i’ve been away for a long time, and i’ve been wanting to talk about it, but honestly… i didn’t really know how or where to begin. i’m a very private person, but being silent hasn’t been helping me, and i want to be honest with the people who support my writing.
these past few months, i’ve been struggling with an ed. i won’t go into detail, but it reached a point where it started affecting my health very badly (i remember i was open about my anemia) — including my blood pressure and my overall well-being. things got worse unexpectedly, and it scared me enough to realize i needed to take recovery seriously. it’s been slow, but i’m working on it day by day, because this is something that can become very dangerous if i ignore it.
because of that, my writing completely stopped. not because i stopped loving it, i still adore writing and i miss it deeply, but because i just haven’t been in a healthy enough state of mind or body to sit down and create the way i used to. the words aren’t flowing. the rhythm isn’t there.
i also want to say this clearly: i know all of us writers and readers — are going through our own battles. mine doesn’t make me special or different. this isn’t an excuse. i genuinely feel troubled and guilty that i couldn’t finish the things i promised, especially the sukuna story and the events i am/was part of. i never intended to ghost anyone or disappear. it just became too much for me to handle.
if anyone followed me specifically for the sukuna story and feels the need to unfollow, please feel free. there’s no hard feelings at all. i completely understand.
i miss my mutuals. i miss the joy writing used to give me. and i’m hopeful that once i’ve regained my strength and healed properly, that spark will come back again, hopefully naturally, not forced, not rushed.
thank you to everyone who has been patient with me. thank you for the quiet support, even without knowing what was going on.
i’m taking things one step at a time. i've been contemplating for more than a month if i should be honest with my mutuals and readers. again i would like to apologize to @heaveninruins and @gojosoups for not being able to finish my stories on the events i participated in.
other than that, i wish everyone a lovely christmas and most importantly, please remember that you are not alone whether you are going through the darkest battle of your life — know that there is always a light at the end of that tunnel.
💌: with much love from katherine
ps : this was really scary to post, hopefully everyone understands
omg katherine welcome back bby !! ❤️ glad to see you on my dash and I hope you’re feeling better ❤️❤️
hi my sweet emi 💌
ive really missed you all :') it's really welcoming receiving all these sweet messages from you all, makes me really happy. im glad to be back and being able to write little by little so im recovering slowly but even so im gonna try and write!! . i see ive missed out on a lot?
i came to attack you all!! jokes jokes hahaha honestly it's good to be back. but even so im trying my best to take care of my health too :') i really miss writing frequently as i used to but for some reason it's not like it used to be. i hope the little i share with you all is enough though. i really missed you 🫂🤍
𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦𝐞 : religious imagery · grief/loss (mother’s death mentioned) · father’s guilt · possession themes · power imbalance · pact/branding · blood symbolism · gothic horror elements · heavy atmosphere · shadows/whispers · implied corruption
(MDNI 18+ — dark romance with mature/dark themes. please read responsibly.)
𝐯𝐢𝐠𝐧𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞 : before her first breath, her father bargained with a shadow — a covenant born of desperation, sealed in silence, and hidden beneath trembling prayers. but bargains with demons do not fade; they linger, like blood on sacred cloth. on the eve of her twenty-first year, the truth rises. the stranger was no man, but Ryomen Sukuna, King of Demons — come to claim what was promised. torn from her home, she is thrust into a kingdom where night reigns eternal, ruled by a sovereign of iron and cruelty, who knows no love. she aches for freedom, for her father’s embrace, for light. he demands submission, loyalty, her place at his throne. yet in the heart of shadow, rebellion stirs, and buried truths bleed into ruin. hatred begin to fracture, twisting into a peril far more ruinous than rage.
for what becomes of a daughter of light, when she learns to hunger for the darkness that stole?
𝐰/𝐜 : [ 7, 1 k ]
♱ playlist : bride of the night
a gothic classical mix to set the tone — candlelight, violins, and whispers of the underworld
🎧 listen here
𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 · 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞
Heidelberg 1800
The storm was not weather, not truly. It prowled over the hills like a beast loosed from some unseen chain, clawing at the rooftops, rattling shutters, gnashing its teeth through thunder. The rain came slantwise, sharp as thrown nails, hammering against the chapel’s high windows until the glass shivered as though it might splinter. Lightning bared the sky white, then left it darker than before, each strike like a heartbeat too powerful for the heavens to contain.
Inside, the chapel was no sanctuary. Its stones wept with dampness. Hairline fractures cut through the painted saints, their colors faded to ghosts. The wood of the pews was scarred by time,their varnish stripped away by countless hands and knees. Only the altar, squat and immovable, seemed untouched, through the centuries had worn its surface smooth. A dozen candles guttered before it, their flames bent sideways, bowling low each time the wind crept in through the broken seams of the walls.
The man kneeling there did not notice the cold. His soaked robes clung to him like a shroud. His hair, once dark and neatly combed, hung wild and matted, plastered across his brow. His eyes red-rimmed, not from the storm but from nights without sleep, and his hands — clasped so tightly that the knuckles showed bone-white — shook with a tremor he could not still.
He whispered, but it was not prayer.
“Please…” His voice fractured, frayed from repetition. “Please, I beg you.”
Not God, not saints. He did not dare to shape words into a name. He begged the silence itself. He begged the stone, the air, the yawning dark between candle flames.
His daughter was dying.
The image of her never left him: pale cheeks, damp with fever, lips cracked from thirst, chest heaving for each shallow breath. The physician had come, had muttered something about an infection of the lungs, had left with his fee and little more than pity. No poultice soothed her. No broth stayed in her stomach. Each hour she drifted further, like a leaf black water.
He had buried a wife already. He could not bury the child she had left him. He could not lower another coffin into the earth, could not stand at another grave with nothing left but absence. His wife's laughter still haunted the rooms of their home, caught between the rafters. His daughter's laughter had been the only answer — and now even that was thinning, unraveling with each rattled breath.
The storm bellowed. The candles faltered.
“Anyone,” he rasped. “Anything. Do not take her. I will pay whatever is asked. Only —” His words choked off, lodged behind the swell of grief. He pressed his forehead against the stone, lips scraping raw as he whispered: “Only let her live.”
The silence stretched. He thought, for a flicker, that he was alone. That no one had heard, that his plea would sink like a stone to the bottom of the world.
Then the silence moved.
It was subtle at first: the shadows along the chapel’s walls thickening, their edges curdling into shapes they had no right to hold. The draft stilled, though no crack had sealed. The air grew heavy, and the storm outside, for all its rage, muffled itself into a distant throb. The candles’ frames drew long, quivering as though bending towards something unseen.
And then —
“Anything —”
The voice was not a voice. It was a resonance, deep as caverns, old as dust, layered as though a hundred throats had spoken in unison but with one will. It filled the chapel without rising in volume, as if the stones themselves had chosen to speak.
The man's head snapped up. His pulse, thrashed against his throat.
Shadows poured forward, unmoored from their owners, spilling across the floor like ink spreading in water. They climbed the altar, veined across the ceiling, coiled around the trembling candles. At the center of it, a figure began to shape — not wholly seen, not wholly unseen.
A height greater than any man, crowned with a vague curve of horns that might have been smoke. Shoulders broad as pillars, tapering to arms long and lean, one hand ending in claws sharp enough to score stone. Where its face should have been, there was only suggestion: the sense of eyes that watched from within the void, a mouth unseen yet certain, smiling with cruelty too ancient to be human.
The man stumbled back, knees scraping the floor. His lips trembled.
The figure leaned closer, though it did not move. Its presence pressed into him, crushing, suffocating, as if eternity itself had bent low to breathe into his ear.
“You beg.”
The words slithered, slow, heavy, patient.
“You plead for a spark in her dying lungs. For marrow not yet strong enough to bear the weight of years. You would buy her breath with your ruin. Do you understand what you ask?”
The man's chest heaved. He clutched his robes as if fabric could shield him. “She is all I have,” he whispered. “She is my blood. My wife's last gift. I cannot —” His throat closed. His eyes blurred. “I cannot lose her.”
The shadows stirred, restless, rippling outward like a tide.
“Then hear me, mortal.”
The voice shook the marrow of his bones. It was not spoken in words he knew, yet he understood it. It was older than tongue, heavier than meaning.
“I will give her breath. I will bind marrow to her bones, stitch fire to her veins. She will live beyond this night. She will walk, speak, and laugh again.”
The man's breath caught. Hope flared sharp, painful. “At what cost?”
The figure's head tilted. Claws grazed the altar, carving grooves into stone as soft as wax beneath its touch. Sparks of black fire hissed from each stroke.
“Her life will not be yours to keep. In twenty-one years’ time, when blood ripens into womanhood, she will be mine. By bargain, by birthright, by blood.”
The man's mouth worked, but no sound came. His heart thundered like the storm outside, as if it might shatter his chest from within.
His daughter. His only daughter. The memory of her small hand clutching his thumb, the fragile rise and fall of her chest even now as she battled against death’s weight — it split him open.
“What you ask…” His voice was barely sound. “It would damn her.”
The darkness shifted, amused.
“You speak of damnation, as though your soul is not already bartered to pride and hunger. As though you have not feasted on the silver of men's faith, swelling yourself fat with their reverence while you left your own house empty.”
The man flinched as if struck. The words peeled him open, unearthing sins he had buried beneath cloth and scripture. Greed, vanity, the pride that had whispered to him with honeyed lips each time gold clinked into his palm. His knees pressed harder to the stone, as though pain could drown truth.
Still, he whispered, “She's innocent.”
The figure bent closer. Though its face was shadow, he felt it smile, wide and knowing.
“Innocence is not amor. Innocence is inheritance. Her purity sweetens the bargain. She will not remember this night, nor the weight of your choice. But when she stands at the threshold of womanhood, I will come. And she will be mine.”
The candles guttered as if suffocating. The storm pressed its claws harder against the walls. The chapel groaned.
The man closed his eyes. Tears burned hot as they spilled, carving lines down his hollow cheeks.
He had prayed to gods that would not answer. He had begged saints who gave only silence. Now, when the shadows had opened its jaws, he found himself kneeling, not in defiance, but in surrender.
“Then take me instead,” he gasped suddenly, voice cracking on desperation. “Take me, not her”
The darkness laughed.
It was not human laughter. It was low roll of mountains shifting, the groan of ancient doors swung wide, the tearing of roots from earth. It filled the chapel until its ears rang, until he clutched his skull as though it might split apart.
“I have no desire for withered fruit. What is a husk of a man, already rotting, compared to what she will be?”
The words crushed him. He could not breathe. He wanted to rage, to claw, to spit his defiance — but he saw her face, pale and damn with sweat, and all that left him was a sob.
“Then… let it be done.” His voice cracked like broken glass. “Only let her live.”
The shadow leaned back, satisfied.
“So sworn.”
It came like a trolling bell. The sound reverberated in his marrow, thrumming through his skull until sparks burst behind his eyes. He sagged forward, chest heaving, as the figure raised its clawed head.
Black fire hissed along its talons. It stretched them wide, and the air stank of ash and iron.
“Wh — what…?” His words faltered, throat dry.
“Every pack is sealed.” The voice swelled, layered with a hundred echoes. “Yours will be written upon flesh.”
The man had no time to cry out. The clawed hand came down and struck his chest.
Agony exploded through him, white-hot, blistering. His scream tore through chapel, high and raw, mingling with thunder. The fire was not flame as he knew it; it seared deeper, carving symbols into his skin, into the very root of him. It branded not only his flesh, but the blood that had birthed his daughter. The curse wound through lineage, curling tight like a chain unseen.
He thrashed, clawed at the altar, begged incoherent words, but the shadow held him pinned with its presence alone. Smoke hissed from his skin, curling upward in ribbons.
When at last the claws lifted, the man collapsed, heaving. His robes clung to him, scorched through, the stench of burned flesh clinging heavy in the air.
His chest bore the mark — four jagged slashes, intersecting at his sternum, glowing faintly with embers that pulsed like a second heartbeat before fading to black.
He wept, clutching himself, the pain so consuming he barely heard when the voice spoke again.
“In twenty-one years, she is mine. Queen to the night, bride to the abyss. You will not see it — you will rot long before the day comes —but her fate is sealed.”
The storm outside broke. Not eased, not ended — broke. Rain ceased mid-drop. Thunder snapped shut. The wind fell dead. Silence slammed into the chapel with such force the man gasped at it.
The figure was gone. Only shadows clung to corners, innocent once more.
His sobs echoed.
//꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦꒷//
At first, he thought himself abandoned, alone with nothing but his ruin. Then —
A sound. A small sound.
He lifted his head, heart wrenching.
Through the ringing of his ears, through the haze of agony, he heard it: a cough, wet but strong.
He staggered to his feet, body screaming. His legs nearly gave way as he stumbled down the chapel aisle, through the storm-silent doors, across the yard to his home.
He threw open the door.
And there you were.
You sat up in bed, pale but breathing, your eyes — once glassy with fever — bright with confusion as they found him. Your lips parted.
“Father?”
He fell to his knees, weeping.
He did not see the faint trace of shadow that curled at her throat as she spoke. He did not see how her pupils flared, swallowing the light for a fraction of a moment before dimming again.
He only saw his daughter, alive.
Alive — by the price of her damnation.
The thunder of that night still lingers, though faint now, like an echo pressed into your bones. When you close your eyes, you swear you still hear it — the crack of the storm, the guttural weight of vows whispered into your blood. But memory does not linger in darkness forever. It reshapes itself into something quieter, something deceptively gentle.
The storm dissolves into candlelight.
And you are no longer there, kneeling in shadow — you are a child once more.
꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷ //
Your father’s voice was the first anchor you ever knew. Deep, deliberate, tinged with weariness, yet always steady. It carried the kind of gravity that made others bow their heads, though for you, it softened like rain over stone. He had not left you after that night — no, he had bound himself to you as fiercely as any vow.
“Stay close,” he would murmur, his hand brushing against your hair as if ensuring you were still real, still warm, still his. “Stay where I can see you.”
You were the light of his house. The one piece left unshattered when everything else fell to ruin.
And so, your days unfolded beneath the weight of his devotion.
The villagers spoke of you in hushed tones.
Some called you a blessing — a child too graceful for such a bleak world. Your smile, when it came, lit even the most joyless hearths. Strangers paused at the sight of you, struck by something they could not name. You seemed, at times, carved from some other realm: a wisp of sunlight clinging to a place long abandoned by warmth.
But others whispered differently. Their voices carried suspicion, envy, fear.
She was born of that night.
She should not have lived.
Something clings to her, unseen.
Your father heard these whispers. He bore them in silence, his jaw clenched, his hand tightening around yours whenever shadows gathered too close.
“Don't listen to them my dear. You are a blessing.”
You never saw him falter in front of you, but at night you sometimes heard the sound of glass shattering quietly in another room, the groan of wood as though fists had pressed too hard against the table. And oh those marks against his chest you used to see as you peaked beyond the dark rooms.
"Father, those marks did Mr Easter Bunny hurt you?"
"No my dear I'm sure he would never hurt me." with a wavering smile.
He carried his guilt like a second skin, but he never let it spill into your days.
Instead, he wove rules around you like threads of iron.
You were not to wander past the edges of the fields.
You were not to linger near strangers who looked too long.
And above all, you were never to set foot near the ruined chapel at the village’s edge.
At first, you obeyed without thought. What child would not, with such stern eyes watching? But as you grew, those rules became walls. You began to feel the weight of them — their bars pressing around you, the sense that you were being kept not simply safe, but apart.
