For half a breath, the club dissolved around us, replaced by something far older and far more terrible. Stone walls rose into darkness, the air thick with heat and power.
For he was no longer seated in his club but instead upon a hellish throne carved from bone and demonic shadows. His deadly frame crowned in firelight and ancient authority.
His form shifted, his presence expanding with wings half-unfurled behind him. A pair that looked enormous, with each dark feather like a layered blade or sharpened shadows. Their edges ragged and serrated as if carved from night itself. An eerie emerald glow pulsed beneath the black, veins of luminous green threading through the feathers like living embers. His aura cast a sickly, otherworldly light that breathed and moved with him. Like some restrained power barely contained beneath the span of wings.
Glowing white eyes pinned me in place, and my breath caught painfully in my chest. Pure, undiluted fear shivered through me as he reached out, beckoning me closer with a sharp jerk of two claw-tipped fingers.
Then Hell evaporated, and the club snapped back into place with startling clarity. The music returned, the lights glowed once more, and he was back to being the same Oblivion that I had seen anchored to my own world. Calculated control, watching me as though nothing had changed at all. As though both versions of him existed at once, layered over each other. Truthand illusion flickered together until I could no longer tell which one frightened me more.
I glanced nervously over my shoulder, only to find that the crowd behind me had thinned. Where once there were dozens of bodies pressed together, now there were fewer, their shapes indistinct, their faces turned away. Unease rippled through me, but it did not stop me. If anything, it drew me onward. My steps slowed as I continued toward him, my awareness narrowing to the space between us.
Another step and another pause was all it took for him to lure me once more with his words. His voice was closer now, more intimate, as if he were standing right beside me instead of waiting upon his throne.
“You are safe here.”
I swallowed, my throat dry, my heart hammering as I looked back once more. The club was emptier now, vast stretches of darkness where people once stood, and the sense of isolation thundered in my chest. It dawned on me then that they weren’t leaving on their own.
No…they were being removed.
Eradicated for me.
The realization should have terrified me. It should have sent me running, screaming for an exit that no longer existed. Instead, my feet carried me forward, betraying me with every step, drawn by something I did not understand and did not want to resist. The throne loomed closer, its dark lines resolving into something more intricate, and I saw it for what it truly was.
A web.
Invisible threads stretched outward from it, subtle and impossibly strong. Each cord humming with power, thrumming through my veins. Each step I took brought me closer to it,closer to the core.And I knew with chilling certainty that once I erased that final distance between us, there would be no pulling free.
I looked back one last time.
The club was now completely empty.
No music, no laughter, no bodies, nothing but darkness and silence stretching infinitely behind me,like some endless oblivion.I was completely alone with him now, the weight of his attention pressing down on me until my skin prickled and my breath came shallow and fast. My heart was in my throat as I turned back toward the throne, my mouth opening to demand answers I was not sure I wanted.
But he was no longer seated.
No, now he was directly…in front of me!
I screamed.
He stood impossibly close, towering over me, his features no longer restrained, no longer softened by illusion. His eyes blazed white, his presence overwhelming, and his form unmistakably demonic as his arms closed around me. A cage of muscle trapping me against his chest with unyielding strength. There was no pain, no struggle, only the crushing certainty of his hold and the heat of him seeping into my bones.
“You are mine now.”
The words reverberated through me, settling deep and final, until fear and desire collided so violently that I couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. My breath tore free in a broken gasp as his grip tightened. The web closing around us both as the world collapsed into darkness.
Into his seductive Hell.
I wokewith a sharp intake of breath, my heart racing, my body damp with sweat as the echo of his voice still rang far too clearly in my ears. His words of dark seduction clinging there as if hehad never truly let me go. The room slowly came into focus around me, the darkness of the dream giving way to the thin, early morning light. However, the sense of his presence lingered stubbornly, heavy and intimate, refusing to fade with the night.
I lay there for a moment, tangled in the sheets, trying to steady my breathing and convince myself that it had only been a dream. Yet his voice still curled through my thoughts with unsettling certainty, as though it had left something behind. A lingering residue that clung on and refused to let go.
He was a sorcerer, after all, so it made sense to ask myself if he could have done something to me? Perhaps, when touching me, even briefly last night, could have done more than I realized. Could he have woven something subtle and unseen into my sleep?
The thought sent a fresh ripple of unease through me. I didn’t know if I could endure nights like this, caught between fear and longing. Nights when my subconscious would start replaying his claim over and over again. Worse still was the possibility that the dream hadn’t been a dream at all, but more like…a warning.
That he hadn’t simply let me escape. That whatever had passed between us had marked me in ways I was only just beginning to understand, and that this was only the start.
‘You are mine now.’
