Chapter 5
5899words
Disclaimer:
This chapter contains gore themes, graphic violence, and psychologically intense situations. It is intended for adult audiences only. Reader discretion is advised.
Street Spirit (Fade Out)- Radiohead
Akisha rose from the tangled remains of the bed, slow and a little sore. It was still early, and sleep didn't come easily.
Not truly.
Afrina had been pacing back and fourth behind her ribs all night, hissing at shadows. Her breath was quiet, but the room was not — the walls whispered, the coals crackled, and Afrina hissed
Gold shimmered faintly at her ankles, climbing the inside of her thigh in slow pulses. The flame was awake — but it didn't move with her breath today. It twitched and crawled up her very sluggish, almost as if it was hungover.
She stood with her back to the bed. The room bore witness to the night before: scorched ash where flame bowls had toppled, her favorite sheets reduced to silk tatters curled at the corners like burned petals. She reached for a black robe that swept the floor, draping it over her skin without care. One knot, loose and lifeless at her waist and she flipped her hair from out her robe.
And still, behind her...
"Do not pretend to sleep," she murmured glancing at him over her shoulder, her voice low and sovereign. "You're restless too."
The bed rustled. Rasmus sat upright, his shoulder length dreads moved with grace, his chest rose slowly, and his gold scars pulsed low. The recent mark on his neck started to heal very slowly. The way his eyes trailed up and down her body made her stomach coil again.
"I could not rest; Anubis barely gave me control." He said at last. "He saw the mark... and I still don't know what it means"
Akisha didn't answer and just lit the fires again and walked to her bathroom. The walls were the color of dried blood — a brown-black and red, like rusted iron that was sitting outside. Sconces carved into the shapes of sacred beasts lined the walls, their eyes set with red quartz that caught the firelight like bloodied jewels — a snarling lioness, a falcon mid-screech, a jackal with sharp golden canines glinting beneath its curled lip, a crocodile narrowing its eyes in cold judgment, and a cobra with its hood flared wide in eternal warning. Each head cradled a flickering bowl of flame in its jaws or claws, the fires swaying like dancers in a slow, fevered seance.
The bathtub in the center was carved into a square into the floor, the black and golden trimmed rim rose slightly off the floor— wide enough for a gathering and deep enough to fully submerge. Faint runes pulsed beneath its surface, reacting to her presence with a lazy glow, as if her very skin summoned the magic. Heat curled from the floor like breath, and the air shimmered with as her flame slowly heat up the room.
The mirror waited across from her — just above the basin, mounted into the stone wall, hung a mirror she had scorched herself — melted from desert sand by her own flame. It was imperfect, divine in its flaws; flat at the center, but warped at the edges, it had been pulled by bare hands. The surface rippled as it warmed, responding to her as she drew near, warming once more.
Her eyes scanned her reflection; her jaw tightened at the sight. Her silver eyes sharp as ever, but hollow in her gaze. Bruises bloomed beneath her collarbone, and her curls hung wild and damp, curling against her throat like a necklace. The firelight behind her glitched purple, so quick that when she blinked it vanished.
Rasmus moved to speak, but it was as if his throat swelled shut. His breath hitched and mouth parted — nothing. A pressure pulsed at the base of his neck, hot and rising, like someone dragging claws up from his spine. Anubis stirred low and snarling, beating against bone and seal. His eyes flickered — dark gold turning molten. The glyph. Neither of them understood it.
Akisha turned from the mirror, slow and sharp, her gaze narrowed.
The robe parted sightly just enough to reveal the glyph on her thigh — deep violet, pulsing with heat like something alive — not just color but shape. The center had begun to twist, curling into unfamiliar symbols like broken script. The runes were neither Egyptian nor Fae
"You recognize this?" she asked.
He shook his head. Slowly. "I've studied every glyph known to your lineage. That's not one of yours."
"And it's not his, either," she snapped. "Rakh would've said something or even gloated."
A tense silence followed.
"You always choke when I feel like you're keeping something from me."
Rasmus found his voice again, barely. "If I had answers, I'd give them. You know that."
She sighed, and the firelight behind her stuttered. Her flame pulsed, angry, erratic — licking up the wall and vanishing just as fast.
"Then give me something."
