is.

—

He shows you the ship, not all at once, but slowly, over many gentle, winding cycles.

You no longer wear the thin shifts he first gave you. He drapes you in flowing fabrics now, soft and weightless, clinging lovingly to your skin in pale, luminous colors.

You are beautiful in them.

He tells you so often, in whispers and kisses and soft growls as he presses you into the walls, the floors, his mouth hot and hungry on your throat.

He leads you through chambers you could never have imagined. Sectors where bioluminescent plants twist and bloom in gravity defying spirals. Pools of softly glowing liquid, warm and soothing to the touch, that you wade into with sighs of contentment. A conservatory where alien birds flicker between translucent trees, their songs harmonizing eerily with the ship’s ambient hum.

But your favorite place is the garden.

His garden.

You are allowed there freely now, naked sometimes, or dressed in the soft, flowing robes he favors on you. You walk barefoot on strange, sponge soft moss, fingers brushing along vines heavy with fragrant blossoms.

And Jeongguk always follows, watchful.

His eyes track you with quiet worship, glowing softly as you lose yourself in the alien beauty of his world. He likes when you forget to fear him. He likes when you hum softly to yourself, or tilt your face toward the artificial sun he created just for you in the center of the atrium. When you smile faintly, unaware of him watching.

Those are the moments he always takes you.

—

You lose track of how many times he has taken you, because there are no longer clear lines. There is no fucking and lovemaking—there is only him, and how he worships you.

He fucks you into the bed, into the walls, against the glass overlooking endless space.

He makes love to you in the garden, slow and molten and devastating, whispering filthy alien phrases that make you clench and writhe and sob his name. He devours you in the pools, pulling orgasms from you lazily as though drinking from a fountain he intends to drain dry.

It is endless.

It is overwhelming.

It is addictive.

Some nights, you come so many times you fall asleep between his thighs, lips sore, body aching sweetly, utterly ruined.

Other nights, he takes hours simply to make you ache. Touching, kissing, murmuring, until you’re begging and trembling, leaking and desperate in his arms.

“You are never empty,” he whispers often, mouth hot against your throat as he thrusts deep and slow, filling you until your belly feels heavy with him.

“You are never without me.”

You nod when he says this.

Because it is true.

His touch clings to your skin long after he pulls away. His cum warms and coats your thighs when you sleep. His mouth, his hands, his voice. They weave through your every waking thought, soft chains you have long since stopped tugging against.

There is no reality anymore.

Not outside of him.

Not outside of his ship.

Not outside of this.

You belong to him.

Not just because he claimed you.

Not because he broke you.

But because you want to.

And when he holds you close in the endless quiet of space, whispering promises of eternity, of worlds he will show you, of forever at his side, you believe him.

And worse…you hope for it.

—

You do not know how much time has passed since your surrender began. You do not count cycles anymore. You do not mark meals. You do not dream of Earth.

You only exist in soft, endless now.

In the warmth of his arms. In the steady hum of the ship. In the way he touches you, not like a possession anymore, but like you are part of him.

And perhaps you are.

He whispers things sometimes when he thinks you are asleep. Soft words in his native tongue. Caresses so gentle they feel like prayers pressed against your skin.

He tells you of stars you will visit. Of galaxies only Kaereth royalty have walked.

Of eternity.

He speaks of eternity often now.

Not as threat.

Not as warning.

As promise.

—

It begins without announcement, no sharp change in routine, no cold demand. Only Jeongguk, cradling you softly against his chest as you lay tangled together on the bed, voice low and uncharacteristically hesitant.

“It is time.”

You stir slowly, heavy with sleep and satiation. “Time for what?” you murmur, voice rough and thick with drowsy contentment.

His lips brush against your temple.

“For what should have always been, my little star,” he says gently. “For forever.”

You blink slowly, confusion weaving through the pleasant haze in your mind. His arms tighten slightly.

“The ritual,” he murmurs, almost shyly now. “Kaereth do not simply claim. They bind. When a mate is chosen… there must be permanence. Ceremony. Union.”

You tense slightly, instinct pulling at old fears, but he soothes you immediately, his touch soft and endlessly patient.

“You do not have to fear,” he promises, kissing along your cheek with unbearable tenderness. “The Kaereth binding ritual is not violent. It is tender.”

“You are already mine. This is only affirmation.”

You swallow thickly, heart pounding strangely in your chest. Part of you wants to refuse. Part of you wants to cling to the last fragment of your own name, your own shape.

But that part… is so small now.

So soft.

So tired.

And when you meet his eyes,glowing pale and molten silver, heated and brimming with unspeakable longing, you nod.

You whisper, “Yes.”

And his entire being shudders with pleasure.

::::::::::::

You don’t dress for the ritual, Jeongguk forbids it. “Skin to skin,” he murmurs, his voice carrying the weight of law as he guides you through the glowing veins of the ship. “No barriers. No pretenses. We meet now as we were always meant to. Unmade and remade in the raw truth of one another.”

The chamber he brings you to does not belong to any realm you know. It is dark, endless, humming with a resonance too ancient for words.

The floor gleams faintly beneath your bare feet, liquid starlight swirling like whispers from a thousand forgotten worlds.

The walls pulse in rhythm, steady, solemn, alive, as though the ship itself holds its breath, bearing witness to what is to come.

Jeongguk draws you backward into his embrace, his hands firm as they curve over your body, memorizing each rise and fall like sacred scripture. “You must offer yourself freely,” he murmurs, his lips ghosting over the tender shell of your ear, his voice as soft and unrelenting as a vow.

“Desire must be the altar. Willingness the flame. Speak it—not only to me, but to the vessel that carries us between stars. Let the void itself know your yearning.”

Your breath catches, but the words rise from your soul with aching clarity.

“I want this.”

At once, the chamber responds.

The air thickens, lush and heavy as though unseen deities lean close, eager and enraptured.

The floor brightens beneath you, starlight reaching, cradling, adoring. Jeongguk turns you slowly, adoration carved into every movement, as though you are the holiest of offerings.

He lifts you easily, effortlessly, as if gravity itself bends in submission to the rite unfolding between you.

He carries you to the heart of the radiant expanse, laying you down as though to place you before celestial judges, his touch a prayer unto itself. When he speaks again, his voice is no longer mortal.

“This is consecration,” he intones, sliding between your thighs, his every movement graceful and deliberate, dictated by some divine choreography.

“Not of chains. Not of suffering. But of convergence.”

He presses forward, entering you in one unhurried, devastating thrust, filling you so completely it feels as though your soul fragments and rejoins in the same breath.

“Bound in breath,” he whispers, lips brushing yours like the gentlest psalm. “Bound in pulse. Bound in the quietude where existence fades and only we remain.”

His hips move slowly, each thrust purposeful, each withdrawal a supplication. Every motion speaks of patience, of worship, of eternity folding gently around the fragile wonder of now.

“Bound in rapture,” he breathes, as your body arches and tears burn behind your eyes. “In pleasure deeper than flesh. In surrender beyond fear. In the marrow of longing made manifest.”

Your hands clutch at him, desperate and trembling, as emotion and sensation braid together, unspooling you at the seams. He continues, his words pouring over you like sacred oil.

“You are mine,” he declares softly, but with a gravity that feels immutable. “Not owned. Not caged. But chosen. Desired beyond logic. Worshipped beyond measure.”

He thrusts deeper still, and the stars themselves seem to keen softly in resonance. “You will never know emptiness again,” he vows, voice tight with holy hunger.

“My essence will fill you, until the very stars inscribe your name beside mine. Until the void itself kneels before our union.”

You cry out, broken open, undone, yet remade in the furnace of his worship. “Please,” you whisper, though no prayer seems enough.

His rhythm grows, still tender yet laced now with relentless fervor. The predator made priest, the lover made eternal.

“Say it,” Jeongguk commands, his voice edged with divine demand. “Seal the oath. Let the cosmos hear and etch it into its bones.”

You shatter, your orgasm consuming you wholly. A tidal wave of surrender crashing through body and spirit alike.

“Forever,” you sob, raw and radiant with belief. “Forever, Jeongguk. Forever.”

His growl follows, deep and resonant, alien than man, more celestial than alien as he empties himself within you. His essence sealing the covenant in ways far beyond comprehension.

The room erupts in light, no longer just glowing, but singing.

A song of union.

A hymn of completion.

Jeongguk clutches you tightly, his lips frantic against your sweat slick skin as he whispers benedictions between each kiss. “You are bound now,” he whispers fiercely, voice a litany of devotion and awe.

“Your soul, entwined with mine until suns collapse and the void forgets how to hunger. The end of being itself will tremble before the truth of us.”

And as you cling to him, spent, filled, irrevocably his, you feel it. The absence of Earth. The fading echo of your past self.

There is only now.

Only Jeongguk.

Only eternity.

And you do not fear the endless night that stretches before you.

You crave it.

You welcome it.

You belong to it.

—

Time has long since stopped meaning anything to you. Cycles became months, months became years. And years…you no longer know. Nor do you care. Because eternity, as Jeongguk once promised, is not a cold, empty void.

It is warm.

Soft.

Endless.

It lives in the quiet hum of the ship, atuned now to your presence, responding to your touch, your voice, your desires.

It lives in the alien worlds that bloom before your eyes. Stars and planets unknown to your old, forgotten Earth self, offered to you like flowers pressed between the pages of a lover’s letter.

It lives in Jeongguk.

Always, Jeongguk.

—

You are no longer the woman who clawed and scratched and screamed for freedom. She faded quietly, slipped from her skin the night you bound yourself to him.

The night he made you his forever.

Now…you are more, you are his Consort.

The ship’s systems recognize your presence before any other. Doors ripple open in welcome. Lights dim or brighten in response to your moods. The living flora bends subtly toward you when you pass, as though paying silent tribute to their queen.

“My Consort will dine with me.”

Jeongguk only ever calls you by your title now when addressing the ship or his crew.

“My Consort desires warmth in the garden.”

“My Consort wishes to see the stars from the obsidian chamber.”

And when you are alone…

When you lay beneath him, wrapped in endless sheets and marked from endless nights of his mouth and hands and cock dragging moans from your lips until you are wrecked and sobbing.

He does not call you Consort.

He calls you everything.

“My treasure.”

“My star.”

“My forever.”

—

You have visited worlds now.

Jeongguk keeps you close, always within arm’s reach when you step from the ship. Alien beings kneel or bow or lower their gazes when they see you.

Not because they fear you, but because they know.

You are his.

And through him, powerful beyond measure.

You remember the first diplomatic council Jeongguk brought you to. The air was thick with esteem as beings of every shape and color turned to face the Kaereth leader who ruled this corner of the galaxy. And at his side, on a throne grown from living obsidian, veins of silver and violet pulsing gently through the arms and back, sat you.

Draped in silk spun from creatures that floated gently in the upper atmosphere of worlds you could not name.

Jewels from stars that had long since collapsed woven into strands and hung delicately from your throat. Jeongguk did not speak first.

He merely tilted his head slightly and every being turned to face you.

“Speak, Consort,” he murmured then, his fingers curling lazily around yours, his voice full of quiet pride and unrelenting devotion.

“What pleases you?”

That was all it took.

Your desires became law that day.

And ever since.

—

But your favorite moments are still the quiet ones. The ones where his titles and the ship and alien worlds fall away. When you are nothing but soft skin and softer sighs. When he worships you with his mouth, drawing orgasms from you as though sustaining himself on them.

When he fills you slowly, murmuring in his language, still dark, still filthy, but now tinged with awe and quiet desperation.

“I will never tire of this,” he whispers often as he pushes deep, rolling his hips slowly to press against the spot that makes your breath stutter and your thighs shake.

“I will never stop. Not until you are full of me, every cycle, every hour, forever.”

And you?

You only clutch him tighter. You only moan his name. Because somewhere along the way, you stopped resisting pleasure. You stopped resisting him. And now, there is only hunger.

Ravenous, endless hunger.

Not just for sex, though that is constant and devastating. Not just for his body, though it is the only thing that feels real some days.

But for him.

For his voice, soft and low when he whispers your name against your throat. For his hands, rough and gentle as they map the shape of you over and over again. For his devotion, that terrifying, beautiful thing that never wavers.

You are addicted to it.

Addicted to him.

And you never want to stop.

—

Even now, as you lay in the garden he built just for you, its vines curling protectively overhead, Jeongguk’s head resting contently between your thighs as he lazily drags his tongue over your overstimulated cunt, coaxing yet another orgasm from your trembling body.

You think of Earth.

Not wistfully.

Not longingly.

But distantly.

Like a dream you woke from long ago.

Blurry and irrelevant.

You moan softly, fingers curling tightly in his soft hair as he groans against you, the vibration sparking more pleasure that threatens to unravel you completely.

He lifts his head slightly, eyes glowing pale silver and pink in the soft bioluminescence, and smiles.

Soft.

Devastated.

Endlessly in love.

“You will never leave me,” he whispers, worshipful and certain. “You belong here. With me. Always.”

You whimper, too far gone to speak, but you nod. Because it’s true. You have not just been claimed.

You have chosen.

And when he slides up your body slowly, covering you with his weight and kissing you deeply, his cock slipping easily back inside you with a low, content sigh, You cling to him like salvation.

You are his.

His Consort.

His forever.

His everything.

And as you fall apart beneath him again, body and soul already shattered and rebuilt countless times in his arms.

You know you will never, ever want anything else again.

one | masterlist

#bts fanfic #bangtanarmynet #bts fanfiction #bts au #fanfic #bts angst #bts jeon jungkook #bts jeongguk #jeongguk x reader #bts yandere #alien au #stockholm syndrome #forced proximity #mass extinction #spaceship #space #bts smut #SoundCloud

458 notes · View notes

frostycatblr-fandom-files · 1 year ago

Photo

It's such a simple, silent scene in the very beginning of the game, and it managed to make me so emotional and upset in a matter of seconds. Because seconds was all they needed.

The Jedi Temple, wrapped in the red banners and the insignia of the Empire and cog... The perversion of such a holy place to Force-wielders during the time of the Great Jedi Purge...

This was the first time Cal sees the Temple in years since the start of the Purge, since Order 66, and it no longer looks like home to him. The stonework is the same. The temple grounds probably look the same from the sky lanes, and maybe minimal change has been made to them. But the banners... the wings of the Order are not-so-gently replaced.

And who knows exactly what has been done to the interior of the Temple in the time it was restored after Operation Knightfall. What replacements were made when everything was gutted, leaving only the outer walls as they were; a husk of what the Temple once was.

