Chapter 18: The First Offering
She didn't knock.
She didn't announce herself.
Kaelith walked straight into the observation hall like a storm in silk, her coat snapping behind her, her badge flashing past every scanner like a blade. The guards barely looked up before her presence cut the breath from the air. She passed them without pause. Their orders meant nothing. The woman they thought they were watching had already ceased to exist.
They hadn't locked Cell 77 yet.
That was their first mistake.
She reached the control panel beside the door and keyed in her own override. Not the one they thought she'd forgotten—but the one buried deeper. The one the system had tried to erase.
A code for gods, not doctors.
The door hissed open.
The scent of antiseptic and sedatives lingered like smoke.
Saevus lay stretched on the cot, wrists unbound but his limbs too heavy to lift, pupils dilated, chest rising slow.
They'd dosed him.
Cowards.
Kaelith stepped inside.
The door shut behind her with a sound that might have been the final click of a tomb.
He stirred at the noise.
Slow. Sluggish.
But then—his eyes found her.
And everything stopped.
She said nothing.
Walked to him.
He tried to speak—his throat flexed—but no words came. His jaw slackened. The drugs clung to him like wet cloth. He blinked. Once. Twice.
Kaelith sat beside him, slowly, deliberately.
Then she reached into her coat and pulled out the relic.
She pressed it to his chest.
Right over his heart.
And whispered: "Wake."
The effect was instantaneous.
His back arched. A soft hiss tore from his throat. His fingers flexed against the sheets. Sweat bloomed across his temples. His eyes darkened from dazed to lucid in a single breath.
Kaelith watched without flinching.
"I found the file," she said softly. "I know what they're going to do."
He didn't ask.
He didn't need to.
"They're afraid," she continued. "Afraid of what I'll become if you stay alive."
She pressed the relic harder to his chest.
"And they're right to be."
Saevus's voice emerged, rough, shredded. "Then burn it down."
Kaelith leaned closer.
"No," she whispered. "Not yet."
She stood.
Moved to the metal chair. Dragged it to the center of the room.
Then stripped off her coat and laid it across the back.
Beneath, her blouse clung damp to her spine, her breath shallow, her body a livewire of intention.
She turned to him.
"Sit up."
He obeyed.
Slowly.
Like a worshipper crawling toward altar.
She watched the way his body trembled—equal parts drug aftershock and reverence. He didn't ask what she was doing. He didn't question it.
Because he knew.
Because he remembered.
Kaelith walked behind him and took the relic chain, threading it around his throat like a collar.
She leaned down, her breath hot against his ear.
"You said I led the first ritual."
"Yes," he rasped.
"Then I want to remember it. All of it."
She dragged the chair forward with a screech.
Sat.
And spread her legs.
He knelt between them without a word.
Her hand tangled in his hair.
His breath hitched.
The tension between them snapped like a taut string—no more questions, no more tests. Just need. Just surrender. Just a fire they'd both been pretending not to burn inside.
She pulled his face to her.
Their mouths collided—no finesse, no restraint. Tongue, teeth, the low groan he made as her nails dug into his scalp.
He devoured her like he'd been starving for years.
And maybe he had.
Her blouse ripped somewhere between kisses. His shirt followed. The relic glowed between them, a molten center as their bodies pressed together, slick with heat, breath crashing.
When she climbed into his lap, he didn't resist.
When she reached between them, wrapped her fist around him and watched his eyes roll back, he shuddered like a man coming undone.
Her voice was a blade against his throat.
"Say my name."
He did.
"Ashema."
Again.
"Ashema."
She sank onto him like she'd never known another way to pray.
The room fell away.
Their bodies moved like memory—violent, reverent, desperate. Her hands on his throat. His mouth on her chest. Her thighs wrapped around his hips, dragging him deeper, faster, until the rhythm became ritual.
The relic between them burned white-hot.
Neither flinched.
When she came, she bit his shoulder so hard he bled.
When he followed, it was with a whispered sob of her name against her skin.
She didn't move for a long time.
Just sat on him.
Breathing.
Trembling.
Alive.
And then—
heat.
Low, radiant. Blooming across her ribs like a brand surfacing from beneath the skin.
Kaelith blinked, unsure if it was afterglow or something else.
She shifted.
Looked down at her torso.
Where his hands had touched her—where his mouth had worshipped—faint lines had appeared.
Not scratches.
Not bruises.
Glyphs.
Old ones.
The same script etched into the relic's face. The same language scrawled across the chamber walls in the visions she never told anyone about.
But this time, they weren't remembered.
They were hers.
Written in dusky red along her ribcage.
Fresh.
Alive.
She reached down, fingers tracing one of them gently. It stung, faintly—like ink drying on raw skin.
Saevus stirred beneath her.
His eyes fluttered open.
He saw the marks.
He didn't speak.
Didn't need to.
She met his gaze, hand still resting on the symbols carved into her body like prophecy.
And in that moment, she understood:
The Doctrine wasn't something they practiced.
It was something they became.
Finally—finally—she looked down at him, hair falling around her face like a veil.
"You're mine now," she said.
Saevus smiled, eyes glassy, blood on his teeth.
"I always was."