She turned her face toward him, unreadable. The mirror behind her caught only the edges of her shadow.
"The way I found you on the battlefield... surrounded by corpses and your eyes were still glowing... I've always felt drawn to you, strangely."
Rasmus flinched at the memory— but she caught it.
A low growl churned in his throat, more instinct than thought. His eyes, gold-rimmed and strained, darkened.
"I told you what I remembered."
A pause. Not quite defensive — but close.
"The corpses... I couldn't have done all of that myself."
Rasmus took a few steps forward, past the bed now. His jaw worked, clenched and unclenched, trying to tame the words trying to erupt.
"I don't know what this is," he admitted finally. His voice turned rougher, bitter with helplessness.
"Anubis won't surface. But I can feel him... gnawing."
He lifted his hand to his throat again, as if something clawed behind it.
"Not just angry — cornered. Afraid. I've never felt that from him before."
His hand ghosted to the base of his throat, as if trying to feel the source of that pressure.
"It's like claws dragging upward from my spine. He's screaming... but nothing comes out."
He looked up, and for a second, he was just a man lost in thought. "What if this is my punishment?"
Akisha said nothing for a long moment.
"You've always carried him." Her tone was detached. "But he's louder now. And not in the way I remember, even my flame hasn't been right since that stupid mutt." She revealed, her voice low and bitter. "Even last night, it felt intense."
She continued almost to herself, and her eyes darkened. "It moves today — but not for me. It coils like it's listening to something I can't hear."
Her voice faltered on the last two words, disgust curling in her throat. "I didn't let him touch me."
Rasmus didn't ask who. He didn't need to. It was Andrew who started all of this.
"I know," he said.
And his hands balled into fists. That stupid fucking mutt — he'd rip his skull in two with his bare hands if she gave the word. Anubis agreed within him. For once...
Akisha turned her back again. The robe swept the floor with a whisper, her steps slow, heavy with dread. The glyph on her thigh pulsed brighter now — deeper purple and for a moment it hissed as if reacting to his nearness.
Still facing the wall, she muttered, "The glyph reacts now when you're close. It burns me."
Rasmus stepped back — cautious and wounded. "You think this is me?"
"I don't know what to think," she whispered her voice was quiet. "And that's the part that infuriates me." She swallowed slow and tight — and the flame twisted around her ribs like a warning.
Akisha closed her eyes and reached inward, trying to summon the flame... to feel for herself. But something else moved first.
A phantom touch — cold and deliberate — trailed up her spine to the base of her neck.
Her breath caught. She gasped, hand flying to her chest. Her knees gave.
Rasmus caught her before she hit the floor, arms locked firm around her waist, jaw clenched behind Rasmus eyes, Anubis coils tighter, then snarls, but no one can hear him —
She's not just marked.She's being hollowed. From the inside.It's inside her.
You're losing her.And I can't speak. I CAN'T STOP IT—
"The Oracles, Akisha," he growled painfully. "We need answers. You haven't been since—"
"I'll go," she whispered, burying her face into his chest. Her voice trembled like a broken incantation.
The glyph on her thigh seared again — molten-hot
(Dirty Pretty-In This Moment)(Slept so Long- Jay Gordon)(God is a weapon- Falling in Reverse ft Marylin Manson)
Akisha swiftly crossed the threshold, the mark ached—the sharp, searing pull of a bruise getting hit again. and a memory tightened within her chest. It moved along her flame—soft at first, insistent next—coiling up her spine in a slow reminder. It yanked her backward into blood-soaked halls, into the chorus of screams, into the ache of an old hunger she had once been forced to tame. The air thickened until each breath scraped her throat like smoke. The chambers blurred from stone and shadow into something living: a pulse, a heat, a narrowing tunnelvision dragging her where her mind chose to go.
Well, what she woke to, at least.
Akisha remembered waking after seeing a bright light. The ringing in her skull was a slow tide, swallowing the races of her thoughts. She lay slumped against marble so cold it bit her skin, knees crooked awkwardly beneath her, arms limp and bloodless at her sides. A dull ache bloomed in her chest, then deepened until it felt as though her ribs had been forged in a kiln, each breath catching on molten edges—while her pulse throbbed unevenly, and then it came to a stop. But the scent—
Something about the smell of the room stirred her deeper than pain. The air pressed heavy on her, sinking into her bones.