What became of the Room of a Thousand Fountains? What took the place of the vast libraries and archives? The meditation chambers? The rooms where the initiates were once cared for before their time as padawans began?

How gleefully was that all destroyed, replaced, painted/sealed over or melted down and whatever else when Palpatine turned the Jedi Temple into the Imperial Palace?

Cal sees the Temple while flying over Coruscant, sees what it's been turned into, and immediately he must know he'll never be able to return to what had once been his home. It would never be the same even if he did drive the Empire from those hallowed halls. Every stone would echo with pain and anguish to him. It would reek of the extermination of his kind. To Cal, with his psychometry, the Temple likely becomes too great a wound in the Force for him to bare.

JEDI: SURVIVOR (2023)

#star wars #jedi survivor #cal kestis #cameron monaghan #jedi survivor spoilers #sorry for the long and speculative ramble; but it was too much for the tags #the phrase ''16 year-long genocide'' in reference to the Great Jedi Purge was surprising while doing research #I'd either forgotten the exact length of time of the GJP or I never realized it to begin with #oops! that's my queue

4K notes · View notes

ekkkkey · 4 months ago

Text

there will be games! (final)

summary: Cassandra, a quiet and loyal wife to the much older Senator Tiberius, accidentally attracts the unsettling attention of Emperor Caracalla at a lavish feast hosted by Senator Thraex...

warnings: 18+ minors dni, this is dark, noncon

word count: ~4k

chapter I chapter II chapter III chapter IV chapter V

«No woman could feel safe if her beauty or name aroused the emperor's curiosity.»

-Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars (Caligula, Chapter 36)

⋆ ⋆ ☼ ⋆ ⋆

Claudia twirled before her, showing off, stretching out her slender wrists adorned with expensive bracelets.

"If I had known Livia would send us such gifts, I wouldn’t have cried so much when they took her from us," she spun once more and, laughing, sat beside Cassandra, wrapping her arms around her, pressing her forehead against her shoulder. "I know you’re sad… About Father, about me, and… about your husband. But please, you’re the last person I have left to talk to! Don’t be so grim! It’s been over a year—you don’t have to wear mourning anymore! You’re young, beautiful…"

"Enough," Cassandra cut her off, her voice tired, her thoughts even darker.

A year had passed. A year since she became a widow. A year since her life was shattered, destroyed. It was true—she no longer had to wear mourning for her husband, and she could even remarry, if not for the stigma of a traitor's widow, the stain of an adulteress, and if not for the scars left on her skin, pale and inescapable.

Claudia, one of her younger sisters, had never seen the marks. Cassandra hid them, too ashamed to speak of what had happened in the imperial palace. How shocked Claudia had been when she learned that Cassandra—the luckiest among them, married, happy—was returning home in disgrace, back under their father’s roof.

Tiberius’ family had not accepted her. And she herself had no desire to live in a home filled with hatred.

But the girl who returned was not the same quiet, dreamy Cassandra who had left. What came back was only a shadow, an empty shell—pale, hollow-eyed, covered in wounds and bruises, with her hair cut short. Her father had known what had happened but had been powerless to change anything. Then, three months later, he died. His old heart couldn’t take it. And Cassandra blamed herself for that, too.

Without a man in the house, she had been doomed. But Livia, the youngest of the three sisters, had spent the last seven years training in the Temple of Vesta, and with that came privileges—privileges that saved Cassandra and Claudia from a fate worse than death: being handed over to some stranger.

Normally, the fate of widows and orphans—those who had lost their fathers but had not yet married—was decided by the Senate, sometimes even by the Emperor himself. Just the thought of it sent phantom pain burning through the place where he had carved his name into her skin. Cassandra’s fingers twitched, running through her short hair, tucking the strands behind her ears. He had cut those, too, to make sure no one would dare look at her, as if that had ever been possible.

"I’m begging you!" Claudia knelt in front of her, gripping her hands tightly. "Just one evening! My wedding, Cassandra! Rome is not a trap!"

Cassandra exhaled, pained, unwilling to listen to her sister’s pleading. She should be happy for her, and yet all she felt was fear and unease. She had not set foot in Rome for a year. The quiet, forgotten province suited her. She no longer wanted to see the world—her past had killed all curiosity in her. Everything had been peaceful… until history started repeating itself.

After the conspiracy of General Acacius and several senators was uncovered, a great purge followed. The ranks of Rome’s elite were drastically thinned. The executions went on day after day, and the Praetorians crushed rebellion after rebellion. The discontent had been widespread—many had loved the general—but steel was the best argument an emperor could make. And when the executions spread beyond the nobility, the people fell silent.

That was when Appius entered their lives—or rather, Claudia’s life. A newly appointed senator, he had taken the seat of one of the traitors.

The first formal meeting had sealed everything. He was too young for the Senate, but he had been utterly captivated by Claudia’s charm, her brightness. Cassandra could only watch in horror as history repeated itself… though there was one difference. They loved each other.

"Livia already refused me! At least don’t refuse me, too!" Claudia’s tearful pleas continued. "It’ll just be his family!"

Cassandra couldn’t bear to see her like this. She agreed.

If just one of her sisters had been with her at the imperial court, maybe—just maybe—things would have been different. Wouldn’t they?

⋆ ⋆ ☼ ⋆ ⋆

Rome no longer seemed beautiful to her.

The further they traveled, the heavier the weight in her chest became. It was only when they passed the Colosseum that she could breathe a little easier.

But just as her anxiety began to subside, it flared up again. The villa of Appius’s family wasn’t just large and beautiful—it was enormous. Green branches, golden and red ribbons adorned the already magnificent residence, proudly declaring where the groom lived.

Claudia was quickly pulled from her arms by the firm hands of the wedding matrona, who was to prepare the bride. Cassandra simply followed the flock of women, obedient and silent. The wedding had not yet begun, but the villa was already filled with guests.

It reminded her of her first time stepping into Senator Thraex’s home. A shiver ran down her spine, and she pulled her dark brown cloak tighter around her, telling herself that everyone who had once known her was probably dead by now.

"Ah, Cassandra! What a surprise!"

Appius caught her in a warm embrace, as if he truly was delighted to see her.

As custom dictated, the groom wore only a simple white toga and a pair of bracelets. His sharp blue eyes swept over her, like a man surveying goods at a market.

For the first time in a long while, she was not wearing black—the color that marked her as a widow. She didn’t look so bad, she told herself, if not for the short hair, barely reaching her chin.

"Appius, what a wonderful reception! So many guests!" She lied, feigning admiration for the sheer number of extravagantly dressed people in the vast, opulent hall.

Claudia had assured her it would only be the groom’s family. But surely not all these people were his relatives.

"Oh, thank you!" His voice was just as honeyed, though his sharp gaze noted her unease. "The rest of the guests will arrive later, for the ceremony itself. After all, my position now requires a little less modesty than before, wouldn’t you say?" He bowed to her with mock politeness and disappeared into the crowd.

The guests didn’t interest her. Neither did the villa, nor the wine, nor the food.

Cassandra retreated to the farthest corner, doing everything she could to remain unseen.

As the halls grew more crowded, the chatter louder, and the evening sky darkened, Claudia finally appeared.

The ceremony began.

Cassandra stepped closer. She saw her smiling sister, her head covered with a delicate orange veil. The same vows, the same rings she herself had once exchanged with her husband. It felt like a lifetime ago, though not even two years had passed.

"It can’t be!" A woman’s hushed, excited whisper sounded close by.

"I told you! Appius didn’t become a senator just like that! And he’s been friends with the emperors for a long time," replied another muffled voice.

Cassandra froze. Her sister’s face blurred, and the ceremony’s noise faded away, leaving only the quiet murmuring of two women she didn’t know. The happiest moment she had experienced in years was once again overshadowed. And once again, he was the reason.

The ritual continued, the lovers exchanged their vows, but Cassandra was entranced by the conversation she should never have overheard.

"Friendship, ha!" A quiet, eloquent giggle made her twist her lips. Could it be that her sister’s husband… "But who would refuse the emperor?"

"You’re lying! That can’t be!"

"It’s the truth!" More quiet giggling. "I saw him once. Oh, it was a sight! He waved to us, and I swear, I was ready to leave my husband forever just for one night with him! That deep blue cloak embroidered in gold, the golden cuirass with the sun shining in the center—"

"Which emperor?"

"Caracalla. They say he’s cruel and insane, but we all know those vile tongues." The voices grew even quieter.

"I heard he’s ill…"

Cassandra stopped listening. She didn’t want to drown in memories any further.

For a brief moment, she felt free, light. Her sister, now a wife, embraced her, pressing warm kisses to her cheeks, flushed and happy. Even Appius hugged her—more modestly, of course—but Cassandra forced herself not to dwell on it or on the conversation she had overheard.

Her sister was happy. And so, for her sake, was Cassandra.

Then came laughter, music, and wine. As the bride’s sister, she couldn’t avoid attention for long. Guests pulled her into idle conversations, politely avoiding questions about her husband. A few young men even tried to steer the talk into something indecent, but she brushed them off.

"What’s the matter, my dear lady? Has your heart already been claimed by someone?" He was charming and young, but just the thought of closeness with a man filled her with dread.

But dread awaited her ahead. The evening picked up pace, more and more wine loosened tongues and hands, and she once again felt nervous.

Something was wrong.

She blushed from a sudden wave of emotion, then turned pale with fear, hearing a piercing animalistic screech, high and loud. The fear was sharp, painful, as though her past had caught up with her once again. Conversations swirled around her, but she only clutched the silver cup in her hand, desperately trying not to panic.

They were here.

The play of light and shadow, the darkness of evening, and the flickering torchlight deceived the guests, but she saw him. He was just as he appeared in her nightmares.

His delicate features, a high forehead framed by unruly red curls, and beneath pale brows, those mocking blue eyes gleamed.

Why was she looking at him? Why was she staring?

Yet she couldn’t stop, her gaze drifting lower—to those defined red lips, the soft curve of his chin and neck… He hadn’t changed a bit, except perhaps for the feverish flush that now colored his face even more vividly.

A shadow shifted, and torchlight illuminated his brother’s face—pale, tight-lipped, dark eyes sharp, and furrowed brows.

The emperors were sober. And completely joyless.

Though Caracalla smiled.

He always smiled. She remembered that well—smiled even in rage.

Appius quickly made his way to the noble guests, gracefully gesturing for everyone to continue the celebration, all while taking turns kissing the emperors’ hands.

Cassandra cast a desperate glance at her sister, seated among the women. But Claudia didn’t notice—too thrilled by the presence of Rome’s rulers.

Yet the air in the room had changed.

She saw the way the lutenist’s hands trembled, how he licked his suddenly dry lips, terrified of plucking the wrong string. Gossip or not, many still believed in the emperors’ cruelty. The proof hung in the streets—rebels crucified and tortured, all those who dared rise against the Caesars.

Voices lowered. Laughter grew restrained.

After all, everyone only had one head.

"Hail the Caesars!" the crowd roared, and finally, smiles spread across the emperors’ faces.

Slaves swiftly cleared space in the grand hall. The young rulers took the place meant for the newlyweds, but it seemed no one dared object.

Appius, forgetting his young wife entirely, hovered around the emperors like a fawning servant, laughing and pouring wine into their goblets as if he himself were a slave.

Like in a dream, Cassandra watched them from the shadows, catching every gesture, every lazy movement of their hands. Caracalla was bored, the tip of his tongue tracing his upper lip, still sober and thus irritable. Geta, with a forced smile, nodded at Appius, clearly sharing his brother’s mood.

Her heart pounded with fear and dread when the young senator waved Claudia over, clearly eager to present her to the emperors. Caracalla sat up straighter, tilting his head to appraise Appius’s young wife. Oh, Cassandra knew that look—evaluating, languid, always bored and never passing up a chance for amusement. Geta mirrored his brother, wiping his chin as he studied Claudia. There was no honor in their gazes, only cold, slippery intent, but her sister didn’t see it—just as Cassandra herself hadn’t seen it once upon a time.

Appius held Claudia by the fingertips, spinning her in a circle as she laughed, clearly more intent on showing off than entertaining his bride. Caracalla leaned forward with a smirk, his pale, delicate hand, adorned with gold and gems, reaching out toward her sister. Without thinking, Cassandra stepped forward in fear for Claudia.

"Claudia!" she called out before she even realized what she had done.

Her fragile shield of shadow fell away as she emerged into the light. Appius and Claudia stared at her, puzzled, but they weren’t the ones who mattered. Along with them, those feverish blue eyes fixed on her. Her legs weakened, her palms grew slick with sweat, but it was too late—she was caught again.

"Oh, Cassandra, come here!" her sister called. Appius clearly disapproved but couldn’t object.

On unsteady legs, she still managed to approach them, feeling the crowd's eyes on her. And their eyes. God, she hated them both with equal ferocity! The fact that Geta tormented her less didn’t lessen his guilt—after all, it was with his casual approval that Caracalla had started this whole twisted game.

Appius introduced her, and she bowed her head in feigned reverence. When she looked up, Geta’s unblinking gaze met hers—he recognized her, how could he not, after all he’d witnessed? Her scar throbbed painfully, and she averted her eyes, unable to withstand the oppressive blackness of his stare. But it was much harder to meet Caracalla’s gaze… though, to her surprise, he clearly didn’t remember her. Still, relief didn’t come. In his eyes, she saw curiosity, a spark, excitement! He feverishly licked his lips, his red mouth curling into a smile, his hand tightening around his cup. Gods, had they truly cursed her, binding him to her, sending him to torment her again and again? He didn’t even recognize her, and yet he was intrigued!

Then Emperor Geta leaned toward his brother, whispering something in his ear, and Cassandra realized she was doomed. Now, recognition appeared on Caracalla’s face, and he burst out laughing like a child, patting his brother on the shoulder as if he’d just made a brilliant joke.

"Little bird?" His voice was hoarse, deceptively soft, as if they were old friends.

Claudia looked at her, confused, but Cassandra couldn’t answer. Worse still, her sister was witnessing this entire humiliating spectacle.

"My emperor," she replied quietly.

"It really is you!" He scanned her from head to toe, his mouth slightly open, never ceasing to smile, his obsessive gaze drinking in her face.

"So, this is your sister?" She nodded. "And where’s your husband?"

Her breath caught, and Appius and Claudia froze beside her. Even Emperor Geta stared at his brother, one eyebrow raised in evident confusion. It took every ounce of her strength not to break down in tears right then and there. Instead, she exhaled shakily and answered, "Dead. You killed him, Caesar."

