They say when death comes, it comes gently. Like a whisper. A fading breath. A slow unraveling into silence.
They say it is painless.
They say it is kind.
They lied.
What I felt was not gentle. It was not peace. It was not release.
It was rather agony with no end. It was pain that pressed into my chest like a blade, splitting bone from flesh. My ribs screamed with every ragged inhale. Blood pooled beneath my body, warm and sticky, mixing with the dirt and rot soaked into the stone.
My shoulder throbbed with each shallow breath. My tongue was thick with the taste of iron, my mouth was as dry as ash.
The air was sharp and cold. It was thin. It clawed at my lungs like broken glass, and still I drank it in, greedy and desperate.
And beneath me, the stone pulsed with a chill so deep it sank into the roots of me. It seeped past my skin, muscle, and marrow until I could no longer tell where I ended and the death beneath me began.
I couldn't move.
I couldn't scream.
I couldn't even close my eyes.
And still, I was alive.
Somehow, that was worse.
Because being alive meant I had not escaped. It meant I was still here, still trapped in this cursed place where they had cast me like trash into the earth.
And it meant I could still remember everything that brought me here.
I remembered the courtroom . The polished marble floors that gleamed like the blade they meant to drive through me. The air had smelled of incense and iron, too clean, too holy, like they believed their cruelty would be sanctified by the gods if they scrubbed it down hard enough. I remembered the rows of faces, all carved from stone, dressed in silks and silence, pretending they didn't know the truth they were helping bury.
They never saw the true me. They only saw what I was never allowed to be.
A bastard. A servant's mistake. A smear on noble blood.
And her, I remembered her most of all. The noble girl with roses in her hair and secrets on her tongue. I remembered the nights she came to me in silence, uninvited, barefoot on cold stone, trembling with a hunger she didn't have a name for. I remembered her laughter, soft and breathless, when I told her she was playing with fire.
She asked me to kiss her.
She begged me to touch her.
She swore I was hers.
I remembered the way she tasted when she pressed her mouth to mine in the dark. I remembered the silk she wore falling to the floor. I remembered the sound of her voice, pleading for more, not less.
And I remembered the moment it all shattered.
She stood in that courtroom beneath her father's shadow, her hands folded in trembling grace, her lips quivering with well-rehearsed fear. Her voice broke when she said I had taken her against her will. Her tears fell too easily. And no one questioned her. No one asked why her story shifted. No one remembered the way she used to smile when she looked at me.
She cried for herself. Not for me.
And I saw it in her eyes. The shame, the panic, the calculation.
She wasn't crying because I hurt her. She was crying because she had something to lose. I had nothing.
And so they gave her back her innocence with their verdict, and fed me to the pit to wash her clean.
And so they cast me down here. The cursed pit beneath the Temple of Zareth.
A place whispered about in servant halls and drunken taverns. A place the nobility called superstition while priests warned children never to approach its sealed mouth. It was older than the temple that sat above it. Older than the kingdom that claimed to own it. Older than the gods who pretended to fear it.
They didn't bury the dead here. They discarded them.
This wasn't a tomb. It was a sentence. A silence. As if they were simply trying to forget me.
Here, the dead did not rot. They simply vanished. Swallowed by stone, by time, by whatever nameless thing slept in the blackness beneath the world.
They thought I would vanish too.
They thought the pit would take me quietly, like it had taken the others. The criminals, heretics, bastards, broken things no one wanted to see again.
But they were wrong.
Because I was still breathing. It was shallow and gagged but I was still breathing.
And then it started, the pulse.
It rose beneath me, not sudden but slow. Like the drawing of a curtain. Like a heartbeat, yes but not mine. It couldn't have been. It was too slow, too deep. It didn't follow the rhythm of my chest, but something older. Something buried.
I felt it first in my spine, low and cold, coiling into my body like a tide creeping onto shore. Then it spread. Up through my ribs. Across my shoulders. Into the base of my skull.
It was a throb, steady and patient, and with every second it grew louder. Until I couldn't tell where it ended and I began.