Her grey eyes swept the chamber: white marble veined like riverbeds stretched toward lotus-capped columns scorched by incense fires long burned out. The air was thick with kyphi and myrrh, the smoke curling in waves as if unwilling to leave. Starlight spilled through a round ceiling above, turning drifting ash into slow constellations as they rose into the night. Hieroglyphs along the walls shimmered faintly with heat, as though the stone still remembered a second sun.
Upon the split altar lay a man she didn't recognize—a broad-shouldered, bronze skin poured over his frame sculpted like a perfect statue. Gold veins threaded his flesh like rivulets of molten dawn, now dulled to the hue of autumn wheat. His face was symmetrical and stern even in stillness, jaw lined with a close-cropped black beard, lips parted in the ghost of a command that had died before it could be spoken. One of his eyes hung half-lidded, its iris caught between clouded amber and the faintest glint, as if the light in the room had chosen him alone to reflect from.A torn shendyt skirt clung to his hips, heavy with gold embroidery; a shattered broad collar of lapis and carnelian rested crooked at his throat. His chest was split wide like an unoffered chalice, ribs slick and gleaming, the cavity a slow-draining pool where gold-tinted blood thickened toward amber. Deep within, the thinnest thread of gold in a vein seemed to stir—too faint to know if it moved at all.The dented crown lay discarded on the marble, its shattered rubies scattered like pebbles, a thin ribbon of crimson threading from its edge to the altar's base.
What the fuck happened to him?
Pain lanced her chest, hot and precise—then vanished. She watched, breath quickening, as the wound closed beneath threads of molten heat that pulled her flesh together the way a seamstress draws silk. A spark kindled at her sternum—shy at first, then certain—curling up her spine, spiraling her ribs, gliding across her throat in a lover's embrace. It did not burn her, and the air itself wavered in its presence. She gasped, timid, until it wrapped deeper inside her, as if it had been waiting for her reign.
Something gleamed through the haze: a dagger shaped like an ankh, half-cradled in a pool of blood. Its edge glowed faintly, as if it drank light and sang to soothe itself. Gold inlay traced the loop and arms of the ankh; it was blackened at the tip where it had tasted life.
Without knowing why, her hand drifted toward the man on the altar, and her feet followed suit. Her fingers brushed the line of his jaw, still warm with fading light. For a heartbeat, her flame stilled—quiet as breath.
Then the feeling of hunger struck, deep and sudden.
It arrived without warning—aching. Her throat was a desert, her tongue heavy, the back of her mouth blooming with the phantom taste of a blood she had never drunk. Her gums throbbed as her teeth pressed longer, until the points pricked air sharp as pins. The flame inside her tightened around her ribs to urge her forward. Feed.
Suddenly many footsteps pounded in the halls and guards burst through the chamber doors, weapons raised, priests spilling in behind them with prayers tumbling from their lips. A second wave jammed the threshold—spears clattering, bronze blades sweating in the heat until their edges wavered like mirage. One man's staff caught fire in his grip; resin bubbled and ran down his wrist as he screamed and didn't drop it.
The first man to truly see her froze, eyes darting between the corpse and the woman standing beside it. "Goddess..." he whispered.
She tilted her head, coils of blood-slick hair sliding forward, heavy with the scent of copper and incense smoke. Her skin glowed faintly, as if lit from within by an ember. Her lips were pale, but when they parted, new fangs gleamed wet, catching the dim temple light like sharpened glass pulled from a riverbed. Her eyes were all white and no irises—silvered like moonstone, drinking in every glint of gold and ash.
"Monster!" another spat, the word cutting the air like a blade.He lunged, hand outstretched to seize her, desperation painted over fear.
She moved like spreading wildfire—quicker than light, sudden, devouring, without hesitation. Her body slammed into his, the impact ringing through the room like a war drum. Her teeth tore into him deep, and before the man's scream could finish, she ripped sideways—flesh tearing in a spray of blood so hot it hissed where it hit the marble.
A voice a small child — bubbly and bright "Papa!" The smell of warm bread, a clay toy pressed into small hands. Then—nothing.
A heartbeat of stillness — droplets pattering, sliding — then she moved again.