And yet, despite all this, you were… different.
From the beginning, your body had been fragile. You were prone to sudden fevers, strange faintness, illnesses that should have lingered far longer than they did. There were nights your father sat at your bedside, lips pressed to your temple, whispering prayers he half-believed, hands shaking as if the world might take you from him in the next breath.
But each time, without fail, you recovered.
Not slowly, not with lingering weakness — but abruptly, as though something unseen refused to let you go. One morning you would be pale and gasping, the next you would rise from your bed with color in your cheeks, hunger in your stomach, life thrumming again in your veins.
Your father never spoke of it aloud. But you noticed how his eyes would linger after, studying you with a mixture of awe and dread, as if you were both miracle and omen in the same breath.
The villagers noticed too. Some shook their heads, muttering that no child recovered so quickly, that such things were unnatural. Others nodded reverently, calling you favored, blessed.
You never understood it fully then. You only felt the way the air sometimes shifted around you, as though you were not entirely alone even when you stood in the silence of an empty room.
And though you did not know his name, there were nights, in the cradle of your sleep, where a voice older than mountains stirred against your dreams. A voice not your father’s — one that wrapped itself in shadows and steel, whispering words you could never quite remember when dawn came.
But even so…
You were happy, in your way.
Your father praised your laughter, though it was rare; he treasured the sight of you running through the orchard in early spring, your hands catching at blossoms as they fell. He called you his angel, his light, even as the weight of sorrow never left his eyes.
He gave you all he could, but always with that distance — that fear. Love pressed into rules. Devotion pressed into restraint. He could not let you out of his sight, could not bear the thought of you being taken as everything else had been taken from him.
And so your childhood was not entirely your own.
The villagers smiled politely. They looked at you as though at something fragile, untouchable, set apart. A relic rather than a girl. They spoke to you with caution, sometimes kindness, sometimes coldness. Few dared come too close.
But when they thought you could not hear, the continuation of their words always carried.
Blessing.
Curse.
Not quite of this world.
Even then, deep inside, you knew there was truth in their fear.
For on quiet nights, you sometimes felt it — the mark still burning faintly in your blood, the echo of a vow you had not chosen but could never escape.
And though your father’s arms held you tight, though his rules shielded you from the world, you could not shake the sense that you were never entirely his to keep.
Not when unseen eyes watched still.
Not when a voice older than gods had already laid claim.
You grow beneath your father’s gaze as one grows beneath the weight of a cathedral’s roof — nurtured, but never truly free. He watches you with the kind of love that borders on desperation, every lesson a chain disguised as care.
“My dear, do not wander. Do not linger in the woods. Do not speak too long with strangers. Do not — above all — stray near the chapel ruins where the storm once broke the world.” with frustrated eyes.
“But they went father. I —” you replied softly.
“You are not to wander around, you hear me young lady?” The demand made your eyes wander to your little shoes covered in dirt.
“Yes Father, I understand.”
These are the laws etched into you as early as language itself, so that sometimes you wonder whether they are his words or commandments written into your very bones.
And yet, even caged birds find ways to sing.
You are not quiet, nor meek. Laughter bubbles from you like a brook over stones, bright and clear, defying the whispers that cling to you in the village. The baker’s wife calls you a blessing, while others mutter “curse” beneath their breath, as though you cannot hear. They say the storms come harsher since your birth. They say your mother died because of you. They say your father clings too tightly to you because he knows what you are. But you smile anyway, offering flowers, offering kindness. It is your rebellion: to bloom in a place that wishes you barren.
Still — children can be cruel.
You remember the day sharply, as if it were a knife’s edge. The sun hung low, staining the fields gold, and your hair was bound in pigtails your father had clumsily tied before morning prayers. A group of older boys cornered you near the schoolhouse wall, their jeers echoing against the bricks. “Demon’s child,” one spat, tugging at your braid until you stumbled. “Witch’s brat,” another sneered, shoving you hard enough that your knees scraped against the dust.
“I'm not a witch, nor a demons child please st —”
Tears stung your eyes, more from humiliation than pain. You tried to be strong, the way your father taught you, but you were only a child, and your voice cracked when you begged them to stop.
That was when he appeared.
A flash of silver hair, eyes so blue they seemed almost mocking, and a grin far too wide for his small face. The boy who would change everything — Satoru Gojo.
“What’s this? Picking on someone smaller?” His voice carried no fear, only laughter, as if the cruelty before him were a game he could tip over with a single shove. He wedged himself between you and your tormentors, tall even then, though still wiry and gangly with youth. “If you want a fight, fight me. But I don’t think you’ve got the guts.”
The boys faltered, thrown off by his boldness. Satoru winked at you over his shoulder, a careless, dazzling thing, before turning back to them with a smirk sharp enough to draw blood. “Run along before I tell the teacher you cried when you lost at marbles last week.”
It worked. They scattered, their insults dissolving into the dust they kicked up. And when they were gone, silence fell between you.
For a seven year old he was truly strong willed.
Satoru turned, his grin softening. You were still on your knees, trembling, your palms scraped raw. He crouched before you, brushing dirt from your skirt with a tenderness that felt too old for his age. “Don’t cry,” he teased gently, though his voice held none of the cruelty of the boys before. “Those pigtails are way too pretty for tears.”
You hiccupped, a weak laugh breaking through, and in that instant something shifted. Where your father’s love was a chain, Satoru’s presence was sunlight breaking through the bars.
From that day on, he was your shadow and your shield. Mischievous where you were obedient, reckless where you were cautious, he tugged you by the hand into laughter, into scraped knees that healed, into adventures your father would scold you for later. But you didn’t care. Satoru showed you that the world could be wide, that joy could be reckless, that not every whisper carried poison. He was your friend, your anchor, your secret rebellion.
And yet — beneath the laughter, the whispers of another remained.
Every year, on the eve of your birthday, sleep came heavy and strange. You would wake with the memory of shadows pressing against your skin, of whispers curling like smoke against your ears. At first, they were formless — dreams of cold wind, of footsteps behind doors that should not open. But as you grew, so too did the figure in your dreams. A shape in the dark, vast and terrible, with eyes like molten gold bleeding into crimson. They would hover in the darkness behind your lids, and a voice would murmur words you could never fully recall, though you woke each time with your heart pounding, your skin chilled, your breath shallow.
Once, at twelve, you dreamed of a hand brushing against your cheek. When you woke, your skin burned where it had touched. At fifteen, the voice you once heard grew clearer: a rumble deep as the earth itself, speaking in a tongue you didn’t know but somehow understood.
And at seventeen — you saw him.
Not fully, never fully, but enough. The breadth of a figure that filled the dark, a cruel mouth curved in something between hunger and amusement, and those eyes — impossible eyes — that followed you even into waking.
You never told your father. His rules already chained you tightly enough; you feared he would lock you away entirely if he knew. You never told Satoru, either. How could you? He was your sun, and these dreams belonged to the shadows.
But still, the signs followed you into daylight. The way animals startled when you passed, dogs whining low, horses refusing to meet your gaze. The way shadows seemed to cling longer when you stepped into a room, as if reluctant to let you go. And sometimes, when you were alone, you swore you could feel it — the faintest brush of a gaze across your skin, a presence just beyond the corner of your sight.
Not a curse. Not a blessing. Something else entirely.
Something waiting.
Heidelberg 1821
You are no longer the child who laughed with scraped knees, nor the girl who hid bruises behind Satoru’s grin. You are twenty-one now, or near enough, and the village cannot help but look at you with something like awe. An angel, they whisper, though others mutter darker things when they think you cannot hear. Angel or curse, blessing or omen — whichever name they give you, they look too long, too hungrily, because beauty has become your burden.
You carry yourself like light draped in silk, hair tumbling like dusk spun into gold, your smile as rare as it is radiant. When you walk, heads turn. When you speak, voices fall silent. You do not mean to command it — but you do. Even your father, once the most commanding presence in every room, now stands smaller in your shadow, gaze heavy with pride and dread in equal measure.
And then, one autumn morning, word arrives: he is returning.
Satoru Gojo.
The name spreads faster than the church bells, rolling through the narrow lanes of the village until every girl has flushed cheeks and every boy wears a look of sour envy. Years have passed since he left for England, with books and ambition tucked under his arm, promising letters and stories you clutched like lifelines. He wrote often at first — grand tales of London’s smog, of halls hung with chandeliers brighter than any star. But the letters slowed, until silence became your companion. You told yourself it was only because he was busy, because the world had swallowed him whole.
And now — he was coming back.
Your friends were merciless. In class that day, the sunlight spilled pale across the long benches, and every girl leaned toward you with conspiratorial smirks.
“They say he’s taller now,” one giggled.
“They say he’s become a gentleman,” another chimed in, twirling a lock of hair.
“They say he’s returning just to see you,” a third teased, her eyes sharp with envy.
You tried to protest, heat rising to your cheeks. “He is my friend. Nothing more.”
But your words only fed their laughter. “Ah, but your cheeks betray you, angel,” they sang, and no denial could quiet them.
Your father watched the exchange from across the room, his expression unreadable. Only when you met his eyes did you see it — a flicker of sorrow, of dread, quickly buried. He said nothing. He never did, not on this subject.
And then, at last, the day came.
You were standing near the square, clutching a basket of late apples, when the crowd stirred. A tall figure moved through the throng, and the air shifted around him as though he carried sunlight in his wake. His hair caught the light — still that impossible silver, though shorter now, tamed. His shoulders were broader, his step surer, his smile sharpened by years away.
Satoru.
For a moment you could not breathe. He looked nothing like the boy you remembered — and yet, when his eyes found yours, the same mischievous light cracked through, and he grinned.
“Pigtails?”
The old name, spoken like no time had passed. You laughed, startled, tears stinging your eyes before you could stop them. He was at your side in an instant, dropping the polished gentleman’s air to pull you into a clumsy, exuberant hug. The crowd melted away, leaving only the echo of your heartbeat in your ears.
“England was dreadful without you,” he teased when he pulled back, eyes roving over your face as though memorizing it anew. “Do you know how many boring people there are over there? None of them had your smile. I nearly died of misery.”
“Don’t be dramatic,” you scolded, though your voice wavered. “You look well. Older.”
He smirked. “Older, wiser, taller, handsomer — you can say it, you know. I don’t mind.”
You rolled your eyes, but warmth bloomed in your chest all the same. Before you could utter a word he strode forward and swept the basket from your hands with a dramatic bow. “Allow me, my lady. I’ve just returned from England, after all. Chivalry is expected.”
You rolled your eyes. “You were gone for five years and you return insufferable.”
“And you,” he shot back with mock injury, “have grown into a woman so lovely, the angels are surely weeping for losing you to the earth.”
Heat crept into your cheeks, but before you could scold him, he caught your wrist. “Come with me. We have a lifetime to catch up on.”
“Satoru we still —”
You barely managed a protest before he was pulling you through the square. Villagers laughed, shaking their heads at the sight of you both — the wild boy returned, dragging the village’s angel by the hand.
That afternoon, you walked together through the village, the way you used to as children. He told you story after story, waving his hands dramatically, painting pictures of fog and carriages and duels fought in candlelit parlors. He pressed small trinkets into your hands as he spoke — a carved silver hairpin, a scrap of silk, a book with your initials pressed into the spine. “Souvenirs,” he said. “Proof that I thought of you every step of the way.”
The day unfurled like a song.
He bought you honey cakes from the baker, insisting you take the biggest bite while smearing powdered sugar across your nose just to laugh at your indignation.
“Still a child,” you huffed, swiping at your face.
“Still beautiful,” he teased, licking his own fingers.
At the fruit stand, he plucked a ripe plum and offered it to you, holding it just out of reach when you tried to take it.
“Say please, pigtails.”
“I’d sooner starve.”
“Then starve prettily,” he smirked — before relenting and pressing the fruit into your palm.
The hours melted. You wandered the fields where you once chased fireflies, dipped your toes into the stream where he once splashed mud on your dress, and laughed until your stomach ached at the ridiculous stories he told of his time abroad — balls with too many rules, professors with too little patience, cities full of smoke and stone where no one laughed as freely as home.
“England sounds dreadful,” you giggled, chewing on another honey cake.
“Without you, it was,” he admitted softly, so quietly you almost missed it.
You glanced at him, startled, and found him watching you — really watching, as though trying to memorize your face. The air shifted. For a heartbeat, it was only the two of you, the world hushed into stillness.
But he broke it with a playful grin, tugging your hand as storm clouds gathered above.
“Do you trust me, pigtails?”
The words brought you back to childhood, to scraped knees and shared secrets. Without hesitation, you took his hand.
“Always.”
Rain began to fall in heavy drops, sending villagers rushing for cover, but you and Satoru only laughed louder. You spun beneath the downpour, skirts soaked, his white hair plastered to his forehead. He twirled you as though the storm itself was part of the dance, lightning splitting the sky in silver.
And then — the laughter ebbed. He was holding you close, his breath warm against your cheek, his eyes shimmering with something unspoken. Slowly, his forehead pressed to yours. His lips hovered a breath away.
“Pigtails…” he whispered, voice trembling with a confession he’d carried for years.
But just as your heart leapt — the world shifted. A whisper slid through your mind like oil through silk, dark and mocking:
Mine.
The storm seemed to grow heavier, shadows bending unnaturally at the edges of your vision. Your chest tightened. You pulled back sharply, shuddering.
Satoru blinked, startled. “What’s wrong?”
You forced a smile, shaking your head. “It’s nothing. Just the storm.”
Awkwardness settled between you. He didn’t press — though his hand lingered at your back as he escorted you home through the rain.
Outside your father’s door, he paused. His usual grin returned, softer this time.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he promised. His hand brushed yours one last time. “When you’re finally twenty-one.”
You nodded, though your heart felt heavy, your smile fragile.
Neither of you knew it then — but it was the last moment untouched by shadow.
//꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷//
The house smelled faintly of rain-soaked earth and woodsmoke when you stepped inside. The lanterns were already lit, throwing golden circles of warmth against the stone walls. Your father sat at the kitchen table, a knife in hand, slowly slicing through one of the apples you’d carried home in your basket.
“You’re late,” he said, though there was no anger in his voice. Only tired relief.
“I was with Satoru,” you admitted, setting down the damp shawl that clung to your shoulders.
At his name, your father’s hands stilled on the knife. He glanced up — his sternness softened, though something unreadable lingered in his eyes. “So the boy is back, then.”
You smiled faintly, pulling a chair beside him. “Not a boy anymore.”
He huffed at that, shaking his head. “To me, he will always be the reckless child who once tried climbing our roof and broke half the tiles.” But then he passed you a slice of apple, the crisp sound of his knife filling the quiet.
You both ate in silence for a moment, the rain tapping gently against the shutters. It was strange, how peaceful it felt — how still.
Then, after a long pause, he spoke. His voice was low, weighted with something unspoken.
“My child, I…”
The words faltered. He looked down at his hands, at the years worn into his skin, at the faint tremor of his fingers as he set the knife aside. His throat worked, but nothing else came.
You reached across the table, intertwining your hand with his, smiling softly.
“Father, it’s okay. Don’t worry too much.”
His eyes lifted to yours, and for the first time in years, he didn’t look like the immovable man who ruled your childhood with iron caution. He looked simply… human. Fragile, even.
He squeezed your hand once, then withdrew to reach into his coat. When he returned, something rested in his palm — delicate, glinting in the lamplight.
A necklace. Silver, fine, with a small pendant shaped like a teardrop of red glass. Your mother’s.
