NOVEL NEXT Chapter 116: True Love <3
Hannya worked without hurry, but not slowly either. Her pace was the practiced movements of someone who's set traps and also learned to step out of them just as smoothly. She hovered her palm over the large thorn rooted beneath Vainglory's collarbone and wrote a neat collection of sigils in the air with a finger.
These sigils glowed stranger than normal scripts. They inverted, swallowing the dimness and returning a resulting keyword. Each mark locked cleanly into the next until a small block of logic hung above the thorn, waiting to be told how to proceed.
"Good, a return value." she said, almost conversational, angling the logic block and pressing it down. "We're going to trick the root."
Vainglory's gaze clicked from her fingers to the symbols, measuring. "Trick it how?"
"By lying politely." She tapped once; the square broke into thinner, flowing strokes that threaded through flesh without touching it. "These thorns don't just bind, they 'listen'. There's a spirit-core at the base of each root, like a little microphon-... ears lodged in the bark. I'm spoofing a signal it trusts."
'Spoofing? If the logic follows… a sort of mimicking technique.' He took care to file away every word he didn't recognize.
He watched the lines seep down and wrap the thorn-base with a soft, clever pressure. "What signal?"
"An elven one," she answered calmly. "I'm emulating a druidic deactivation call. Their spirit magic can 'tell' a core to sleep if it believes the caller has permissions, or at least non-hostile." She pushed a second block into place and drew a diagonal slash through it. "See this? I'm forging a credential and submitting it with a friendly flag."
"Forging," he repeated, amused despite the situation. "You make it sound like a greed market crime."
"It is a greed market crime," she said dryly. "I'm embezzling from nature." She flicked two more strokes, a curly brace and a dot. "Shh. Go to sleep."
The thorn shuddered. Under his skin, near the bone, Vainglory felt the pressure ease by a fraction. The blue-wood didn't change, but the hungry bite at its root softened, like a jaw unclenching.
He breathed out slowly and inclined his head. "You've studied elves?"
"In depth," she said, then moved without elaborating. "Their magic leans into law, not structures or chi. You can feel it, right? How it moves towards orders rather than waiting for them."
He nodded. "They frame intent as rule, not as power. Elven spirit work is interesting in that way, it's less about reservoir and direction, and more about the proper 'permission' like you mentioned. They write authority into the spell. Beast-kin do something similar when they bind to terrain or blood, though they call it listening rather than writing."
"Mm." Hannya nested another bracket so the first bracket couldn't run by accident. "I once thought it was because their spellcraft and chi were on the weaker side. So they learned where they could win."
"Partly correct," Vainglory allowed. The rings in his eyes turned with a slow, approving note. "But not the root cause. They focus on certain law because of tradition. Culture. Rituals are remembered faster than logic is learned. They codified before they practiced, then refused to forget that code when the practice outgrew it."
Hannya paused, an idea catching on its way through. She glanced up and met his eyes directly, for two seconds longer than planned. "That… makes sense." A faint, reluctant appreciation touched her voice. "Perspective helps."
She looked away first and returned to the thorn, clearing her throat. "Still, we'll use what they gave the world, and what the world gave them. If the root thinks a sleepy oak spirit whispered in its ear, it will accept a nap without protest
"Will it last?" he asked.
"Long enough," she said. "We're not building a house here, we're just picking a lock."
She depressed her palm. The square of logic folded neatly and sank. The thorn's spirit core deep inside shuddered and dimmed. The angle of pressure within his chest reduced. Vainglory felt a pocket of pain become numb space.
"Next," Hannya said briskly, sliding to the thorn at his rib. She built the lie again, faster this time, fingers a blur. "Hannya Magic: [DruidKey - SpoofFlag]".
The root groaned and slackened by a hair. She went to the thorn at his shoulder and gave it the same gentle betrayal. "Hannya Magic: [False Credential - SleepBit]." A final dot. "There we go."
Vainglory watched the technique with interest, going well past courtesy into real regard. "You built this." he said, more of a statement than a question.
"I write my spells like instructions," she said simply. "Clear inputs. Predictable outputs. No poetry if I can help it. Others put too much trust in the spells already logged." She expressed without thinking.
The last root eased. The three thorns no longer shifted to punish every breath he took. The room did not brighten, but something in his chest loosened, giving him more than the rationed air he'd allowed himself for centuries.