The delight on Caracalla’s face was a mockery. He didn’t touch her, but she felt as if he’d slapped her across the face.

"Did I? Really?" He leaned back, spreading his legs, clearly pleased with himself. "So, you’re a widow now? What wonderful news!"

Was he taunting her, or was he truly so sick? She couldn’t tell, but judging by Geta’s heavy gaze, he was concerned.

"Come here, little bird," he said, spreading his arms in a welcoming gesture, and she obeyed, stepping closer. "I’ve never had a widow before," he purred, trailing his hand along her thigh, still sitting, lazily, almost weightlessly, touching the thick fabric of her clothes with his fingertips. Yet, she felt the long-forgotten heat of his touch. He himself, like his hair—blood, fire.

Geta nodded to Appius, who took Claudia’s hand and led her away. Cassandra wanted to protest, to reach for her sister, to beg for rescue, but instead, she caught only a worried, strangely hurt look from Claudia—a look that cut her heart deeper than all the emperor’s cruelties.

"You vanished, my dear," Caesar said, yanking her hand down and forcing her to sit beside him, at his feet, like some nameless slave. Long-forgotten humiliation flushed her neck and cheeks red, especially as the guests still stole glances their way. "I missed you so much," he whispered in a singsong tone, his ring-laden fingers burying themselves in her short hair, stroking it. "I liked your hair," he said, his hot hand sliding lower, down her neck, then beneath the fabric, nearly brushing her chest. But it wasn’t lust that drove the young emperor—Cassandra felt his tender fingers trace the pale outline of her scar, following the path of the blade that had left it there.

"Brother, not here," Geta warned, clearly uneasy. "Have you forgotten the uprisings the Praetorians worked so hard to crush? Leave her be—you’ve already taken enough from her, so…"

"And I’ll take her again!" A grimace of rage twisted Caracalla’s powdered, delicate face. He released her, nervously twisting the rings on his fingers. "Don’t lecture me—you, of all people, should know that, brother."

"I’m just asking you not to do this in public!" Geta relented. "This is a wedding…"

"If I want, our dear Appius will take her place with a snap of my fingers," Caracalla hissed, clearly displeased by his brother’s words. "Or, if I desire, his little wife will do."

She looked up at him in horror, silently begging him not to.

Geta merely clicked his tongue and turned away, taking a sip from his goblet. Caracalla, however, shifted from rage to tenderness, gazing down at her once more, his thumb brushing along her cheekbone, her lips.

"Missed me?" A soft, playful slap to her cheek made her close her eyes. "I know you did, little bird. I imagine you often thought about our little meetings." He paused, a sly grin tugging at his lips. "To be honest, I don’t remember our sweet little dates all that well, but no one can stop us from repeating them, hmm?"

Angry tears welled in her eyes, but they didn’t fall—she kept fighting to hold herself together. Her husband was dead, her father was dead, and her sisters… her sisters were relatively safe.

"You can’t treat me like this," she said, hardly believing the words had left her mouth.

Caracalla laughed, his laughter echoing through the hall, but the nervous twitch of his mouth betrayed that he was far from amused.

"Can’t I?" he taunted, his fingers digging into her chin, forcing her to meet his gaze. "You’re a widow and an orphan! Who but the father of Rome would open his arms to you and offer you shelter?" But his touch brought only pain, and the look in his darkened eyes promised suffering.

Then his grip softened, his hand stroking her cheek tenderly, as if he truly meant to comfort her. But instead, Caracalla leaned in, his hot breath laced with the sweet scent of oils and powder, and whispered heatedly in her ear, "Now I am your husband, your brother, your father, understand? You are mine." His lips nearly brushed her temple. "Now you are my property, and I will do with you as I please, my dear."

A single tear rolled down her cheek, and Caracalla, sealing his words, kissed her forehead in a fatherly gesture before pulling back.

The music played on, life buzzed outside, but for her, everything had stopped right there. Caracalla, pleased with the impression he’d made, like a street magician, opened a particularly large ring on his index finger.

Through a veil of tears, Cassandra saw the Emperor bring the ring to his nose, inhaling the powder that filled the hollow space of the ornament.

"What do you like most about me?" he asked, still mocking. Geta grimaced, clearly starting to get irritated.

She wanted to say she hated him, that she wanted to wipe that smug grin off his face, but the fear for her sister’s fate was overwhelming, so she bowed her head and whispered quietly, "Generosity, my Caesar."

"Great answer!" He snapped his fingers and turned to his brother. "Hear that? I’m generous!"

"Of course she’ll say whatever you want," Geta’s displeasure was plain to see. The way the young emperor curled his lips, furrowed his brow, and tapped his fingers—all of it spoke of a foul mood.

Could Caracalla’s behavior truly anger him so much? The brothers quarreled often, but they always seemed a united front—so what had changed? Why was Geta looking at his brother with such tight-lipped disdain? Then his gaze shifted to her, and Cassandra understood. He hated her. The mere fact that she had reappeared in their lives and captured Caracalla’s attention infuriated him.

"And since I am generous," Caracalla continued grandly, ignoring his brother’s words, "I will be generous to you." The emperor extended his hand to her, as if for a kiss, but the ring was still open, and she understood exactly what he wanted her to do.

Cassandra pressed her lips shut, turning her head away, and the smile vanished from Caracalla’s face. Emperor Geta, on the other hand, leaned over his brother’s palm, inhaled the powder, and quickly wiped his nose. Now two pairs of eyes bored into her, waiting for her to submit.

"Who are you hurting more?" Geta said, licking his lips and leaning back, far more relaxed than he had been a moment ago. "You’ve been told countless times, but you’re still stubborn as a mule—or are you just an idiot? A brainless, obstinate wench whom, by some twist of fate, my brother lusts after? Huh?"

Caracalla hated disobedience and had no patience for coaxing, so he seized her jaw, pressing painfully until she opened her mouth and looked up at him. His eyes had darkened, and in the halo of red paint and the dim torchlight, they looked utterly mad.

He released her face for a moment, but only to scoop a handful of powder from the ring and shove it into her mouth. Cassandra couldn’t withstand the force and obediently opened her mouth, fearing he’d dislocate her jaw.

Suppressing the urge to bite him, she waited for the humiliation to end, but Caracalla’s breathing grew heavier, and he continued to force her to lick the bitter powder from his delicate fingers. In the end, he always got his way, no matter how much she resisted.

Finally, he stopped tormenting her mouth, wiping his wet fingers on her cheek and leaning back, satisfied, glancing at his brother with a wide grin that revealed a golden tooth.

She turned away again, hoping no one had seen. Fortunately, her sister was speaking with her husband, but there was one witness to her shame. The young man who had flirted with her earlier was staring right at them, and the confusion and disgust on his face were yet another invisible slap.

Caracalla sees him too, and it excites him, turns him on. She feels her head start to spin, her eyelids grow heavy, as the emperor presses her head against his leg, as if she’s one of his many slaves, showing everyone who she belongs to now.

"Who’s that, little bird?" His tone promised nothing good.

"I don’t know him, Caesar," she replied, her voice trembling, clenching her fists tightly, trying to think clearly.

"Lie to me, and I won’t be kind," he said, his fingers in her hair tightening, pulling, causing pain.

"It’s the truth! We spoke today, nothing more, he’s just…"

"Do you want him? Shall I bring you his head? It’d make a fine wedding gift, don’t you think?"

She couldn’t think. Tears blurred her vision, and her thoughts tangled further. She saw Caracalla’s pupils dilate, his gaze growing heavy, languid, his breathing quickening—surely, she looked the same, drugged and dazed. A wedding gift? What was he talking about?

"Bedding ceremony!" Caracalla drawled in a sing-song voice, rising and immediately stumbling, grabbing his brother’s shoulder.

The guests looked at him in confusion, as did the newlyweds.

"But, Emperor, it’s still early…" one of the high-ranking guests began obsequiously.

Caracalla merely snorted and extended his hand to her. And then it hit her. This was their bedding ceremony. He was playing out his own perverse version of a wedding, twisting everything to suit his depraved whims. The sanctity, the sacred rite meant only for Claudia and Appius, was trampled underfoot, but no one dared object to the emperor. They all smiled saccharinely, unwilling to provoke his wrath.

Caracalla was too unsteady to lift her himself, so Geta hauled her to her feet with a sharp tug. The moment she was upright, Caracalla wrapped an arm around her waist, pressing his nose against her neck, grinning lazily in satisfaction, utterly dazed from intoxication.

"Don’t take too long," Geta muttered.

Caracalla only laughed.

The guests echoed him, their laughter swelling to fill the hall. Only Claudia remained silent, her face drained of all color, watching-unblinking—as her sister was dragged toward the room meant for the newlyweds.

"Save me. Save me!" The words pounded in her skull like a funeral bell.

But no one would save her. There wasn't a soul in Rome who would stand against the Emperor, who would shield her from the emperor's hungry gaze.

Nothing from her wedding to Tiberius was happening now. No ritual, no solemn rites—only crude, mocking songs. The men scattered, whistling and shouting obscenities, as if they had already forgotten that the woman being taken was the bride’s sister, handed over to the Emperor against her will.

The women were quieter, but even among them, some did not look at her with pity. Some watched with envy, some with scorn.

All of Rome would know. She had no doubt. If she had managed to keep what happened in the palace a secret from her sisters, there was no hiding this. The stain of shame had already settled over her like a black shadow—right before Claudia’s eyes.

The tears broke free. She couldn’t hold them back anymore.

Caracalla didn’t like that.

His grip on her waist tightened as he leaned in, his breath warm against her ear. In that same soft, honeyed tone, he purred, "Smile, little bird. Or we won’t even need a separate room. I’ll take you right here, in front of everyone. Then, I’ll let them all have their turn—Appius included—while your dear sister watches."

He smiled as he said it.

She forced a smile, too, wiped her tears, and felt her legs trembling beneath her.

A moment later, the clamor faded, the door closed behind them, and they were alone.

Everything inside had been carefully arranged for the young husband and wife. But no one else would be entering this room tonight.

Tonight, it was her cage.

And in front of her, smiling softly, drunk and amused, stood her tormentor.

Her knees buckled, and she sank onto the edge of the bed, sitting stiff as a bowstring, clutching at the fabric of her clothes, her cheeks burning.

Caracalla rubs his nose childishly, pulls the laurel wreath from his head, sending his red curls into a wild disarray, then he steps closer and mockingly places it on her head.

"A virtuous matron you will never be. What a pity," he sighed. "But you can still be my sweet little pet, Cassandra."

Her name was another lash of the whip.

The crown on her head feels like thorns, heavy, as though the world’s troubles have been laid upon her.

"Undress," he commands, his voice dropping lower as he positions himself at the head of the bed.

He didn’t undress himself, but she could see—he was aroused. His pale skin was flushed, the paint on his face smudging as he watched her hesitantly move.

Her slowness irritates him. Like a raging fire, he impatiently pulls at the remnants of her clothes, tossing the crown aside like a worthless trinket.

"Why?" she whimpered, while he looked her over with delight, his gaze lingering on the scar he had given her. "Why me? Why are you doing this, Caesar?"

Caracalla stilled.

His turquoise eyes turned glassy, as if lost in thought.

"Why?" He blinked, his long, girlish lashes casting shadows over his cheeks, making him look almost vulnerable, almost innocent.

"Because I can?" he mused. "Because I want you?"

And with each word, he leaned in. His fingers wrapped around her throat, squeezing slowly, firmly,

He stared at her without malice, and that made it even more terrifying.

"Do you realize how beautiful you are?" he whispered, his breath hot against her earlobe. His grip tightened. "Do you realize how much I want you?"

His fingers pressed harder.

"The moment I saw you, all I could think about was how much I wanted to destroy you."

She gasped for air.

"You make me so angry, little bird," he murmured, his thumb brushing over her pulse, feeling it race beneath his touch. "And I desperately want to snap this fragile little neck."

She started to gasp for air, and only then did he release her, shoving her away with mockery.

"But not now, hmm? Right now, you need to be quiet, stop asking stupid questions, and fulfill your wifely duties, understood?"

She said nothing more, sitting silently, her head bowed.

"Well, no, this won’t do. This is a wedding, not a funeral! Is that how you greet your husband?" She didn’t know what to do and only raised her tear-streaked face to him.

"Turn around. I can’t stand tears."

She obeyed, turning her back to him, and immediately, he pushed her down onto the sheets, forcing her onto her elbows.

"On all fours, little bird, arch your back," he murmured, his soft palm pressing against her lower back, making her take the most humiliating position possible.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then a sharp slap against her backside made her gasp, her face buried in the sheets, quietly silencing herself out of shame. Caracalla, clearly pleased with her reaction, grabbed Cassandra’s wrist, twisting it behind her back, forcing her to arch even more and whimper like a beaten animal.

He takes her without warning, quietly exhaling with satisfaction and gripping her thigh painfully. Cassandra only lets out a stifled gasp, not even trying to pretend she enjoys it. Her body is ready to accept him; she’s wet, she can feel it—the drugs have taken effect—but her mind resists.

"See? Even a pedigreed bitch turns out to be just a bitch in the end," he coos tenderly, releasing her hand, squeezing her thighs even harder, leaving scratches on her soft skin.

From a slow, teasing rhythm and lazy purring, he shifts—harsher now, sharper. Her mind empties of all thoughts, as if it's not her hair being roughly yanked, not her shoulders and neck marred with painful bites, and as if it's not her being brutally raped right at her younger sister's wedding.

"Please, stop!" she whimpers, but he only presses her head into the sheets with his hand, continuing.

She sobs, breaking into a moan, a whimper, and then another shameful moan. Worst of all, the guests behind the door might hear it, but Caracalla deliberately pushes everything to a frenzy, to madness, not for nothing did he say he wanted to destroy her.

"This time, it’ll work," he presses his entire body against her back, squeezing her breast, his nails digging painfully into her pale skin. "Be grateful, Jupiter himself has blessed you with his seed." He makes a few more harsh thrusts, sinking even deeper, then freezes with a moan. His hand curls around her neck, forcing her to turn, and kisses her wetly, messily, breathing heavily.

Her legs tremble; she feels dirty, broken. Cassandra can imagine how she looks from the outside: covered in bites and bruises, with tangled hair and swollen lips. A whore.

"Now, now, no time to sulk!" he acts as if nothing has happened, his gaze still feverish and amused. "Now it’s time for your dear sister’s farewell, isn’t it?"

Cassandra understands that tonight will last forever and merely nods in resignation. She is dead inside.