He placed it carefully in front of you. “She wore this the day I first saw her,” he said, voice breaking against memory. “She would have wanted you to have it. Consider it… an early gift, before tomorrow.”
Your throat tightened as you picked it up, the metal cold against your skin. “It’s beautiful.”
“It belonged to someone even more so,” he murmured.
You slipped it around your neck, feeling the weight settle against your collarbone — not heavy, but anchoring, like a thread tying you to her, to him, to everything you had been and would become.
“Thank you, Father, it's lovely” you whispered.
For a moment, he only watched you — as though trying to carve this sight into memory. Then he nodded, quietly, and rose from the table. “Get some rest. Tomorrow is a new chapter.”
You stood as well, leaning forward to kiss his cheek. “Goodnight.”
“Goodnight, my angel.”
You left him there in the kitchen, smiling at the simple inheritance from your beloved mother. A symbol that she still lives within both of you.
The house was quiet when you returned to your room, still carrying the faint smell of apples on your fingers and the cool weight of your mother’s necklace against your throat. Lanternlight flickered on the walls, the shadows gentle, familiar. It was a comfort — the kind of ordinary stillness that made you forget, for a moment, the heavy stares of the villagers, the endless rules, the ache of your father’s eyes when he looked at you.
You slipped out of your dress and into a simple nightgown, drawing your shawl around your shoulders before settling by the small table beneath your window. The rain had stopped; droplets clung to the glass, shining faintly in the moonlight. You opened the book you had left there earlier — a worn volume of poetry, its spine soft from years of turning.
But your eyes did not linger on the words.
Instead, your mind drifted. Back to the laughter in the village square, the way Satoru had grinned when he stole one of your apples, the way his hand had wrapped around yours as he teased you. The storm, the running, the breathless pause where his face was suddenly far too close.
That almost-kiss.
Your lips curved without your permission, and you pressed the open book against your chest as if to contain the fluttering warmth inside you. It had been years since you’d felt so light, so young. For once, you hadn’t been the priest’s cloistered daughter or the whispered curse of the village. You had simply been a girl with a friend — a man, now — who made you laugh until your stomach hurt.
You leaned your head against the glass, watching the moon peek through drifting clouds. “Twenty-one,” you whispered softly, as if testing the word. A milestone. A threshold. A freedom your father had always said would change everything. And tonight — with Satoru back, with your father’s gift heavy against your heart — you wanted to believe him.
Perhaps, you thought, you were finally allowed to be happy.
The bells outside began to toll.
Once… twice…
You closed your eyes, letting the sound wash over you. The book slipped from your hands to the table. The room felt cooler, though you told yourself it was only the night wind.
Nine… ten… eleven…
The last bell began its swing, the deep groan reverberating through the earth itself.
Twelve.
The flame of your candle bent violently to the side. Then it snuffed out.
Your eyes flew open. The room was dark — not the gentle dark of night, but thick, swallowing, unnatural. The shadows lengthened, stretching like ink poured over the walls. The air grew sharp and thin, stinging your lungs.
And then you felt it.
A presence.
Low, coiling, as though smoke itself had crept beneath your skin. Your heartbeat thundered. You clutched the necklace at your throat. “Who’s there?”
The answer came not with a voice, but a laugh. Low. Cruel. Ancient. The kind of sound that had no place in the world of the living.
From the corner of the room, something began to form — taller than the ceiling, broader than the doorway. Smoke thickened into the suggestion of shoulders, arms, a monstrous head crowned with horns of shadow. Four eyes flared open, glowing red-gold, pinning you where you stood.
“Little bride, the voice whispered directly into your skull, velvet and venom at once. Did you truly think you had been forgotten?”
Your mouth opened to scream —
The door slammed open.
“Get away from her!”
Your father. His robe flared around him, his face pale but fierce, the kitchen knife clutched tight in his fist along with a stash of holy water. His eyes went wide at the sight before him, but he did not falter. With a raw cry, he lunged forward.
The figure in the shadows turned. Slowly. Almost lazily. His jagged mouth split into a grin.
“Ah… the fool priest who bartered his bloodline,” The dark shadow crooned, his voice dripping with scorn. “Did you truly believe I would not come to collect?”
Your father thrust the knife forward, straight into his chest. The blade met resistance — then slid through, as though plunging into water. It clattered to the ground, useless.
The dark shadow laughed. “How quaint.”
With a flick of his massive hand, a wave of shadow slammed into your father’s chest, sending him crashing into the wall. He collapsed, coughing, blood at his lip, yet still he tried to rise.
“Run!” he gasped at you. “Run, child—!”
But you couldn’t move. The air held you down, the shadows snaring your wrists, your ankles. They burned like iron chains.
The dark shadow bent over you, the smoke of his form solidifying — pale flesh, black markings curling over it, each line burning with ancient malice. He slid one arm beneath you, lifting you effortlessly against him.
You struggled, but the strength left your body, a dizzy weight pressing at your skull. The world tilted, your vision dimming.
Your father crawled forward on shaking limbs, reaching for you, sobbing. “Please — please, not her! Take me instead! She is innocent — she is all I have!”
The dark shadow’s grin widened, crueler still. He leaned down, his breath hot and rancid at your father’s ear.
“As I said before you cannot offer me what was never yours to give,” he hissed. “She was promised long before she breathed her first cry. Promised, and marked. Mine.”
“Please…” your father begged, voice breaking, tears cutting down his face.
“Pathetic,” the dark shadow spat, turning away, cradling you like a bride in his arms. “Live, priest. Live, and remember this night. Wake each day knowing your daughter lies in my halls, wears my mark, and will scream my name.”
Your father’s hand brushed your nightdress as you passed. For one fleeting instant, his fingertips caught the fabric — and then you were gone, shadows closing like jaws, swallowing the room, the house, the world.
The last thing you heard before consciousness slipped away was The dark shadow’s laughter, cruel and triumphant.
Mine.
𝐚/𝐧 : hello my loves 🕯️ it’s been a while. i’ve been away for the past month because of my health, but i’m finally back — and i couldn’t think of a better way to return than with this story that’s been burning in me. thank you for your patience, your kindness, and your encouragement while i was gone.
this is the prologue to bride of the night, a gothic halloween series that will carry us all the way through october. i’ll be posting every friday until halloween night, when the finale drops beneath the moon. i hope you’ll stay with me, through candlelight and ruin.
𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦𝐞 : religious imagery · grief/loss (mother’s death mentioned) · father’s guilt · possession themes · power imbalance · pact/branding · blood symbolism · gothic horror elements · heavy atmosphere · shadows/whispers · implied corruption
(MDNI 18+ — dark romance with mature/dark themes. please read responsibly.)
𝐯𝐢𝐠𝐧𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞 : before her first breath, her father bargained with a shadow — a covenant born of desperation, sealed in silence, and hidden beneath trembling prayers. but bargains with demons do not fade; they linger, like blood on sacred cloth. on the eve of her twenty-first year, the truth rises. the stranger was no man, but Ryomen Sukuna, King of Demons — come to claim what was promised. torn from her home, she is thrust into a kingdom where night reigns eternal, ruled by a sovereign of iron and cruelty, who knows no love. she aches for freedom, for her father’s embrace, for light. he demands submission, loyalty, her place at his throne. yet in the heart of shadow, rebellion stirs, and buried truths bleed into ruin. hatred begin to fracture, twisting into a peril far more ruinous than rage.
for what becomes of a daughter of light, when she learns to hunger for the darkness that stole?
𝐰/𝐜 : [ 7, 1 k ]
♱ playlist : bride of the night
a gothic classical mix to set the tone — candlelight, violins, and whispers of the underworld
🎧 listen here
𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 · 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞
Heidelberg 1800
The storm was not weather, not truly. It prowled over the hills like a beast loosed from some unseen chain, clawing at the rooftops, rattling shutters, gnashing its teeth through thunder. The rain came slantwise, sharp as thrown nails, hammering against the chapel’s high windows until the glass shivered as though it might splinter. Lightning bared the sky white, then left it darker than before, each strike like a heartbeat too powerful for the heavens to contain.
Inside, the chapel was no sanctuary. Its stones wept with dampness. Hairline fractures cut through the painted saints, their colors faded to ghosts. The wood of the pews was scarred by time,their varnish stripped away by countless hands and knees. Only the altar, squat and immovable, seemed untouched, through the centuries had worn its surface smooth. A dozen candles guttered before it, their flames bent sideways, bowling low each time the wind crept in through the broken seams of the walls.
The man kneeling there did not notice the cold. His soaked robes clung to him like a shroud. His hair, once dark and neatly combed, hung wild and matted, plastered across his brow. His eyes red-rimmed, not from the storm but from nights without sleep, and his hands — clasped so tightly that the knuckles showed bone-white — shook with a tremor he could not still.
He whispered, but it was not prayer.
“Please…” His voice fractured, frayed from repetition. “Please, I beg you.”
Not God, not saints. He did not dare to shape words into a name. He begged the silence itself. He begged the stone, the air, the yawning dark between candle flames.
His daughter was dying.
The image of her never left him: pale cheeks, damp with fever, lips cracked from thirst, chest heaving for each shallow breath. The physician had come, had muttered something about an infection of the lungs, had left with his fee and little more than pity. No poultice soothed her. No broth stayed in her stomach. Each hour she drifted further, like a leaf black water.
He had buried a wife already. He could not bury the child she had left him. He could not lower another coffin into the earth, could not stand at another grave with nothing left but absence. His wife's laughter still haunted the rooms of their home, caught between the rafters. His daughter's laughter had been the only answer — and now even that was thinning, unraveling with each rattled breath.
The storm bellowed. The candles faltered.
“Anyone,” he rasped. “Anything. Do not take her. I will pay whatever is asked. Only —” His words choked off, lodged behind the swell of grief. He pressed his forehead against the stone, lips scraping raw as he whispered: “Only let her live.”
The silence stretched. He thought, for a flicker, that he was alone. That no one had heard, that his plea would sink like a stone to the bottom of the world.
Then the silence moved.
It was subtle at first: the shadows along the chapel’s walls thickening, their edges curdling into shapes they had no right to hold. The draft stilled, though no crack had sealed. The air grew heavy, and the storm outside, for all its rage, muffled itself into a distant throb. The candles’ frames drew long, quivering as though bending towards something unseen.
And then —
“Anything —”
The voice was not a voice. It was a resonance, deep as caverns, old as dust, layered as though a hundred throats had spoken in unison but with one will. It filled the chapel without rising in volume, as if the stones themselves had chosen to speak.
The man's head snapped up. His pulse, thrashed against his throat.
Shadows poured forward, unmoored from their owners, spilling across the floor like ink spreading in water. They climbed the altar, veined across the ceiling, coiled around the trembling candles. At the center of it, a figure began to shape — not wholly seen, not wholly unseen.
A height greater than any man, crowned with a vague curve of horns that might have been smoke. Shoulders broad as pillars, tapering to arms long and lean, one hand ending in claws sharp enough to score stone. Where its face should have been, there was only suggestion: the sense of eyes that watched from within the void, a mouth unseen yet certain, smiling with cruelty too ancient to be human.
The man stumbled back, knees scraping the floor. His lips trembled.
The figure leaned closer, though it did not move. Its presence pressed into him, crushing, suffocating, as if eternity itself had bent low to breathe into his ear.
“You beg.”
The words slithered, slow, heavy, patient.
“You plead for a spark in her dying lungs. For marrow not yet strong enough to bear the weight of years. You would buy her breath with your ruin. Do you understand what you ask?”
The man's chest heaved. He clutched his robes as if fabric could shield him. “She is all I have,” he whispered. “She is my blood. My wife's last gift. I cannot —” His throat closed. His eyes blurred. “I cannot lose her.”
The shadows stirred, restless, rippling outward like a tide.
“Then hear me, mortal.”
The voice shook the marrow of his bones. It was not spoken in words he knew, yet he understood it. It was older than tongue, heavier than meaning.
“I will give her breath. I will bind marrow to her bones, stitch fire to her veins. She will live beyond this night. She will walk, speak, and laugh again.”
The man's breath caught. Hope flared sharp, painful. “At what cost?”
The figure's head tilted. Claws grazed the altar, carving grooves into stone as soft as wax beneath its touch. Sparks of black fire hissed from each stroke.
“Her life will not be yours to keep. In twenty-one years’ time, when blood ripens into womanhood, she will be mine. By bargain, by birthright, by blood.”
The man's mouth worked, but no sound came. His heart thundered like the storm outside, as if it might shatter his chest from within.
His daughter. His only daughter. The memory of her small hand clutching his thumb, the fragile rise and fall of her chest even now as she battled against death’s weight — it split him open.
“What you ask…” His voice was barely sound. “It would damn her.”
The darkness shifted, amused.
“You speak of damnation, as though your soul is not already bartered to pride and hunger. As though you have not feasted on the silver of men's faith, swelling yourself fat with their reverence while you left your own house empty.”
The man flinched as if struck. The words peeled him open, unearthing sins he had buried beneath cloth and scripture. Greed, vanity, the pride that had whispered to him with honeyed lips each time gold clinked into his palm. His knees pressed harder to the stone, as though pain could drown truth.
Still, he whispered, “She's innocent.”
The figure bent closer. Though its face was shadow, he felt it smile, wide and knowing.
“Innocence is not amor. Innocence is inheritance. Her purity sweetens the bargain. She will not remember this night, nor the weight of your choice. But when she stands at the threshold of womanhood, I will come. And she will be mine.”
The candles guttered as if suffocating. The storm pressed its claws harder against the walls. The chapel groaned.
The man closed his eyes. Tears burned hot as they spilled, carving lines down his hollow cheeks.
He had prayed to gods that would not answer. He had begged saints who gave only silence. Now, when the shadows had opened its jaws, he found himself kneeling, not in defiance, but in surrender.
“Then take me instead,” he gasped suddenly, voice cracking on desperation. “Take me, not her”
The darkness laughed.
It was not human laughter. It was low roll of mountains shifting, the groan of ancient doors swung wide, the tearing of roots from earth. It filled the chapel until its ears rang, until he clutched his skull as though it might split apart.
“I have no desire for withered fruit. What is a husk of a man, already rotting, compared to what she will be?”
The words crushed him. He could not breathe. He wanted to rage, to claw, to spit his defiance — but he saw her face, pale and damn with sweat, and all that left him was a sob.
“Then… let it be done.” His voice cracked like broken glass. “Only let her live.”
The shadow leaned back, satisfied.
“So sworn.”
It came like a trolling bell. The sound reverberated in his marrow, thrumming through his skull until sparks burst behind his eyes. He sagged forward, chest heaving, as the figure raised its clawed head.
Black fire hissed along its talons. It stretched them wide, and the air stank of ash and iron.
“Wh — what…?” His words faltered, throat dry.
“Every pack is sealed.” The voice swelled, layered with a hundred echoes. “Yours will be written upon flesh.”
The man had no time to cry out. The clawed hand came down and struck his chest.
Agony exploded through him, white-hot, blistering. His scream tore through chapel, high and raw, mingling with thunder. The fire was not flame as he knew it; it seared deeper, carving symbols into his skin, into the very root of him. It branded not only his flesh, but the blood that had birthed his daughter. The curse wound through lineage, curling tight like a chain unseen.
He thrashed, clawed at the altar, begged incoherent words, but the shadow held him pinned with its presence alone. Smoke hissed from his skin, curling upward in ribbons.
When at last the claws lifted, the man collapsed, heaving. His robes clung to him, scorched through, the stench of burned flesh clinging heavy in the air.
