Summary ~ There’s nothing worse for a deity than to be abandoned by their maker. You’re saved by the one who’s watched you for centuries, Morpheus, the King of Dreams.....But your rescue comes with a price.
Warnings: Smut, Dark Dream/Morpheus x Goddess Reader, Psychological Manipulation, Possessiveness, Obsession, NonCon/DubCon, Power Imbalance, Gaslighting, Captivity, Gothic Horror, Gothic Romance
Part 1, Part 2, Part 4, Part 5
There is no pain quite like becoming unwanted by the one who made you.
Once, you had stepped into Desire’s throne room like a second sun, burning, bright, impossible to look away from. Your lips were wine-dark, your skin kissed by golden fire, your presence magnetic. You had been their finest creation. Their favorite.
Now, when you return… they barely glance your way.
Their eyes don’t linger. Their praise doesn’t come. There is no punishment, only a subtler cruelty: silence. Distance. As if they are already unmaking you in their mind.
You feel the withering. Your power, once effortless, stutters. Where once you radiated seduction, now you are a pale beauty fading at the edges. Lips turned pink, hair no longer gleaming, the heat of divine attention gone.
When you place the pouch of sand at their feet, Desire snorts, tosses it back with two fingers.
“It doesn’t open for me,” they say, disinterested. “Must be broken.”
Still… later in the privacy of your own chambers, when you open the pouch and it responds to your touch, warm, alive, you feel a chill curl around your spine.
You try to hide among mortals, lean into old habits. You charm one—a soft-eyed poet, full of yearning. But where it once took a glance, now it drains you. Your beauty sways him, but it’s a performance wrung from exhaustion.
When he grows obsessive, when his affection turns sharp, you use the last flicker of your charm to escape him.
You let your lips brush his jaw. Whispered sweet nothings into the shell of his ear. You let your fingers drift across his chest, slow and trembling. You laughed softly….too softly, tucking your head beneath his chin like a lover who had simply needed a moment to remember her place.
And when he relaxed, when he sighed like a man forgiven by God, you slipped free.
You walked away on trembling legs, heart hammering like a frightened bird against its cage.
What once had been effortless, natural…..now drained you.
The glamour flickered like a dying candle. You felt it leave you in pieces, through your breath, your pulse, the weight of each step. By the time you returned to your chambers, your limbs shook from exhaustion. Your hands could barely unlace your corset. Your body felt brittle.
You couldn’t stop yourself.
And for the first time in ages, you dreamed.
You, who had been born outside the edges of dreams.
You, who once danced through the realm of sleep like a shadow no god could grasp.
You, who had been untouchable.
Now, you were vulnerable.
And the Dreaming welcomed you like a lover who had been waiting far too long.
The dream began with roses.
They bloomed from the marble floor of a cathedral built from bone and starlight, each black petal curling with frost, rimmed in blood. The altar dripped red like a wounded thing. Columns wept rusted wax. The vaulted ceiling groaned under the weight of skulls, cracked and silent, stitched together by strands of hair and blood to form a grotesque tapestry.
And you stood in the center of it all.
Blood dripped from the ceiling like rain, cold and slick across your shoulders.
No longer the divine terror you once were.
Your beauty had withered into something tragic, lips faded to soft pink instead of red, skin leached of its golden warmth, hair dulled like wet ash. The glamour you once wore like armor now clung to you in tattered fragments. Every breath felt like a thread pulled too tight through your ribs.
Still, you lifted your chin.
You were Desire’s creation. A weapon forged in want. You would not flinch.
“I am not afraid of dreams,” you spat into the gloom.
The voice that answered was familiar, his voice, the voice of your soulmate. But no longer gentle. No longer reverent. It was laced now with betrayal. With anger.
“No. But you should be afraid of memory.”
Your name echoed through the cathedral, whispered by unseen mouths. Then the whispers took shape, voices you recognized, lovers from centuries past, their words twisted in awe, broken by agony.
From it stumbled Paris of Troy, no longer golden, no longer radiant. One half of his face was burned to bone, blackened and raw. His left eye sealed shut by melted skin. In his hand, he still clutched the shattered remnants of a laurel crown, blood-soaked, skeletal fingers curled tight.
“You told me I was worth the war,” he hissed. “So I gave you my world. And you vanished when the fire reached the gates.”
The second door creaked open.
Lord Byron stepped through, lips tinged blue with opium, fingers smeared in half-dried ink. One hand held a torn manuscript, slit down the center like a wound, the pages fluttering like dying wings. Blood dripped slowly from his ears, soaking the collar of his ruined cravat.
“You made agony divine,” he whispered. “And I drank it like wine. You kissed me once and left a thousand sonnets to rot.”
Next came Hamlet, barefoot and wide-eyed, a tattered doublet clinging with graveyard rot. Maggots squirmed in his matted curls. In his trembling hands, he carried a cracked mirror, and in it, your reflection smiled back.
But it was not your face.
It was older. Monstrous. Your eyes glowed with cruelty. Your smile was ruin incarnate.
Tristan followed, limping, the hilt of a broken sword lodged deep in his stomach. His once-white tunic clung like rotted flesh, crusted thick with coagulated blood and festering grime.
His hollow eyes gaped wide, empty pits of silent accusation, while darkened veins writhed beneath pallid, bruised skin.
You took an involuntary step back, trembling in fear, disgust, guilt, and still they came.
Dante, tongue cut out, scribbling his sorrow in blood across scraps of ruined parchment, his tears falling for a Beatrice he could no longer speak of.
Poe, eyes sunken, mouth dripping blood. A dead raven clung to his shoulder, whispering your name like a death knell.
Each man, a monument to your sins.