Another priest lunged at her back. She caught him without looking, fingers hooking under his jaw and pulling until bone split and the skin tore away like ripping clothes. The head rolled from her grip, steam curling from the severed neck. She shoved the body into the path of a third.
The man stumbled, tripping over the corpse as the flames leapt from dead flesh to living. His scream was raw, shredded, and cut short when the fire bit through to marrow.
The smell thickened — of burning hair, boiling bone, and copper-sweet blood misted turning the air red enough to taste.
Her flame roared awake, spilling from her skin in a violent bloom. It leapt outward, catching on the robes of a nearby priest. He was ash before his scream could finish, skin peeling from bone in papery curls before the bone itself cracked into black dust.
Two more came at her from opposite sides. She turned into the first, her claws raking across his chest, catching ribs and tearing them open like a ripped book — his heart exposed for a single trembling beat before her teeth closed on it.The second barely had time to flinch before she drove her elbow into his throat, shattering it, and ripped downward until her hand burst from his spine in a spray of blood and pale fragments.
A priest tried to run, but the fire reached him before the door did—licking up his back, wrapping around his throat, searing his breath from the inside out. His jaw locked open in a soundless scream before his knees buckled and he dropped like a marionette with its strings cut. A hanging oil lamp buckled in the sudden heat and fell—glass shattering, a river of flame and shimmering oil sluicing across the marble and undercutting three men at once. They went down writhing, glass teeth embedded in their palms as their sleeves bloomed into fireflowers.
For a breath, the hall froze. One priest staggered back, lips moving around a half-formed prayer. Another's hands shook so violently that his censer swung wild, scattering embers across the floor. They knew what she was. The word monster clung to their faces like ash — but still, they came.then chaos took root.
More guards forced their way in only to stumble. One swung a falchion; the blade sagged mid-arc and slapped her shoulder like a ribbon before bursting into sparks. She answered by snapping two fingers—his shadow flared bright against the wall, then charred black and tore free; he watched it rip away and folded with it, boneless, like a tent collapsing.
Only two managed to reach back to the palace doors. Bare feet slapped against the marble, smearing the droplets of blood and molten wax. A third crawled, shin split to white; she let him crawl, and as he dragged himself past a gold inlay line, the metal hissed and branded his palm with a sunburst that would outlive him by seconds.
"Two still flee," said a voice—inward, but threaded through the pulse of her flame. It was female, low, and dangerous. A shadow leans out from the columns and folded in her bones, eyes catching firelight like a predator in tall grass.
And? Akisha's thought was curt, sharp
"And you should not let them." A ripple of heat spread through her spine, pressing her shoulders back, tilting her chin. "Shape what is yours. Let them carry your name in their screams."
Her lips curled, and the world tilted into that deep, molten quiet that comes before storm.
But she would not allow witnesses.
Her gaze fell on the man still standing before her—the one with the sword that shook in his hands, sweat tracing frantic paths down his face. She reached for him, but the fire did not mame. It poured into his mouth instead.
His scream tore the air apart. His spine arched back at an impossible angle, the sound of tendons snapping echoing under the vaulted ceiling. His skin blistered, then split, fur forcing its way out in small, steaming patches. His jaw pulled itself forward into a muzzle, teeth lengthening with wet, meaty pops. Bones in his hands burst and reformed into claws that raked deep gouges into the white marble at his feet. His ribs bowed and then splayed, cartilage crackling like fat in oil as his lungs expanded to a predator's bellows. His cheeks split along the zygomatic arch; the skull crawled forward under the skin, and for a heartbeat his face was two faces—man and beast—before the man sheared away. Blood poured from his mouth in ropes and then frothed white as the palate re-knit. Ears slid higher with a wet scrape; nails sloughed off like husks as black talons punched through and his body swelled, muscles knotting and stretching.
The heat in her chest convulsed, twisting into something with teeth. Smoke curled from her lips as the being took shape — muscle, shadow, and molten bone snapping into place. Her pulse thundered in her ears.
Finally. The voice slithered up her spine again — not from the air, but from the marrow itself. Call me Afrina.
When it was done, he stood on all fours, chest heaving, foam curling at the edges of his lips. His eyes—once wide with fear—now glowed the deep amber of an open flame. He panted heat; each exhale smoked and evaporated. His paws left seared crescents in the wax-blood slurry. His tongue lolled, slick with slob and salt.