His chest bore the mark — four jagged slashes, intersecting at his sternum, glowing faintly with embers that pulsed like a second heartbeat before fading to black.
He wept, clutching himself, the pain so consuming he barely heard when the voice spoke again.
“In twenty-one years, she is mine. Queen to the night, bride to the abyss. You will not see it — you will rot long before the day comes —but her fate is sealed.”
The storm outside broke. Not eased, not ended — broke. Rain ceased mid-drop. Thunder snapped shut. The wind fell dead. Silence slammed into the chapel with such force the man gasped at it.
The figure was gone. Only shadows clung to corners, innocent once more.
His sobs echoed.
//꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦꒷//
At first, he thought himself abandoned, alone with nothing but his ruin. Then —
A sound. A small sound.
He lifted his head, heart wrenching.
Through the ringing of his ears, through the haze of agony, he heard it: a cough, wet but strong.
He staggered to his feet, body screaming. His legs nearly gave way as he stumbled down the chapel aisle, through the storm-silent doors, across the yard to his home.
He threw open the door.
And there you were.
You sat up in bed, pale but breathing, your eyes — once glassy with fever — bright with confusion as they found him. Your lips parted.
“Father?”
He fell to his knees, weeping.
He did not see the faint trace of shadow that curled at her throat as she spoke. He did not see how her pupils flared, swallowing the light for a fraction of a moment before dimming again.
He only saw his daughter, alive.
Alive — by the price of her damnation.
The thunder of that night still lingers, though faint now, like an echo pressed into your bones. When you close your eyes, you swear you still hear it — the crack of the storm, the guttural weight of vows whispered into your blood. But memory does not linger in darkness forever. It reshapes itself into something quieter, something deceptively gentle.
The storm dissolves into candlelight.
And you are no longer there, kneeling in shadow — you are a child once more.
꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷ //
Your father’s voice was the first anchor you ever knew. Deep, deliberate, tinged with weariness, yet always steady. It carried the kind of gravity that made others bow their heads, though for you, it softened like rain over stone. He had not left you after that night — no, he had bound himself to you as fiercely as any vow.
“Stay close,” he would murmur, his hand brushing against your hair as if ensuring you were still real, still warm, still his. “Stay where I can see you.”
You were the light of his house. The one piece left unshattered when everything else fell to ruin.
And so, your days unfolded beneath the weight of his devotion.
The villagers spoke of you in hushed tones.
Some called you a blessing — a child too graceful for such a bleak world. Your smile, when it came, lit even the most joyless hearths. Strangers paused at the sight of you, struck by something they could not name. You seemed, at times, carved from some other realm: a wisp of sunlight clinging to a place long abandoned by warmth.
But others whispered differently. Their voices carried suspicion, envy, fear.
She was born of that night.
She should not have lived.
Something clings to her, unseen.
Your father heard these whispers. He bore them in silence, his jaw clenched, his hand tightening around yours whenever shadows gathered too close.
“Don't listen to them my dear. You are a blessing.”
You never saw him falter in front of you, but at night you sometimes heard the sound of glass shattering quietly in another room, the groan of wood as though fists had pressed too hard against the table. And oh those marks against his chest you used to see as you peaked beyond the dark rooms.
"Father, those marks did Mr Easter Bunny hurt you?"
"No my dear I'm sure he would never hurt me." with a wavering smile.
He carried his guilt like a second skin, but he never let it spill into your days.
Instead, he wove rules around you like threads of iron.
You were not to wander past the edges of the fields.
You were not to linger near strangers who looked too long.
And above all, you were never to set foot near the ruined chapel at the village’s edge.
At first, you obeyed without thought. What child would not, with such stern eyes watching? But as you grew, those rules became walls. You began to feel the weight of them — their bars pressing around you, the sense that you were being kept not simply safe, but apart.
And yet, despite all this, you were… different.
From the beginning, your body had been fragile. You were prone to sudden fevers, strange faintness, illnesses that should have lingered far longer than they did. There were nights your father sat at your bedside, lips pressed to your temple, whispering prayers he half-believed, hands shaking as if the world might take you from him in the next breath.
But each time, without fail, you recovered.
Not slowly, not with lingering weakness — but abruptly, as though something unseen refused to let you go. One morning you would be pale and gasping, the next you would rise from your bed with color in your cheeks, hunger in your stomach, life thrumming again in your veins.
Your father never spoke of it aloud. But you noticed how his eyes would linger after, studying you with a mixture of awe and dread, as if you were both miracle and omen in the same breath.
The villagers noticed too. Some shook their heads, muttering that no child recovered so quickly, that such things were unnatural. Others nodded reverently, calling you favored, blessed.
You never understood it fully then. You only felt the way the air sometimes shifted around you, as though you were not entirely alone even when you stood in the silence of an empty room.
And though you did not know his name, there were nights, in the cradle of your sleep, where a voice older than mountains stirred against your dreams. A voice not your father’s — one that wrapped itself in shadows and steel, whispering words you could never quite remember when dawn came.
But even so…
You were happy, in your way.
Your father praised your laughter, though it was rare; he treasured the sight of you running through the orchard in early spring, your hands catching at blossoms as they fell. He called you his angel, his light, even as the weight of sorrow never left his eyes.
He gave you all he could, but always with that distance — that fear. Love pressed into rules. Devotion pressed into restraint. He could not let you out of his sight, could not bear the thought of you being taken as everything else had been taken from him.
And so your childhood was not entirely your own.
The villagers smiled politely. They looked at you as though at something fragile, untouchable, set apart. A relic rather than a girl. They spoke to you with caution, sometimes kindness, sometimes coldness. Few dared come too close.
But when they thought you could not hear, the continuation of their words always carried.
Blessing.
Curse.
Not quite of this world.
Even then, deep inside, you knew there was truth in their fear.
For on quiet nights, you sometimes felt it — the mark still burning faintly in your blood, the echo of a vow you had not chosen but could never escape.
And though your father’s arms held you tight, though his rules shielded you from the world, you could not shake the sense that you were never entirely his to keep.
Not when unseen eyes watched still.
Not when a voice older than gods had already laid claim.
You grow beneath your father’s gaze as one grows beneath the weight of a cathedral’s roof — nurtured, but never truly free. He watches you with the kind of love that borders on desperation, every lesson a chain disguised as care.
“My dear, do not wander. Do not linger in the woods. Do not speak too long with strangers. Do not — above all — stray near the chapel ruins where the storm once broke the world.” with frustrated eyes.
“But they went father. I —” you replied softly.
“You are not to wander around, you hear me young lady?” The demand made your eyes wander to your little shoes covered in dirt.
“Yes Father, I understand.”
These are the laws etched into you as early as language itself, so that sometimes you wonder whether they are his words or commandments written into your very bones.
And yet, even caged birds find ways to sing.
You are not quiet, nor meek. Laughter bubbles from you like a brook over stones, bright and clear, defying the whispers that cling to you in the village. The baker’s wife calls you a blessing, while others mutter “curse” beneath their breath, as though you cannot hear. They say the storms come harsher since your birth. They say your mother died because of you. They say your father clings too tightly to you because he knows what you are. But you smile anyway, offering flowers, offering kindness. It is your rebellion: to bloom in a place that wishes you barren.
Still — children can be cruel.
You remember the day sharply, as if it were a knife’s edge. The sun hung low, staining the fields gold, and your hair was bound in pigtails your father had clumsily tied before morning prayers. A group of older boys cornered you near the schoolhouse wall, their jeers echoing against the bricks. “Demon’s child,” one spat, tugging at your braid until you stumbled. “Witch’s brat,” another sneered, shoving you hard enough that your knees scraped against the dust.
“I'm not a witch, nor a demons child please st —”
Tears stung your eyes, more from humiliation than pain. You tried to be strong, the way your father taught you, but you were only a child, and your voice cracked when you begged them to stop.
That was when he appeared.
A flash of silver hair, eyes so blue they seemed almost mocking, and a grin far too wide for his small face. The boy who would change everything — Satoru Gojo.
“What’s this? Picking on someone smaller?” His voice carried no fear, only laughter, as if the cruelty before him were a game he could tip over with a single shove. He wedged himself between you and your tormentors, tall even then, though still wiry and gangly with youth. “If you want a fight, fight me. But I don’t think you’ve got the guts.”
The boys faltered, thrown off by his boldness. Satoru winked at you over his shoulder, a careless, dazzling thing, before turning back to them with a smirk sharp enough to draw blood. “Run along before I tell the teacher you cried when you lost at marbles last week.”
It worked. They scattered, their insults dissolving into the dust they kicked up. And when they were gone, silence fell between you.
For a seven year old he was truly strong willed.
Satoru turned, his grin softening. You were still on your knees, trembling, your palms scraped raw. He crouched before you, brushing dirt from your skirt with a tenderness that felt too old for his age. “Don’t cry,” he teased gently, though his voice held none of the cruelty of the boys before. “Those pigtails are way too pretty for tears.”
You hiccupped, a weak laugh breaking through, and in that instant something shifted. Where your father’s love was a chain, Satoru’s presence was sunlight breaking through the bars.
From that day on, he was your shadow and your shield. Mischievous where you were obedient, reckless where you were cautious, he tugged you by the hand into laughter, into scraped knees that healed, into adventures your father would scold you for later. But you didn’t care. Satoru showed you that the world could be wide, that joy could be reckless, that not every whisper carried poison. He was your friend, your anchor, your secret rebellion.
And yet — beneath the laughter, the whispers of another remained.
Every year, on the eve of your birthday, sleep came heavy and strange. You would wake with the memory of shadows pressing against your skin, of whispers curling like smoke against your ears. At first, they were formless — dreams of cold wind, of footsteps behind doors that should not open. But as you grew, so too did the figure in your dreams. A shape in the dark, vast and terrible, with eyes like molten gold bleeding into crimson. They would hover in the darkness behind your lids, and a voice would murmur words you could never fully recall, though you woke each time with your heart pounding, your skin chilled, your breath shallow.
Once, at twelve, you dreamed of a hand brushing against your cheek. When you woke, your skin burned where it had touched. At fifteen, the voice you once heard grew clearer: a rumble deep as the earth itself, speaking in a tongue you didn’t know but somehow understood.
And at seventeen — you saw him.
Not fully, never fully, but enough. The breadth of a figure that filled the dark, a cruel mouth curved in something between hunger and amusement, and those eyes — impossible eyes — that followed you even into waking.
You never told your father. His rules already chained you tightly enough; you feared he would lock you away entirely if he knew. You never told Satoru, either. How could you? He was your sun, and these dreams belonged to the shadows.
But still, the signs followed you into daylight. The way animals startled when you passed, dogs whining low, horses refusing to meet your gaze. The way shadows seemed to cling longer when you stepped into a room, as if reluctant to let you go. And sometimes, when you were alone, you swore you could feel it — the faintest brush of a gaze across your skin, a presence just beyond the corner of your sight.
Not a curse. Not a blessing. Something else entirely.
Something waiting.
Heidelberg 1821
You are no longer the child who laughed with scraped knees, nor the girl who hid bruises behind Satoru’s grin. You are twenty-one now, or near enough, and the village cannot help but look at you with something like awe. An angel, they whisper, though others mutter darker things when they think you cannot hear. Angel or curse, blessing or omen — whichever name they give you, they look too long, too hungrily, because beauty has become your burden.
You carry yourself like light draped in silk, hair tumbling like dusk spun into gold, your smile as rare as it is radiant. When you walk, heads turn. When you speak, voices fall silent. You do not mean to command it — but you do. Even your father, once the most commanding presence in every room, now stands smaller in your shadow, gaze heavy with pride and dread in equal measure.
And then, one autumn morning, word arrives: he is returning.
Satoru Gojo.
The name spreads faster than the church bells, rolling through the narrow lanes of the village until every girl has flushed cheeks and every boy wears a look of sour envy. Years have passed since he left for England, with books and ambition tucked under his arm, promising letters and stories you clutched like lifelines. He wrote often at first — grand tales of London’s smog, of halls hung with chandeliers brighter than any star. But the letters slowed, until silence became your companion. You told yourself it was only because he was busy, because the world had swallowed him whole.
And now — he was coming back.
Your friends were merciless. In class that day, the sunlight spilled pale across the long benches, and every girl leaned toward you with conspiratorial smirks.
“They say he’s taller now,” one giggled.
“They say he’s become a gentleman,” another chimed in, twirling a lock of hair.
“They say he’s returning just to see you,” a third teased, her eyes sharp with envy.
You tried to protest, heat rising to your cheeks. “He is my friend. Nothing more.”
But your words only fed their laughter. “Ah, but your cheeks betray you, angel,” they sang, and no denial could quiet them.
Your father watched the exchange from across the room, his expression unreadable. Only when you met his eyes did you see it — a flicker of sorrow, of dread, quickly buried. He said nothing. He never did, not on this subject.
And then, at last, the day came.
You were standing near the square, clutching a basket of late apples, when the crowd stirred. A tall figure moved through the throng, and the air shifted around him as though he carried sunlight in his wake. His hair caught the light — still that impossible silver, though shorter now, tamed. His shoulders were broader, his step surer, his smile sharpened by years away.
Satoru.
For a moment you could not breathe. He looked nothing like the boy you remembered — and yet, when his eyes found yours, the same mischievous light cracked through, and he grinned.
“Pigtails?”
The old name, spoken like no time had passed. You laughed, startled, tears stinging your eyes before you could stop them. He was at your side in an instant, dropping the polished gentleman’s air to pull you into a clumsy, exuberant hug. The crowd melted away, leaving only the echo of your heartbeat in your ears.
“England was dreadful without you,” he teased when he pulled back, eyes roving over your face as though memorizing it anew. “Do you know how many boring people there are over there? None of them had your smile. I nearly died of misery.”
“Don’t be dramatic,” you scolded, though your voice wavered. “You look well. Older.”
He smirked. “Older, wiser, taller, handsomer — you can say it, you know. I don’t mind.”
You rolled your eyes, but warmth bloomed in your chest all the same. Before you could utter a word he strode forward and swept the basket from your hands with a dramatic bow. “Allow me, my lady. I’ve just returned from England, after all. Chivalry is expected.”
You rolled your eyes. “You were gone for five years and you return insufferable.”
“And you,” he shot back with mock injury, “have grown into a woman so lovely, the angels are surely weeping for losing you to the earth.”
Heat crept into your cheeks, but before you could scold him, he caught your wrist. “Come with me. We have a lifetime to catch up on.”
“Satoru we still —”
You barely managed a protest before he was pulling you through the square. Villagers laughed, shaking their heads at the sight of you both — the wild boy returned, dragging the village’s angel by the hand.
That afternoon, you walked together through the village, the way you used to as children. He told you story after story, waving his hands dramatically, painting pictures of fog and carriages and duels fought in candlelit parlors. He pressed small trinkets into your hands as he spoke — a carved silver hairpin, a scrap of silk, a book with your initials pressed into the spine. “Souvenirs,” he said. “Proof that I thought of you every step of the way.”
The day unfurled like a song.
He bought you honey cakes from the baker, insisting you take the biggest bite while smearing powdered sugar across your nose just to laugh at your indignation.
“Still a child,” you huffed, swiping at your face.
“Still beautiful,” he teased, licking his own fingers.
At the fruit stand, he plucked a ripe plum and offered it to you, holding it just out of reach when you tried to take it.
“Say please, pigtails.”
“I’d sooner starve.”
“Then starve prettily,” he smirked — before relenting and pressing the fruit into your palm.
