The Night He Chose Me

The night air was thick with the scent of blood and something darker—something ancient. The battlefield still echoed with the screams of the fallen, but within the ruins of the abandoned cathedral where I stood, silence reigned.

Silence, except for him.

Kier.

The monster. The nightmare. The abyss is given form.

And he was kneeling.

His head bowed, his raven hair falling over his sharp, otherworldly features. Those glowing, abyss-forged eyes flickered up toward me like embers in the dark, filled with something unreadable. Devotion? Hunger? A promise?

I had demanded he kneel, and he had obeyed. But that wasn't what unsettled me.

It was the way my pulse quickened in response.

I had expected defiance. Violence. A test of dominance between predator and prey. Instead, I was met with unwavering submission. A silent vow. And I had no idea what it meant.

Slowly, I stepped forward, my boots crunching against shattered stone. The flickering candlelight cast our shadows against the cracked walls of the cathedral, stretching them long and distorted, like twisted echoes of the bond forming between us.

"Why?" I finally asked, my voice quieter than I intended. "You could kill me. You should have killed me. Instead, you kneel."

Kier's lips curled into something between a smirk and a snarl. "You commanded it."

"And you follow my orders now?"

A low, amused chuckle rumbled from his chest. "Not orders. Desires." He tilted his head, his glowing gaze drinking me in, reading me in ways I wasn't sure I liked. "You are beginning to understand, aren't you, little flame?"

Little flame. He had called me that since the moment I returned from the abyss with him at my side. I hated the way it made something inside me burn.

I narrowed my eyes. "Understand what?"

"That you are not merely surviving," he murmured. "You are claiming."

A chill crept down my spine. I wanted to argue, but something in his voice made me hesitate. His words felt like truth, like a thread unraveling something I wasn't yet ready to see.

"Stand up," I commanded.

He obeyed, rising with a slow, deliberate grace that made my breath hitch. Even in his human form, he was otherworldly—tall, broad-shouldered, with a presence that was both suffocating and intoxicating.

"I could have anyone kneel before me," I said, forcing strength into my voice. "But you—" My throat tightened. "You are different."

Kier stepped closer, and I should have moved back, should have put distance between us. But I didn't.

His fingers brushed my chin, tilting my head up just slightly. A touch so light, yet it sent a shiver through me.

"Say it," he whispered.

I clenched my jaw. "Say what?"

"That you have chosen me as I have chosen you."

My heart pounded. The air between us felt charged, the space too small, too intimate.

"This isn't a choice," I snapped. "You attached yourself to me like a curse."

Kier exhaled a low laugh. "And yet, you have not tried to break it."

I hated how true that was.

I had every chance to turn against him, to seek out the humans who would call him an abomination and me a traitor. But I hadn't. I kept him close. I let him protect me. I let myself want his presence.

"You don't understand," I whispered, more to myself than to him.

His hand slid from my chin to my throat, fingers barely pressing against my pulse. Not enough to threaten. Just enough to remind me that he could. That I was fragile, breakable.

"I understand more than you do, little flame," he murmured. "You fight it, but you already know the truth."

I swallowed hard. "And what's that?"

His lips ghosted near my ear, his voice a dark, velvet promise.

"That you are mine."

***

I didn't sleep that night. I couldn't.

Kier had withdrawn after those words, stepping back into the darkness like a predator retreating to the shadows. He hadn't left, though. I could feel his presence—always watching, always near.

I sat by the broken window of the cathedral, staring at the remains of the world outside. The city was nothing more than ruins now, the once-bright skyline reduced to jagged bones against the starless sky. Fires still burned in the distance, a reminder that the war wasn't over.

It would never be over.

Not until the monsters were wiped from existence.

Or until humans no longer had the strength to fight back.

I exhaled, rubbing my temples. My thoughts were a mess, tangled between the war, my unwanted bond with Kier, and the gnawing truth that no one was coming for me.

The humans had already deemed me lost.

The monsters had already claimed me as their own.

And Kier—

A sound broke through the silence. Not loud, but sharp. A shift in the air. A presence behind me.

I didn't have to turn to know it was him.

"You should rest," he said, his voice smoother than it had any right to be.

I scoffed. "And let you watch me sleep?"

Kier chuckled. "Would that be so terrible?"

I turned my head just enough to glare at him. "Yes."

He smirked but said nothing.

We sat in silence, the space between us charged with something I didn't want to name.

Minutes passed. Maybe hours.

And then, softly—so quietly I almost didn't hear it—he spoke.

"I will burn this world for you."

My breath caught.

Not a threat. Not a warning. Just a simple truth.

And for the first time since the abyss swallowed me whole… I wasn't afraid.

***

The night should have ended in silence. It should have passed like the others—filled with restless thoughts and unanswered questions.

But fate had other plans.

A sudden, sharp pressure filled the air, thick and suffocating. My instincts screamed before my mind could catch up.

Something was coming.

Kier tensed. His eyes flickered to the ruined archway of the cathedral, his entire body shifting—no longer the teasing, arrogant beast, but something lethal.

I rose to my feet, my pulse hammering.

"What is it?" I asked, already reaching for the dagger at my waist.

Kier didn't look at me. His focus was on the shadows beyond the doorway, his expression unreadable.

"Not what," he murmured. "Who."

The temperature dropped. A sickening energy slithered through the air, thick with malice and something older than the abyss itself.

And then, from the darkness, a voice—low, rasping, and filled with amusement.

"Well, well," it purred. "The runaway bride and her monster."

A figure stepped forward.

Not human. Not beast.

Something worse.

Something that shouldn't exist.

Kier's entire form bristled with rage, his lips curling back in a snarl.

"Get behind me," he ordered.

I didn't move. My grip on the dagger tightened, my heart pounding like a war drum.

Because for the first time, I saw something in Kier's expression I had never seen before.

Fear.