⋆ ⋆ ☼ ⋆ ⋆

She never thought she would return to the imperial palace. Just as she never thought that, at such a young age, everything she loved would be destroyed. Nor did she think that she would ever find herself in such a position.

Cassandra waited in the tiny room, more fitting for a slave’s quarters than a place for meetings. She gazed melancholically out of the small window, hugging her shoulders.

"So it’s true."

This wasn’t the voice she had expected.

Emperor Geta seemed out of place in the shabby room, too dramatic and pompous in his expensive clothes and jewels.

"I wasn’t expecting you," she replied coldly.

"I know." He looked her over with a sharp gaze, lingering on her stomach. "But you should understand why I’m here."

With a soft clink, he placed a tiny vial on the table in front of her, and in his black eyes, she saw the reflection of death.

"What about your brother?"

"Oh, he’ll be furious, but… you know, he’s quick to forgive," Geta replied in the same melancholic tone, as if they were old friends. She might have been surprised, if not for the circumstances. Now, he had no reason to hate her.

"So, this is the end?" A sudden emptiness filled her. She wasn’t sad for herself or for the unborn child in her womb.

"It’s salvation, isn’t it?" For the first time, he seemed serious, almost like the emperors of old legends. "He won’t let you go. Caracalla loves his pets."

"And you want him to love only you?" she bitterly smirked and took the vial in her hand.

Geta’s eyes narrowed, his calm demeanor evaporating.

"You wanted to die," he said harshly. "I’m giving you the chance. And even if you don’t take it, I’ll slit your throat myself. Choose, Cassandra."

Hearing her name now felt strange. The gods had played a cruel game with her. Maybe after death, she would find peace? She opened the lid.

"You’ll be buried with honor. I’ll make sure of that," he spoke of her death as if it were nothing. And in truth, it wasn’t. The gods had no interest in mortals and their insignificant lives.

"Please, keep my sisters safe," she whispered, tears flowing down her pale cheeks as she took a sip.

"I promise," was all he said before they fell silent, staring out the tiny window.

The poison spread quickly through her body, painless. She was glad it was Geta who had done this, that he had spared her the necessity of facing Caracalla. Her head grew heavy, and she leaned against the wall, closing her eyes.

And, as if mocking her, her mind conjured the image of the second emperor.

A crimson sunset.

Red hair, red robes.

Clear, light blue eyes and that smirk.

"See you soon, little bird."

⋆ ⋆ ☼ ⋆ ⋆

Hello, my friends! Well, that’s it, the story has come to an end. I think the final is quite logical, though I can’t help but feel a little sad about it.

But for those who enjoyed my story, I have good news! I’ve been deeply inspired by a new plot featuring our ginger little scoundrel, and I’m already finishing the first chapter of a brand-new tale!

Stay tuned 💋

#emperor caracalla #caracalla #caracalla x oc smut #emperor caracalla x oc #gladiator 2 #gladiator ll #fred hechinger #joseph quinn #emperor geta #geta #caracalla smut #caracalla x oc #emperor caracalla x reader #caracalla fanfic #caracalla x reader smut #caracalla x reader #geta and caracalla

534 notes · View notes

slylycurioustreasure · 1 month ago

Text

The Bleeding Sky

Summary: Heir to a cursed line of sorcerers, you carry on your shoulders the weight of an ancestral pact: to prevent the destruction of the world, you must unite with four men from clans once enemies of your own kind—a demon, a celestial, an immortal fox, and a human.

But nothing is simple when love, hate, desire, and betrayal intertwine. Torn between your curse and your feelings, protected by some, judged by others, you will have to face the truth about your blood... and what you are willing to sacrifice to survive.

What if it wasn't you, but them... who were trapped from the start?

Genre: Fantasy, Dark Romance, Drama, Action, Reverse Harem, Supernatural, Wuxia, Historical

Pairing : Enha hyung Line x reader

Warning: Death, pain, blood, injury, hatred, loneliness, despair, psychological suffering, fear, anguish, black magic, ritual, sacrifice, intense emotions, fatality, forced marriage.

word : 15k

NEXT (PART 2.1) ✘ SERIES MASTERLIST ✘

Long ago—so long that even immortals have forgotten the taste of memory—there existed a clan whose name was erased. Erased from the royal chronicles. Strictly erased from the celestial tablets. Defiled and then buried beneath centuries of silence and fear.

A clan that should never have existed. A clan born from a crime against the laws of creation.

It is said that when the world was young, before the mountains rose, before the stars aligned, a fragment of chaotic essence wandered freely at the edge of the worlds.

Neither life nor death. Neither order nor destruction.

An ancient, formless spirit, hungry for form. His name was Wu Hei, the Nameless Shadow. And one day, in his drift, he met a woman who had fallen from the sky. A banished celestial, whose wings had been burned for loving a mortal. Her name was Yun Qiao, the Bearer of the Red Star.

He possessed her. Or she accepted him. No one knows.

From this blasphemous union was born a lineage the heavens had not foreseen. Neither human. Nor demons. Nor celestial. Something else. Something too ancient to be named. They were called sorcerers. But that word, in itself, was a betrayal.

Their bodies were of shadow and flesh. Their veins carried a black fire—not a fire that illuminates, but a fire that consumes, slowly, silently, until nothing remains but ashes of soul. Their gazes troubled mirrors. Their voices disrupted the seasons. They were born with screams, and died in silence.

They lived for a long time on the fringes of the world, slipping into the invisible faults—where maps end, where laws lose their power. They built cities from the roots of ancient trees, dug palaces beneath acidic lakes, carved temples from the skulls of dead beasts.

They didn't pray. They remembered.

They were cursed at birth. Not by a god or a demon, but by the very nature of their blood. For their magic was unchanneled: it burned unhindered, transforming them, devouring them little by little. Each spell cast cost them a part of their being. But they had no choice. It was that or disappear. And then they became powerful. Too powerful.

The world noticed them.

Men, jealous of what they did not understand, decided they were heretics. Demons, intrigued by their raw magic, wanted to capture and domesticate them. The celestials, frightened by what they perceived as a threat to the balance of cosmic laws, condemned them without trial.

And then the purge began.

Sorcerers were hunted like beasts. Shrines were ransacked. Children were torn from their mothers' arms to be purified in flames. Sages were executed, their tongues torn out and nailed to the doors of celestial temples. Pregnant women were disemboweled under the red moons, so that their lineage would not survive. The rivers where they had washed were rendered unfit for life. Even the demons eventually retreated. Too unstable, too dangerous. Too human, too inhuman. And in the final hour of their fall, a single name was whispered among the ashes: Wu Zhen.

Wu Zhen was the last of the Negative Fire masters. He had been trained in the depths of a forgotten sanctuary, beneath the Heiyan Sea of Mist, where the sky was no longer reflected. He knew the 49 languages of pain. He could make a blade cry, or a corpse sing.

But he never wanted war. The world imposed it on him.

They took his sister—hung her naked on celestial chains, her womb cut open, her eyes burned with divine light. They took his son—a three-year-old child with diaphanous skin, whose heart was offered to the gods to sanctify a harvest.

They took his name, his clan, his history.

And then Wu Zhen, the last, the tombless, lost his mind. But it wasn't a madness of screams and blood. It was a madness of order. A madness of silence. A madness of purpose.

He carved a forbidden incantation into his own body, right into his bones. A curse so ancient that even immortals feared it. He shattered the barriers between worlds, reversed the flow of rivers, disrupted the cycle of the seasons. He opened gates even demons barely dared to touch.

And into that gaping chasm between existence and nothingness, he cried out a single wish: “Let all perish.”

It wasn't revenge.

It was an end.

Not a war. A sentence.

The three great clans, panicked, forgot their ancestral hatred. Humans—weak but cunning. The celestials—pure but cruel. The demons—powerful but divided. Together they forged a pact. A new curse, born of fear.

They could not kill Wu Zhen. But they sealed his work. And they swore that never again would such power be born. So they turned the curse on his own line. The sons were erased. But the daughters… The daughters still carried the seed of chaos.

Every generation, a witch would be reborn. And to control her, to prevent her from opening the gates again, she would be bound—body and soul—to four representatives of the enemy clans.

A demon, to contain his violence.

A celestial, to watch over her.

A human, to humanize him.

A fox, to disturb her.

This wasn't a marriage. It was a cage. A punishment. A living seal. Each bond devoured the witch a little more. Each oath bound her essence to enemy souls. She wasn't allowed to love. Nor to choose. She had to obey, survive, bleed, and then die. Her heart was a tomb. Her body, a key.

And as long as the key remained in the hands of fate, peace, fragile and corrupt, could be maintained.

But with each generation, the same tragedy began again. The witch suffered. Her husbands fell, slowly, consumed by the curse. And despite everything, despite the fear, despite the pain—they fell. Into her eyes. Into her distress. Into her cursed light. And the circle began again. One girl. Four men. A cracked world. And love, like a double-edged sword—beautiful, fatal, and always bloody.

500 Years Later — Guangyin Si (光殒祠) – The Temple of Falling Light

In the forgotten languages of the ancient Celestials, the name Guangyin Si is broken down as follows: Guangyin , the light that no longer shines, the clarity that falls, fades, slowly collapses into the abyss without a cry—and Si , a funerary word, a term of sacred exile, which does not designate prayer, but mourning. Not that of the living, but that which the dead impose on the survivors. A complaint that even the gods no longer console.

Guangyin Si is not a temple. It is a scar.

A fracture in the celestial order. A chasm in the memory of the immortals. A remnant of an act of betrayal so pure, so absolute, that no tongue yet dares to name it.

It rests—or rather, hangs—on the edge of reality. Where the celestial realm frays into mists of frost. Where the sky ceases to be a shelter and becomes a precipice. The temple hangs over an infinite abyss, like a black fruit plucked from the world tree, held together only by ancient chains of fossilized light, stretched across the last pillars of a vanished era.

They creak sometimes. Not in the wind, because here, the wind is dead. But under the weight of centuries and captive souls.

It is said that Guangyin Si was sealed, not built.

The Immortals themselves speak of it only in hushed tones, as if they feared being overheard by the shadows that still sleep there.

The temple is carved from celestial obsidian so dense, so pure, that it absorbs light. The walls are black, but shot through with dull reflections, dead glows—memories of collapsed constellations.

Each slab is engraved. Not mere characters, no—but psalms of eternal penance, calligraphed in the funerary script of the High Immortals, a language only the fallen can read without losing their minds. They are forbidden to be spoken. Some have. Their bodies froze. Their mouths vanished. And their names were blotted from the sky.

The sanctuary rises like a vertical tomb. Its columns, twisted with runic chains, bear the weight of ancient, petrified celestial guardians—mutilated statues with bandaged eye sockets, severed wings, unearthed hearts. Each blind gaze seems to cry out for a punishment they did not choose. Their hands implore the heavens. The sky remains silent.

The wind doesn't blow here. It moans.

A deep, slow rattle that seems to come from within the walls. As if the stone were sighing under the sins it contains.

At the exact center of the temple rests the Altar of Lost Tears. A translucent, almost living monolith. It doesn't always shine. It doesn't vibrate with prayers. It waits. And when a soul collapses, when a being swears without believing, when a heart opens to mourn what it can never have... Then the Altar lights up. With a soft glow. Tragic. Deadly.

Guangyin Si does not welcome crowds.

It opens its doors only to those whom destiny has marked with a sacred seal:

The witches, descendants of the cursed blood. And the husbands, those who will be bound to them by the Pact. But this is not a marriage. It is a divine judgment. An offering. An execution.

The Celestial designated for this bond is never a weak being. He is chosen for his righteousness, his faith, his ability to obey without question. But when he enters Guangyin Si, he understands. He understands that he will not be a protector. That he will not be a lover. He will be the chain. He will take an oath not out of duty, but out of condemnation.

The ritual is long. Slow. Cruel.

He is temporarily stripped of his wings. To remind him that he is not a god here. He is made to kneel before the Altar. His hands plunge into the crystal. He then feels the memories of others, the fragments of those who came before him.

Their screams.

Their doubts.

Their useless love.

Their fall.

The bond is woven not with flesh, but with essence. An invisible vein opens between him and the witch. She doesn't see it, not yet. But she feels it. A burning deep in her heart. A trace of ash in her bones. From that moment on, she is his—not like a wife, but like a sacrificed key. And he is condemned to love her without ever being loved.

It is said that some Celestials tried to flee. Others begged. Some tried to break the pact at the final moment, facing the Altar. The Altar does not judge. It absorbs. We can still see their traces. Luminous silhouettes, half-melted into the walls, like star specters.

They don't scream. They no longer have a voice.

But if you listen carefully, if you listen for a long time, you will hear... Their regret.

You were only twelve years old.

Twelve silent winters spent growing up within the hushed, treacherous walls of the Black Lotus Pavilion. There, nothing was truly alive. Everything was only forms and appearances. You were fed bitter herbs and carefully measured poisons, twisted truths and dire premonitions. You were spoken to softly, like a precious doll... but every step, every word, was watched like a sin in the making.

You were neither a child nor a student. You were a warning. The cursed descendant of a blood the immortals had tried to erase, a living echo of a time the books no longer dared to mention. A shard of chaos embodied in a body too young, too thin, too still trembling to bear such fatality.

So you ran away.

Not forever.

Just… for a few hours.

You wanted something other than the acrid smell of black incense, something other than the long processions of mute sorcerers, the lessons delivered with voices of stone, the stares that weighed like blades balanced on your neck. You wanted to see something other than the dried blood in ritual cups, the tattoos seared with hot irons on the arms of the elders, the sacred ashes that served only to hide fear.

You had run barefoot, unprotected, unguided, through withered groves, hills where twisted trees seemed to weep. You had crossed the remains of ancient battles, fields of ashes where souls never truly rested. The wind carried whispers there that no one listened to.

And then you saw it. A temple. Broken. Half collapsed, half engulfed under thick brambles, roots bleeding black sap. A forgotten, or perhaps hidden, shrine. Something in its silence had called your blood.

You should never have come in.

This was not an abandoned shrine, nor a lost ruin. This was Guangyin Si. Where even immortals dared not set foot. Where oaths were bound by blood and silence. Where the living were sealed like upright coffins.

The ground beneath your feet was icy. You felt the stone vibrate—not like matter, but like memory. Each slab seemed to weep. There was a strange heaviness in the air. No smell. No light. Nothing but emptiness. A palpable chasm opening inside you, as if this place already knew who you were. What you carried. You reached out toward a worn relief, a sculpture eaten away by the centuries, half angel, half beast. Your fingers barely trembled—and that's when it appeared.

Not a sound.

Not an alert.