Her eyes lingered on his face for a beat, far too readable if he wanted to be cruel about it. She was thinking 'still in there', he could practically see it. Then her expression reset to cool poise, as if she'd shoved the thought into a drawer and promised herself she wouldn't check it again until later.
"Anyway," Hannya said, deliberately swerving her mind. "Elven culture is also debauched, full of gigolos and woman-whores if you ask me."
Vainglory's eyebrows lifted the faintest degree. "An expert's verdict?"
"A realist's." She wiped the pink smear of logic from her fingers onto empty air; it dissolved like ink in water. "I won't say all, but the share rate is… suspiciously high."
He let the smallest smile appear, the kind that would never reach a mortal's eyes. "Have you met elves, then? Met an elf who wanted to share you?"
Her snort was immediate. "I'm not into harems," she said flatly, and for some reason felt compelled to add, "Just so you know." The honesty annoyed her. "And no, I haven't met those degenerates. I just know."
"You know a lot without a fate mutation." he observed, narrowing his gaze. No accusation, just another mark in the files.
"I do." She didn't elaborate, but he didn't expect her to.
He clicked his attention to the next problem. The stakes, holy ones, pulsing and faintly gleaming even in the abyss. One through the thigh, one along the forearm, one, meanest of them all, buried crooked beside the spine where even devils would find it ugly to touch.
Hannya's humor fell away. She studied the angles, then looked up. "This part will be the worst," she said. "They put Order into these like a promise. It will hurt more coming out than going in."
"I won't scream." Vainglory said, voice even.
"You can," she countered, surprising them both. "It's allowed."
A glance flicked between them. Something in her had wanted to hand him some dignity preemptively. Something in her also hated that reflex. She tugged it back with a quiet, inward snarl at herself.
'He isn't him you simp, not yet. Handsome, yes. Distracting, yes. But fucking focus!'
"I won't scream," he repeated, gentler this time. "I'm used to pain."
She nodded once, not arguing. "Then we begin."
She didn't reach for the mirror this time. The Narcissus had eaten enough curses, and holy law was another problem all together. Instead, Hannya drew a thin band of glyphs that wrapped the metal just under the skin. "Hannya Magic: [Tolerance Window]." The law inside the stake resisted; her script widened the allowable range by lying about what counted as 'in place'. The stake loosened by a fraction, enough to move without it stabbing him in retaliation.
The first tug brought relief and fresh hurt at the same time. Holy metal hissed in his flesh like a snake losing patience. His hands curled against empty air, but he kept the rest of his body relaxed.
Hannya's mouth tightened. She pressed her bare palm to the protruding stake.
It sizzled.
The contact made a faint, ugly sound. The smell that rose was sharp and metallic; devils did not burn like humans, but holy things did well when announcing their contempt.
Vainglory's eyes cut to her without moving the rest of him. "Gloves," he said. "Use the scabbard at least-"
"I said I'd handle it." Her voice didn't change, but her back unconsciously straightened even as the tendons in her wrist surfaced. She added a second script. "Hannya Magic: [Friction - Null]." Then she pulled.
The stake slid out a quarter-inch, then a half, then the whole hateful length came free in one smooth pull. The last inch came with a thin gasp from the wound and the wet sound of supreme blood; she let the metal fall. It clattered on the dark floor with a dying glow.
She exhaled through her nose. Burn marks had risen across her palm, reddened skin across pale where the holy laws had bitten. She didn't look at it. She stayed lofty, smiling just at the edge of her lips.
"Farming aura, I see." she murmured while she reached for the next, impressed that not even a single grunt escaped his lips.
'Hmm. Peripheral speech again.'
Vainglory's mind pieced together the phrase rapidly, their conversations slowly forming a language model in his mind. He understood the jab well enough.
"You're one to talk." he said dryly, and watched her set her burned hand on the second stake anyway.
The second stake came slower. She cast again, smaller, her logic gentled the metal, it lied to the order about what 'removed' meant, then dragged it out with hands that hissed and smoked at every inch of contact. She still didn't make a sound. The only sounds were the hiss and the metal tumbling down onto the ground.
The third stake, the one at his back, was the worst. She climbed half behind him to get the angle, close enough that her shoulder brushed the torn edge of his pauldron. Her breath warmed his skin for a beat while her fingers found the stake's edge.
As Hannya measured the last stake's angle against bone, she spoke without looking up, her voice careful, almost casual. "So… who took your heart, and when?"