The hours melted. You wandered the fields where you once chased fireflies, dipped your toes into the stream where he once splashed mud on your dress, and laughed until your stomach ached at the ridiculous stories he told of his time abroad — balls with too many rules, professors with too little patience, cities full of smoke and stone where no one laughed as freely as home.
“England sounds dreadful,” you giggled, chewing on another honey cake.
“Without you, it was,” he admitted softly, so quietly you almost missed it.
You glanced at him, startled, and found him watching you — really watching, as though trying to memorize your face. The air shifted. For a heartbeat, it was only the two of you, the world hushed into stillness.
But he broke it with a playful grin, tugging your hand as storm clouds gathered above.
“Do you trust me, pigtails?”
The words brought you back to childhood, to scraped knees and shared secrets. Without hesitation, you took his hand.
“Always.”
Rain began to fall in heavy drops, sending villagers rushing for cover, but you and Satoru only laughed louder. You spun beneath the downpour, skirts soaked, his white hair plastered to his forehead. He twirled you as though the storm itself was part of the dance, lightning splitting the sky in silver.
And then — the laughter ebbed. He was holding you close, his breath warm against your cheek, his eyes shimmering with something unspoken. Slowly, his forehead pressed to yours. His lips hovered a breath away.
“Pigtails…” he whispered, voice trembling with a confession he’d carried for years.
But just as your heart leapt — the world shifted. A whisper slid through your mind like oil through silk, dark and mocking:
Mine.
The storm seemed to grow heavier, shadows bending unnaturally at the edges of your vision. Your chest tightened. You pulled back sharply, shuddering.
Satoru blinked, startled. “What’s wrong?”
You forced a smile, shaking your head. “It’s nothing. Just the storm.”
Awkwardness settled between you. He didn’t press — though his hand lingered at your back as he escorted you home through the rain.
Outside your father’s door, he paused. His usual grin returned, softer this time.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he promised. His hand brushed yours one last time. “When you’re finally twenty-one.”
You nodded, though your heart felt heavy, your smile fragile.
Neither of you knew it then — but it was the last moment untouched by shadow.
//꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷//
The house smelled faintly of rain-soaked earth and woodsmoke when you stepped inside. The lanterns were already lit, throwing golden circles of warmth against the stone walls. Your father sat at the kitchen table, a knife in hand, slowly slicing through one of the apples you’d carried home in your basket.
“You’re late,” he said, though there was no anger in his voice. Only tired relief.
“I was with Satoru,” you admitted, setting down the damp shawl that clung to your shoulders.
At his name, your father’s hands stilled on the knife. He glanced up — his sternness softened, though something unreadable lingered in his eyes. “So the boy is back, then.”
You smiled faintly, pulling a chair beside him. “Not a boy anymore.”
He huffed at that, shaking his head. “To me, he will always be the reckless child who once tried climbing our roof and broke half the tiles.” But then he passed you a slice of apple, the crisp sound of his knife filling the quiet.
You both ate in silence for a moment, the rain tapping gently against the shutters. It was strange, how peaceful it felt — how still.
Then, after a long pause, he spoke. His voice was low, weighted with something unspoken.
“My child, I…”
The words faltered. He looked down at his hands, at the years worn into his skin, at the faint tremor of his fingers as he set the knife aside. His throat worked, but nothing else came.
You reached across the table, intertwining your hand with his, smiling softly.
“Father, it’s okay. Don’t worry too much.”
His eyes lifted to yours, and for the first time in years, he didn’t look like the immovable man who ruled your childhood with iron caution. He looked simply… human. Fragile, even.
He squeezed your hand once, then withdrew to reach into his coat. When he returned, something rested in his palm — delicate, glinting in the lamplight.
A necklace. Silver, fine, with a small pendant shaped like a teardrop of red glass. Your mother’s.
He placed it carefully in front of you. “She wore this the day I first saw her,” he said, voice breaking against memory. “She would have wanted you to have it. Consider it… an early gift, before tomorrow.”
Your throat tightened as you picked it up, the metal cold against your skin. “It’s beautiful.”
“It belonged to someone even more so,” he murmured.
You slipped it around your neck, feeling the weight settle against your collarbone — not heavy, but anchoring, like a thread tying you to her, to him, to everything you had been and would become.
“Thank you, Father, it's lovely” you whispered.
For a moment, he only watched you — as though trying to carve this sight into memory. Then he nodded, quietly, and rose from the table. “Get some rest. Tomorrow is a new chapter.”
You stood as well, leaning forward to kiss his cheek. “Goodnight.”
“Goodnight, my angel.”
You left him there in the kitchen, smiling at the simple inheritance from your beloved mother. A symbol that she still lives within both of you.
The house was quiet when you returned to your room, still carrying the faint smell of apples on your fingers and the cool weight of your mother’s necklace against your throat. Lanternlight flickered on the walls, the shadows gentle, familiar. It was a comfort — the kind of ordinary stillness that made you forget, for a moment, the heavy stares of the villagers, the endless rules, the ache of your father’s eyes when he looked at you.
You slipped out of your dress and into a simple nightgown, drawing your shawl around your shoulders before settling by the small table beneath your window. The rain had stopped; droplets clung to the glass, shining faintly in the moonlight. You opened the book you had left there earlier — a worn volume of poetry, its spine soft from years of turning.
But your eyes did not linger on the words.
Instead, your mind drifted. Back to the laughter in the village square, the way Satoru had grinned when he stole one of your apples, the way his hand had wrapped around yours as he teased you. The storm, the running, the breathless pause where his face was suddenly far too close.
That almost-kiss.
Your lips curved without your permission, and you pressed the open book against your chest as if to contain the fluttering warmth inside you. It had been years since you’d felt so light, so young. For once, you hadn’t been the priest’s cloistered daughter or the whispered curse of the village. You had simply been a girl with a friend — a man, now — who made you laugh until your stomach hurt.
You leaned your head against the glass, watching the moon peek through drifting clouds. “Twenty-one,” you whispered softly, as if testing the word. A milestone. A threshold. A freedom your father had always said would change everything. And tonight — with Satoru back, with your father’s gift heavy against your heart — you wanted to believe him.
Perhaps, you thought, you were finally allowed to be happy.
The bells outside began to toll.
Once… twice…
You closed your eyes, letting the sound wash over you. The book slipped from your hands to the table. The room felt cooler, though you told yourself it was only the night wind.
Nine… ten… eleven…
The last bell began its swing, the deep groan reverberating through the earth itself.
Twelve.
The flame of your candle bent violently to the side. Then it snuffed out.
Your eyes flew open. The room was dark — not the gentle dark of night, but thick, swallowing, unnatural. The shadows lengthened, stretching like ink poured over the walls. The air grew sharp and thin, stinging your lungs.
And then you felt it.
A presence.
Low, coiling, as though smoke itself had crept beneath your skin. Your heartbeat thundered. You clutched the necklace at your throat. “Who’s there?”
The answer came not with a voice, but a laugh. Low. Cruel. Ancient. The kind of sound that had no place in the world of the living.
From the corner of the room, something began to form — taller than the ceiling, broader than the doorway. Smoke thickened into the suggestion of shoulders, arms, a monstrous head crowned with horns of shadow. Four eyes flared open, glowing red-gold, pinning you where you stood.
“Little bride, the voice whispered directly into your skull, velvet and venom at once. Did you truly think you had been forgotten?”
Your mouth opened to scream —
The door slammed open.
“Get away from her!”
Your father. His robe flared around him, his face pale but fierce, the kitchen knife clutched tight in his fist along with a stash of holy water. His eyes went wide at the sight before him, but he did not falter. With a raw cry, he lunged forward.
The figure in the shadows turned. Slowly. Almost lazily. His jagged mouth split into a grin.
“Ah… the fool priest who bartered his bloodline,” The dark shadow crooned, his voice dripping with scorn. “Did you truly believe I would not come to collect?”
Your father thrust the knife forward, straight into his chest. The blade met resistance — then slid through, as though plunging into water. It clattered to the ground, useless.
The dark shadow laughed. “How quaint.”
With a flick of his massive hand, a wave of shadow slammed into your father’s chest, sending him crashing into the wall. He collapsed, coughing, blood at his lip, yet still he tried to rise.
“Run!” he gasped at you. “Run, child—!”
But you couldn’t move. The air held you down, the shadows snaring your wrists, your ankles. They burned like iron chains.
The dark shadow bent over you, the smoke of his form solidifying — pale flesh, black markings curling over it, each line burning with ancient malice. He slid one arm beneath you, lifting you effortlessly against him.
You struggled, but the strength left your body, a dizzy weight pressing at your skull. The world tilted, your vision dimming.
Your father crawled forward on shaking limbs, reaching for you, sobbing. “Please — please, not her! Take me instead! She is innocent — she is all I have!”
The dark shadow’s grin widened, crueler still. He leaned down, his breath hot and rancid at your father’s ear.
“As I said before you cannot offer me what was never yours to give,” he hissed. “She was promised long before she breathed her first cry. Promised, and marked. Mine.”
“Please…” your father begged, voice breaking, tears cutting down his face.
“Pathetic,” the dark shadow spat, turning away, cradling you like a bride in his arms. “Live, priest. Live, and remember this night. Wake each day knowing your daughter lies in my halls, wears my mark, and will scream my name.”
Your father’s hand brushed your nightdress as you passed. For one fleeting instant, his fingertips caught the fabric — and then you were gone, shadows closing like jaws, swallowing the room, the house, the world.
The last thing you heard before consciousness slipped away was The dark shadow’s laughter, cruel and triumphant.
Mine.
𝐚/𝐧 : hello my loves 🕯️ it’s been a while. i’ve been away for the past month because of my health, but i’m finally back — and i couldn’t think of a better way to return than with this story that’s been burning in me. thank you for your patience, your kindness, and your encouragement while i was gone.
this is the prologue to bride of the night, a gothic halloween series that will carry us all the way through october. i’ll be posting every friday until halloween night, when the finale drops beneath the moon. i hope you’ll stay with me, through candlelight and ruin.
𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦𝐞 : religious imagery · grief/loss (mother’s death mentioned) · father’s guilt · possession themes · power imbalance · pact/branding · blood symbolism · gothic horror elements · heavy atmosphere · shadows/whispers · implied corruption
(MDNI 18+ — dark romance with mature/dark themes. please read responsibly.)
𝐯𝐢𝐠𝐧𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞 : before her first breath, her father bargained with a shadow — a covenant born of desperation, sealed in silence, and hidden beneath trembling prayers. but bargains with demons do not fade; they linger, like blood on sacred cloth. on the eve of her twenty-first year, the truth rises. the stranger was no man, but Ryomen Sukuna, King of Demons — come to claim what was promised. torn from her home, she is thrust into a kingdom where night reigns eternal, ruled by a sovereign of iron and cruelty, who knows no love. she aches for freedom, for her father’s embrace, for light. he demands submission, loyalty, her place at his throne. yet in the heart of shadow, rebellion stirs, and buried truths bleed into ruin. hatred begin to fracture, twisting into a peril far more ruinous than rage.
for what becomes of a daughter of light, when she learns to hunger for the darkness that stole?
𝐰/𝐜 : [ 7, 1 k ]
♱ playlist : bride of the night
a gothic classical mix to set the tone — candlelight, violins, and whispers of the underworld
🎧 listen here
𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 · 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞
Heidelberg 1800
The storm was not weather, not truly. It prowled over the hills like a beast loosed from some unseen chain, clawing at the rooftops, rattling shutters, gnashing its teeth through thunder. The rain came slantwise, sharp as thrown nails, hammering against the chapel’s high windows until the glass shivered as though it might splinter. Lightning bared the sky white, then left it darker than before, each strike like a heartbeat too powerful for the heavens to contain.
Inside, the chapel was no sanctuary. Its stones wept with dampness. Hairline fractures cut through the painted saints, their colors faded to ghosts. The wood of the pews was scarred by time,their varnish stripped away by countless hands and knees. Only the altar, squat and immovable, seemed untouched, through the centuries had worn its surface smooth. A dozen candles guttered before it, their flames bent sideways, bowling low each time the wind crept in through the broken seams of the walls.
The man kneeling there did not notice the cold. His soaked robes clung to him like a shroud. His hair, once dark and neatly combed, hung wild and matted, plastered across his brow. His eyes red-rimmed, not from the storm but from nights without sleep, and his hands — clasped so tightly that the knuckles showed bone-white — shook with a tremor he could not still.
He whispered, but it was not prayer.
“Please…” His voice fractured, frayed from repetition. “Please, I beg you.”
Not God, not saints. He did not dare to shape words into a name. He begged the silence itself. He begged the stone, the air, the yawning dark between candle flames.
His daughter was dying.
The image of her never left him: pale cheeks, damp with fever, lips cracked from thirst, chest heaving for each shallow breath. The physician had come, had muttered something about an infection of the lungs, had left with his fee and little more than pity. No poultice soothed her. No broth stayed in her stomach. Each hour she drifted further, like a leaf black water.
He had buried a wife already. He could not bury the child she had left him. He could not lower another coffin into the earth, could not stand at another grave with nothing left but absence. His wife's laughter still haunted the rooms of their home, caught between the rafters. His daughter's laughter had been the only answer — and now even that was thinning, unraveling with each rattled breath.
The storm bellowed. The candles faltered.
“Anyone,” he rasped. “Anything. Do not take her. I will pay whatever is asked. Only —” His words choked off, lodged behind the swell of grief. He pressed his forehead against the stone, lips scraping raw as he whispered: “Only let her live.”
The silence stretched. He thought, for a flicker, that he was alone. That no one had heard, that his plea would sink like a stone to the bottom of the world.
Then the silence moved.
It was subtle at first: the shadows along the chapel’s walls thickening, their edges curdling into shapes they had no right to hold. The draft stilled, though no crack had sealed. The air grew heavy, and the storm outside, for all its rage, muffled itself into a distant throb. The candles’ frames drew long, quivering as though bending towards something unseen.
And then —
“Anything —”
The voice was not a voice. It was a resonance, deep as caverns, old as dust, layered as though a hundred throats had spoken in unison but with one will. It filled the chapel without rising in volume, as if the stones themselves had chosen to speak.
The man's head snapped up. His pulse, thrashed against his throat.
Shadows poured forward, unmoored from their owners, spilling across the floor like ink spreading in water. They climbed the altar, veined across the ceiling, coiled around the trembling candles. At the center of it, a figure began to shape — not wholly seen, not wholly unseen.
A height greater than any man, crowned with a vague curve of horns that might have been smoke. Shoulders broad as pillars, tapering to arms long and lean, one hand ending in claws sharp enough to score stone. Where its face should have been, there was only suggestion: the sense of eyes that watched from within the void, a mouth unseen yet certain, smiling with cruelty too ancient to be human.
The man stumbled back, knees scraping the floor. His lips trembled.
The figure leaned closer, though it did not move. Its presence pressed into him, crushing, suffocating, as if eternity itself had bent low to breathe into his ear.
“You beg.”
The words slithered, slow, heavy, patient.
“You plead for a spark in her dying lungs. For marrow not yet strong enough to bear the weight of years. You would buy her breath with your ruin. Do you understand what you ask?”
The man's chest heaved. He clutched his robes as if fabric could shield him. “She is all I have,” he whispered. “She is my blood. My wife's last gift. I cannot —” His throat closed. His eyes blurred. “I cannot lose her.”
The shadows stirred, restless, rippling outward like a tide.
“Then hear me, mortal.”