Just… the pain.

A hand, large and cruel, had fallen upon you without warning, seizing you by the hair with animal brutality. You felt your neck twist. Your feet leave the ground. Your breath catch. The grip was that of an executioner: assured, disgusted, sure of his right.

You had screamed.

But the sound had crashed into the walls, absorbed by the stones. No echo. No response. Even the shadows had turned away. Your tears had flowed at once. No shame, no fear—just a flood of naked pain. You felt them slide down your twisted jaw, mingling with your blood. Whole strands of your hair had fallen to the ground, some clinging to your scalp, tinged a dark red, almost black. Your stomach twisted. Your vision rippled.

And he spoke.

"What's a little witch doing here?" His voice was a low whisper, laden with suppressed anger, but also with a kind of cold disgust. Not like an outraged man. But like an insulted god.

As if your presence desecrated not only this place, but also its essence.

You wanted to speak. Scream. Spit out your rage. You wanted to bite him. Scream your name. Throw your curse in his face. But your body no longer responded. So you struggled. Your hands, too thin, too fragile, reached out toward his face. You scratched, struck, screamed silently. Like a cornered animal.

But with each attempt, the light pushed you back. A barrier. Thin. Invisible, but burning hot. You felt your skin melting. Your palms sizzled from the impact, marked with red, painful blisters.

You'd never touched anything so pure. So... unattainable. It wasn't a spell. It was him. A Celestial. Not a simple guard. Not a priest. One of their own. An immortal. One of those who think that their gaze is enough to judge, that their silence is a sentence.

He watched you, suspended in midair, like an anomaly he needed to crush. But he wasn't crushing you. He was waiting. He was sizing you up, like a scientist with a rare insect. Maybe he hoped you'd cry more. Beg. Break down like the others.

But you didn't.

You were in pain. The world was spinning. Blood pounded in your temples like funeral drums.

But you growled. A hoarse sound, coming from deeper than your throat. A scream that wasn't human. A howl of bloodline, of curse. Something that came from the shadow of your clan. Something that wouldn't die.

The Celestial sneers. A shrill, broken sound, like a bone being bent until it cracks. There is no mercy in this laughter. No hesitation. Just a cruel, tiny joy that pierces beneath his voice, as if what he is about to do is not only a duty... but a forbidden pleasure.

Then comes the shock. Brutal. You don't see it coming.

Your body is thrown to the ground with such brutal force that the air suddenly leaves your lungs. You hit the stone with your lower back, your legs, your arms. A sinister crack mixes with the impact: your shoulder, perhaps. Or your hope.

The pain is immediate. Acute. You want to scream, but only a hoarse breath escapes your throat. Your face contorts, not from fear, but from this unbearable, pure, white suffering. Your legs refuse to move. Your back screams.

You stand there for a moment, face down, listening to the irregular beating of your own heart. The echo of the Celestial's sneer floats above you like a mocking specter.

And then you crawl. You have no more strength, but you crawl. Your fingers, covered in burns from his barrier of light, are already bleeding. But the stones here aren't mere pebbles. They're engraved with ancient runes, ancient celestial oaths as sharp as blades, encrusted with obsidian crystals and purifying salt. Every movement tears at your skin. Every step forward tears the flesh of your hands a little more, opening deep cracks that are instantly blackened by blood.

You swallow your screams. You refuse to give him that. Tears fall, heavy, hot, silent. You feel them slide down your cheeks, mix with the sacred dust of the ground, form a sticky red mud beneath you.

Behind, his footsteps still echo. One. Two. Three. Slow. Measured. As if counting the beats of your heart before the final silence.

“You think you can run away?” His voice is low, calm, almost gentle. And it’s that gentleness that chills the blood. “You think you can escape what you are? Little scum of the world… Your kind should have been eradicated generations ago. You are a mistake. A blasphemy.”

He doesn't scream. He just observes. As if your existence violates some fundamental law of the universe.

You keep crawling, a little, just enough to get away from his shadow. You're out of breath. Out of strength. Your body is a field of pain. So you stop. You close your eyes. You breathe in. Slowly. Once. Twice. Your hands are shaking, covered in blood and tears. But you place them flat on the floor. You clench your jaw. And you straighten up. Painfully. Trembling. Like a flame that refuses to go out.

Facing him.

He watches you. His eyes are pale, shot through with a hard glow, as if forged in the glare of divine judgment. But you don't lower your eyes.

“We didn't do anything…” you say. Your voice is raspy, barely above a whisper. But it's there. Alive. “Nothing… to deserve this. We didn't choose. The universe rejected us. But… You chose to hate us.”

You swallow. Blood rises to your mouth. You wipe it with the back of your hand, stained, soiled, and continue:

“If living is a crime… if being born a witch is a fault… then kill me. Now. But look at me well, and tell me if your oath gives you the right to treat me as less than a beast.”

You challenge him. Your eyes shine—not with light, but with that shadow so ancient it predates even the laws of the gods. It is a spark of chaos. A promise of destruction. And he sees it. He frowns, a breath hesitates on his lips. Doubt? Fear? Perhaps. Or perhaps a simple shudder. Then he raises his hand. A sword materializes in a shower of golden shards. Its light is almost unbearable. It sings. A crystalline music, pure, sharp. A blade fashioned to kill beings like you—living curses.

He points it at you.

“I'm going to kill you, for the good of this world. For peace. So that my people can sleep without nightmares.” He smiled. Cold. Empty. “Don't take this the wrong way, little one. I have no choice.”

But you see it. You feel it. He's lying. He loves this scene. He enjoys this terror. And he chooses, every day, to hate what he doesn't understand.

And in the silence that follows, as the blade lights with the will of the gods, something within you awakens. Something older than your name. Deeper than your blood. Older than the temple itself.

At first you feel a dull tension gnawing at your being, like a poison slowly seeping in, then a hot ember igniting in the hollow of your chest. This ember becomes a cruel fire, a voracious fire that consumes your veins, devours your flesh, consumes your will.

Your breath quickens, gasps, becomes hoarse, like a trapped animal. Your hands tremble, your whole body screams silently.

Then this fire explodes.

A storm of white light erupts from your heart, violent, blinding, torn with deep-black shadows, as if the sky and the night themselves had been unleashed within you. The blast surges forth in furious waves, devastating everything around. The ground trembles, the temple walls vibrate with the force of your power.

A pungent smell of blood mixed with that of dark magic fills the air. The very air seems to be cracking.

The celestial, until now frozen in a deceptive calm, is swept away by this storm. His body flies backward, crashes against the thousand-year-old stone of the sanctuary wall with a dull, dry thud, his skull hitting the stone with a sinister crack.

A shudder of pain twists his face. He collapses to his knees, gasping for breath, overcome by the violence of your power. Blackish blood seeps from his temple, slowly sliding like a river of darkness across his pale skin. The thick liquid seeps into his hair, stains his face, and falls in silent drops onto the temple's engraved flagstones. He half-closes one eye, his gaze clouded with pain and surprise, but refuses to sink. His saber, planted in the ground, is his last anchor.

And you, at the center of this chaos, no longer resemble the child you once were. You are no longer the vulnerable girl who sought light amidst the darkness.

Something ancient, dark, unfathomable, has taken possession of your soul.

In your palm rises a sword. It is forged in your own blood, mingled with swirling black smoke, as alive as you are. The blade is deep black, veined with incandescent red, smoking like the maw of a sleeping dragon. It throbs, a cursed heart beating within the steel.

You take it without hesitation. It's heavy, but it feels like a natural extension of yourself. It's cold, yet it burns your skin like frost and fire combined.

You advance, slowly, inexorably. Your bare footsteps hammer the sacred ground, leaving crimson prints, bloody traces that seem to dance beneath the grim glow of the torches.

Your gaze is a blade. Empty. Icy. Merciless. Your heart no longer beats for yourself, but for one thing: revenge, survival.

"You won't blame me..." your voice rises, foreign, broken, woven with a veil of shadow. It is no longer that of a child, but that of a being who has seen too much, suffered too much, lost too much. "...for killing you to save my clan. To save me."

The celestial lifts his head, barely conscious, panting, a vein pulsing in his forehead. His eyes, half-lidded, are a mixture of pain, disbelief, and a final spark of defiance. He knows that this gaze is no longer that of a child, but of a demon inhabited by a curse. He knows the battle is lost.

"I don't have a choice either." You say the words with a cruel smile, a grimace distorted by pain and determination, which is anything but childish.

You suddenly disappear in a swirl of thick black smoke. Then you reappear before him, a specter of vengeance and despair. Your saber raised, but too slow, too weak.

Your blade pierces his chest. The black metal pierces flesh, splits bone, pierces a heart that still beats, but weakly. A deep, muffled rattle escapes his throat. It's not a scream, but a final breath laden with pain, regret, and silent forgiveness.

His eyes open wide, filled with indescribable grief, a silent goodbye. His fingers weakly grip your wrist, searching for one last connection, one reason, one forgiveness. His breath comes short, uneven. His body trembles, slumps, like a wilted flower in a black rain.

He dies.

You slowly back away.

The sword in your hand is still warm, steaming, saturated with its essence, its ripped life. Heavenly blood trickles from the wound, falling in heavy drops onto the sacred ground. You watch it crumble, motionless, slowly absorbed by stone and shadow.

You don't look away. You smile. A broken, torn, heartbreaking smile, somewhere between the bitter jubilation of having survived and the visceral horror of having killed.

And in this silence, you don't see. The child. Thirteen years old. He stands there, in the shadows, like a frozen ghost. He still wears the uniform of the celestial novices, clumsy, too big for him. His face is pale, his eyes too light, frozen in a mixture of fear, pain, and despair.

He saw everything.

Your unleashed power. The death of his master, the one who had taken him in, raised him, loved him like a father. Your smile, that of a witch lost in her own night. His lips tremble, his hands clench the hilt of a saber he has never wielded.

Then he screams. A heart-rending, shrill cry, a sound that pierces the silence like a blade.

He throws himself at you.

You no longer have time to think, nor to flee. A sharp pain explodes in your shoulder. The blade is thin, clumsy, but it penetrates, brutal, cruel. Your cry of pain tears through the sanctuary, awakening echoes of the past. Your magic breaks free, uncontrollable. A new explosion of dark and luminous energy propels him backward. The boy is thrown against a column, collapses, half-conscious, gasping for breath.

You stagger, breathless, your body bruised. You tear the blade from your flesh with a scream of agony. Blood flows, a red river on the cold stone. You tremble. And in this absolute pain, you see it.

He is not a warrior. Not a celestial. Just a child. A boy with a face still round, his eyes full of tears. And you have just stolen his world. He looks at you one last time. A look full of sadness, fear, hatred. Then he passed out. And you... You run away. You become mist again. Silence. Shadow. A nightmare we prefer to forget.

That day, Sunghoon didn't just see his master die. He saw a demon born. And this demon had the eyes of a girl. Eyes that, one day, he knew, would find him again.

16 Years Later — Shīhún Qiáo — The Bridge of Lost Souls

You've always been told legends. Tales to lull children to sleep, or to nurture the bravery of young soldiers. You've been told that true warriors don't bleed. That their skin is as smooth, immaculate, and fragile as a newborn's, protected by an invisible, impenetrable force. That their flesh refuses injury, like a mystical shield insulating them from pain. That their bones, tempered in fire and iron, are as strong as the immortal blade they wield. You've been told repeatedly that they never fall, that their bodies are living fortresses, invincible, eternal.

They lied to you.

For at this precise moment, on this bridge suspended over the sacred river—this thick, black stream, whispered by the ancients as the incandescent border between the realm of the living and that of the dead—there is a body. Or what remains of it.

The wood of the bridge groans beneath your cautious steps, slippery, soaked by the recent rain, drowned in a thick winter mist. The worn ropes hang like vines covered in mold and, above all, stained with blood. Ancient blood. Blood mingled with lost souls.

The air is icy, laden with an almost palpable humidity that clings to your skin like a shroud, heavy and suffocating.

Amidst the blackened, war-scarred planks, you see a collapsed figure, clinging to the worn wood, like the last castaway on a worm-eaten raft.

A man. No. A soldier. A survivor. Or rather, a dying man.

He is slumped, overwhelmed, on his knees, but his legs seem to have broken themselves, or perhaps they have betrayed him. He can no longer support them, he no longer feels them. His body is curled up, folded in on itself, as if the pain, as unbearable as death, were trying to suffocate him. His chest heaves painfully, each breath a hoarse, wheezing rattle, each inspiration a struggle against the approaching nothingness.

Behind him, a trail of blood stretches across the wood, long, thick, and winding, like a funereal mark carved into the bridge. In places, the bright red color has darkened, coagulated into thick, almost solid black stains. In others, the carmine liquid still drips, warm, fresh, vibrant with the life slowly escaping from his body. Every step you take splatters this bloody ground; you walk on the remains of a battle, on the vestiges of a broken army.

You step forward, your muscles trembling with emotion, your breath caught, and what you discover draws a stifled cry from you. His armor, once gleaming black and gold, bears the scars of hell. It is cracked, torn, twisted. The protective plates, once solid, now hang in shreds of bruised metal, some melted, cracked, as if burned by magic too devastating to be human.

His flesh appears, torn, burned, shredded. Blood flows in invisible, sticky streams between the plates, trickling down his pale skin, splashing the wood of the bridge in a macabre fresco. On his left side, a gaping wound spreads like an open carnivorous mouth, revealing the red and black pulp of his entrails, which throb painfully with every breath.

And yet, despite this devastation, he is still alive.

His fingers, stiff and tense, desperately grip the hilt of his sword. A long, cracked blade, eaten away by rust and fire, its metal blackened by the infernal heat of spilled blood and raging flames. This once-proud sword now bears the scars of a war that poets would sing of as an epic tragedy. But this blade is twisted, worn, tired. Like its master.

His forehead rests against the cold, icy pommel, covered in dried blood. You might think he's praying, finding some final comfort in this contact. But his lips barely move. These aren't prayers. They're names.

« Jiang… Lu'an… Fei… »

You crouch down beside him and scrutinize his face, hidden by soaked locks of hair, stuck to his pale skin. He's young. Far too young. Maybe not even twenty. He could have been handsome. He could have laughed. But today, that face is broken. Fractured. Fragile like porcelain abandoned in torrential rain. His gaze, red and glassy, expresses an indescribable pain. An immense fatigue. A pain of the soul. And suddenly, you hear. It's not just the wind that slips between the ropes.

