*Content Warning* Ambuscade of Sin

The road back to Reprieve was supposed to be uneventful.

They had earned a moment's quiet. Their work in the scar had been grueling, but clean—clear victories, few wounds, no fragments. Just another echo extinguished and a team sharpened further by the fire of battle.

So when they stopped at a fortified outpost nestled between two sheer cliffs, no one questioned it. The walls were high, the guards dutiful, the inn modest but warm. The kind of place where travelers laid down burdens and picked up hot stew and dreamless sleep.

Even Koda allowed himself a breath.

That night, the party took separate rooms. Laughter had filled the halls just an hour before—Deker tossing barbed commentary about the food, Terron betting he could drink the tavern dry, Thessa quietly insisting he wouldn't last three mugs. Maia had pressed herself into Koda's side, content. Safe.

The room they shared was lit only by a half-melted candle. They lay together, skin on skin, whispers trailing into sleep.

But Koda woke before the candle finished dying.

There was no sound. No breeze. No creak of wood.

Just… wrongness.

It wasn't the kind that screamed or threatened. It was deeper. Quieter. Like stepping into a memory you didn't make. He blinked, eyes adjusting to the dark, and found Maia curled against him. Her skin was flushed, her breaths short.

He moved to rise, muscles tensing on instinct—but her hand gripped his wrist, trembling.

"Don't," she whispered.

It was her voice. Her cadence. But distorted. Fragile in a way that was unfamiliar. "Please. Just… one moment. Please, Koda."

He turned fully to her, and saw the tears in her eyes. Pain, but not physical. Not fear either. Desire, sharpened into a weapon.

She kissed him then—deep, urgent, her body trembling under his hands. It was like watching someone drown in want. Like her thoughts had been replaced with ache. She pressed herself against him, begging not with words, but with desperation.

Koda's heart thundered.

He loved her. Gods, he loved her. But this was not her. Not entirely. Her warmth, her scent—it was all there, but twisted.

He pulled away, jaw clenched. "Maia. No. This isn't—"

She whimpered, hands still reaching, like his touch had become air itself. Her pupils were dilated, pulse too fast.

And then he remembered. Kindness.

He held her face gently, brushing her hair back, and let himself feel her ability—Sanctuary of the Heart. He focused on the sanctuary, the calm, the purity of it. The bond between them, the way it soothed even death itself.

And he channeled it through his trait.

Her eyes closed slowly. Her breaths eased. The flush drained from her skin as sleep reclaimed her—not collapsed but cradled, safe again within the sanctuary they had built.

Only then did he turn his attention inward.

Koda of the Eternal Guide

And there, in the far edge of the status window—faint, ephemeral, almost missed—was a line of text in light too soft to be called real.

Trait: Lust – Bewitched by the carnal desire of Lust.

A coldness ran through him.

But as soon as he saw it, the illusion unraveled. Awareness was its enemy. His will, forged through battles and bonds, rejected it. The light cracked. The words bled into nothing.

Shattered.

He looked to Maia—sleeping soundly again—and exhaled, silent.

Koda moved like a man walking into a storm he couldn't see.

The air in the outpost was heavy—too heavy. His breath, shallow. The weight of his armor settled over him in a shimmer of shadow and silk as it flowed from the pendant to encase his form. It hissed softly as it sealed, drinking in the quiet around him. The lightless hall beyond their room felt too still. Unnatural.

And then—

A door creaked open.

Terron stood there, hunched, a grimace carved into his face. One hand braced on the frame, the other pressed to his temple. The wide-shouldered man—normally the rock among them—was pale, sweat clinging to his brow.

He looked at Koda and swallowed hard. "Something's… it's in my head, man. I—" His voice cracked like glass under pressure. "Everything's hot. Like the world's boiling."

Koda crossed the space in two steps, steady, wordless. He caught Terron as his knees wavered and helped him back into his room, laying him gently on the bed like a fevered brother.

"No one is touching your mind," Koda said, hand resting over Terron's chest. "Not while I'm here."