The voice shook the marrow of his bones. It was not spoken in words he knew, yet he understood it. It was older than tongue, heavier than meaning.
“I will give her breath. I will bind marrow to her bones, stitch fire to her veins. She will live beyond this night. She will walk, speak, and laugh again.”
The man's breath caught. Hope flared sharp, painful. “At what cost?”
The figure's head tilted. Claws grazed the altar, carving grooves into stone as soft as wax beneath its touch. Sparks of black fire hissed from each stroke.
“Her life will not be yours to keep. In twenty-one years’ time, when blood ripens into womanhood, she will be mine. By bargain, by birthright, by blood.”
The man's mouth worked, but no sound came. His heart thundered like the storm outside, as if it might shatter his chest from within.
His daughter. His only daughter. The memory of her small hand clutching his thumb, the fragile rise and fall of her chest even now as she battled against death’s weight — it split him open.
“What you ask…” His voice was barely sound. “It would damn her.”
The darkness shifted, amused.
“You speak of damnation, as though your soul is not already bartered to pride and hunger. As though you have not feasted on the silver of men's faith, swelling yourself fat with their reverence while you left your own house empty.”
The man flinched as if struck. The words peeled him open, unearthing sins he had buried beneath cloth and scripture. Greed, vanity, the pride that had whispered to him with honeyed lips each time gold clinked into his palm. His knees pressed harder to the stone, as though pain could drown truth.
Still, he whispered, “She's innocent.”
The figure bent closer. Though its face was shadow, he felt it smile, wide and knowing.
“Innocence is not amor. Innocence is inheritance. Her purity sweetens the bargain. She will not remember this night, nor the weight of your choice. But when she stands at the threshold of womanhood, I will come. And she will be mine.”
The candles guttered as if suffocating. The storm pressed its claws harder against the walls. The chapel groaned.
The man closed his eyes. Tears burned hot as they spilled, carving lines down his hollow cheeks.
He had prayed to gods that would not answer. He had begged saints who gave only silence. Now, when the shadows had opened its jaws, he found himself kneeling, not in defiance, but in surrender.
“Then take me instead,” he gasped suddenly, voice cracking on desperation. “Take me, not her”
The darkness laughed.
It was not human laughter. It was low roll of mountains shifting, the groan of ancient doors swung wide, the tearing of roots from earth. It filled the chapel until its ears rang, until he clutched his skull as though it might split apart.
“I have no desire for withered fruit. What is a husk of a man, already rotting, compared to what she will be?”
The words crushed him. He could not breathe. He wanted to rage, to claw, to spit his defiance — but he saw her face, pale and damn with sweat, and all that left him was a sob.
“Then… let it be done.” His voice cracked like broken glass. “Only let her live.”
The shadow leaned back, satisfied.
“So sworn.”
It came like a trolling bell. The sound reverberated in his marrow, thrumming through his skull until sparks burst behind his eyes. He sagged forward, chest heaving, as the figure raised its clawed head.
Black fire hissed along its talons. It stretched them wide, and the air stank of ash and iron.
“Wh — what…?” His words faltered, throat dry.
“Every pack is sealed.” The voice swelled, layered with a hundred echoes. “Yours will be written upon flesh.”
The man had no time to cry out. The clawed hand came down and struck his chest.
Agony exploded through him, white-hot, blistering. His scream tore through chapel, high and raw, mingling with thunder. The fire was not flame as he knew it; it seared deeper, carving symbols into his skin, into the very root of him. It branded not only his flesh, but the blood that had birthed his daughter. The curse wound through lineage, curling tight like a chain unseen.
He thrashed, clawed at the altar, begged incoherent words, but the shadow held him pinned with its presence alone. Smoke hissed from his skin, curling upward in ribbons.
When at last the claws lifted, the man collapsed, heaving. His robes clung to him, scorched through, the stench of burned flesh clinging heavy in the air.
His chest bore the mark — four jagged slashes, intersecting at his sternum, glowing faintly with embers that pulsed like a second heartbeat before fading to black.
He wept, clutching himself, the pain so consuming he barely heard when the voice spoke again.
“In twenty-one years, she is mine. Queen to the night, bride to the abyss. You will not see it — you will rot long before the day comes —but her fate is sealed.”
The storm outside broke. Not eased, not ended — broke. Rain ceased mid-drop. Thunder snapped shut. The wind fell dead. Silence slammed into the chapel with such force the man gasped at it.
The figure was gone. Only shadows clung to corners, innocent once more.
His sobs echoed.
//꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦꒷//
At first, he thought himself abandoned, alone with nothing but his ruin. Then —
A sound. A small sound.
He lifted his head, heart wrenching.
Through the ringing of his ears, through the haze of agony, he heard it: a cough, wet but strong.
He staggered to his feet, body screaming. His legs nearly gave way as he stumbled down the chapel aisle, through the storm-silent doors, across the yard to his home.
He threw open the door.
And there you were.
You sat up in bed, pale but breathing, your eyes — once glassy with fever — bright with confusion as they found him. Your lips parted.
“Father?”
He fell to his knees, weeping.
He did not see the faint trace of shadow that curled at her throat as she spoke. He did not see how her pupils flared, swallowing the light for a fraction of a moment before dimming again.
He only saw his daughter, alive.
Alive — by the price of her damnation.
The thunder of that night still lingers, though faint now, like an echo pressed into your bones. When you close your eyes, you swear you still hear it — the crack of the storm, the guttural weight of vows whispered into your blood. But memory does not linger in darkness forever. It reshapes itself into something quieter, something deceptively gentle.
The storm dissolves into candlelight.
And you are no longer there, kneeling in shadow — you are a child once more.
꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷ //
Your father’s voice was the first anchor you ever knew. Deep, deliberate, tinged with weariness, yet always steady. It carried the kind of gravity that made others bow their heads, though for you, it softened like rain over stone. He had not left you after that night — no, he had bound himself to you as fiercely as any vow.
“Stay close,” he would murmur, his hand brushing against your hair as if ensuring you were still real, still warm, still his. “Stay where I can see you.”
You were the light of his house. The one piece left unshattered when everything else fell to ruin.
And so, your days unfolded beneath the weight of his devotion.
The villagers spoke of you in hushed tones.
Some called you a blessing — a child too graceful for such a bleak world. Your smile, when it came, lit even the most joyless hearths. Strangers paused at the sight of you, struck by something they could not name. You seemed, at times, carved from some other realm: a wisp of sunlight clinging to a place long abandoned by warmth.
But others whispered differently. Their voices carried suspicion, envy, fear.
She was born of that night.
She should not have lived.
Something clings to her, unseen.
Your father heard these whispers. He bore them in silence, his jaw clenched, his hand tightening around yours whenever shadows gathered too close.
“Don't listen to them my dear. You are a blessing.”
You never saw him falter in front of you, but at night you sometimes heard the sound of glass shattering quietly in another room, the groan of wood as though fists had pressed too hard against the table. And oh those marks against his chest you used to see as you peaked beyond the dark rooms.
"Father, those marks did Mr Easter Bunny hurt you?"
"No my dear I'm sure he would never hurt me." with a wavering smile.
He carried his guilt like a second skin, but he never let it spill into your days.
Instead, he wove rules around you like threads of iron.
You were not to wander past the edges of the fields.
You were not to linger near strangers who looked too long.
And above all, you were never to set foot near the ruined chapel at the village’s edge.
At first, you obeyed without thought. What child would not, with such stern eyes watching? But as you grew, those rules became walls. You began to feel the weight of them — their bars pressing around you, the sense that you were being kept not simply safe, but apart.
And yet, despite all this, you were… different.
From the beginning, your body had been fragile. You were prone to sudden fevers, strange faintness, illnesses that should have lingered far longer than they did. There were nights your father sat at your bedside, lips pressed to your temple, whispering prayers he half-believed, hands shaking as if the world might take you from him in the next breath.
But each time, without fail, you recovered.
Not slowly, not with lingering weakness — but abruptly, as though something unseen refused to let you go. One morning you would be pale and gasping, the next you would rise from your bed with color in your cheeks, hunger in your stomach, life thrumming again in your veins.
Your father never spoke of it aloud. But you noticed how his eyes would linger after, studying you with a mixture of awe and dread, as if you were both miracle and omen in the same breath.
The villagers noticed too. Some shook their heads, muttering that no child recovered so quickly, that such things were unnatural. Others nodded reverently, calling you favored, blessed.
You never understood it fully then. You only felt the way the air sometimes shifted around you, as though you were not entirely alone even when you stood in the silence of an empty room.
And though you did not know his name, there were nights, in the cradle of your sleep, where a voice older than mountains stirred against your dreams. A voice not your father’s — one that wrapped itself in shadows and steel, whispering words you could never quite remember when dawn came.
But even so…
You were happy, in your way.
Your father praised your laughter, though it was rare; he treasured the sight of you running through the orchard in early spring, your hands catching at blossoms as they fell. He called you his angel, his light, even as the weight of sorrow never left his eyes.
He gave you all he could, but always with that distance — that fear. Love pressed into rules. Devotion pressed into restraint. He could not let you out of his sight, could not bear the thought of you being taken as everything else had been taken from him.
And so your childhood was not entirely your own.
The villagers smiled politely. They looked at you as though at something fragile, untouchable, set apart. A relic rather than a girl. They spoke to you with caution, sometimes kindness, sometimes coldness. Few dared come too close.
But when they thought you could not hear, the continuation of their words always carried.
Blessing.
Curse.
Not quite of this world.
Even then, deep inside, you knew there was truth in their fear.
For on quiet nights, you sometimes felt it — the mark still burning faintly in your blood, the echo of a vow you had not chosen but could never escape.
And though your father’s arms held you tight, though his rules shielded you from the world, you could not shake the sense that you were never entirely his to keep.
Not when unseen eyes watched still.
Not when a voice older than gods had already laid claim.
You grow beneath your father’s gaze as one grows beneath the weight of a cathedral’s roof — nurtured, but never truly free. He watches you with the kind of love that borders on desperation, every lesson a chain disguised as care.
“My dear, do not wander. Do not linger in the woods. Do not speak too long with strangers. Do not — above all — stray near the chapel ruins where the storm once broke the world.” with frustrated eyes.
“But they went father. I —” you replied softly.
“You are not to wander around, you hear me young lady?” The demand made your eyes wander to your little shoes covered in dirt.
“Yes Father, I understand.”
These are the laws etched into you as early as language itself, so that sometimes you wonder whether they are his words or commandments written into your very bones.
And yet, even caged birds find ways to sing.
You are not quiet, nor meek. Laughter bubbles from you like a brook over stones, bright and clear, defying the whispers that cling to you in the village. The baker’s wife calls you a blessing, while others mutter “curse” beneath their breath, as though you cannot hear. They say the storms come harsher since your birth. They say your mother died because of you. They say your father clings too tightly to you because he knows what you are. But you smile anyway, offering flowers, offering kindness. It is your rebellion: to bloom in a place that wishes you barren.
Still — children can be cruel.
You remember the day sharply, as if it were a knife’s edge. The sun hung low, staining the fields gold, and your hair was bound in pigtails your father had clumsily tied before morning prayers. A group of older boys cornered you near the schoolhouse wall, their jeers echoing against the bricks. “Demon’s child,” one spat, tugging at your braid until you stumbled. “Witch’s brat,” another sneered, shoving you hard enough that your knees scraped against the dust.
“I'm not a witch, nor a demons child please st —”
Tears stung your eyes, more from humiliation than pain. You tried to be strong, the way your father taught you, but you were only a child, and your voice cracked when you begged them to stop.
That was when he appeared.
A flash of silver hair, eyes so blue they seemed almost mocking, and a grin far too wide for his small face. The boy who would change everything — Satoru Gojo.
“What’s this? Picking on someone smaller?” His voice carried no fear, only laughter, as if the cruelty before him were a game he could tip over with a single shove. He wedged himself between you and your tormentors, tall even then, though still wiry and gangly with youth. “If you want a fight, fight me. But I don’t think you’ve got the guts.”
The boys faltered, thrown off by his boldness. Satoru winked at you over his shoulder, a careless, dazzling thing, before turning back to them with a smirk sharp enough to draw blood. “Run along before I tell the teacher you cried when you lost at marbles last week.”
It worked. They scattered, their insults dissolving into the dust they kicked up. And when they were gone, silence fell between you.
For a seven year old he was truly strong willed.
Satoru turned, his grin softening. You were still on your knees, trembling, your palms scraped raw. He crouched before you, brushing dirt from your skirt with a tenderness that felt too old for his age. “Don’t cry,” he teased gently, though his voice held none of the cruelty of the boys before. “Those pigtails are way too pretty for tears.”
You hiccupped, a weak laugh breaking through, and in that instant something shifted. Where your father’s love was a chain, Satoru’s presence was sunlight breaking through the bars.
From that day on, he was your shadow and your shield. Mischievous where you were obedient, reckless where you were cautious, he tugged you by the hand into laughter, into scraped knees that healed, into adventures your father would scold you for later. But you didn’t care. Satoru showed you that the world could be wide, that joy could be reckless, that not every whisper carried poison. He was your friend, your anchor, your secret rebellion.
And yet — beneath the laughter, the whispers of another remained.
Every year, on the eve of your birthday, sleep came heavy and strange. You would wake with the memory of shadows pressing against your skin, of whispers curling like smoke against your ears. At first, they were formless — dreams of cold wind, of footsteps behind doors that should not open. But as you grew, so too did the figure in your dreams. A shape in the dark, vast and terrible, with eyes like molten gold bleeding into crimson. They would hover in the darkness behind your lids, and a voice would murmur words you could never fully recall, though you woke each time with your heart pounding, your skin chilled, your breath shallow.
Once, at twelve, you dreamed of a hand brushing against your cheek. When you woke, your skin burned where it had touched. At fifteen, the voice you once heard grew clearer: a rumble deep as the earth itself, speaking in a tongue you didn’t know but somehow understood.
And at seventeen — you saw him.
Not fully, never fully, but enough. The breadth of a figure that filled the dark, a cruel mouth curved in something between hunger and amusement, and those eyes — impossible eyes — that followed you even into waking.
You never told your father. His rules already chained you tightly enough; you feared he would lock you away entirely if he knew. You never told Satoru, either. How could you? He was your sun, and these dreams belonged to the shadows.
But still, the signs followed you into daylight. The way animals startled when you passed, dogs whining low, horses refusing to meet your gaze. The way shadows seemed to cling longer when you stepped into a room, as if reluctant to let you go. And sometimes, when you were alone, you swore you could feel it — the faintest brush of a gaze across your skin, a presence just beyond the corner of your sight.
Not a curse. Not a blessing. Something else entirely.
Something waiting.
Heidelberg 1821
You are no longer the child who laughed with scraped knees, nor the girl who hid bruises behind Satoru’s grin. You are twenty-one now, or near enough, and the village cannot help but look at you with something like awe. An angel, they whisper, though others mutter darker things when they think you cannot hear. Angel or curse, blessing or omen — whichever name they give you, they look too long, too hungrily, because beauty has become your burden.
You carry yourself like light draped in silk, hair tumbling like dusk spun into gold, your smile as rare as it is radiant. When you walk, heads turn. When you speak, voices fall silent. You do not mean to command it — but you do. Even your father, once the most commanding presence in every room, now stands smaller in your shadow, gaze heavy with pride and dread in equal measure.
And then, one autumn morning, word arrives: he is returning.
Satoru Gojo.