These are voices. Barely audible whispers. Forgotten breaths. Gaunt sighs. Smothered cries that tear at each other. Moans distorted by eternity. These are the spirits of the dead. The black souls floating on the river. Those who sank into its waters, believing they would find rest there. Those whom the soldier himself perhaps sent to the other bank.

They circle him like invisible vultures, carried by the wind. Drawn by the smell of blood, of despair, of the end. You reach out hesitantly to touch his shoulder. He groans, a heart-rending rattle, and your heart clenches painfully. He looks at you. And in his eyes, there is neither fear nor anger. It is a consuming, infinite shame. The shame of having survived. Of having seen his brothers fall one by one. The shame of not having died with them.

“They… told me to run away… I… I left. I left everything…” His voice is a hoarse breath, a painful rattle, a whisper of death. Each word seems to cost him his life. And yet, he speaks. Because there is nothing left but the words. The memories. The ghosts.

You see his tears. But they don't run down his cheeks. They mix with the blood. They slide from the corners of his eyes, mix with the grime, and fall silently onto the sticky wood of the bridge. He grits his teeth, but his body trembles, shaken by fever and pain.

You look at his wounds again. Not all of them are visible. Some go far deeper than flesh, to the very heart of the soul. Wounds that neither magic, nor time, nor tears can heal.

You tear off a piece of your garment, soaked with moisture and blood, and press it against his gaping wound. The fabric immediately soaks, bright red, bursting like a cry of despair, red with death, red with stolen life.

You feel the heat escaping from his body, the end near, the flickering light. And as you try, with all the strength you have left, to right him, he collapses, sliding against you. His forehead rests on your shoulder, his weak but firm hand grips your wrist like a desperate anchor.

“Tell them… we didn’t run away. Tell them… we fought. To the last man.” Her voice fades little by little, like a flame blown out by the wind. But her grip, fragile and trembling, remains. Almost stronger than her breath.

The wind howls through the bridge ropes, carrying with it the funeral melody of wandering souls. The river roars, black and untamed, engulfing the dead and their secrets in its waters. And you stand there. Frozen. Holding this brother of blood and pain against you. The sky is a thick gray shroud, laden with ash and despair. The world seems reduced to dust. And you... you finally understand.

Heroes are not immortal. They are bleeding. They cry. They die. And sometimes they howl into the night, alone in the cold, on a bridge between two worlds.

You hadn't thought. You hadn't had time. Your instinct had screamed louder than reason. Your heart, drowned in a storm of invisible tears, had screamed louder than your magic itself.

And in the blink of an eye, you had left that bridge. You had left the world suspended between life and death, this theater of blood and shadows, to appear within the Black Lotus Pavilion—this forbidden, ancient sanctuary, which even the most powerful hardly dared to name.

A black mist engulfed you before spat you back into your room, its walls draped in dusty silk and the faded scent of forgotten incense. The man's inert body hung in your arms, heavy, icy, wet with the blood of former comrades, enemies, or perhaps both.

He'd slipped from your grasp once as you staggered to your feet. You'd screamed unintentionally, in pain or rage, or perhaps both. But you'd finally hoisted him onto the black brocade bed, the sheets of which immediately became soaked with the blood that kept flowing, slowly, mercilessly, like the grains of an hourglass whose fall you could no longer stop.

His breath was almost imperceptible. A weak, broken whimper, somewhere between life and agony. You placed your hand on his chest. Cold. So cold. And then you understood. He was dying. And you were going to have to save him. But he wasn't an immortal. He wasn't a celestial, a demon, or a spirit beast. He was just a man. A wounded, broken, shattered man.

You knew what it would cost.

This wasn't a simple healing. It wasn't a stitching of flesh or a bandage of light. What you were about to do… was about to tap into an ancient magic. A dark magic. Forbidden. A magic that drew on your life force. Your blood. Your memory. Your essence.

And you knew that by triggering it, you would never be the same again.

Every ounce of power used to save him would be ripped from your own soul. Once given, it would never return.

You looked at him one last time. He looked so young… almost peaceful, in that moment. Like a child exhausted by war. Like a brother you never had. A king without a throne. A soldier without a war.

You made your decision.

Your fingers began to dance in the air, despite their trembling. You formed the first mudras, the first sacred gestures, precise, sharp as blades. Each one made your bones creak, as if your flesh refused to obey this forbidden invocation.

Then your mouth opened. And the spell flowed from your lips like a river of curses. A deep, guttural, ancient whisper. Words in a language no one spoke anymore. The walls of the pavilion seemed to shudder at their sound. The room began to shake slowly, then more violently, in time with your voice.

The wind rose in the closed room. Yet there were no open windows, no half-open doors. But magic called for a storm. The candles flickered. One by one, they went out, swallowed by an invisible breath. The shadows fell. And suddenly, your body began to burn. Your blood turned to fire. You felt a pressure burst in your chest, your veins twisting like angry snakes, your breath caught.

You leaned forward, gasping for air, and vomited blood onto the floor. Red. Thick. Hot. You didn't stop. You couldn't stop. You continued the actions. The words. The sacrifices. You lost track of time. Hours. Or maybe seconds. Your body was on fire, and your soul was bleeding, but suddenly you felt a jolt in the air. A pulse.

The soldier's body rose slowly above the bed. He floated, his arms dangling, his head hanging. Around him, a black aura, like liquid ash, formed. Black flames—no, spiritual burns—rose from his torso, his arms, his wounds. They devoured the pain. They stitched the flesh together, slowly, brutally, like incandescent needles. His bones cracked. Snapped back into place with an unbearable noise.

And yet, he didn't scream. Because he was unconscious. But you felt every wound as if it were tearing at you. You screamed silently. You felt your power melting, your essence burning away, your heart beating like a war drum ready to explode.

Then, like a dying wave, the spell fell. The body fell back onto the bed with a shudder, its wounds healed, its breathing more regular. Still weak. But alive.

You collapsed. You fell to your knees, your hands pressed against the ground, in a pool of blood—your blood. You were shaking. Your breath was nothing but a rattle, a painful hiss. You raised your head. A tear fell. Then another. You tried to speak. Nothing came out. You coughed up more blood. It was darker this time. Almost black.

You placed your hand on the wall to keep from falling. Your eyes burned. You couldn't see anything anymore. You were empty. And in that almost total silence, broken only by your broken breath, you understood. You had saved a man. And you had just sacrificed a part of yourself that you would never get back.

You closed your eyes. You were no longer whole. But he… he was alive.

A few days had passed, but they had brought no relief. The echo of the forbidden spell still screamed through your bruised flesh, reverberating through every vein like a blade that was both cold and burning. Your body, once a proud and solid sanctuary, was now nothing more than a cracked receptacle, tainted by the dark, corrupted magic you had summoned. Forbidden, unholy magic, an open wound in the very fabric of your soul.

Every night, you lay on the frozen floor of the Black Lotus Pavilion, your wide eyes fixed on the ceiling of shifting shadows, frozen between life and death, like a motionless offering in an abandoned temple. Your breaths came in short, ragged gasps, a hoarse rattle that seemed to come from the depths of an abyss. Your blood, that vital liquid, had become a burning poison, distilling pain and fatigue with every pulse. You had given everything, sacrificed everything. And something inside you, that day, had ceased to exist.

Time no longer had any contours. The hours ticked by in a thick fog, slipping like black sand between your icy fingers. The nights coiled around your throat like poisonous, endless snakes, strangling you in a silence echoing with the howls of the past war. Nothing made sense anymore, except this dull, tenacious pain, this gloomy wait, and the silent figure lying a few feet away from you, this fragile body that you had torn from the grim reaper, without it ever knowing.

Sitting cross-legged, arms clasped around your bruised stomach, you meditated in the icy silence. You tried to reconstitute that sacred IQ, that mutilated vital energy, torn apart by your forbidden act. But the gaping rift remained, hungry, insatiable. It was a bottomless pit, a void that nothing could fill. Your body was still bleeding, despite the magic. Streams of thick, black blood, weighed down by the curse, escaped from your nostrils, ran down your palms, sometimes even from your eyes. The metallic smell of iron, of rust, of misfortune had permeated you, sticking to your skin like a second flesh, an invisible gangrene.

And yet, despite this ignoble agony, you knew you had to make him leave. He must never know. Never discover that you had slashed your own heart to snatch his from the clutches of death. He must not see you as you were—the damned witch, the outcast of heaven, the guardian of a silent and monstrous sacrifice. You refused to let him bind you to this desecrated magic, to this horror that even the heavens refused to bless.

So you got up.

Your body reeled, heavy and broken. Your legs suddenly buckled in a wild spasm, as if refusing to bear such a heavy burden. You clutched desperately at the rough stone wall, your fingers trembling, your flesh bruised, to keep from collapsing into a pile of ash. A sharp pain, as sharp as a rusty blade, pierced your spine. You bit the inside of your cheek until it bled, to keep from letting out a scream of agony.

But you walked.

Your bare feet slid across the cold, damp, black-moss-covered flagstones, each step echoing in the icy silence like a funeral drumbeat heralding the end. You walked through the stagnant mists of the cave, where the air seemed laden with ancient deaths, oozing from the walls like a promise of despair. The smell of decay and blood permeated your matted hair, and your breath came in short, harsh gasps. Even the wind, once free and alive, seemed frozen here, trapped in an invisible tomb.

You finally reached the bedroom. And then… your eyes find him.

He was sleeping.

You stopped, panting, unable to go any further. Your breath caught in your tight throat. The name of this man, this mutilated soldier, echoed in your head like a profane incantation you had never dared to utter aloud: Lee Heeseung.

This stranger, this fragment of humanity torn from the demons of war, this broken body that you had saved, at the cost of your own sacrifice.

He lay on the black wooden bed, unconscious but alive. His chest rose and fell gently, almost timidly. His skin had become a little lighter, his wounds healed, cleansed of clotted blood, but the scars remained—etched into the flesh like so many silent witnesses to the carnage. His gaze, even closed, seemed to bear the weight of an unfathomable abyss, a void as black as night. You had felt his last breath slip through your fingers, and you had refused it, clinging to him by a thread of forbidden magic.

You approached slowly, your hands trembling, hesitant, as if haunted by the fear of profaning this fragile miracle. You wanted to hide them in the sleeves of your worn robe, but they slipped away, nervous, uncontrollable. You leaned over him, observing the rebellious locks falling on his forehead, still damp from the cold rain of the resurrection spell. He wore a black hanfu, woven in a secret whisper by your trembling hands—a robe of shadow, made of silence, ashes, and oblivion, the garment of a fallen king.

You looked at him for a long time, too long, as if you were looking for an answer, a release. Then, slowly, with infinite delicacy, you placed two fingers on his chest, where his heart beat weakly—that slow, hesitant drum, fragile like a last breath.

The black mist rose around you, dense and heavy, enveloping you in a veil of oblivion. And with a breath, you disappeared with it.

When you reappeared, it was in front of the Lee Residence. It was a shadow of its former self.

The stone bore the scars of a recent battle: arrow shards embedded in the walls, gaping breaches like open wounds, the ground stained with fresh, damp blood, filling the air with a metallic smell of iron and death. Distant screams rose muffled, drowned out by smoke that rose in thick curls toward a low, gray sky. The war was over here, leaving behind a silence of ashes.

You moved slowly, each step heavy, almost solemn. The lanterns hanging from the branches of the surrounding trees trembled, half-melted, casting flickering lights on the faces carved in the stone—dead heroes, forgotten ancestors, frozen in a time that would no longer pass.

You gently placed Lee Heeseung at the foot of the rough wall, his legs bent like those of an exhausted man, his back pressed against the cold stone. His head tilted limply to one side, exposing a pale, vulnerable throat, bare to the world. You knelt before him, and for the first time, truly, you looked at him.

He didn't look like a survivor. He looked like a sacrificed king. To a forgotten martyr. To a bloody offering.

You reached out your hand. A black lock of hair fell on his cheek, which you pushed back with a gesture of infinite gentleness. Your fingers brushed against his burning skin, slid slowly across his forehead, beaded with cold sweat. You felt the warmth of his life flickering, that fragile beat in the night.

And there, in that tiny touch, your heart nearly broke. No love. No pity. Something ancient, crueler, more voracious. A savage need, a burning desire. A hunger born of blood and war.

You jerked back, gasping for air.

His brows furrowed in an almost imperceptible spasm. He was about to wake up. You shouldn't have been there. You were only the shadow, the silent sacrifice. Then, without a word, without a goodbye, you withdrew. You were dissolved into the mist, erased by the night.

When Heeseung opened his eyes, it was like a blade slashing through the black mist of unconsciousness. At first, it was a pale, harsh, unbearable light—as if his soul, snatched from the clutches of death, was not yet ready to return to life. Then, slowly, the outlines of a silent world appeared around him, blurred, twisted, bathed in an almost supernatural calm.

He no longer felt pain. And that alone should have alarmed him. For before… there had been only pain. Fire, blood, screams, swords slicing through flesh. The chaos of a battlefield that even the heavens had denied.

But all of this… seemed to belong to another life. A life he had left behind.

A veil covered his memory, not like natural forgetting, but like a curse. Thick, sticky, oozing with that dark, ancient magic that men should never touch. A painful absence, a hollow in his mind where something should still have burned. Someone. But there was nothing.

Not even a trace.

Not even an emotion.

As if the memory of someone he had unknowingly loved had been torn from him. When he looked down, it was to meet the gaze of a woman kneeling before him.

A celestial one.

Her immaculate dress floated in the still air as if it obeyed no laws of this world. Her skin was unblemished, her face marked by serene compassion. In her open palm, a soft light pulsed, like a heart ready to offer a second life. She looked at him gently, like a goddess descended from the heavens. And he… he believed her. He believed this illusion.

Because he needed to believe it.

Because a man returned from the dead, covered in healed wounds and clotted blood, no longer had the strength to doubt. His soul was too damaged, too weary, too broken to question what fate offered him. So he accepted. He accepted this lie. And in this choice—or this non-choice—was the most terrible cruelty. For it was not she who had saved him. It was not this woman of light.

It was you.

You, the shadow, the forbidden one, the witch with the torn heart. The one who had vomited blood to give him life again. The one who had sacrificed years of existence, burned away his power, lost part of her soul. The one who had carried him, inert and covered in wounds, to your home to snatch him from death.

You, of whom nothing remained. Not a trace in his memories. Not a hint of warmth in his gaze.

Heaven, in its cruel justice, had erased your name from its destiny. It had made you invisible. And while the celestial placed a benevolent hand on its brow, you were nothing more than a faded memory, a phantom presence that even the wind refused to name.