Vainglory didn't hesitate and answered. "A witch. Hornless, probably human, in black a few months ago. I didn't recognize her."
Hannya's fingers paused for a moment. The petals in her eyes rotated with a small flare of anger flashing and settling. "Mm." She nodded once, a smooth recovery. But inside, a name fit the shape of his description.
Abigail.
She was early, too early. In the story, the theft wasn't supposed to happen until the gates had opened, a year from this point.
Her heat in her eyes cooled into a colder resolve. "Understood."
Vainglory shifted a fraction, chains whispering. "Though, there was something… wrong about her," he added. "She was wrapped in a peculiar spell matrix my eyes didn't have time to adj-"
"Say no more." Hannya cut him off cleanly, the edge of her tone half-soft, half-sharp. She pressed her fingers lightly to the stake's head, then set her palm against the burning metal, a thin line of chi rolling to buffer the holy pain. "We finish this first."
"On three," she said. "Breathe shallow. If it bites, I'll bite back."
"Proceed." he said.
"One. Two. Three."
It hurt. Searing, deep, and clean. He kept his jaw set and let the rings in his eyes turn without rhythm. Hannya's lips pressed into a thin line as she pulled it out; her hand hissed, bled, and hardened, slowly healing again. The stake left him with a horrible relief, like a splinter finally freeing after months of prayers. She let it clatter away and shook her hand once, as if she could fling the burning sanctity off by force.
Vainglory's breath returned to its chosen rhythm. He made a small nod for the job done well. He did not remark on the smell of burned devil skin. He did not remark on the way she hadn't let go, even when her flesh argued with law.
But inside him, impressions shifted. Whatever else she was, she had the discipline to keep her promise to pain.
Uncommon. Dangerous.... Useful.
Something old and familiar nosed at the back of his mind, like a stray dog invited back to a yard he used to own.
Parallel Opinion slid in quietly, for once. It didn't announce itself with jokes. It didn't suggest trades. It just watched the woman with narrow disapproval and set down a decision the way a clerk marks a checklist box.
'If he leaves with her,' it thought, 'He leaves Piety's path. If he leaves with her, he brings war to peace, variability to proof. If he leaves, I convert. Drain the glory, gift him order, break him clean, a merciful end.' It thought all this, looking through Vainglory's eyes at the woman threatening the balance of well crafted order. 'I didn't want to do this…'
But the blessing had conditions. Piety was a name and a demand; the mutation had wrapped the once helpful voice in doctrines that felt like kindness from the inside and like knives to those standing in its way.
'Show piety to Piety.' PO told itself, and watched.
Hannya flexed her fingers once and shook the sting out of them. The burn marks had already begun to vanish. She flicked her gaze over his limbs, counting punctures that no longer held sacred metal.
"Stakes, done." It was more for her own log than for his.
"Good work." Vainglory said, and he meant it.
Her chin lifted a fraction, her pride coming quick and unapologetic. "The chains next."
Order law chains. Pale, rigid, and immaculate. They lay across him like promises he'd never signed, and they didn't care. The white links had been a problem from the beginning, a problem he could probably brute force now if his glory burned hot enough…
If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
'I'll just wait…'
But he'd already paid that price once today.
Hannya drew a small black bottle from her ring. When she shook it, the liquid inside moved like ink through the air.
"Last quarter," she said, weighing the essence on her fingers. "Essence of Desire. I'll coat the contact points, write a disassembler, then counterspell the latches."
He watched the bottle, then her hands. "You'll nullify the chain before you try to break it."
"Exactly." The black liquid ran along her skin and didn't drip. She leaned close, tracing narrow signs along the links across his chest, then along the one hugging his ribs, then the one that rode too close to his throat. The essence sank and left a faint sheen. "Desire contradicts Order in a way," she said as she worked. "I'm asking the chain to want to be wrong for a little while."
"Persuasion-like magic," he said. "Not compulsion."
"More like consent magic," she corrected, dry. "The chain consents to its own stupidity. With luck." She glanced at his face, at the measured calm, at the way his eyes stayed steady. "Hold still."
He did, watching her paint the links one by one, some of the script overflowing onto his body directly. The essence trailed across his sternum, up to his collarbone, and over his shoulder, her touch was always just short of truly touching.
She moved around him, tracing the chain at his back, the one coiled over the old thorn site, the one bound across the hip. Then she returned, knelt, and slid the last of the liquid over the shackles at his wrists and ankles, her expression focused and narrowed.