He summoned Sanctuary of the Heart again, its divine resonance flowing through his fingers like warm water. The space bent subtly around them, the burden lifting from Terron's eyes as the ward pressed out the cloying presence. The hammer-wielder slumped back into the bed, groaning, but calmer.

But not safe.

A sound cut through the stillness. Distant, muffled. Choked.

A scream. Not of fear, but desperation.

Koda's head snapped toward the door.

He moved without a word.

Down the hallway—past the guest rooms—and to the third door on the left. Thessa's. The source.

It wasn't locked. The handle turned under his fingers.

Inside, the room glowed with a low, sick warmth. The scent of sweat and incense lingered unnaturally heavy in the air, like it had sunk into the walls. The candle by the bedside had melted all the way down, its flame still flickering far longer than it should've lasted.

Thessa was kneeling beside the bed, partially clothed, hair clinging to her forehead, her body trembling as she shifted against the edge of her arm—lips parted, eyes glazed with both need and terror.

She looked at him. She saw him. Recognition fought its way to the surface of her panic-hazed stare.

Her voice failed, but her eyes screamed: Help me.

And Koda did not hesitate.

He crossed the space, knelt beside her, and touched her forehead gently—his fingers unflinching, his will like iron. The calm flowed through him again, reaching into her as if her soul had left a door cracked open just wide enough to let him in.

Kindness met her anguish. Not with force, but with sanctuary.

The room cooled.

The haze lifted.

Thessa slumped forward, caught in his arms, her breathing slowing—then deepening. Not unconscious, but released. Freed from the grip of something that had tried to rewrite her into its image.

Koda laid her on the bed, pulling the blanket gently over her.

He stood there for a moment. Silent.

Then turned slowly back to the door.

The outpost was not safe.

Something was moving beneath its skin.

And it had only just begun.

Koda moved swiftly but with a weight in his step now. The kind of weight that came from knowing too much too quickly.

Deker's door creaked open without resistance. He was twisted up in his blanket, murmuring through his teeth. Sweat clung to his brow, his legs kicking out weakly like he was trying to run from something in his dreams.

But he didn't wake.

Koda knelt beside the bed and placed a hand over Deker's chest. No spell this time. Just Kindness, gentle and measured. Enough to ease the ache, not shatter the dream. He wasn't being overtaken, not yet—but the pressure was there, worming at the corners of the boy's mind.

He whispered a reassurance. Something low and soft. Then pulled the blanket tighter around Deker's frame before stepping out once more.

One left.

Wren.

And her door gave him pause.

From behind the wood came a sound—barely audible. A breath. A whimper. Then a low moan.

Koda stared at the grain of the door like it might offer a reason not to go in.

But he couldn't leave her like this. Not while something else pulled the strings.

He raised his hand and pushed. The door opened slow, resisting as if the room itself didn't want to be disturbed.

Inside, scattered clothes told the story before his eyes even reached her.

Wren knelt in the center of the bed, her back arched, one hand clutching at the blankets while the other moved feverishly between her thighs. Her breath came in ragged gasps, a sheen of sweat glistening against her skin. Her eyes—half-lidded—stared ahead, but there was no recognition in them. No shame. Just need. A mechanical, ravenous desire that didn't belong to her.

She didn't even register his presence.

Koda crossed the room, quickly but not rushed. Not out of fear. Out of resolve.

He reached out and placed his hand on her forehead.

The second their skin touched, Wren arched violently, the pleasure spiking at his mere presence. Her moan split the air, body shuddering with the force of it. But he didn't flinch. Didn't draw away. He held firm as Sanctuary of the Heart spilled from his fingers in a wave of quiet golden calm.

Her breath hitched.

Then slowed.

Her hands dropped away from herself, legs folding beneath her. Her eyes blinked once—twice—and she saw him.

Truly saw him.

Tears welled, not of shame, but of release.

"Thank you," she whispered, her voice threadbare. Then her strength gave out, and she slipped into sleep, her breathing soft and even.