But your blood was still there. It stained the stones in front of the Lee house. It seeped into the roots. It called your name silently.

And if Heeseung had paid a little more attention... if he had listened a little more to his heart, he might have heard that silent cry, that tiny dissonance in the false harmony that was being held out to him.

But he didn't. He accepted the lie. He accepted his "savior." And you, somewhere in the mists, watched. Heart broken, body hollow. Knees in the mud, fingers covered in ash, eyes wide open in the night. You were the one who had loved him enough to disappear from his memory. The one who had saved him... so that he could live without you.

And in a world torn apart by war, in a time when life was sold for pieces of soul, there was perhaps nothing more tragic...

…than having given everything to be forgotten.

20 Years Later — Yǒng míng huī diàn (永冥灰殿) — The Shrine of the Ashes of the Eternal Shadow

It is said that the sanctuary of Yǒng Míng Huī Diàn stands on a desolate plateau, swept by icy, howling winds, atop a barren mountain, torn by centuries of storms and battles. Where life once tried to cling, today only black stones, split and splintered, remain, mutilated remnants of a world consumed by the fury of flames and the wrath of the gods.

The ground is dry and cracked, crevassed like the skin of a dying man, and the few tufts of grass that dare venture there are quickly scorched by a burning dust laden with ash and dried blood.

The temple itself is a grim colossus, rising like a scar on the devastated landscape. Its dark stone walls appear to have been eaten away by fire and time, covered in thick, still-damp ash, as if war had just been raging within them once more.

Massive columns, as black as the purest ebony, soar into an inky sky, heavy with clouds that stretch as far as the eye can see, threatening to engulf this place in an endless abyss. Each stone bears the scars of ancient battles, engraved with forbidden and cursed runes, engravings that glow faintly with an ashen, malevolent light, as if the temple's tormented soul itself manages the boundary between this world and the underworld.

The air is so thick with dark magic that it constricts the chest and tightens the throat, each breath becoming a painful struggle for breath, as if the shadows themselves were trying to penetrate your being. The wind, laden with dust and ash, never ceases to moan, carrying with it strange whispers, sighs of lost souls and the muffled laments of vanished soldiers. These voices haunt the temple, echoing through the empty corridors, mingling with the distant creaking of walls cracking under the weight of centuries and curses.

With every step, the ground becomes more menacing. It is littered with shards of broken bones, fragments of shattered weapons—swords, spears, axes—silent witnesses to a forgotten massacre, buried beneath layers of dried blood that blacken the earth. In places, dark, sticky pools, remnants of unspeakable carnage, betray the violence of the fighting that robbed this place of every ounce of life. The blood has mingled with the dust, creating a dark, viscous paste that oozes between the stones, like the indelible memory of a suffering that even time cannot erase.

Once sacred altars lie shattered, their mystical symbols half-erased by flames and the passage of time, but still imbued with a sinister energy. Reddish traces—a mingling of blood and ash—still stain their surfaces, evidence of ancient, bloody, perhaps forbidden rituals that resonate in the bleak silence of the sanctuary like an echo of immemorial horror.

The temple seems alive, breathing a dark, almost palpable melancholy. It echoes with a dull, incessant murmur—a spectral chorus of forgotten chants, muffled cries, and distant laments that twist the soul. The wind carries these sounds like a morbid lullaby, a funereal symphony mingling pain, anger, and despair.

In some places, a thick black magic spreads in the air, undulating like a black and toxic mist, capable of plunging the heart into an icy night, of weighing down each beat, of constricting the lungs to the point of suffocation.

It is said that this sanctuary is not simply a place of contemplation or prayer, but a living tomb, a crossroads where tortured souls and vengeful spirits intertwine. Here, the boundary between the world of the living and the world of the dead is fragile, and the shadows of fallen warriors wander in a dance of death, trapped in an endless cycle of suffering and blood.

This place embodies the end of all things—absolute destruction, inexorable fall—but also the terrible power of that which refuses to die: the eternal shadow, the black flame, the incandescent ashes of war.

A marriage sealed in this place does not celebrate the sacred union of two souls, but a fatal pact, a fragile and unstable alliance between the unleashed forces of destruction and the resurgent forces of pain. It is marked by suffering, by the cruelty of fate, by the bloody violence of an oath forged in fire and blood. It is not an oath of love, but a commitment to bear the cross of a fragile balance between life and death, between light and darkness, sealed forever by sacrifice, pain, and the memory of torn souls.

You wore a blood-red hanfu, as bright as an open wound. It slid across your skin like a stream of fire, its long sleeves trailing behind you like the funeral ribbons of an offering. Motifs of bridled phoenixes, with folded wings and dull eyes, snaked along the fabric. They weren't sewn to fly. They were there to remind you of sacrificed nobility, aborted rebirth, the chains that even mythical creatures could not break.

The bottom of the hanfu was so dark it looked as if it had been dipped in ashes, blackened by the flames of a sacred pyre—that of your freedom.

And you, silent, you walked.

On your head rested a phoenix crown, forged from gold too heavy, engraved with imperial motifs and encrusted with ancient jade and pearly beads. With every step, it pulled you toward the ground, weighing like the sky itself. Every pin stuck in your hair seemed to pierce your skull to reach your mind, and the gold chains that hung from it vibrated gently, tinkling like funeral bells. They didn't celebrate a union. They mourned an execution in disguise.

You were dressed like an empress... But you felt like a prisoner being led to sacrifice.

Your face was hidden beneath a veil of red silk, embroidered with gold threads that outlined ancient characters—perhaps prayers, or perhaps curses. No one dared read them. This veil was the last bulwark between you and the world, between dignity and collapse. Around your neck, stiff, tight collars hampered your breathing. On your arms, dark metal bracelets, engraved with pact seals, bound you to the four clans that had shared your fate.

You moved slowly, each step painful. You felt the muscles in your legs protesting under the weight of the fabric, the metal, and the memory. The shoes were thin but stiff, and small patches of blood were already appearing at the tips of your toes—your body was reminding you that it refused to get used to this pain.

Since childhood, you had been trained. Yes, trained. Uneducated. Untrained. Trained as one forms a weapon, a tool, a bond.

Each ceremony, each ritual, had distanced you a little further from your humanity, making you the living heart of a fragile peace pact, the final barrier between war and the end of the world. And yet, today, atop this bare mountain, you understood that it was not peace you carried, but war frozen in a silk coffin.

The path to the Yǒng Míng Huī Diàn shrine was steep, lined with sharp stones and broken bones half-buried beneath the black dust. With every step, the mountain seemed to whisper, speaking to you in a language made of biting wind, scorched sand, and dried blood. The wind slapped you, sometimes lifting your veil, reminding you that you were only a body offered to the ancient gods.

When you finally reached the summit, a wave of dizziness washed over you. Before you, the temple stood its black silhouette against an inky sky, its walls cracked by war, its columns covered with forgotten symbols. There were no wedding decorations. No ribbons, no flowers, no music.

Only silence. The cold. And the ruins.

It was right. It wasn't a marriage. It wasn't a union. It was a ritual of mutual submission, an offering of flesh and soul to delay the inevitable—the next conflict, the next fall.

You saw the representatives of the four clans, posted at a good distance. Each of them wore mourning in their eyes, or in suppressed hatred. None of them really looked at you. You were not a woman. You were not a wife.

You were the knot in the rope, the one that bound them all in this senseless trap.

Your heart was beating. No fear. No hope. Of rage. Silent. Burning. Ancient.

Because no one had asked your opinion. No one had looked at you as you bled. No one had mourned the dead you left behind. And today, you were alone, terribly alone, surrounded by men, legends, pacts, and ruins. Your name, your past, your future had been torn from you. And now they wanted your body, bound by blood and the chains of an ancient oath.

And you walked towards the altar. The chains of your jewels rattled like funeral gongs. Your veil fluttered like a shroud. And beneath your feet, the mountain was still bleeding.

You walked slowly toward the altar, each step echoing off the icy stone of the shrine. Your blood-red hanfu, weighed down by the gold, silk, and chains that snaked around your body like so many silent oaths, trailed behind you like a living shroud. The black phoenix embroidery seemed to stir in time with the howling winds, as if they too rebelled against your fate. The golden crown on your head seemed to dig into your skull, each pin like a sharp claw. It was not an ornament, but a cage—a sentence.

Your veil obstructed your view, but you didn't need to see to know where you were going. You felt the presence of others. Their gazes. Their judgments. Their silence. You kept your head down, not out of submission, but out of necessity. To avoid looking at them. To avoid giving them the satisfaction of gazing at your broken face.

Because you didn't want them to see. Your pain. Your anger. Your fear.

You arrived before the altar, frozen like a statue. The wind rushed into the open nave of the temple, carrying flakes of ash, the smell of iron, ashes... and blood. The entire mountain seemed to contract around you, as if the earth itself were rejecting this marriage of ashes and chains.

You had been prepared for this moment since childhood, conditioned to obey, to endure. But none of the forced prayers, none of the cruel training, none of the mock ceremonies had prepared you for this real horror.

Five bowls were placed before you. Then a knife.

You grabbed the weapon, the cold metal biting into your palm before you could even move. Your hands were barely shaking, yet you felt your heart pounding against your ribs, like a captive beast. Without a word, you cut into your flesh. The pain was sharp, acute, almost clean at first. Then it became deeper, duller, settling into your bones, your nerves, your stomach. You poured your blood into the first bowl. But it wasn't enough. So you started again.

Again.

And again.

Each time, the blade cut more slowly, as if resisting, sinking more painfully into your already tortured flesh. Your blood was hot, viscous, almost black red in the funereal glow of the temple. It flowed slowly into the stone bowls, sliding down your wrist, dripping onto the sacred ground. You heard the pearls of your ornaments clash against your hanfu, and the shudder of the metal echo against the oppressive silence.

You weren't allowed to cry. Not now. Not here. Because you knew you were already in chains. You were just afraid of breaking yourself even more.

When the five bowls were finally filled with your blood, you put down the knife, your purple-covered fingers trembling slightly, but you straightened up, back straight, eyes still hidden.

Then came the others.

The celestial. The cold embodiment of divine law. He poured his blood into two bowls, one for him, one for you. His expression was fixed, solemn, almost inhuman. He wasn't afraid. Perhaps he felt nothing. Or perhaps, like you, he had learned to hide everything.

Then came the demon, the fox, the general. Each offered their blood. Each wove a scarlet thread between you.

One by one, you mixed your essences.

The mixture was thick, almost black. The blood pulsed in the bowls as if it were still alive. You could hear murmurs rising, ancient, guttural, as if the temple itself were awakening, hungry.

So you lifted your veil. The silk slid slowly off, revealing your pale, frozen face, bursting forth like a poisoned flower in this funereal setting.

You grab the bowl. And you drank. The first sip was lukewarm, metallic, disgusting. The second, a test.

You wanted to vomit, to spit out this abject agreement, this carnal pact, but you didn't. You swallowed every drop, your gaze empty, your hands clenched. And as the black liquid went down your throat, you felt something tear inside you—a last innocence.

Then the pain came. Not normal pain. Holy agony. As if a burning blade were slowly inscribing itself between your shoulder blades, carving an eternal seal into your flesh. You fell to your knees, your breath caught, the cry frozen in your throat. You heard ancient chants, muffled cries, the crash of armies, the suffering of the dead, fire and ice mingling.

And on your skin, the mark took shape. A black and red swirl, like a cursed galaxy. At the center, the demon's devouring spiral, blood red, pulsing like a heart. A vivid, barbaric energy that seemed to want to engulf you. Around them, the stylized wings of the celestial—elegant, but burned, tarnished, broken. Justice corrupted. Duty sacrificed. On the right, the dancing flames of the fox—graceful, undulating, deceptive, dangerous. The cruel charm of the manipulator. On the left, sharp fragments of armor—the general. Fallen honor. War in the flesh. The weight of responsibility on broken shoulders. And you, at the center, receptacle of their power, prisoner of their war.

It wasn't a wedding.

It was a curse.

An eternal condemnation.

And in the silence of the temple, while your blood still steamed at the bottom of the bowls, you understood that nothing would ever be the same again.

You would never be free again.

The marks of the pact were not mere symbols.

They weren't painted or tattooed. They had been burned into their flesh like a hot iron, but this fire wasn't made of ordinary flames. It came from another world. From an ancient magic, closer to a curse than a blessing.

On Sunghoon, it had formed on his right wrist—not on the palm, nor on the arm, but right there, between the fineness of the tendons and the pulsing of the artery. Where the blood beats regularly. Where chains, in other times, would have been attached.

At first, it was only a shudder. Then the pain came, sharp, dull, as if a needle of pure light were piercing every nerve. The mark had carved itself, slowly, in silent agony, like an invisible hand tracing an ancient incantation on his skin, indecipherable to mortals.

It depicted a broken circle, surrounded by vines of lightning and celestial runes half-erased by the centuries. Each line seemed to breathe. Sometimes the mark would pulse with a dull red light, whenever he came close to you—or whenever his heart wavered between duty and anger.

He no longer dared raise his arm without feeling the mark burn. As if it reminded him with every gesture that his hand was no longer his. That it belonged to the pact. Yours.

For Jay, it was a more intimate torture. The demon's mark opened in the center of his left palm—the hand he extended when he made deals, killed, or caressed.

It appeared as a crack in the middle of his skin, as if a lightning bolt had split it from within. A breath of shadow escaped from this mystical wound during the ritual, almost as if something living were screaming silently. It wasn't just a wound, it was a door. A rift into the dark. Into everything he had repressed, locked away.

Black filaments, like dead veins, extended from the mark, running up his forearm like snakes ready to burst beneath the skin. It burned him whenever he used his magic. Whenever he thought of you. Whenever he wanted to run away from what he had become.

Sometimes he would slam it shut, his fist trembling, as if to stifle a voice that only he could hear. But the voice came back. And she whispered your name.

In Jake's case, the mark was more insidious, almost elegant in its cruelty. It had drawn itself behind his right ear, where the whispers of yesteryear slip in, where promises are made in hushed tones. An intimate place. Fragile. That no one can see... unless they get closer. And few were those he let approach. The mark was shaped like an inverted crescent moon, surrounded by thin claws, like a forgotten bite. On its surface, ancient symbols appeared and disappeared like illusions. They glowed with a murky purple radiance, a reflection of moody and unstable magic.

When his thoughts became too vivid, too painful, the mark would come to life, pulsing against his skin like a stray heartbeat. Sometimes he would scratch it until it bled, but it remained there, unalterable.

A secret. A curse. A subtle and cruel chain that he wore in silence, with the lying smile of those who prefer to hide their pain behind laughter.

