Creating A Succubus Army In A Fantasy World!

The morning sun that streamed through the academy's crystalline windows had always been Creed's silent herald.

Its golden rays caught the lustrous sheen of his hair and illuminated the confident set of his shoulders as he strode through the corridors like a young god walking among mortals.

Students would pause in their conversations to watch him pass, drawn by the natural magnetism that seemed to radiate from his very being, the way his blue eyes sparkled with the kind of inner fire that promised greatness.

That Creed Walden was gone.

The figure that emerged from his Villa on the morning after his cosmic nightmare bore only the faintest resemblance to the golden-haired prodigy who had entered it the day before.

Where once his hair had cascaded in waves of spun sunlight, now hung limp strands of faded gold, as if some vital essence had been drained from each follicle.

The once-lustrous hair was now dull and brittle like autumn wheat left too long in the field. The silky texture had become fragile, absorbing light rather than reflecting it.

But his eyes showed the most devastating change. Those brilliant blue orbs, once clear as tropical seas, had become murky pools of stagnant water.

The vibrant azure had faded to dull slate-gray, storm clouds permanently settled behind his pupils.

Where confidence and humor once danced, only hollow emptiness remained, like peering into an abandoned well with no reflection staring back.

A pitch-black headband wrapped around his forehead completed his transformation, stretching from temple to temple to cover where his cosmic mark burned with invisible fire.

His skin had lost its golden vitality, taking on a translucent pallor that revealed faint blue veins like rivers mapped across parchment.

A gauntness to his features suggested his bones had become more prominent overnight.

Even his movement betrayed the change. Gone was the confident stride that once carried him through halls like he owned them.

Now he moved with measured, deliberate steps—someone who no longer trusted his body, walking through a world of glass that might shatter if he moved too quickly.

His shoulders, once held with natural pride, now carried themselves with careful neutrality, as if the universe was always watching and judging every gesture.

Students began to notice him before he'd taken ten steps from his villa door.

The whispers started as a barely audible susurration, like wind through dry leaves, but quickly grew in volume and intensity as more eyes turned to track his passage.

"Is that really Creed Walden?"

"What happened to his hair? It looks… sick."

"Did you hear of his performance in the assessment yesterday? Completely humiliating."

"I heard he couldn't even remain in the simulation for more than thirty seconds."

"Maybe the pressure finally got to him. You know how these prodigies are—all flash, no substance when it really matters."

"Look at those eyes. It's like someone turned off a light inside him."

"That headband is new. What do you think he's hiding under there?"

The voices followed him like a chorus of judgment, each comment landing with the precision of arrows finding their mark.

But Creed gave no outward sign that he heard them. His expression remained perfectly neutral, a mask of calm that revealed nothing of the storm raging beneath.

He didn't turn his head to acknowledge the stares, didn't quicken his pace to escape the whispers, didn't even blink when someone called his name with false concern.

He simply continued his measured walk through the sleek pathways, as if he were alone in the world and the dozens of eyes tracking his movement were merely figments of his imagination.

Internally, however, the emotional landscape was far more complex and turbulent than his serene exterior suggested.

Beneath the carefully controlled surface, a symphony of conflicting feelings played out with devastating intensity.

Shame burned in his chest like acid, eating away at the foundations of everything he had once believed about himself.

The whispers about his assessment failure weren't wrong—he had been humiliated, had failed so spectacularly that it would probably become academy legend.

But the shame he was feeling went deeper than professional embarrassment.

It was the shame of knowing that his entire identity had been built on a lie, that the confident, capable summoner everyone had known was nothing more than a cosmic puppet dancing to strings he couldn't even see.

Beneath the shame lay an ocean of grief so vast and deep that he sometimes felt he might drown in it.

The loss of his summons wasn't just the absence of magical abilities, it was the death of relationships that had defined his understanding of companionship, trust, and love.

Lilith, Tierra, and Meredith hadn't just been magical partners; they had been the closest things to family he had ever known.

Their voices had been constant companions in his mind, their personalities as familiar as his own reflection.

Now that comforting presence was gone, leaving behind a silence so complete it felt like spiritual amputation.

The grief was complicated by guilt that gnawed at him with relentless persistence.

Somewhere in that nightmare realm of shadows and impossible choices, he had made a decision that had probably doomed his companions to suffering beyond imagination.

The screaming from the first chasm, the rattling chains from the second, the web of organic cocoons in the third, all of it was his fault.

Every moment of their torment was the direct result of whatever choice he had made and then forgotten.

The guilt was a living thing inside him, feeding on his uncertainty and growing stronger with each passing hour.

But perhaps most devastating of all was the helplessness. For the first time in his life, Creed Walden faced a problem that couldn't be solved through talent, hard work, or natural charisma.

He was trapped in a situation he didn't understand, bound by consequences he couldn't remember, marked with a symbol that branded him as property to forces beyond his comprehension.

The mark on his forehead wasn't just a physical manifestation of his cosmic enslavement, it was a constant reminder that his agency, his freedom, his very sense of self had been compromised in ways he might never fully understand.

Yet beneath all the negative emotions, buried so deep it was barely detectable even to himself, burned a core of determination that the cosmic forces had been unable to extinguish.

It was small, fragile, like a candle flame in a hurricane, but it refused to die. This tiny spark of defiance whispered that he would not accept this fate passively.

He would find a way to understand what had happened to him. He would discover the choice he had made and the consequences it had set in motion.

He would find his summons and free them from whatever torment they were enduring.

And somehow, some way, he would break the chains that bound him to forces that treated sentient beings like chess pieces in a game too vast for mortal comprehension.

_____

[Authors Note]

To My Readers,

I owe you an apology for my inconsistent updates. You've shown patience and support that I haven't matched with reliable posting.

Life and writing struggles got in the way, but that's not an excuse for leaving you waiting without communication. You invested time in my story and deserved better from me.

I'm recommitting to regular updates and treating your time with the respect it deserves. Thank you for not giving up on the story—or on me.

The story continues soon.