Koda stood in the silence, hand falling to his side.

Lust had touched them all.

And it had done so quietly, without a single scream. Without fire or blade.

Just the pull of something deep and primal.

He turned back toward the hall.

This was no longer just a threat. It was a hunt.

And they had just become the prey.

Koda approached the final door—Junen's.

The hallway was silent now, the air heavier with each step he took. But he held steady. Raised his hand and gave a soft knock.

The door opened immediately.

Too fast.

Junen stood there, her breath shallow, her eyes wide. Her nightclothes clung to her skin, damp with sweat, revealing more than either of them were prepared for. A flush sat high on her cheeks, and her lips were parted like she'd been caught mid-thought. Or mid-something else.

Koda froze, instinct kicking in—ready to act. To cast. To reach for the calm.

But then… he met her eyes.

And they were clear.

Tired, yes. Shaken, perhaps. But clear.

No haze. No hunger. No pull of something foreign.

"I was wondering when you'd come," she said softly, almost a whisper. "Have you checked your status?"

He nodded.

And at that, the tension in her shoulders loosened. Relief flooded her face—not just for herself, but knowing she wasn't alone in this.

Koda then realized just how much he could see through the thin, damp fabric clinging to her. His gaze snapped to the side, his hand already raising in retreat. "I'll wait in the hall," he said quickly, turning on his heel before she had to ask.

Behind him, there was a pause. Then a quiet, startled breath—realizing the state she was in now that her mind had calmed.

"…Sorry," Junen murmured.

"No need," he replied gently, already stepping back to give her space.

The door closed quietly behind him.

And Koda stood in the silence once more—one step ahead of a threat they hadn't seen coming, surrounded by those who had almost fallen without a blade drawn.

They'd check the town next.

Koda stepped out first, Junen a careful shadow at his back. The air hit them like breath from a dying beast—humid, rank, tinged with something coppery and sweet. The kind of scent that made the stomach tighten before the brain understood why.

And then… they saw it.

The street had become a pit of writhing bodies.

At first, it looked like a crowd—then a tangle—then something far more sinister. Naked flesh packed close like scales on a serpent. Limbs wound through limbs, fingers digging, clutching, pulling—mouths open in silent gasps or wet, fevered moans. The cobblestone beneath them was slick with sweat and something else. A sheen coated everything—skin, stone, glass. The kind of sheen you only see in places touched by madness.

Some moved with frantic desperation, grinding, gasping, clawing like drowning souls searching for something real. Others lay still, twitching rhythmically as others used them like objects. There was no sense of who had started what, or if anyone could stop. Young and old alike, faces contorted with pleasure or vacant with exhaustion. Any trace of self had been swallowed in the haze.

There was no decency here.

No shame.

No will.

Just indulgence. Animal need turned grotesque, infected with something deeper than lust—a possession of the soul.

A woman nearby, bare knees scraped on stone, moaned softly as three men clutched at her body like beggars at a shrine. One had blood down his chin—nose or mouth, it was unclear—and another had fingernails torn to the quick. None of them noticed. None of them cared. They were all trapped in the same fevered ritual.

Another pair collapsed together in a heap. Not even looking at each other. One wept quietly, even as his hips kept moving, his hands trembling.

A man staggered out of the pile, his eyes red and lips torn from too much kissing, too many teeth. His legs gave out two steps later and he crawled back in—muttering soft apologies, or maybe prayers, as he disappeared beneath the mass.

Koda felt bile in his throat.

Junen pressed a hand to her mouth, eyes wide with horror. Her shield was back on her arm now, not for battle—but for something deeper. To protect her mind, her soul, from the erosion she could feel pressing in from all sides.

This wasn't just depravity.

It was worship.

Not of beauty, or intimacy, or desire. But of compulsion. Of being consumed.

A priestess of the Holy Mother staggered by, her robes in tatters, eyes glassy and mouth slack. A dozen worshipers followed her, still speaking benedictions between groans, their hands sliding across her like she was a statue of some long-forgotten goddess.

