“I do love you. I’ll… I’ll do anything for you.”
The woman’s scowl curled into a wicked grin, her expression positively gleeful.
“I knew you would, my love.”
The room faded, the woman’s smirk the final image seared in Isabelle’s mind as blackness enveloped her once again.
She was alone, icy dread crawling up her spine, eerie silence surrounding her. She could see nothing, just darkness in every direction, felt nothing but heated air as she waved her arms through the vast expanse.
A sudden sensation of intense fear overwhelmed her, her pulse quickening and sweat beading on her brow. She couldn’t breathe, every muscle trembling as a strange clicking surrounded her, echoing from every direction at once.
As her eyes adjusted, she saw the path, an obsidian bridge stretching and twisting on and on.
Into the heart of le Voile.
Eternal misery threatened to overwhelm her, but she refused to give up.
The world was meaningless, but she would not accept her death.
She would not let the woman win.
Isabelle stared into the void, feeling the power in her bones, the absurd nature of reality clearer in this moment than ever before.
She was nothing more than a skeleton rotting away in the dirt, and this was her Sanctum, her eternal resting place. She was a sinner and a saint, everything and nothing all at once.
Light flashed in her vision, a series of memories passing by in an instant.
Isabelle understood what was happening, but nothowit was happening.
Somehow, she was both Jean-Phillipe and Bellinor. She was le Voile and she was herself.
There was le Jardin, the strange sculptures and the rooms and the foxgloves. Perpetual solitude, both a blessing and a curse, agonizing silence, seclusion, until it could be tolerated no longer. There was Rul, and the servants, wisps of light entering le Voile, feeding it, satiating it for decades to come.
Jean-Phillipe was gone and only Bellinor remained.
She was in the red room, a deep sense of satisfaction winding its way through her bones as she delivered blow after blow to a devotee of Celeste, the follower crying out with pain and pleasure until fading away to nothing.
She was back in Marilet, seeing visions of herself from years before–at the temple, kneeling before the altar of Celeste, at the tavern, at the café, in her cottage after her father had passed.
She was watching herself have sex with Henri, the disinterest clear on her face as he writhed on top of her without rhythm. She was in the room with herself and Pierre, pushing his face away as he attempted to taste her.
Every moment of shame and humiliation she bore witness to, the way she pleasured herself while squeezing her cilice, the way her face twisted with wicked want as she felt the heat of the priestess’ flogger.
She saw herself lying on her bed, covered in Bellinor’s blood. The most beautiful sight she’d ever seen. Gratitude filled her, a sense of awe and humility that she would give the gift of her body in such a manner.
Then she was in the forest, her white dress billowing in the wind, her eyes meeting her own as she gazed into the darkness.
Darkness, eternal and damning, ever present no matter how much she tried to escape it.
It surrounded her, enveloped her, made her one with it, until all was gone except le Voile and her.
She closed her eyes, letting herself be consumed.
“Isabelle?” a voice said, and she blinked her eyes open to a dimly lit room.
She was on her back, two men hovering over her with concerned looks.
Bellinor and Rul.