For Heeseung, the mark had taken root on his left collarbone, where the heart beats strongest, where the burden of command weighs like invisible armor. It had burst from his skin like a blade's shard: brutal, sharp, silent. It looked like a gash in the shape of an inverted cross, lined with black fragments like pieces of shattered armor. The surrounding skin was purple, as if bruised by fire. Through the lines, screaming faces could be seen, silhouettes in flames, memories of ancient battlefields.

When he breathed deeply, the mark spread. As if it were soaking up every breath, every thought. Once, he lay alone, shirtless, in the freezing rain, hoping the water would wash away the seal. But nothing worked.

The brand remained. Alive. Red. Living. Like you.

And at the center of each of their bodies… The mark sometimes throbbed in unison. A silent, barely perceptible shudder, like the breath of a memory thought forgotten, but which never quite dies. An ancient echo, buried in the flesh, engraved in the bones. A cursed pulse that responded to the most visceral emotions, as if each heartbeat was no longer entirely theirs. As if a part of you lived through their pain.

When one of them thought of you—not with tenderness, but with that confused burning between hatred, regret, and desire—the mark would awaken. Red. Dark. Cold, at first, like the shiver of a warning. Then hot, burning, devouring. It vibrated beneath the skin, as if something inside them wanted to come out, scream, flee… or come back to you.

And when you suffered—when you wept alone, under the weight of the pact, when your knees touched the stone floor and your blood flowed again to assuage the curse—their marks would flare for no apparent reason. They would awaken in the middle of the night, in the midst of battle, or in the silence of a deserted palace. They pulsed like a reminder. A bond. A shared pain, foreign yet intimate, as if your grief screamed through the bones of the world.

And when one of them used the magic of the pact... When the forces sealed in their flesh were activated, when they invoked forbidden techniques born of common blood, then the five marks would light up together, even from leagues apart.

They answered each other, clashed. They screamed. Not an audible scream, no. But a scream from the soul. A scream that only those who suffer understand.

A red light—dense, almost black—emerged from those open cracks in the skin, those scars that never healed. It shone for a moment, like an eye opening. An ancient eye. Witness to the horror. And then… the pain returned. Not the pain of an injury. Not the pain of a torn muscle or a broken bone.

No.

That of a heart forced to beat for a cause it didn't choose. That of a love buried alive, beneath duty, war, and black magic. The demon shuddered, growled, his fangs clenched, his palm branded with fire beneath his chains. The celestial, for his part, closed his eyes, trying not to show anything, but his wrist trembled, and his breath broke in the prayer he never finished. The fox, still smiling, held his hand behind his ear as if it were nothing—but his eyes lost their sparkle, and his laughter became empty, hollow, broken. And the general... He placed his hand on his left collarbone. He said nothing. But his silence bled more than all the screams.

And you. You, at the center. Voluntarily imprisoned by a destiny that no longer allows you the right to love or hate freely. You who drink their pain like one drinks poison that never ends.

Your own seal, lodged between your shoulder blades, pulses every time they think of you. You never know which one. But you feel it. You feel their rage. Their confusion. Their sadness. And sometimes, that burning in your back becomes unbearable. A silent agony, a fire beneath your skin, as if each of them is calling you, claiming you, cursing you… or loving you, all in the same breath.

And you, what can you do but stand upright, veiled in red and silence, your back burning, your hands bloody, and your heart poisoned by four souls who can neither love you... nor forget you?

It wasn't a bond. It was a chain. A blood oath, twisted, impure, sacred. Impossible to break. Impossible to escape.

A mutilated love.

An exiled love.

A love that bleeds and lives, against the will of the gods.

Yè Mó Gǔchéng – Ancient City of the Night Demon

You find yourself in Yè Mó Gǔchéng — the Ancient City of the Night Demon.

Suspended in the heights of a cursed valley where dawn never breaks, it is a relic of a forgotten age, a chasm of shadows frozen in stone. As you advance, the wind crashes against the fractured walls like an ancient sigh, carrying with it a thick, reddish, almost living mist. It seeps between the collapsed arches, winds between the mutilated columns, and coils around your ankles like bloody chains.

The cobblestones creak beneath your feet. Not because of the cold, but because the ground is made of crushed bones and memories frozen in stone—fragments of war, betrayed oaths. They say every wall in Yè Mó Gǔchéng is a tomb, every roof an open coffin, every tower an unfinished prayer. And you hear them, those whispers of pain—muffled, tiny, like tears that even death could not silence.

The Demon King's palace sits in the center, like a black heart wrapped in obsidian chains. It has no stained-glass windows or light. It offers no shelter, only the weight of its silence. It is said that this palace still beats like a wounded beast curled into itself, infected with forbidden magic, growling with every sigh of the wind.

This is where you must spend your wedding night.

You were not led to him with tenderness or music. There was no procession or flowers. You walked alone, draped in red, the veil falling over your eyelashes, escorted only by the ghosts of the virgins who had died before you. You were the offering. The pact. The blood sealed in a cup of agony.

The bridal chamber does not resemble a love bed, but an execution cell.

The bed, immense, is made of a blackened wood that even flames refuse to consume. The sheets are heavy, red silk woven with tarnished gold threads, embroidered with scenes of war and ancient pacts. From the ceiling, a mobile of hanging bones creaks with every movement of air, emitting a macabre music of dry clicking. Chains hang from the walls, unused but present, like a silent threat. The room is saturated with overly thick perfumes, burning black jasmine candles, and immortality incense—an aroma too sweet, almost sickening, like the taste of something too beautiful in a mouth full of blood.

You are here.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, straight as a marble statue, frozen in a dignity that crumbles with every second. Hours pass and your gaze wanders to the floor, then to the wall, then to the moving shadow cast by the dying flame of a lantern. You say nothing. You hardly breathe. Waiting is a blade against your throat.

You are hungry. But hunger is a suffering you know how to contain.

For it wasn't your stomach that groaned the loudest—it was your heart. Your heart, which, despite the pain, despite the betrayal, had held onto a shred of hope. A shred of humanity. You had thought, maybe… maybe he would come. Not for you. But at least for the honor of the pact. For the blood you had shed. For the pain that had scarred you forever.

But he doesn't come. Not a step. Not a vibration in the air. Just silence. And cold. And shame. When the door finally creaks, it's not him. She's a young maid, pale-faced, arms outstretched, trembling like a candle in the rain. She doesn't speak right away, as if your anger will strike her before it even takes shape.

You don't even turn your head. You no longer have the strength. Your eyes stare into space, the moving shadows of the red veil hanging over the wedding bed, that bed where no oath was ever consummated, that bed where your heart emptied itself in silence.

"He won't come... will he?" Your voice rises, weak at first, then colder, sharper than a blade drawn in the dark. It's not a question. It's a sentence. The kind you carve on a stele, funereal, irrevocable.

The maid jumps as if she's been struck. She lowers her head so low that her forehead almost touches the black stone floor. Her fingers tremble on the coarse fabric of her dress, as if she's trying to sink into it, disappear.

"I... I apologize, madam... the lord... he is overwhelmed this evening."

"Overwhelmed"... The word resonates, bitter. Like a poison distilled in a low voice. You stand slowly. You don't leap—you rise. Like the rising red tide, unstoppable. Your robe, a vast hanfu of scarlet silk embroidered with dead phoenixes, spreads around you, heavily, like spilled blood that never dries.

Your hair, tied back in a crown and studded with golden thorns and precious chains, quivers under the weight of silence. Your eyes, shining with a pain you refuse to let flow, stare at the maid who barely dares to breathe.

“Get out. I no longer require your services.” Your voice is calm. Too calm. A chilling calm, where you can sense entire worlds crumbling beneath the surface. “And tell him this: if the king of hell thinks his throne is too heavy to honor a pact sealed by blood and pain… let him know that some things never forgive forgetting.” You don’t scream. You don’t cry. Feelings are an offering you refuse to make to those who trample them.

You reach out. The black mist envelops you. A mist born of the pact itself, a cursed magic, contracted in blood, worn like a chain around your soul. It devours you and carries you away. In a breath, you are gone.

And you reappear at the Black Lotus Pavilion. A sanctuary. A refuge. No… not anymore. The lanterns are out. The silence is so dense it crushes you. The walls, painted gold and jade, seem narrower than ever. As if this room has become a tomb. Your tomb.

And then you collapse.

You let out a scream. A howl. Not of pain. Not yet. A scream of rage, of shame, of loneliness. You tear down the draperies, you smash the precious objects you were given, you toss the censers, the vases, the instruments. Everything that reminds you that you were an offering. A bride. A thing to be consumed and forgotten.

The mirror shatters against the floor. It reflects your own face back at you, shattered into a thousand shards. A thousand versions of you. All lost. All hated. You fall to your knees, your palms bleeding against the shards. You gasp, your lungs burning. And your eyes… your eyes, they still refuse to cry.

Until you see her.

The pin. Just one, slipped into the storm. A thin golden stem, adorned with a black pearl and a drop-shaped ruby. It was your mother's. One of the few memories not taken from you. A promise, long ago. That you would never be alone. And you grab it. Your fingers tremble. You press it against your palm. Hard. Hard enough to feel the bite. Hard enough to make the blood flow again.

“I'm an idiot… an idiot…” Your voice breaks. Each word is a fragment of soul you spit out like shards of glass. “I should have known… Hope… hope is poison… And love… love is a curse.”

You curl into yourself, your dress crumpled, your body twisted. You lie down on the cold wood. Your cheek against the ground. Your hands close around the void. You shiver. With grief. With shame. With anger.

And the tears come. Not human tears. Ancient tears. Tears that carry within them all the sacrifices you've had to make, all the sleepless nights, all the sacrifices imposed on you.

You cry. Until your eyelids close against your will. Until sleep tears you from the pain. A dark, haunted sleep. A dreamless sleep. Or perhaps populated by just one: that of a man with red eyes... who will never come.

And in the icy silence of the Lotus Pavilion, the shadows close in on you. Some cry with you. Others… laugh softly in the darkness.

And that night…

As your body lay on the floor of the Black Lotus Pavilion—this place now a tomb, this sanctuary now empty—an ancient breath rose in the air, imperceptible, but laden with a forgotten memory.

A thrill. A whisper in the spine of the world. A call.

And beneath your skin, just between your shoulder blades, where the flesh had been marked by the pact, a glow ignited. Faintly at first. Like an ember thought to be extinguished. Then the light grew brighter. A pale blue. But it wasn't the blue of the morning sky, nor that of a distant dream.

It was a spectral blue.

The blue of the abyss.

The blue of goodbyes.

It rose from you like a silent complaint, a wave crossing heaven and earth, striking, without pity, the hearts linked to yours. And with that light… came pain. Not for you. No. Not this time. It hit them. One by one. Slowly. Irremediably.

At the top of the world, where the air is too pure for mortals, the celestial Sunghoon meditated, seated on a pale silk cushion, in the silence of a temple suspended in the void. Circles of ancient ink floated around him, chains of celestial prayers, all intended to purify his soul, to sever the bonds of the lower world.

But no seal, no prayer, no divine law could stop what happened.

Without warning, he tensed. His right palm began to burn. Not on the surface, but deep within the flesh. The blue light seeped into his veins, sinuous, painful, as if a river of ice and fire were flowing against the current of his blood. His breath caught. He leaned forward, his hand pressed against his wrist, where the mark pulsed like a second heart. A scream rose in his throat… but it didn't come out. He didn't scream. He closed his eyes.

And in that inner darkness, he saw you. Collapsed. Extinct.

Something tore inside him. Not his pride, nor his celestial dignity. No. Something older. More primitive. A link. An oath he had sworn to hate… but which survived the hatred.

He didn't think. His body acted on its own. And his steps, free from all logic, began to move.

Towards you.

In the bowels of a cursed temple, beneath blood-soaked stones, the demon king Park Jongseong uttered the final words of a forbidden spell, his forehead covered in black sweat, his body surrounded by ancient glyphs.

But even the dark magic stopped, as if terrified. A blue flash split the shadow.

His left palm burst into flames, and he howled—a guttural, primal sound, a wounded beast in the darkness. He fell to his knees. His heart skipped a beat. The tattoos along his arm activated, pulsing, as if your name were etched into them in letters of fire. He spat out blood. And in that blood, a fragment of your grief. He slowly straightened up, his eyes wild.

“You again… what did you do to me…?”

But it wasn't anger that drove him. It was something else. Even more terrible. A dull fear. A worry he never wanted to feel.

In the heart of a pleasure house hidden beneath red lanterns, the fox Sim Jake played the lute, his laughter hanging on his lips, his charm diffused like sweet poison.

He seduced. He played. He forgot.

Until the pain hit him. Just behind his ear, where his mark, so subtle it might have seemed inexistent, began to glow an electric blue. He dropped his instrument. The lute shattered on the ground. He staggered, one hand on his temple, his eyes wide. He stood up, unsteady, his legs weak. He leaned against a wall painted with flowers, which now looked faded.

"You really are... incorrigible," he murmured, his throat tight.

He wished he didn't feel anything. But that fire in him was yours. That pain was your heart screaming into the void. And even in his cowardice, he could not escape it.

On a training ground abandoned since the war, General Lee Heeseung tirelessly repeated the same movements. A blade. A step. A breath. The saber dance in silence.

But on the fourth move, his sword slipped from his grasp.

His left collarbone flared up. He fell to his knees, his hand clutched at his chest. His mark glowed like a firebrand, blue cracks spreading across his skin like frozen lightning.

And suddenly… he knew.

He saw you. Not with his eyes, but with that part of him you had locked away in the pact. He felt your shame, your loneliness, your silent rage. He felt your cold body against the floor. Your muffled sobs. And he bowed his head. Without a word. He wouldn't come. But he didn't forget you.

And in the silence, a tear traced a bitter furrow on his cheek.

Four places.

Four pains.

Only one link.

The mark throbbed on their skin, a single beat. An invisible chain.

You, forgotten witch, rejected, abandoned in the room where no lover came... you made them suffer. Not out of revenge. But because you bled. And they bled with you. Not because they wanted to. But because the pact does not forget.

You crawled slowly towards the bed, your gaze drowned in absence, your hands pressed against your stomach as if you could contain your pain, and you whispered, to no one:

“Hope is poison… Love… damnation.”

And the shadows around you wept too. Or cursed you. But it didn't matter. Because that night, you were all bound together.

Not by desire.

But by blood.

And blood… never lies.

Taglist : @weepingsweep @immelissaaa

273 notes · View notes