She turned her head toward the open doors, where the fleeing priests stumbled down the palace steps.
The scent of their fear heightened, thick and wild, until even the flame in her veins leaned toward it. She heard their feet pounding across the stone; bodies shoving each other to get away. One slipped on spilled oil and cracked his temple on the step; he tried to rise and left part of himself on the edge.
A waste, Afrina murmured , curling up from deep inside her like smoke finding its way through cracks. Let them run... but leave a reminder for the ones who dare come back.
Akisha's pulse slowed, not quickened.
A wolf, Afrina breathed, her tone molten and eager. Born from your bone and rage, carrying your fire in its teeth. It will hunt their memory, and their children will tell stories about it long after their bones are ash.
Her gaze cut toward the two breaking from the pack, faster than the rest.
Show them who made the first howl, Afrina whispered. And let them pray they never hear it again
"Run them down," she said, voice low and cold as iron fresh from the forge. The words leave Akisha's mouth before she can think. It's the first sound she's made since opening her eyes, and it feels like a verdict.
The wolf tensed and then lunged past her and the wind from it whipped her hair back, its claws sparking against the stone. His body hit the doorway like a thrown spear breaking it completely , the sound of his growl rolling through the night like thunder. On the steps, he took the first man mid-stride—jaws locking at the base of the neck with a crunch that traveled up the spine; the body went loose and then juddered as he shook it side to side, vertebrae snapping off like beads off a string. The second made three desperate bounds before the wolf slammed him from behind, teeth punching through ribs to the heart; when the wolf wrenched backward, the man's limp body folded inside the hole that had been made.
Outside, the first scream came almost instantly—high, panicked, and short-lived. The second followed seconds later, drowned in the wet, tearing sound of a body breaking under jaws perfected for killing. A last survivor turned to look back and saw only eyes—white and endless—and then nothing but night and the sound of chewing.
Inside, the room fell silent but for the hiss of her flame and the quiet drip of blood from her chin. The floor had become a red mirror veined with soot; ash fell like slow snow. Somewhere a blade finally finished melting and curled into itself, a dead flower of bronze at her feet.
High above, veiled in the lattice of shadows between the carved columns, the Oracles watched. Their eyes were the cold patience of distant stars. They watched as though this moment had been prophesied—not as a possibility, but an inevitability.
One Oracle tilted her head, lips shaping words no mortal could hear. The sound moved like wind through stone, rippling the flame along Akisha's spine. Somewhere, far from the temple, something ancient shifted as if in answer. The chains of a King stirred in his sleep. The hollow hunger of another stirred the deepest.
The vision tore away like a skin ripped from bone. Her lungs filled—but the breath carried a heartbeat that wasn't hers. It thudded once, twice, then faded, leaving only the scent of burnt plum, clinging to smoke that refused to lift.. The air changed as she stepped beyond the palace gates—cooler, thinner, touched with the taste of the present.
Here, in the sacred outer lands, the world was quiet, minus the sand. It was listening as if the dunes themselves held their breath.
Her crimson veil moved behind her like a live thing, rippling in a wind that dared not touch her skin, dragging shadows across the tan-hardened dunes in slow, deliberate strokes. Sand crunched beneath her boots — smooth, reflective, brittle as shattered glass under the unblinking weight of celestial flame. Even the wind stilled, as though the air feared to trespass across her path.
She did not bring her council.
The Empress of Flame walked alone to meet the Seers, and the silence made her taller.
Above, the sky wore a pale gold sheen, like a bruise struggling to heal beneath skin. A faint eclipse ring clung to the hidden sun — soft as an omen whispered into a cradle, sharp as a knife pressed against an old wound.
Her eyes stayed forward, silver adorned razors, locked on what rose ahead.
A shimmer pulsed in the sand — no more than a flicker at first, the kind that could be mistaken for heat haze. But then it thickened, slowed, breathed. The desert exhaled and slowly sunk into itself. Grain by grain, the Oracle Spire breached the surface, not summoned, but remembered — as though the earth was returning something it had swallowed in grief. It rose like a buried fossil kissed by lightning, glass-laced and pale bronze, its edges veined in faded glyphs and fractured heatlines, each one weeping faint warmth.