Koda clenched his fists as he stepped forward, each movement heavy with resistance—as if the very air was trying to seduce him into stillness. Junen followed, silent and pale, her shield glinting with faint holy light, warding off the pull of whatever sickness had claimed the town.

They moved carefully, side by side through a street where nothing was sacred anymore.

Against the base of a collapsed statue—once a depiction of a saint—lay a tangle of three bodies, limbs bent at awkward angles. A man kissed a woman's shoulder while another gnawed lightly on her breast, her laughter staccato and wrong. Her head was tilted back too far, her eyes glassy and bloodshot, red rings under her eyelids like she hadn't slept in days. None of them stopped. Even when Koda passed, even when Junen looked on in horror—they didn't seem to see them. Or couldn't.

A dog, ribs showing under matted fur, humped a stone wall nearby, its motions erratic and violent. Across the way, a stable door was ajar. Inside, the sounds were worse than anything they'd seen in the streets—braying, moaning, sobbing, all blurred into one desperate rhythm.

Junen looked away sharply, clutching her stomach.

Children were nowhere to be seen.

Thank the gods.

But a body hung in an alley, wrists bound to a beam, head limp. A man below him was weeping, rocking back and forth, blood on his hands, muttering apologies between long, drawn breaths.

"Make it stop…" he whispered as they passed. "Make her stop…"

The closer they came to the city center, the worse it became. People fought for places in the piles now—scratching and clawing, biting at each other like addicts denied a fix. One woman pulled her hair out in thick clumps as she cried and begged someone, anyone, to touch her. To end the fire in her.

She bled from her scalp, but her fingers moved between her thighs even as she begged.

"Please… please… it hurts—"

Junen turned, buried her face in Koda's shoulder, shaking.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I can't unsee this."

Koda placed a hand on her back, eyes locked on the square up ahead.

The heart of the city.

And its true rot.

A platform—once used for announcements and speeches—now served a far more grotesque purpose. Bodies writhed upon it, limbs intertwined with no distinction of where one person ended and another began. Dozens of women were mounted, clutched, suckled, used by partners of either sex. Some cried out in pleasure, others in pain—but none of them could stop. Their hands clawed at the stone, at each other. Long, raking scratches covered some of their breasts and thighs—thin trails of blood crisscrossing skin like lace.

One woman's chest rose and fell rapidly, her face a mask of both agony and rapture. A hand clutched her neck as another body used her from behind, both of them lost to the frenzied momentum of the mass.

Above them, something dripped from the edge of the platform. Red. Viscous. But not blood.

It was like the city was bleeding desire—coated in it, drowning in it.

There was no love here.

No passion.

Just raw, gaping need.

And at the center of it all, unseen but undeniable—she was watching. Lust. Fragment or goddess—it no longer mattered. Her influence was no longer creeping. It was enthroned.

Junen trembled at Koda's side, but she did not look away now.

Neither did he.

They had come to purge this place.

Now they understood the depth of the sickness.

And that cleansing would take far more than steel or spell.

But the need began to change.

It was subtle at first.

A man's moans turned guttural—not from release, but from some wild, unfocused anger.

A woman cried out, but the pleasure twisted into a scream—not of ecstasy, but of pain. The man above her didn't stop. His hands clamped tighter on her wrists, his hips bucking with a force that bruised, not pleasured. He spit down on her and called her a whore, and she… laughed. A hollow, broken sound that didn't belong in a human throat.

Junen stiffened at Koda's side. Her shield came up like instinct, not as protection from attack, but from the sight of it all.

Koda's grip tightened around the hilt at his back.

Around them, the moaning continued—but now it was punctuated with yells. Feral, guttural, inhuman yells. Bodies once writhing in sensual rhythm now lurched with violence—slaps turned to strikes. Grabs turned to gouges.

Someone shoved another through a window. The glass shattered and the man inside laughed as blood streamed down his face—then lunged back through the jagged frame to drag the attacker in with him, fingers locked around their throat, their mouths still locked in a kiss that was now just teeth.