I thought it was the stone at first, some strange echo beneath the rock. Then I thought it was the air, dense and charged, like the breath before a storm.
Then I thought it was my blood. Maybe I was bleeding out, and this was my final hallucination, the sound of my body giving up.
But then I knew that it was none of those things. It was all of them at once. It was inside me. It was around me. It was the pit.
The walls began to change. Faint red light spilled from cracks in the stone, veins glowing like fire moving through flesh. Runes shimmered into life, curling across the surface of the chamber in patterns too ancient to be written, too fluid to be still. They moved. Alive.
And with them, something awakened in me. Not pain, not fear. But heat. Low and visceral, blooming in my gut like the first draw of breath after drowning. And just as terrifying.
The glyphs came next.
Red light bled through the walls, thin as veins at first, then thicker, glowing brighter as they unfurled like eyes opening to watch me. The runes weren't written in any language I knew, yet they burned with a meaning I felt in my bones. They pulsed, steady and deliberate, syncing with the rhythm now pounding behind my ribs. And then I heard it.
Not with my ears. From within.
Lustbound Core: Host identified
Vitality compromised
Link inactive. Sexual fusion requires for restoration.
I couldn't move. Couldn't scream. But something inside me snapped. A whisper curled through my mind. It wasn't a word. It was a hunger.
Take. Bind. Breed. Ascend.
Heat exploded through me, chasing the pain from my limbs. It rushed down my spine, rolled through my muscles, and coiled in my core. My body arched. My skin flushed. My cock throbbed with sudden, violent need.
This wasn't healing. This was appetite. And the Core had just awakened.
Footsteps cracked against the silence, steady and I ntentional. Boots grinding against the stone. Leather scuffing along the ancient spiral path carved into the pit wall.
I tilted my head slowly, pain flaring down my neck. My body ached, but I couldn't look away.
A figure moved along the narrow ledge above, carrying a flickering torch that licked shadows across the crumbling stone. She descended with purpose, each step slow but fearless, like she belonged to the darkness itself.
When she stepped into full view, the breath caught in my chest and refused to return.
She was a vision sculpted from heat and steel. She was tall and fierce. Her leather armor was scratched and battle-worn, molded to a body built for war. Her cloak hung in tatters, caught by bramble and travel. Her hair was deep crimson, tangled and beautiful, falling loose around her sharp cheekbones.
But it was her eyes that held me.
They were gold and they weren't just colored, they burned like molten metal, like flame caught in human form.
She stared at me silently not moving. Like she expected a corpse.
"You're alive," she said, voice low and laced with disbelief.
It wasn't a question. It was a fact wrapped in warning.
I didn't answer.
I couldn't, at first. I simply watched her and waited.
She came closer and knelt beside me. I could smell the mix of sweat and leather on her skin, the scent of soot woven into her cloak. She was too close, and yet I didn't move.
Her fingers hovered over my chest. Then they touched the glowing mark pulsing just above my heart. Her reaction was immediate.
She gasped and pulled her hand away like she'd touched fire. Her eyes widened as she stared at her fingers.
"You're marked," she whispered. Her voice trembled with something she tried to hide. "The seal is alive inside you."
I lifted my arm, the effort trembling through my broken muscles, and wrapped my fingers around her wrist.
She didn't recoil.
Her breath caught in her throat. Her posture tensed, not out of fear but something else. Something she didn't understand yet.
I felt it too. A pull of some kind.
Lustbound Core: Bond Candidate Detected.
Compatibility: Ninety-four percent.
Warning! Initiation will occur at climax.
I held her gaze, watching her mind at war with her instincts. Her face flickered with denial, but her body betrayed her. Her pulse had quickened. Her pupils dilated. Her lips parted as if to speak, then closed again in silence.
She yanked her wrist free and stood in one swift motion, her hand falling to the hilt of her sword. Steel rasped against leather as she drew it halfway from the scabbard.
Her arm trembled slightly.
"What are you?" she asked.
I drew a shaky breath through my blood-stained lips.