Each, a ruin that bore your mark.
A shrine of grief. A mirror of destruction.
You stepped back. Slowly. Trembling.
The cathedral walls crept inward. The incense turned to rot. Blood trickled faster down the columns like veins bleeding into the floor.
“You made them into tragedies.”
His cloak bled starlight and shadow. His eyes burned like dying stars, betrayal, desire, grief, fury, all woven into a gaze that pierced through centuries. The hem of his coat dragged sand behind him, and wherever it touched, the marble cracked and rotted away.
The lovers fell to their knees, marionettes now. Their mouths twisted into soundless screams.
“You call it love,” he said coldly. “But what you do, it devours.”
“No,” he said. “You enchanted them. You let them believe they were gods in your gaze. You gave them a taste of forever and left them to rot.”
A cold wind howled through the cathedral, unnatural and sharp as razors. The corpses wailed.
Their mouths opened too wide. Their teeth crumbled like chalk. Their eyes poured ink and ash. And still, they reached for you. Fingers missing. Skin peeling.
You turned, tried to flee.
But he was already there.
“Tell me,” he whispered, his voice like velvet pulled over knives, “do you even remember their names? Or only how they made you feel?”
You shook. You remembered them. Their warmth. Their songs. Their tears.
But you also remembered your purpose. Desire had made you to be worshipped, to be wanted. You had tried once to be more.
But gods do not escape their nature…..A wolf will feed. Even if it loves the lamb.
“Not like this,” you murmured. “Not when you throw it in my face like a funeral dirge.”
His hands gripped your shoulders.
You felt the rage coil beneath his touch. But worse, far worse was the longing.
“I should let their ghosts tear you apart,” he said, voice cracking like marble under weight.
His hands gripped your shoulders, drawing you close. Too close.
“But I am selfish too,” he murmured against your lips. “And I want you all to myself.”
You tilted your head, defiant still.
His voice dropped to a velvet snarl.
“This is not punishment. This is prophecy.”
And then…the cathedral collapsed.
The skulls above shattered like glass. The stained windows screamed. The lovers’ bodies burst into ash, their wails folding into the stone. A storm of grief howled around you. The roses withered black.
And as the temple of your sins came crashing down—
You landed hard on the altar, gasping. The kiss tore through you like wine through an open wound. Hot. Violent. Claiming.
He pushed you back, onto a black marble altar rising from the floor like a tomb.
“You are cruel,” he whispered, trailing fingers down your thighs. “But even cruelty can be worshipped.”
His mouth moved to your throat, biting, sucking, leaving bruises in the shape of possession.
A thrust of his hips against yours.
“I’ve borne the silence of your absence, and now you’re finally here…mine.”
You writhed beneath him, too breathless to retort. He tore the silk from your hips, fingers sliding into your heat.
“Is this what you gave to them?” he snarled. “This sweetness? These cries?”
You tried to lift your chin in defiance. But then he thrust into you.
You gasped, head thrown back, pleasure and pain twisting tight in your gut.
“You wore their crowns,” he growled. “You drank their devotion like wine.”
Another thrust. Your fingers scrambled at the altar for purchase.
“But you never let them in. Not like this.”
His pace was punishing now, each snap of his hips an accusation.
“You think I haven’t seen them?” he snarled into your ear. “The way they begged? The way you smiled when they succumbed to their desire for you and fell into ruin?” His hand slipped to your throat, just the lightest pressure.
“You wear your heartlessness like armor,” he murmured. “But I will make you feel.”
You sobbed….half-laughing, half-breaking.
Because you hated him. You needed him. You would never admit it. But his name was already slipping from your lips.
Morpheus….Morpheus….Morpheus.
He stilled inside you. And pulled out.
You gasped in protest, until he gripped your jaw, tilted your head back, and spilled his essence across your face.
“If you would rather be Desire’s whore than be my queen,” he said darkly, “then I will treat you like one. But you’ll dream of me when they abandon you. And you’ll wake aching for the only one who never begged for your love….only your surrender.”
You awoke on the floor of your sanctuary, trembling. Your skin glowed faintly, unnaturally. You could still feel him inside you, his voice echoing in your bones.
Then your eyes fell to the pouch. It lay just beyond your outstretched hand. Dream’s sand. Glinting faintly. Whispering louder than thought.
In your chest, shame bloomed, hot and suffocating. Shame that you had let him have you. That you had wanted him. That you'd whispered his name like a vow in the hollow of your dream.
Rage followed. At him. At yourself.
You reached for the pouch. And in one trembling breath, one moment of weakness, you opened it. The power shimmered, seductive, endless, singing with the voice of galaxies.
You told yourself it would only be once.
Just enough to remind yourself who you were.
But you remembered Rachel. The mortal woman who had breathed Dream’s sand and unraveled.You had watched her fall to pieces in a haze of fantasy, her skin turned to shadow, her mind to ash.
You inhaled the dream sand.
And your body lit like a temple set aflame.
Color rushed back to your lips,red, rich, full.
Your skin shimmered, kissed gold by memory. Your laughter spilled out sharp, too bright, cracking the silence like glass. You were yourself again.
The power surged through you like an old friend returned from war, loving, brutal, unstoppable.You laughed, softly.
Yes. There you were again.
The mirror across the room rippled.Just slightly. Like breath on glass. You turned. Nothing moved. And yet your reflection ..... didn’t blink when you did.
For a moment, your smile hung on your face like a mask, too fixed, too sharp. You looked at your own eyes and thought: That’s not how they used to look. You blinked.
And the reflection was fine.
The mirror was whole. Still, the back of your neck prickled.
Like waking from a dream you hadn’t realized you were dreaming.
And not being sure you’d truly woken up.