Koda saw it all.

The sounds changed next.

Not just groans, but cracks. Bones snapping, skin splitting. There was no more ecstasy. Now it was punishment.

Pleasure didn't matter anymore.

Only domination.

Only power.

A man took a rusted hook and dragged it down a woman's back as he forced himself on her. She screamed—but not in protest. Her fingers clawed at the dirt for more. The blood trickled freely, steaming against the cold ground.

Farther down the road, two people tore into each other—literally. Biting flesh. One man's nose was torn off with teeth. Another screamed as his cheek was peeled away, but never stopped thrusting. His partner didn't flinch—only dug her nails into his ribs so deep they popped between bone.

Everywhere now, the sounds were worse.

A woman sobbed in the center of a bloodstained circle. Five others surrounded her—naked, smeared with gore, hands trembling with a need they no longer understood. She looked up and whispered for help—before they descended on her. Not to touch her. Not to love her.

To destroy her.

They tore at her with their bare hands. One woman clawed her breast open. Another shoved her face into the mud and held it there. The men came too, and they didn't use themselves for sex anymore. Now it was fists. Stones. Fire pokers pulled from the hearths. One man brought a whip that looked like it had been made from human hair.

Junen stopped walking.

She covered her mouth, trying not to vomit.

Koda put an arm around her shoulders and guided her forward, past what he could only describe as a slaughterhouse in disguise.

Because the streets still echoed with the cadence of sex—but the meanings had been flayed away. This wasn't Lust anymore. It was Wrath. Desire and rage had melted into each other, forming something fouler.

People weren't just being used.

They were being punished.

Not for anything they had done—but simply because it felt good to hurt them.

One man screamed "I love you!" as he drove a dagger into a woman's stomach again and again. She laughed, blood frothing from her lips. "Harder," she begged, welcoming the end.

Another woman bashed a man's skull into a cobblestone curb while riding his corpse like an animal. His twitching body bucked beneath her, and she wailed with delight at every crack of his face splitting open.

Koda stared at the blood pooling beneath them all.

And realized it wasn't just running in the street.

It was soaking the stone.

Dark veins in the cobbles.

Feeding something deep beneath.

He looked up—and saw it.

A shimmer in the air.

Like the heat ripple of a desert, except it bled red.

Wrath had entered.

And it was still coming.

And Lust… Lust hadn't left.

They were merging.

Forming something else. Something worse.

Something that fed not on a sin—but on the union of sins. On the void between the act and the consequence.

The space where love and hate became the same violent thing.

Junen whispered, "We have to stop this."

Koda nodded.

But he didn't say what he was thinking.

That this… this wasn't just a fragment's influence anymore.

This was the birth of something new.

Something neither of them might be ready for.

Something that didn't want to corrupt the world—

It wanted to end it.

Koda placed his hands firmly on Junen's shoulders. Her breath trembled, eyes still wide from the carnage they'd just walked through, but she met his gaze.

There was strength in it. Fragile, shaken—but still standing.

"We need to try," he said softly. "Sanctified Stand. Together."

Junen nodded, lips pale, jaw tight. She wiped her face with her sleeve and reached for her focus—silvered, worn smooth with prayer. They stepped into the open space at the center of the slaughter, surrounded by the disjointed rhythms of twisted pleasure and unbound violence.

Koda's armor flared to life, the divine weave wrapping around him like falling dawn. Junen's hands shimmered with a white glow, warm and trembling like a heartbeat.

They cast it together.

A pillar of holy light erupted from the cobbled street, crackling through the filth and blood like it had found a vein of gold beneath the rot. It pulsed outward in rings—first quiet, then a silent roar, as if the world itself had exhaled.

Sanctified Stand.

And for a moment—just a moment—the chaos paused.

The air trembled as if time itself staggered.

Those nearest to them froze in place, eyes blinking slowly like waking from a fever dream. Some fell to their knees, gasping. Others looked around in sudden horror at the blood on their hands, the bruises blooming on the bodies around them.