He could feel the difference as she went on. A humming, a subtle loosening at the edges of law composing it. The chain didn't quite break, but it was listening.
Hannya straightened and whisked the final midnight droplet from the bottle's mouth onto the collar at his throat. Now emptied, she tucked it back into her ring.
"Now the logic." she said. She lifted both hands and wrote above his chest, never touching him or the chains. A set of soft, pale pink characters formed, each one quietly defiant, each one more demanding instruction than hopeful prayer.
"Hannya Magic," she intoned, "[MaskBit - OrderFalse],"
The script rotated. She added another layer: "[ReferenceSwap - RootIndex],"
Then a third generator waiting for actions. "[Counterspell - LatchBreak]."
The air thickened like honey. Desire glowed under the links, proper and improper urges twisted together beneath the obedient iron. Her logic stack settled on top of that subtle paradox and waited for her to run the collection.
Hannya stepped back, measured the circle she needed on the floor, and, with the concentration of a master thief opening a safe, drew it. A broad ring, four pointers and a floating reference, a shape that could breathe when laws began to thrash.
She looked at him once more, meeting his eyes through veil and tiredness and a faint, unbecoming hope she refused to name. "When I call it," she said, "the chain will try to correct me. Ignore the instinct to brace and let me take the shock. You'll feel light. Then you'll feel sick. Then the links will misremember what they wanted and we break them."
"I'll adjust," Vainglory said. "On your count."
"On mine." she agreed, smoothing a burned palm down her sleeve.
She took a breath. The last lines of her logic found their places.
And then Hannya raised her hand over the circle, ready to cast.
Her hand cut down through the large sigil's center.
"Hannya Magic: [Generator] : [MaskBit - OrderFalse], [ReferenceSwap - RootIndex], [Counterspell - LatchBreak]."
The circle answered like a struck drum, a low rumble that ran up from the floor and through the white links. Desire flared where she'd inked it, the polite wrongness soaking into each joint. For a moment the chains didn't look weaker; they looked unsure, as if remembering a different job than the one they'd been cast for.
"Now." she said.
Vainglory moved with her. He exhaled, not the breath to brace, but the surrender she'd asked for, letting the correction rebound into her logic instead of his bones. Hannya drove her burned palm into the collar at his throat and twisted hard. He caught the body chain across his ribs and rolled his shoulder under it.
The first link failed with a clean, metallic pop.
The second squealed with a crystalline shatter.
The third simply… quit. The white metal turned gray at the edges and came apart in Hannya's hands, her painted logic drinking the last of its obedience.
Links fell in a broken ring around his feet. Shackles at wrists and ankles stuttered, then cracked. He tore the last cuff apart with raw strength, golden essence flickering along his knuckles as if eager to be helpful again.
Silence followed. Heavy, strange, and full of something unspoken.
He stood. For a moment he was taller than the dark itself, his ordinary height returned. The expected 6'5", blood-slicked, and steady breathed.
Their eyes met.
He did not smile much. She almost never did like a normal person. And yet both of them did, small and controlled, the kind of smiles people allowed themselves when the math finally balanced after a year of ugly calculations.
"Good work, partner." Vainglory finally said, extending his hand.
He could feel his body waking. Chi threaded back into his paths like soldiers returning from the cold front. Mana collected in the old reservoirs at his wrists, behind the knees, across the circuits of his chest and at the skull's base. The aching absence of his core where glory had run dry stayed… quieter. Not filled, not yet.
But soon, once he was out. So he thought, while PO sat quietly in his mind, prepared to move once the moment settled. When all guard was low.
Hannya glanced at the offered palm and let a slow, odd smile bloom behind her veil, something a little malicious at the corners. She stepped in and took his hand.
"Since we're 'partners' now," she said lightly, "I should come clean about something."
"Then speak it." He answered. Smooth and untroubled. Even though betrayal set ready and waiting. Cooperation had gotten them to the door, but once out of the abyss, he would walk his own calculated path. The guilt tasted mild, but necessity tasted cleaner.
He needed to seek out the truth of his situation, find those he once considered… competent enough to answer his inquiries, and corner the rats that facilitated this imprisonment.
Calm judgment was needed. But with this priestess around…
He let a flash of a memory he had already and not yet experienced flash past his inner mind. A torn body, a vicious battle, a severed head, and a silent hum as the world around his post mortem eyes collapsed under confused laws. He snuffed it out as quickly as it came.