She had seen it before. Walked this path before.
But not in five hundred years.
The Spire had never denied her presence, never turned cold, never sealed itself shut. It was Akisha who turned away. Akisha who had torn the scroll in rage. Akisha who walked out before the ashes cooled.
And still... it opened.
As she approached, the sand at her feet liquefied pooling into molten metal that rippled outward in concentric circles like disturbed memory. For a heartbeat, her flame coiled in the same shape it had taken the day she first stood over Rakh's body. It bowed.
From within the Spire, a voice echoed —
"She returns not for prophecy, but to chase the truth she fears."
Another followed — colder, almost amused, like frost teasing the edges of flame.
"She carries the mark."
"Tsk. And a scent that does not belong to the Crown."
Akisha exhaled and stepped forward.
Of course they knew.
The glass-laced walls parted quickly without sound, folding around her like water curling around a stone, doorless, seamless, sacred. She entered the Bone of her Flame. The air moved against her skin in faint, deliberate strokes, as though unseen fingers circled her flame. It tasted of old ash and saltless sweat, heavy with the scent of stories too ancient to die.
There was no ceiling. Just an ocean of darkness above and a faint, rhythmic glow that pulsed from the walls like the slow heartbeat of something sleeping.
At the center in a perfect triangle, they sat in their stone alcoves, unmoving, but the air bent toward them as if gravity itself leaned to listen. The ember in Khamet's bowl flared and dimmed, each pulse in time with Akisha's steps. Light caught along Tamera's bare arm, clinging like molten glass before sliding away. No gold, no velvet, no throne for her — only scorched stone, worn smooth by time and silence.
Between them, a hollow ring carved into the floor. Her boots stilled at the edge, her robe trailing like a smear of sunset ash, heavy with the tension of centuries.
They were already waiting.
Tefeni, the eldest, rose first. Draped in soft, crumbling black silk, her frame carried the weight of judgment. Fingers blackened with ink, eyes dull bronze — not blind, but burdened. She held a cracked mirror bound in gold thread, its surface blurred with something too old to name.
"Mother of Flame," Tefeni murmured. "The past is restless."
Tamera sat motionless. Her head was shaven to bare-smoothness, the yellow glyphs carved across her scalp glowing faintly in rhythm with the thud of Akisha's heart. Her ,Tamera, mouth was sewn shut with a black sacred thread, yet her voice curled through the chamber like smoke, thought pressed directly into her thoughts. She did not meet Akisha's gaze. She pointed at the mark beneath her robes. A gesture of truth.
You do not smell of Rasmus tonight.You smell of rot-silk. Of dead flowers. Of saltless tears.
Akisha's voice came low and sharp.
"Something has touched me. I burn, but not from within. I want to know what it is. And how to kill it."
Khamet stirred. Her body swayed like a candle flame drowning in its own wax, head veiled in a black ink-soaked cloth that clung to her skin. Her hands hovered over a shallow bowl of ash and ember, fingertips twitching like they were being tugged by an unseen thread. When her mouth opened, she sang.
"He lies beneath the veil of your memory...He waits behind the scent of ash and nectar...And when you remember, he will no longer wait-"
Khamet voice fractured mid-line and Akisha's flame sputtered. Her body folded with a ragged gasp, as though the air itself had collapsed around her ribs. A chill crawled up Akisha's spine and flame rose in reflex , something else inside her had heard those words, and answered.
Akisha halted before the ring. Her shadow spilled across the floor, split into two behind her.
Tefeni raised the mirror. It did not show Akisha — not as she was now. It showed another: same appearance, same body, but hollowed. White eyes wide and wrong, so wild and unruly. Her soul was branded with the hunger that first became of her. Lips parted and swollen as if she had just been kissed in a dream she could not wake from.
The cracked surface began to hum, the sound like a throat preparing to scream. A single strand of Tamera's hair lifted. Khamet's bowl quivered with flame. Beneath Akisha's robe, the mark flared once — purple, a pulse under her skin — and stilled.
"We will show you. But only if you accept the cost."
Akisha stepped into the hollow without pause.
"Then burn it into me."