One man looked down at the corpse he'd defiled, realizing what he'd done. His face crumpled, and without hesitation, he picked up the same shard of glass he'd used earlier—and plunged it into his throat. The light hadn't been salvation to him.

It had been judgment.

Another woman stumbled from the shadows, naked and drenched in blood not her own. Her eyes cleared, only for the reality to slam into her like a wall. She screamed—one long, broken cry—and bashed her head against the stones again and again until bone cracked and she dropped twitching beside the body of her sister.

They were freed—but not healed.

The wrath hadn't vanished. It had only loosened its grip enough to let guilt sink in.

A couple curled together in a corner sobbed uncontrollably, their foreheads pressed together. One held a jagged piece of iron. The other guided it to their heart. They died touching.

All around them, the slowed began to weep, wail, or run. The partially freed stumbled from their broken pleasures into maddening clarity, and what was left in their wake was ruin and suicide.

Not redemption.

Not yet.

Koda stood unmoving at the center of it all.

His hands clenched. His jaw locked.

Sanctified Stand hadn't saved them.

It had shown them.

He felt Junen's knees buckle beside him, and he caught her before she fell. Her face buried in his shoulder, her voice muffled and shaking.

"We were too late…"

"No," Koda whispered, his eyes locked on the collapse of what had once been people.

"We're right on time."

Because whatever had done this—whatever twisted fusion of Lust and Wrath had emerged—it was growing.

And they would face it.

But first, they had to survive it.

The stillness within the inn was a fragile shell, thin as paper, separating them from the madness outside.

He turned to Junen. "Wren. Now. She may still be vulnerable."

Junen didn't reply, just bolted from the room with purposeful silence, a hand already on her blade's hilt, bare feet slapping against the wood as she ran.

Koda burst into Maia's room, the dim lamplight catching on her skin as she stirred, still half-sunken in the echoing heat of Lust's grip. Her robe clung to her, sweat-soaked and trembling. Her gaze was fogged until he reached her, his hands working quickly but respectfully to get her clothed.

As the clasps fastened and the cloth settled against her skin, her breathing slowed. She blinked herself to clarity, and Koda's voice met her before fear could settle in.

"It's Wrath," he said, his tone sharp and low. "Lust was just the beginning. We're under siege. I need you—now."

Maia nodded, brushing her hair back with a trembling hand. The silver edge in her expression told him she understood.

"Thessa?" he added.

"I'll get her," Maia answered without hesitation, already moving.

Koda turned away and sprinted down the hall, shouldering into Deker's room. The boy was groggy but upright in an instant, alert in the way only someone used to waking mid-experiment could be. His wild hair stuck out in every direction, eyes glassy but catching the tone immediately.

"Weapons?"

"All," Koda said. "Now."

Deker didn't ask another question.

Next was Terron's room. The big man was half awake already, sitting on the edge of his bed in his under-armor, hand pressed to his forehead like he was nursing a hangover born of rage.

"You feel it too?" Koda asked, tossing him his gauntlets.

"Feels like the gods got drunk and pissed on the world," Terron muttered, forcing himself upright. "Let's fix it."

They moved fast, fury and clarity sharpening every motion. By the time they reached the inn's front doors, the others were already waiting.

Wren stood tall, hair damp from having hastily washed her face, her robe proper and her gloves tight. She held a suppressor talisman between her fingers, its threadbare sigils pulsing faintly.

Junen stood beside her, shield strapped, chin up.

Maia and Thessa emerged from the stairwell next. Thessa's expression was tight, pained—shame still lingering behind her eyes—but she carried her staff with purpose. Maia was already casting small pulses of Sanctuary, steadying them as they moved.

They all met at the threshold, a unified shape against the dissonance clawing at the inn's borders.

Outside, the storm of screams, sobs, and splintering bone was rising again.

They had no time left.

No more shelter.

Koda looked to each of them in turn.

"This town is gone," he said. "But we're not."

He turned the handle, and the door swung wide to the horrors beyond.