His eyes had logged them all. A timeline that used to exist, warped, somehow, by the devil before him.
The vision bolstered his choice. He didn't need the chaos of uncertainty, he needed the order of predictability.
'I need calm to proceed…not calamity.'
He would seek his former allies first. He would seek Pie-
The thread pulsed, and Hannya made a 'strange' move, She didn't step back.
Instead, she slid closer until the soft weight of her chest pressed against his sternum. She rose onto her toes; their joined hands stayed between them like a promise forgotten on purpose. Her breath brushed his ear, warm and scented in a way that shorted out one of his less used senses. He didn't show the surprise. He'd been 'leaned' on before…but attraction wasn't a pressure he'd had to manage in centuries. It arrived like an uninvited guest and took the closest chair beside him anyway.
"But before I tell you," she murmured, one free hand drawing down the planes of his abdomen with a touch that felt like a spell and a dare in equal measure. "let me ask you a question."
She didn't wait for permission. Her heat radiating through torn armor and skin as her Luxuria blood woke and her charm laws curled thicker around them both.
"What's the difference," Hannya murmured, lips close enough that the words warmed his ear, "between a devil's curse and an angel's blessing?"
Vainglory's eyes narrowed a fraction. "I don't understand your meaning," he said evenly and answered simply, maybe a bit too simple for a mind so advanced. "Blessings help. Curses hurt."
"Kikiki!" Her free hand rose and traced lightly along his chin, coaxing his head back the smallest degree. The pressure of her aura made that tiny retreat feel like a slip on brittle ice. "Wrong, the real answer is: one is more honest than the other."
He steadied himself against the pull, his will surfing the waves of charm with a narrow edge. "Angels don't have the capability to lie," he replied, voice staying cool. "Order forbids it. Your logic is flawed."
Her eyes glinted. "Is it?" She smiled, as sweet as poison. "Then let me tell you something interesting…"
She looked up at him from beneath her long lashes. "Seven-ring angels have the authority to-"
DING.
[
Your [All-Seeing Eyes] are adjusting…
]
Blackness fell over his vision, like a theater skipping on the end of a reel.
He was standing, or he thought he was, his body's maps didn't seem to quite match. A small white room held him now. No doors, no windows, he stood close to one of the white walls, close enough to touch. At the rooms center, a hovering eye the size of a boulder. Black sclera. Red iris. A patient, judicial pupil that didn't blink because the concept of such leisure was beneath it.
Downwards Direction turned. It noticed him noticing. A tiny, honest flinch of surprise rippled across the gaze.
He shouldn't have been able to see it, not in his own house.
"Sorry, child," a voice said, not through air but through laws. "You don't know. And rules are rules. You'll be back in a moment."
Vainglory tried to speak, to move, to do anything except watch. The room held him like a thought put on pause. The eye angled away, already busy with a task that wasn't there, and he fell out of the world between one heartbeat later.
Dark again.
Only confusion followed, he traced it back: His hand was extended, The priestess clasped it, two soft mounds pressed against him, [REDACTED], darkness, then the eye.
Before he could delve into the files of his mind further, something soft pressed against his mouth.
A heat, a scent. The hum from a voice he'd learned to identify as hers. Instinct, occasionally staying awake when logic still slept, made him lean a fraction toward it, seeking a little more of the feeling warming his body.
Then, as if lying in wait, a tongue slid past his teeth like a brazen thief, and his eyes snapped open with a cold, immediate clarity.
He ripped back, decisively breaking the seal of the kiss without flinging her away. Shock tried to show in his face, but discipline caught it and turned it into a precision glare.
"What," he said, voice steady enough to be insulting, "are you doing?"
Hannya laughed, bright and satisfied, and didn't let go of his hand. "My duty," she said, faux-prim. "As priestess, of course." her eyes glittered and spun. "My Luxurian worship."
Nonsense, there were no Luxurian rituals he knew of like that, not outside a shrine at least. He opened his mouth to call it what it was.
But then she pointed at his chest.
He looked.
Six black stars ringed his heart, the old humiliation still present now glowed with a fresh, clean block of dark light. Half-full. A gift… or a shackle, depending on who was telling the story.
Hannya tilted her head, veil shifting, satisfied and a little shy under the satisfaction. "Don't worry," she said softly. "I didn't take. I gave."