The mirror darkened—its surface swallowing light until only a thin pulse of gold veined the black. The dark swelled, then parted.
A chamber unfurled—walls stitched in velvet night, candles bowing toward a bed drowned in red silk. Gold streaked the floor like veins in a long-buried beast. Smoke drifted overhead, curling in deliberate shapes, as if listening to its own secrets.
Another man stood there.
Skin like tanned olive crushed under pressure. His hair so black almost blue as the night sky, heavy on his shoulders. A chiseled bare chest free of scars, it was almost like a painting. His breathing was measured, as though he owned the air and everything around him. His face was also distorted slightly.
His green gaze found her through the glass, and the space between them warped. The air thickened—heat coiling low under her skin, tugging toward the place where the hidden mark lived.
The first pull was gentle and caressing, like a hand brushing the inside of her thigh,a trick of shadow, she told herself. Her flame leaned forward before she could command it otherwise.
"Akisha," he said—low enough to live in her bones, familiar enough to soften them. Not cruel—yet.
The chamber shifted around him, and the second pull struck deeper, curling her spine in the smallest betrayals. The scent came next—burnt flowers the smell singed her nose and threaded into her lungs without permission.
Her jaw clenched and her gaze narrowed , but her knees wanted to ease apart.
The mirror blazed white.
In the blink between light and shadow, the scene inverted.
Now she stood in it—crowned with her flames, fangs bared, behind her a world condensed to bone and ash. Cities collapsed, the sky palace suffocated in cinder, gods strewn broken beneath her feet.
Her mouth was open and grinning manically.
"Akisha, who burned the world..."
A pause. A smile from ear to ear, sharpened with delight.
"...what's so bad about that?"
The third pull slammed into her, and her thigh glyph caught like oil to a torch. Her muscles tensed in surrender even as her mind screamed wait. Heat climbed up her ribs, wringing a sound from her that she couldn't describe.
The Spire drank her flame before it could fully lash out, folding it into itself cooling the molten heart.
The mirror split down the center with a clean, deliberate crack.
"That was not a memory ,Mother of Flame," Tefeni said, voice like parchment and embers. "It was a promise."
Khamet's fingers tightened around her scrying bowl. "He will show you what evil you could become... if you say yes."
Akisha's stance did not waver, though her heart struck against her ribs. "You knew. You always knew. Why did you fuckers just warn me now?"
Tefeni stepped closer—dry libraries and old ash riding her scent. "Because now the mark is not just on your skin. It is inside. And the next time you dream..." Her eyes caught molten light. "You will not wake alone."
He is no god. Tamera's voice lanced into her mind, smooth and cold. He is rot that learned to seduce. If you crave answers—burn the scent, not the memory.
Akisha's gaze narrowed again sharply. "You cannot name him?"
Tefeni's lips parted, a shape of a word forming—then closing, as though the syllables themselves were poisonous. The ember hissed, a sharp, offended sound, before settling into an uneasy glow.She then turned her face aside, as though the act of not naming him spared the room from collapse.
Khamet hummed low. "We are Eyes, not swords. We do not speak devourers' names in the house of flame."
"He does not want your heart," Khamet murmured, "he wants your silence. Lie with him again, and the seal breaks. You'll be his. Not his queen—his puppet."
Akisha touched her thigh where the glyph still burned phantom-hot. "If Rasmus is part of me... then I'll find the part I lost."
Then find him soon, Tamera urged, before the dream walks faster than the man.
The words settled in her mouth like embers under the tongue. She turned to leave.
"Do not return with that mark again, Empress," Tefeni said. Now there was no ash in her voice—only fear. "Or we will not be allowed to speak to you at all."
Akisha did not answer already furious by their riddles. She stepped from the circle, boots leaving no trace on the molten floor, but her skin felt too tight, as if something had crawled beneath it and made a home. The air in her lungs tasted of him still, sweet and rotting, like a taste she couldn't spit out.
Behind her, Khamet's tears burned as flame. Tamera's stare stayed fixated on something in the sky. Tefeni turned back to her fractured mirror pretending to brush hair.
🫶🏽____________🫶🏽
Ooooooooooo 😩 she's a bad btch....
Do you guys like Akisha's flashback?
Do you want more? 🥴🫣
Chapter 3 coming soon..