"I don't know. But I think I'm starving."
Her blade hovered near my throat. She didn't move it forward. She didn't pull it back.
"You shouldn't exist."
"And yet I do."
"I should kill you."
"Then why haven't you?"
The fire in her eyes flared. I saw rage and confusion. But buried beneath it was something she hadn't decided how to name.
Curiosity.
"You feel it too," I said. Quiet and certain.
Her jaw clenched. She didn't deny it.
I pushed myself up on one elbow. Pain rippled through every inch of my body, but I needed to see her clearly. I needed her to see me not broken, not pleading, but awake.
"I don't know why I'm alive," I said. "But I know when you touched me, something changed. You felt it. The Core responded to you."
She didn't speak. Her shoulders were tight with tension, but her sword dipped slightly.
"You're dangerous," she said.
"So are you."
Something shifted in her. It wasn't fear not surrender, it was a choice.
She stepped closer slowly and carefully.
Then she crouched again beside me, one knee pressed to the floor. Her hand hovered, then descended to the mark above my heart once more.
She touched it. This time she didn't pull away.
The glow flared beneath her palm, warm and alive. The Core surged.
Arousal level: Thirty six percent.
She inhaled sharply.
"I don't even know your name."
"Lucien."
Her thumb traced the sigil slowly, as if memorizing the shape by feel.
"And if I touch you again," she murmured, "if I keep going…"
"You'll be mine," I whispered. "And I'll be yours."
Her fingers slid lower, brushing along my stomach, then skimming the edge of my pants. Her eyes lifted to mine.
She searched for something. Doubt, weakness or fear. She found none. Only need.
I lifted a hand and cupped her cheek. Her skin was warm beneath my palm. Her breath caught as she leaned into my touch.
She closed her eyes for one heartbeat.
Then she kissed me.
It wasn't hesitant or gentle. It was raw. Rough. Hungry.
It was all the anger she had buried under her armor. All the longing she had never spoken aloud. All the heat she didn't want to feel.
She shoved me back onto the stone floor, straddling me, her mouth never breaking from mine. I moaned into her kiss, gripping her waist as her thighs caged me in, strong and sure.
She tore her cloak off. Then the armor. Each strap pulled away with practiced hands until her body was bare, beautiful and fierce. When her skin met mine, the Core pulsed hard enough to blind me.
Her hand slipped beneath my waistband. Freed me.
And when she sank down onto me, inch by inch, the world shattered.
We moved together in the dark. Our bodies slick with sweat and ash and blood. Her nails dug into my shoulders. My hands claimed her hips. My mouth found her throat and tasted her.
She rode me with wild hunger, her breath sharp and broken, her hair sticking to her face as she rocked her hips in hard, slow waves. Her moans were ragged. Her lips swollen. Her golden eyes locked on mine, demanding I not look away.
I didn't. I couldn't.
She was everything. Flame and fury. Power and pain. Every roll of her hips fed something deeper than lust.
It fed the bond.
Her walls clenched tighter. Her body shook above mine. I could feel her getting closer, teetering on the edge.
So was I.
But the Core reached it first.
The glyphs on the walls blazed red. My mark ignited like fire against her skin. I felt her thoughts. Her need. Her rage. Her softness buried too deep for the world to see.
Her soul pressed against mine. And it locked into place.
She cried out as she came, her voice a broken scream that filled the chamber with fire.
I followed, helpless, my body trembling as the Core roared to life inside me.
Lustbound Core: Primary Bomd Confirmed
Elemental Affinity: Flame
Skill Unlocked: Flame Surge (active)
Vitality Restored. Physical Boost Applied
Soul Tether Active. Bond Strenght: Twenty two percent
She collapsed against me, trembling, her head resting on my chest as she struggled to breathe. Her hair stuck to my skin. My hands found her back and held her close, no longer in dominance, but in something softer. Something I didn't have a name for.
We didn't speak. We didn't have to. We both knew something had changed.
This wasn't an accident. It was only the beginning. And neither of us would ever be the same.