His mind turned. Quick and measured. Catalogs in his head pulled and updated themselves.
Half a star was no simple trinket. You didn't give it lightly; you didn't take it kindly. It was power, path and a promise that could bind if you let it. It was also…annoyingly useful.
He lifted his gaze from the light and pinned her in place with it. "Why?" he asked. The word sat between them like a test neither of them knew how to grade yet.
"Because I need to make sure you stay alive," Hannya said simply… then let a wicked little smile tilt the corner of her mouth. "Also… compensation for the next part."
"Compensation?" Vainglory echoed, tone level.
Her fingers tightened around his hand. "Did you think I didn't know you were going to abandon me the moment we leave this place?"
At the edge of his vision, the red thread only he could see gave a visible throb, color hueing a shade redder, then settling.
Before he could answer, she leaned nearer, veil brushing his jaw. "I know you're still in there, Vain. I trust your success." Her smile widened; her eyes brightened with that hot, manic fervor he'd already learned to track. "But there's a little saying I like. Trust, but verify."
"Kikiki!" she breathed, and the laugh crawled up his spine like warm smoke.
She twisted their joined hands.
The black tracery of Essence of Desire she'd painted over him earlier lit from within, every line turning a soft, hungry pink that bled under his skin. His mana pathways shivered, his chi stuttered, a fourth set of logic circles woke and climbed the now empty blocks she'd prepared.
"Heart Devil Curse: [True Love - Vena Amoris]."
Heat flared along his ring finger to the base of the palm, a sigil burned into existence over the back of his hand, petal-shaped, ribboned, and unmistakably possessive. Her mark. Her claim.
Golden authority surged from his core to answer. Clean, disciplined, and immediate. He lanced glory into the curse to unseal it-
Hannya laughed and wagged a finger in his face. "Ah ah ah. I can't have you brute forcing your way out, macho man."
Her free hand pressed to her chest, over the bright flare of her heart.
"[High Priestess Authority - God's Will]."
His glory essence tipped like a bowl. His power poured cleanly from his core into her own, pulled by an unseen siphon of permission and rank. Her core drank it in one greedy swallow.
'DAMN IT! STOP HER YOU FOOL!' an enraged and panicked voice thumped desperately in his mind as his core rapidly drained.
Though his mind turned for solutions, he noted the noise in the background… a peculiar reaction…
Her pupils dilated, a low shiver passed through her spine. "Mmm~" The sound was too honest to be fake. "We really are perfect for each other." The smile returned, razor sharp and playful. "This should be enough for you to… clear your head." she added, giving him a look that landed somewhere between knowing and smug.
He didn't understand why the look pricked something true, but it did. He refused to follow the feeling. Instead he reached for the one lever he still had, the contract.
'Invoke privileges,' he told the quiet system lodged where his decisions lived. 'Cancel pact.'
DING
[
Chaos Platform: Confirm cancellation of pact with [Six-star Heart Devil] ? :(
(Y/N)
]
He drew in breath to say yes.
Hannya's gaze slid past his face and focused… three inches in front of his eyes.
She wasn't looking at him.
She was reading the panel.
He had half a second of pure, precise disbelief before she met his stare again, delight sparkled in her eyes.
"Kikiki! Looks like what's yours is also mine."
She hooked a finger under her veil and ripped it free, smiling bare and bright, gilded canines flashing like tiny sickles. She tilted her head back and pointed to him.
"I want to remain his priestess, clause 27b. It's clear he's unwell." she told the same air he had just addressed.
DING
[
Adjudication: Petition received. :D
Evaluating…
]
DING
[
Conflict: Pretty [Six-star Heart Devil] vs. Crippled [Six-star Glory Devil]
]
DING
[
Ruling: [Platform of Chaos] sides with pretty [Six-star Heart Devil]
Rationale: Compatible axis; high rehabilitation potential; Disabled [Six-star Glory Devil]; Pretty.
Comment: The Platform hopes the couple will get along and work things out. <3 #Fight!
]
For the first time in centuries, something unfamiliar tugged hard in Vainglory's chest as he read that message. Not something like fear or anger. It was like a weak, crack-lipped echo for help at the bottom of an empty well.
Despair.
And Hannya smelled it, her despair core always smelled it. She softened her hand and let his go, veil dangling from her fingers like a shed skin.
