The winds above the valley of red lotuses carried a strange scent—pure, almost sacred. Lucien crouched atop a jagged cliff, his bare chest still glistening with lingering heat from the Arinya ritual. His eyes narrowed at the procession below.
White-robed priests moved in silence, their faces obscured behind golden veils. At their center was a litter of pale wood and silver silk, carried with such reverence it could only bear one thing:
A sacrifice.
Lucien's smirk curved like a blade.
They were offering someone to the heavens. And they were using her as bait.
A trap, perhaps.
But he was not prey.
Beneath the marble altar within the sacred glade, Talia, the Saintess of the Pure Flame, knelt, bound by holy silk that glowed faintly with divine runes. Her hair, silver like moonlight, spilled over her bare shoulders. The ceremonial gown she wore was thin, translucent—more like a veil than protection.
She whispered prayers between trembling lips, unaware that her cries for mercy would summon anything but salvation.
The ritual was flawed. Talia wasn't meant to die. She was meant to be devoured by divinity—a vessel.
Instead, Lucien arrived.
He dropped into the glade without a sound. The priests reacted too late. Fire swept from his palm in a serpent's arc, incinerating their spell-circle mid-chant. The screams were brief. Ash replaced awe.
Only Talia remained.
She stared at him—not with fear, but disbelief.
"You… you are not the one they prayed for."
Lucien's steps echoed as he approached, slow and deliberate. "No."
"You are wrong."
He crouched before her, tilting her chin up. "No, Saintess. I'm the only answer left."
She struggled. Of course she did. Her bindings sizzled under his touch as his Qi melted through them.
"You think I'll let you defile me?" she hissed.
"I won't defile," Lucien murmured. "I'll free."
And he pressed his lips to hers.
Talia gasped, her divine aura colliding with his corrupted flame. Her body arched involuntarily as waves of conflicting power surged through her nerves.
"No—no—!"
"Yes," he whispered, voice like molten honey.
He peeled the gown from her skin inch by inch, revealing skin as pale as alabaster and trembling not from fear, but from confusion. Her divinity recoiled, but her body didn't. It ached. It responded.
Lucien kissed down her throat, biting softly at the base of her neck.
"Feel it," he said. "Your god won't save you."
And then he took her.
Not gently.
Her cry echoed through the glade, a mixture of shame, shock, and something far more dangerous—awakening. Each thrust drove his Qi deeper into her meridians, cracking the holy seals etched into her bones.
She screamed scripture—words meant to ward off demons.
He kissed them from her lips.
Talia's aura shattered. Her divinity broke open, exposing raw, hungry soul beneath. Her legs locked around him, her hands grasping for his skin.
"No," she gasped. "Please… I was chosen."
"You still are," Lucien said, pressing his forehead to hers. "But now, you're chosen by me."
The cracked halo above the altar flickered. Then it fractured.
Light poured down—heaven's judgment.
Lucien laughed.
And drove himself into her harder, deeper, until her cries became hymns. Until she begged, not for mercy, but for more.
The divine flames above descended. Lucien opened his arms—and devoured them.
The god who had once claimed Talia recoiled as its last thread was severed.
Lucien's Ninefold Furnace blazed anew, now tempered by faith and flesh.
When he finished, Talia lay beneath him, her holy markings turned black with inversion. Her eyes glazed in bliss, lips chanting his name like prayer.
He stood.
The altar cracked.
The statues wept blood.
And Lucien—bare, unrepentant, divine in desecration—walked through the flames, leaving the Saintess broken, beautiful, and bound to him.
Forever.