The name spreads faster than the church bells, rolling through the narrow lanes of the village until every girl has flushed cheeks and every boy wears a look of sour envy. Years have passed since he left for England, with books and ambition tucked under his arm, promising letters and stories you clutched like lifelines. He wrote often at first — grand tales of London’s smog, of halls hung with chandeliers brighter than any star. But the letters slowed, until silence became your companion. You told yourself it was only because he was busy, because the world had swallowed him whole.
And now — he was coming back.
Your friends were merciless. In class that day, the sunlight spilled pale across the long benches, and every girl leaned toward you with conspiratorial smirks.
“They say he’s taller now,” one giggled.
“They say he’s become a gentleman,” another chimed in, twirling a lock of hair.
“They say he’s returning just to see you,” a third teased, her eyes sharp with envy.
You tried to protest, heat rising to your cheeks. “He is my friend. Nothing more.”
But your words only fed their laughter. “Ah, but your cheeks betray you, angel,” they sang, and no denial could quiet them.
Your father watched the exchange from across the room, his expression unreadable. Only when you met his eyes did you see it — a flicker of sorrow, of dread, quickly buried. He said nothing. He never did, not on this subject.
And then, at last, the day came.
You were standing near the square, clutching a basket of late apples, when the crowd stirred. A tall figure moved through the throng, and the air shifted around him as though he carried sunlight in his wake. His hair caught the light — still that impossible silver, though shorter now, tamed. His shoulders were broader, his step surer, his smile sharpened by years away.
Satoru.
For a moment you could not breathe. He looked nothing like the boy you remembered — and yet, when his eyes found yours, the same mischievous light cracked through, and he grinned.
“Pigtails?”
The old name, spoken like no time had passed. You laughed, startled, tears stinging your eyes before you could stop them. He was at your side in an instant, dropping the polished gentleman’s air to pull you into a clumsy, exuberant hug. The crowd melted away, leaving only the echo of your heartbeat in your ears.
“England was dreadful without you,” he teased when he pulled back, eyes roving over your face as though memorizing it anew. “Do you know how many boring people there are over there? None of them had your smile. I nearly died of misery.”
“Don’t be dramatic,” you scolded, though your voice wavered. “You look well. Older.”
He smirked. “Older, wiser, taller, handsomer — you can say it, you know. I don’t mind.”
You rolled your eyes, but warmth bloomed in your chest all the same. Before you could utter a word he strode forward and swept the basket from your hands with a dramatic bow. “Allow me, my lady. I’ve just returned from England, after all. Chivalry is expected.”
You rolled your eyes. “You were gone for five years and you return insufferable.”
“And you,” he shot back with mock injury, “have grown into a woman so lovely, the angels are surely weeping for losing you to the earth.”
Heat crept into your cheeks, but before you could scold him, he caught your wrist. “Come with me. We have a lifetime to catch up on.”
“Satoru we still —”
You barely managed a protest before he was pulling you through the square. Villagers laughed, shaking their heads at the sight of you both — the wild boy returned, dragging the village’s angel by the hand.
That afternoon, you walked together through the village, the way you used to as children. He told you story after story, waving his hands dramatically, painting pictures of fog and carriages and duels fought in candlelit parlors. He pressed small trinkets into your hands as he spoke — a carved silver hairpin, a scrap of silk, a book with your initials pressed into the spine. “Souvenirs,” he said. “Proof that I thought of you every step of the way.”
The day unfurled like a song.
He bought you honey cakes from the baker, insisting you take the biggest bite while smearing powdered sugar across your nose just to laugh at your indignation.
“Still a child,” you huffed, swiping at your face.
“Still beautiful,” he teased, licking his own fingers.
At the fruit stand, he plucked a ripe plum and offered it to you, holding it just out of reach when you tried to take it.
“Say please, pigtails.”
“I’d sooner starve.”
“Then starve prettily,” he smirked — before relenting and pressing the fruit into your palm.
The hours melted. You wandered the fields where you once chased fireflies, dipped your toes into the stream where he once splashed mud on your dress, and laughed until your stomach ached at the ridiculous stories he told of his time abroad — balls with too many rules, professors with too little patience, cities full of smoke and stone where no one laughed as freely as home.
“England sounds dreadful,” you giggled, chewing on another honey cake.
“Without you, it was,” he admitted softly, so quietly you almost missed it.
You glanced at him, startled, and found him watching you — really watching, as though trying to memorize your face. The air shifted. For a heartbeat, it was only the two of you, the world hushed into stillness.
But he broke it with a playful grin, tugging your hand as storm clouds gathered above.
“Do you trust me, pigtails?”
The words brought you back to childhood, to scraped knees and shared secrets. Without hesitation, you took his hand.
“Always.”
Rain began to fall in heavy drops, sending villagers rushing for cover, but you and Satoru only laughed louder. You spun beneath the downpour, skirts soaked, his white hair plastered to his forehead. He twirled you as though the storm itself was part of the dance, lightning splitting the sky in silver.
And then — the laughter ebbed. He was holding you close, his breath warm against your cheek, his eyes shimmering with something unspoken. Slowly, his forehead pressed to yours. His lips hovered a breath away.
“Pigtails…” he whispered, voice trembling with a confession he’d carried for years.
But just as your heart leapt — the world shifted. A whisper slid through your mind like oil through silk, dark and mocking:
Mine.
The storm seemed to grow heavier, shadows bending unnaturally at the edges of your vision. Your chest tightened. You pulled back sharply, shuddering.
Satoru blinked, startled. “What’s wrong?”
You forced a smile, shaking your head. “It’s nothing. Just the storm.”
Awkwardness settled between you. He didn’t press — though his hand lingered at your back as he escorted you home through the rain.
Outside your father’s door, he paused. His usual grin returned, softer this time.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he promised. His hand brushed yours one last time. “When you’re finally twenty-one.”
You nodded, though your heart felt heavy, your smile fragile.
Neither of you knew it then — but it was the last moment untouched by shadow.
//꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷//
The house smelled faintly of rain-soaked earth and woodsmoke when you stepped inside. The lanterns were already lit, throwing golden circles of warmth against the stone walls. Your father sat at the kitchen table, a knife in hand, slowly slicing through one of the apples you’d carried home in your basket.
“You’re late,” he said, though there was no anger in his voice. Only tired relief.
“I was with Satoru,” you admitted, setting down the damp shawl that clung to your shoulders.
At his name, your father’s hands stilled on the knife. He glanced up — his sternness softened, though something unreadable lingered in his eyes. “So the boy is back, then.”
You smiled faintly, pulling a chair beside him. “Not a boy anymore.”
He huffed at that, shaking his head. “To me, he will always be the reckless child who once tried climbing our roof and broke half the tiles.” But then he passed you a slice of apple, the crisp sound of his knife filling the quiet.
You both ate in silence for a moment, the rain tapping gently against the shutters. It was strange, how peaceful it felt — how still.
Then, after a long pause, he spoke. His voice was low, weighted with something unspoken.
“My child, I…”
The words faltered. He looked down at his hands, at the years worn into his skin, at the faint tremor of his fingers as he set the knife aside. His throat worked, but nothing else came.
You reached across the table, intertwining your hand with his, smiling softly.
“Father, it’s okay. Don’t worry too much.”
His eyes lifted to yours, and for the first time in years, he didn’t look like the immovable man who ruled your childhood with iron caution. He looked simply… human. Fragile, even.
He squeezed your hand once, then withdrew to reach into his coat. When he returned, something rested in his palm — delicate, glinting in the lamplight.
A necklace. Silver, fine, with a small pendant shaped like a teardrop of red glass. Your mother’s.
He placed it carefully in front of you. “She wore this the day I first saw her,” he said, voice breaking against memory. “She would have wanted you to have it. Consider it… an early gift, before tomorrow.”
Your throat tightened as you picked it up, the metal cold against your skin. “It’s beautiful.”
“It belonged to someone even more so,” he murmured.
You slipped it around your neck, feeling the weight settle against your collarbone — not heavy, but anchoring, like a thread tying you to her, to him, to everything you had been and would become.
“Thank you, Father, it's lovely” you whispered.
For a moment, he only watched you — as though trying to carve this sight into memory. Then he nodded, quietly, and rose from the table. “Get some rest. Tomorrow is a new chapter.”
You stood as well, leaning forward to kiss his cheek. “Goodnight.”
“Goodnight, my angel.”
You left him there in the kitchen, smiling at the simple inheritance from your beloved mother. A symbol that she still lives within both of you.
The house was quiet when you returned to your room, still carrying the faint smell of apples on your fingers and the cool weight of your mother’s necklace against your throat. Lanternlight flickered on the walls, the shadows gentle, familiar. It was a comfort — the kind of ordinary stillness that made you forget, for a moment, the heavy stares of the villagers, the endless rules, the ache of your father’s eyes when he looked at you.
You slipped out of your dress and into a simple nightgown, drawing your shawl around your shoulders before settling by the small table beneath your window. The rain had stopped; droplets clung to the glass, shining faintly in the moonlight. You opened the book you had left there earlier — a worn volume of poetry, its spine soft from years of turning.
But your eyes did not linger on the words.
Instead, your mind drifted. Back to the laughter in the village square, the way Satoru had grinned when he stole one of your apples, the way his hand had wrapped around yours as he teased you. The storm, the running, the breathless pause where his face was suddenly far too close.
That almost-kiss.
Your lips curved without your permission, and you pressed the open book against your chest as if to contain the fluttering warmth inside you. It had been years since you’d felt so light, so young. For once, you hadn’t been the priest’s cloistered daughter or the whispered curse of the village. You had simply been a girl with a friend — a man, now — who made you laugh until your stomach hurt.
You leaned your head against the glass, watching the moon peek through drifting clouds. “Twenty-one,” you whispered softly, as if testing the word. A milestone. A threshold. A freedom your father had always said would change everything. And tonight — with Satoru back, with your father’s gift heavy against your heart — you wanted to believe him.
Perhaps, you thought, you were finally allowed to be happy.
The bells outside began to toll.
Once… twice…
You closed your eyes, letting the sound wash over you. The book slipped from your hands to the table. The room felt cooler, though you told yourself it was only the night wind.
Nine… ten… eleven…
The last bell began its swing, the deep groan reverberating through the earth itself.
Twelve.
The flame of your candle bent violently to the side. Then it snuffed out.
Your eyes flew open. The room was dark — not the gentle dark of night, but thick, swallowing, unnatural. The shadows lengthened, stretching like ink poured over the walls. The air grew sharp and thin, stinging your lungs.
And then you felt it.
A presence.
Low, coiling, as though smoke itself had crept beneath your skin. Your heartbeat thundered. You clutched the necklace at your throat. “Who’s there?”
The answer came not with a voice, but a laugh. Low. Cruel. Ancient. The kind of sound that had no place in the world of the living.
From the corner of the room, something began to form — taller than the ceiling, broader than the doorway. Smoke thickened into the suggestion of shoulders, arms, a monstrous head crowned with horns of shadow. Four eyes flared open, glowing red-gold, pinning you where you stood.
“Little bride, the voice whispered directly into your skull, velvet and venom at once. Did you truly think you had been forgotten?”
Your mouth opened to scream —
The door slammed open.
“Get away from her!”
Your father. His robe flared around him, his face pale but fierce, the kitchen knife clutched tight in his fist along with a stash of holy water. His eyes went wide at the sight before him, but he did not falter. With a raw cry, he lunged forward.
The figure in the shadows turned. Slowly. Almost lazily. His jagged mouth split into a grin.
“Ah… the fool priest who bartered his bloodline,” The dark shadow crooned, his voice dripping with scorn. “Did you truly believe I would not come to collect?”
Your father thrust the knife forward, straight into his chest. The blade met resistance — then slid through, as though plunging into water. It clattered to the ground, useless.
The dark shadow laughed. “How quaint.”
With a flick of his massive hand, a wave of shadow slammed into your father’s chest, sending him crashing into the wall. He collapsed, coughing, blood at his lip, yet still he tried to rise.
“Run!” he gasped at you. “Run, child—!”
But you couldn’t move. The air held you down, the shadows snaring your wrists, your ankles. They burned like iron chains.
The dark shadow bent over you, the smoke of his form solidifying — pale flesh, black markings curling over it, each line burning with ancient malice. He slid one arm beneath you, lifting you effortlessly against him.
You struggled, but the strength left your body, a dizzy weight pressing at your skull. The world tilted, your vision dimming.
Your father crawled forward on shaking limbs, reaching for you, sobbing. “Please — please, not her! Take me instead! She is innocent — she is all I have!”
The dark shadow’s grin widened, crueler still. He leaned down, his breath hot and rancid at your father’s ear.
“As I said before you cannot offer me what was never yours to give,” he hissed. “She was promised long before she breathed her first cry. Promised, and marked. Mine.”
“Please…” your father begged, voice breaking, tears cutting down his face.
“Pathetic,” the dark shadow spat, turning away, cradling you like a bride in his arms. “Live, priest. Live, and remember this night. Wake each day knowing your daughter lies in my halls, wears my mark, and will scream my name.”
Your father’s hand brushed your nightdress as you passed. For one fleeting instant, his fingertips caught the fabric — and then you were gone, shadows closing like jaws, swallowing the room, the house, the world.
The last thing you heard before consciousness slipped away was The dark shadow’s laughter, cruel and triumphant.
Mine.
𝐚/𝐧 : hello my loves 🕯️ it’s been a while. i’ve been away for the past month because of my health, but i’m finally back — and i couldn’t think of a better way to return than with this story that’s been burning in me. thank you for your patience, your kindness, and your encouragement while i was gone.
this is the prologue to bride of the night, a gothic halloween series that will carry us all the way through october. i’ll be posting every friday until halloween night, when the finale drops beneath the moon. i hope you’ll stay with me, through candlelight and ruin.
thank you so much my cupid, it's been a little journey but im glad to be back with everyone!! truly missed each and everyone of you 🖤 i hope you have been well too!!
WELCOME BACK SWEETHEARTTT 🫶 so glad you’re doing well, it’s nice seeing you back on my dash :’) hope you’ve been taking care of yourself and im excited to see what you’ve got in store hehe
hi my babyyy 💌
thank you very very much it's good to be back. i've probably missed so much!!. oh yes i am thank you, i'm just so glad to finally write / post again 🥹
hehehe, im in such a dilemma to post now or tomorrow night, but i can't wait!! how you enjoy it too!!
oh my gosh, my love :’) i’m so sorry for disappearing like that!! it’s been a while. i’ve been dealing with some health complications, but i’m slowly recovering now — and it feels so good to be back!!
guess who’s finally back :’) i’m slowly healing and feeling better every day. it’s been a tough little journey, but i’m so grateful to be recovering and to be here again with all of you.
to make up for my absence, i’ve got a little surprise waiting!! and of course… happy halloween month 🎃🕸️🖤
i’ve been thinking a lot about whether i should step away from tumblr, but truthfully, i can’t seem to. this space has always felt special to me, like a little corner where i can share my stories with you all.
that said, i want to be honest — i’ve been struggling with my health lately. i have low iron/anemia, which makes eating, writing, walking, and even staying active so difficult. for someone who loves taking care of herself physically and mentally, this has been really hard to accept. apart from that i've also been trying to drink pills but it's unfortunate.
i don’t want to disappear or leave projects unfinished, so i’ll still do my best to continue my series and plans, but i hope you’ll understand if i’m a little slower than usual — i won't deactivate my account but i will be uninstalling the app. if things get worse, i’ll go see a doctor, but for now, i’m taking it one step at a time.
i wasn’t sure if i should share this since this space is so sacred to me, but i felt you deserved to know why i’ve been quiet. thank you for being patient, kind, and supportive — it means more than i can say. i hope you’re all doing well too. ♡
𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 : demon king!sukuna x priest’s daughter!reader
𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦𝐞 : mdni 18+ · corruption · religious imagery · dark romance · possessive/obsessive themes · smut · power imbalance · blood symbolism · chains/crowns imagery · myth-inspired retelling of hades/persephone · enemies to lovers
𝐯𝐢𝐠𝐧𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞 : before her first breath, her father bargained with a shadow — a covenant born of desperation, sealed in silence, and hidden beneath trembling prayers. but bargains with demons do not fade; they linger, like blood on sacred cloth. on the eve of her eighteenth year, the truth rises. the stranger was no man, but Ryomen Sukuna, King of Demons — come to claim what was promised. torn from her home, she is thrust into a kingdom where night reigns eternal, ruled by a sovereign of iron and cruelty, who knows no love. she aches for freedom, for her father’s embrace, for light. he demands submission, loyalty, her place at his throne. yet in the heart of shadow, rebellion stirs, and buried truths bleed into ruin. hatred begin to fracture, twisting into a peril far more ruinous than rage.
for what becomes of a daughter of light, when she learns to hunger for the darkness that stole?
𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬 :
꒷꒦ 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞 — the bargain
... more to come
𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 : open! comment or ask to be added.
𝐚/𝐧 : this october i'll be celebrating my first halloween event on tumblr — a mini-series updating every friday with the finale dropping on halloween night. ever since i wrote for sukuna i came up with the idea, but a huge thanks to @riveredmoon and @sugurusangxl for encouraging me. just a little disclaimer, i might just think of dropping a few surprises. i hope you enjoy the surprises waiting in candlelight and ruin 🕯️
Welcome to this year's 2025 FREAKTOBER event hosted by me, @joemama-2 and @for-ests! Imagine your favourite characters as iconic horror villains, monsters, or killers, and bring them to life! MDNI (18+ only).
BEFORE JOINING: Dark content is permitted, but STRICTLY NO noncon, incest, pedophilia, necrophilia, or zoophilia. Make it freaky, make it smutty — just make sure to follow the rules!
HOW TO ENTER: Send an ask or a dm to me or @joemama-2! Make sure to indicate the character(s) you want to write for + your chosen horror villain/serial killer! FOLLOW THIS LIST FOR GUIDANCE!
Pick a day, any day, just as long as it is available, and be sure to post on your specific day. Age must be visible on your blog to participate.
You're NOT writing the horror villain directly — instead, you’re writing your chosen character inspired by or as them. (e.x. Pyramid Head! Sukuna, Ghostface! Gojo, Joker! Geto, Slenderman! Gojo, American Psycho! Nanami)
POSTING: Anything between a 1k-10k wc is welcome (more or less is fine, as long as it’s complete!) Please keep your work original — no copying, plagiarism, or reposting of others’ content.
Don't forget to use the tag #kiss me killer! when posting! All answered asks for this event will be posted under the tag #kmk! asks
Slots: Open (15/31)
─ ⊹ ⊱ 2025 Freaktober Lineup ⊰ ⊹ ─
Day 1: @redrrem — Ghostface! Jason Todd x Reader
Day 2: @joemama-2 — Patrick Bateman! Gojo x Reader
Day 3: @for-ests — Pyramid Head! Sukuna x Reader
Day 4: @citrustsuki — Dracula! Nanami x Reader
Day 5: [open]
Day 6: @scenequeen05 — Micheal Myers! Leon Kennedy x Reader
Day 7: @satoblue — The Joker! Gojo x Reader
Day 8: [open]
Day 9: [open]
Day 10: @madamechrissy — Hannibal! Nanami x Reader
Day 11: @baepsays — Scarecrow! Gojo x Reader
Day 12: [open]
Day 13: @its-luna-noel — Frankenstein! Gojo x Reader x Frankenstein’s monster! Sukuna
Day 14: [open]
Day 15: @redrrem (ft. @joemama-2) — Kuchisake-onna! Geto x Reader
Day 16: [open]
Day 17: [open]
Day 18: @riveredmoon — Hellraiser! Geto x Reader
Day 19: [open]
Day 20: [open]
Day 21: [open]
Day 22: [open]
Day 23: [open]
Day 24: [open]
Day 25: @lafleurperdue — Count Orlok! Sukuna x Reader (ft. Husband! Nanami x Wife! Reader)
Day 26: [open]
Day 27: @scenequeen05 — The Shining! Gojo x Reader
Day 28: [open]
Day 29: @lily-bisque — The Camp Nightwing Killer! Sukuna x Reader
Day 30: @6akyubasu — Slenderman! Sukuna x Reader
Day 31: @redrrem, @joemama-2, @for-ests — The Finale [TBA]
a/n: Welcome to this year's FREAKTOBER! This event will be run by me and my moots, giselle and carlie! If you guys have any questions, feel free to msg us! Hope you guys enjoy :) skull divider by @/wethairjoel, knife divider by @/thecutestgrotto, blood divider by @/k1ssyoursister, star divider by @/cursed-carmine
a/n 2: Made some edits on the post regarding the rules and how this event works, hopefully this cleared up the air!
It was three in the morning, and the glow of your laptop screen was the only thing keeping you awake. Lines of code, stacked like bricks, mocking you in neat little rows that refused to behave. You tugged the strings of your oversized baby pink hoodie tighter, sinking into it as if the fabric could shield you from a headache forming behind your eyes.
At least you weren't completely alone.
The soft rise and fall from Sukuna's breathing came from behind, steady, grounding. He was sprawled across his bed like he owned the night, an arm lazily thrown across the pillow where your scent still lingered. His place always smelled faintly of cigarette smoke and leather, but tonight it warmed with the faint sweetness of the candle he'd let you light earlier.
Your lips curled into a small smile despite the growing frustration. Ryomen Sukuna, ex-biker gang menace, king of perpetual scowls letting you take over his apartment in the dead of the night. He claimed he liked when you studied here — liked seeing you work hard, brat, he'd muttered, as though it wasn't the softest thing he's ever admitted.
Now he was tugged beneath the sheets while you sat at his desk in his sweatpants, the fabric a little too big but comfortably yours. It had become a routine,
It had become a routine: you staying over, him teasing you for working past midnight, you pretending not to notice the way he watched you from the bed until sleep finally dragged him under.
Another error popped on your screen. “Seriously..?” you groaned, rubbing your temples.
The mattress behind you rustled. “Oi,” his voice low, rough with sleep. “Why the hell are you still typing?”
You froze, glancing over your shoulder. His hair was messy, spiked in every direction, face half-buried in the pillow. His eyes though — sharp even in the pitch black dark — fixed on you with faint annoyance.
“I have to finish this project,” you whispered, hoping he'll roll back over and let you keep struggling with these cenile codes.
Instead, your menace of a boyfriend sat up, sheets slipped to his waist. His tattoos caught the blue glow of your screen, his chest rising with a lazy stretch. He looked entirely out of place in your academic world, and yet here he was — your chaos and your comfort.
“Three a.m…” he said flatly. “You're gonna fry your brain.”
“I'm debugging,” you murmured defensively. “Almost done.”
He dragged his hand down his face groaning, “You said ‘almost done’ two hours ago.”
You turned back to your laptop, determined not to let you win you over — like he always does. But then you felt it — his warmth closing in as he padded barefoot across the wooden floor. He leaned down, bracing an arm on the back of your chair, crowding your pace without hesitation.
“Pink hoodie. My pants. Eyes redder than mine,” his voice was low, teasing. “You're pathetic, brat.”
You bit the inside of your cheek, refusing to give him the satisfaction of reacting. Still the corner of his mouth tugged up, when he caught the way your fingers hesitated on the keyboard.
“You're distracting me,” you whispered.
“Good.” He bent lower, eyes tracing your lips, his breath ghosting against your ear now. “Shut the laptop, before I toss it out the window.”
Your fingers hovered nervously over the keyboard, his breath hot against your ear.
“Kuna,” you whispered softly but stubbornly. “Just let me finish this one thing please? I swear it's almost fixed.”
His eyes narrowed, a dangerous glint in them — but not the kind you should be afraid of, no this was his weakness — the corner of his mouth tugged downward, as if the very thought of you choosing line soft code over sleep offended him on a personal level.
“Thirty minutes,” he said finally, voice firm but oddly gentle. “Not a damn second more. Or I'm dragging your ass to bed.”
You blinked at him, surprised by his words. Then a slow, yet very bright smile spread across your face — soft, grateful and just a little teasing. “Deal.”
Sukuna looked away too fast, the tips of his ears bright pink in the dim light. “Tch. Don't look at me like that,” he muttered, scowling as though the warmth that bloomed within his chest hadn't betrayed him.
You giggled quietly, as you turned back to your laptop screen. But before you could type another word, the chair jolted — his arms sliding beneath you with infuriating ease.
“K-Kuna?!” you squeaked clutching your laptop as he lifted you like you weighed nothing, settling himself back in the chair, and tugging you down on his lap.
“Sit,” he ordered, as if you had any choice in the matter. His chin dipped into the crook of your shoulder, the warmth of his body wrapping around you. One broad arm looped securely around the curve of your waist, while the other rested lazily across the desk, knuckles brushing the edge of your keyboard.
Your whole body went hot. “I-I can't work like this,” you stammered, cheeks burning as his breath tickled your neck.
“Sure you can.” His voice was lower now, much more infused with sleep but rough around the edges. His nose skimmed against your hoodie as he settled in comfortably, the weight of his head pressed against your back. “Keep typing. I'll watch.”
The words sent a shiver through you, more intimate than any kiss. He wasn't teasing, not really. He meant every word.
You tried to focus, eyes darting desperately back to the glowing screen, but every tiny shift of his chest against your spine, every absentminded brush of his thumb along your hip, made your thoughts scatter.
Your ears burned red. He was watching. Watching your screen, your fingers, the way you shifted nervously in his lap. His breathing was slow, steady, and yet somehow you could feel the faintest smile ghosting against your back when he rumbled, “Cute little nerd.”
“Kuna,” you whispered again, more whine than protest.
“Hm?” His voice is a lazy drawl. “What? I'm not touching you. Just… holding you.”
Which was true. He wasn't moving, wasn't pushing. Keeping you cadged in his lap, his warmth curling around you until it was impossible to think of anything else.
And maybe — just maybe — you like it that way.
Your fingers trembled as you typed, fighting to stay focused despite the weight of him pressed against you. Every breath he released seemed to seep into your bones, every absent brush of his thumb against your hip sending sparks racing under your skin.
But somehow — miraculously — you managed it. The last line of code fell into place, your laptop let out a little ping and the test finally ran clean.
“No errors,” you whispered in disbelief, eyes widening, at the little green checkmark on your screen. You almost laughed with disbelief, forgetting that the pink haired man was sitting just behind you.
“Done?” His voice was low against your shoulder, a lazy rumble that made your whole body warm.
“Done,” you breathed, snapping the shut before it could decide to betray you again.
The moment it clicked closed, his arms tightened around your waist. He shifted slightly, tugging you fully into his chest like he's been waiting for permission. His lips brushed your hair inhaling the scent of your fruits and candy — your favorite body wash — his nose nudging against the hood of your cotton sweatshirt.
“‘Bout damn time,” he muttered. But his voice wasn't sharp anymore, instead it was filled with a much softer tone that only you seem to witness — the one that always seems to crack your heart.
You twisted in his lap just enough to see his face. His hair was messy, his eyes heavy with sleep, but there was something else there too — something that made your breath catch.
“What?” you asked shyly, heat already prickling across your cheeks.
Sukuna stared at you for a long time, his scowl faltering slowly. Then he huffed a quiet laugh, almost disbelieving. “Just thinking how the hell I ended up with you.”
You blinked, your chest squeezing. “Is that…a bad thing?”
His brows furrowed instantly, like you offended him just by asking. “The fuck? No.” His grip around your waist tightened, slightly just to make sure this wasn’t a dream. “It's the best goddam thing that's ever happened to me.”
You froze, heart stuttering. Ryomen Sukuna — ex-gang enforcer, tattoos, scars, all rough edges — looking at you like you hung the moon.
“Don't look at me like that either,” he muttered, eyes darting away again, his ears flushed. “I'll kiss you.”
And you were smiling right before you even realized it, leaning closer. “Then kiss me Sukuna.”
Your voice was the only thing that kept him sane, and before you knew it — he did. He kissed you like he had to relearn the meaning of a word, rough at first, unpracticed in gentleness, his mouth demanding against yours. But then something shifted, a quiet desperation bleeding into the way his lips moved, slower now, deeper. Like he'd suddenly realized you were real, warm, in his arms, and he didn't want to waste a second.
His hand cupped your face, calloused thumb tracing the curve of your jaw. The other slid to the back of your neck, anchoring you, tugging you closer with a kind of need that made your chest ache. You melted into him, fingers tugging his ends lightly. He groaned into your mouth — a low, guttural, sound that shot down your spine and left your knees weak.
“Fuck,” he breathed against your lips, as if the word had been ripped from him. “You don't get it, do you?. “The question came out softly as his hands traveled towards your neck, gripping it slightly. “You're it for me. My good luck. My fucking everything.”
Your throat tightened at his confession, too full to speak. So you kissed him again instead, pressed your answer into him, letting your lips say what your voice couldn't.
Somewhere between kisses, his mouth began to wander. His lips dragged down the line of your jaw, brushing over the soft spot beneath your ear.
“‘Kuna” you gasped his name loudly when you felt his teeth graze your skin — the sharp nip followed by the soothing drag of his tongue. He smirked against your neck, pleased at the shiver that raced through you.
“Markin’ you,” he muttered, voice low, half a growl. “So you don't forget who you belong to.”
You felt the heat rise to your cheeks as his mouth sealed against your skin, sucking slow, deliberate, hickeys into the curves of your throat. Your hands clutched at his shoulders, both from the sting and the sweetness of it, the thoughts that Ryomen Sukuna — the man everyone feared was leaving proof of himself on you like some love-struck boy.
When he pulled back to look at his work a smirk appeared. His eyes softened, dark and unguarded, drinking you in. “Perfect,” he murmured, almost reverent.
The kiss that followed was gentler, his lips brushing yours as though he was afraid of breaking you now. He kissed you once, twice, again and again, until you were laughing softly against his mouth.
Time unraveled between kisses and laughter, your giggles swallowed by his hungry lips, his teasing growls softened by the way he cradled you close. When you finally broke apart, panting and flushed, the clock on your desk read 4:30 a.m.
He pulled back finally, exhaling hard like he was trying to steady himself. “That's it. No more code, no more bullshit.” His arms scooped up without effort, ignoring your halfheartedly squeal as he carried you to bed.
The sheets were still warm where he'd been laying earlier, and he put you down with the gentleness that contradicted his size. Then he climbed in behind you, dragging the blankets up around both of you before pulling you firmly against his chest.
You wiggled to get comfortable, but his arm only tightened around your waist, caging you in. His lips brushed your hair, his breath hot against your ear.
“Stay,” he muttered, like there was any chance you'd do otherwise. “Sleep. Your mine ‘til morning.”
Your eyes flutter shut, exhaustion finally sinking in. Wrapped in his warmth, cocooned in blankets and inked arms, you smiled.
“Yours,” you murmured sleepily.
His chest rumbled against your back, a quiet hum that might’ve been satisfaction. Might’ve even been love.
And just before sleep pulled you under, you heard him whisper — so faint you almost thought you dreamed it.