"Don't worry, darling," she said, sounding like a girl comforting a boy under a storm. "I'm more than sure you'll overcome this trial."
"If you love something," she went on, voice turning soft and instructional, "you let them go when needed."
she let out a soft chuckle. "...So they can come right back on their own."
Then her eyes sharpened, petals rotating with focus. "But don't think for a second I'll let you cuck me while you're 'finding yourself.'"
Her smile returned, prettier without the veil, far too pretty for how much trouble it promised. The gilded canines glinted as she lifted the back of her hand between them.
A symbol bloomed there in clean lines, and it was one he knew too well. His eyes widened at the distinct pattern.
Candidate's Mark.
The same mark he hid beneath the skin of his own hand, never shown, never spoken. After all this time, another now had the same.
"The race is beginning babe, and the platforms are choosing this era. You have one year," she said, eyes bright. "Return to the man you were meant to be."
The red thread hummed along the floor between them, as if the words were plucking it.
"And if you don't," Hannya added, voice turning almost airy with intent, "I will march on Neel when the gates open. I'll head to the Spire myself…"
Her pupils widened; the petals around them spun. "And I'll shatter the Grand Dungeon Core."
The air around him tightened.
That was not a threat you said to his face. That was an oath you carved on a mountain.
His lineage had two destinies.
Collapse or judgment.
He had aimed for the latter because there was dignity there, and purpose. Her declaration assaulted both. Rage rose, cold and exact, a clean line from thought to motion.
He moved to seize her wrist…
And nothing happened.
His body didn't answer. The ligament chain between command and muscle was gone. A slow cold crept up his arms and down his spine, the glaze of a clever anesthetic finding purchase between his nerves.
His mind flicked back to the kiss.
"How-" He didn't finish it. The logic map finished itself as his body numbed and the despair deepened.
Hannya laughed, soft and triumphant. "That's the look I wanted to see." Heat colored her cheeks, her breath quickened by a measure. "That's right, if you fail, I'll ruin your legacy." Her voice dropped, sweet turning feral. "Then I'll go hunting that little angel, that no-grip simp, and I'll raze each Platform on the way to the Upper Sky."
The vow came out as a litany of tasks. Then the mood flipped, she sighed, satisfied, and looped the veil back over her mouth, hiding the cruel curve of her lips.
"Don't keep this queen waiting, stud." She did a playful flick at his pendant. "Legacy and lives are at stake. Kikiki!"
She turned without waiting for an answer. Hips swayed under white silk, slit flashing a pale glance of thigh now and then, not to seduce, even though it did, but because she didn't care to hide that she enjoyed being watched by him.
At the edge of the spent array, she glanced back once and let her eyes rake, proprietary, over his paralyzed frame.
"The dread mist will wear off in five minutes for you," she said, tone suddenly professional again. "The way will stay open."
A last, she added a maddeningly gentle: "Good luck."
She stepped into the thinning fog and was gone, mist folding over her like a curtain closing the scene.
Silence returned to Greed's pocket.
Vainglory stood very still because he had no choice, and also because he had always preferred stillness to waste. The possessive seal pulsed once on the back of his hand and settled under skin as if it had been there from the beginning. The new star over his heart glowed as if pleased with its own existence. The pendant at his throat felt cooler than before, or perhaps that was his blood, trying to be honest.
He tested the paralysis and mapped the retreat of the numbness. Five minutes. Less, if he could have forced the gold along unpoisoned lines. He measured the doorway she'd cut into the abyss and the way the laws leaned toward it.
He found the place where anger stopped being useful and folded it away for later.
Above him, far above, two beings in chairs argued in whispers over snacks and principle, betting on what would happen next.
Inside him, something a little like shame, a little like respect, and a lot like calculation made a fragile truce.
When the first finger twitched, he let it be victory.
He exhaled through his nose, a breath that finally felt like his.
"Partner terms," he murmured to the empty dark, as if saying it again would make it less sour. "We'll revisit that."
Another finger answered. Then his wrist.
He set his eyes on the way out. He set his jaw on the year he'd been given like a sentence that could also be a promise.
When he moved again, it would be toward the gate, out of the abyss, into the world, and onto a spiral path he had not chosen, with a woman who hadn't asked for permission.
If he had to become the man she expected…the man he refused…the man the Platforms expected…or something new entirely, he would decide that on the way, his own way.
For now, he counted down, measured the seconds, and prepared to take his first free step in six centuries.