Page 108 of Fallen: Darkness Ascending, Vol.1

SOLARETH

I ’ve been patient. So patient.

But with every step she takes, every breath she draws, she brings me closer to my victory. I see it in the way her heart stutters when she thinks of escape. The way her body shakes when the world around her breaks.

She foolishly believes that fleeing to her fragile little refuge will halt the forces already in motion. She doesn’t understand yet. She never will, until she fully submits. And I plan to make her.

Mayang, beautiful, defiant Mayang, who still believes she can fight me—fight what I am.

She clings to the fragile mirage of human will, of borrowed power.

But it is a lie she tells herself to feel whole.

The truth? She has always been mine. Long before her lungs knew air, before her mother whispered her name into the world, the threads of her soul were already knotted into the marrow of my existence.

She was forged for me—in fire, in prophecy, in destruction.

I watch her from the shadows, as I always do.

How could I not? There is nothing else in this world that captivates me as she does.

The fire that still flickers within her—it thrills me.

But it also frustrates me. She does not yet know the gift of freedom I offer her. She believes that this is a prison.

“Angelica.”

She turns with defiance in her eyes and my cock stirs, hungry to put her in her rightful place. Her blood sings to me, I can smell her body’s reaction from here—her undeniable arousal in my presence.

“That’s not my name,” she snarls.

I smile, slow and knowing. “No,” I murmur, voice a silken thread laced with iron, “it’s the one you’ve forgotten. Come to me.”

My voice fractures the air, ripples through the thin membrane that separates her trembling world from mine.

Behind me, my throne rises—monolithic, veined with obsidian and bone—at the heart of the ruin that straddles both realms. One foot in the dirt of her reality, the other sunk deep into the void where I’ve waited, bound, for centuries.

This place is mine. Between what is and what should never be. A wound in the fabric of reality—stitched with blood, breath, and the screams of saints who learned too late they were wrong.

And now, she stands at its edge. Shivering. Trembling. Radiant.

“All you must do,” I whisper, luring her, “is step forward. Offer yourself. And they live.”

Her eyes dart across the ruin—ruin in name only, for this is not decay but intention. Pillars that bleed light. Stones that hum with memory. A throne carved from petrified sorrow sits at the center, half-submerged in shadow. My throne. The seat of my return.

She doesn't speak. Not yet.

But her thoughts ring in me like struck bells. Confusion. Guilt. That tender, foolish ache humans call compassion. Always trying to save others, never realizing they are the architects of their own ruin.

I drink in her hesitation like wine. It is beautiful. Delicious.

“Such torment in you,” I murmur. “You carry the weight of every life like a chain. But what if I told you they chose this? That their suffering sings to me because of your resistance?”

A tremor passes through her, and I grin. Humanity clutches its empathy like a blade, never realizing how easily it cuts both ways.

“You think it’s noble,” I say, circling her like the promise of a storm. “Your defiance. Your pain. But we see it as something else. A child refusing her inheritance. A key that denies the door. You could end this, Mayang.”

She flinches when I say her name.

Angelica , she wants to correct me again. The name given to mask the one etched into her bones.

But names are old things. Truer than flesh.

“I won’t become what you want,” she says at last. Her voice is steel wrapped in silk.

“You already are,” I say gently, lovingly, tilting her chin toward me. “You just haven’t learned how to sing yet.”

Behind her, the veil pulses—a membrane stretched thin by her indecision. On the other side, her people burn. Slowly. Softly. Their prayers floating up like smoke.

“You can still save them,” I croon. “Just step forward into your purpose.”

She shakes her head. There’s a war behind her eyes. She wants to hate me, but what she really hates… is the part of herself that doesn’t .

And that, more than anything, will be the beginning of her becoming.

I draw her through the fabric of space and time, toward my throne and pull her onto my lap against her will.

She is stiff with resistance and leans away, but my fingers trail along the small of her back, drawing her delectable body against me.

How can she not feel it? The way her form fits mine like a key in a lock—divine and human, prophecy and flesh—meant to merge, to ignite a new era born from our union.

In the past, I tried to force these unions—dragged unwilling souls into my realm, desperate to bind them to my will.

Each time, it ended in blood and desolation.

Too much resistance, too many sacrifices.

Their screams echoed through the void, and their broken bodies were left as warnings carved into the bones of this place.

But she is different. The thread between us was spun long ago, tangled deep within her bloodline.

Centuries past, I forged a brutal covenant with one of her ancestors—a fierce bloodline that waged war against me and my fallen brethren.

That war nearly shattered realms, stained the earth with fire and blood.

All it took was one slip, one fragile human to give into temptation and the agreement was made.

That ancestor’s denial only bound our fates tighter, sealing a bond far stronger than any I’d imposed before.

She carries the weight of that legacy—the weight of destiny itself. She will come willingly—because she must. Because only through her submission can this fractured world caused by her own bloodline be remade.

I tuck a stray strand of dark hair behind her ear, my voice a soft, coaxing murmur. “Is it really so dreadful to surrender to your body’s hunger? It knows me, even if your mind still resists.”

She curls her lip adorably as I lean in and run the tip of my nose between her breast, inhaling her scent—the scent of the untouched, undefiled. The scent of what’s mine.

“You’re deceiving me,” she accuses. “Don’t believe I’m that na?ve. You planted that blueprint in my room, didn’t you? Father Andrei was just a pawn in your grand design.”

Her biting words, daring to challenge a force far beyond her reckoning, only deepens my hunger—for her capitulation, for me to break her mind, body and spirit.

“Does it really matter?”

With a thought, I remove her clothes. Her hands shoot up to cover her exposed breasts, rudely blocking me from my enjoyment.

I nip her fingers with my fangs and her hands land on my equally naked form.

Flesh to flesh, she straddles me on the throne.

Wrapping my mouth around one of her dark areolas, I croon against her taste, the vibration of my hunger threading itself through her as her skin pebbles beneath me.

She craves this as fiercely as I do—the forging of the final seal that will etch my dominion into the very fabric of this mortal realm.

“What are you doing—” she pants, her nails digging into my chest.

But I cut her off, voice cold and certain. “You cannot stop what has already been set in motion, angelica. The chain has snapped—there is no turning back.”

“Bullshi—”

I coat my fingers in her arousal before slipping them in teasingly. She’s tight and hot. My cock strains against the crease of her ass, weeping for entry but I’m not the only glutton for punishment. This little game we’re playing amuses me.

“Such a mouth on you.”

Swirling my thumb across her peeking flesh, I note her body’s reaction and adjust my ministrations until she squirms on top of me, her arousal coating the palm of my hand.

There’s a fire in her eyes, she’s fighting back words while fighting her body’s reaction. My tongue trails across her collarbone before latching onto her flesh and firmly sucking before nipping hard enough to leave a bruise.

She hisses and her hips instinctively gyrates. With a chuckle, I pull her face down and slip my coated finger between her lips, making her taste herself. Her pupils dilate and my nostrils flare before I pull my finger from her for my own taste.

Her mouth drops and my cock jumps, warning her of what’s to come.

“I shouldn’t be doing this,” she says, her voice fraying at the edges. “I shouldn’t be here with you.”

And yet, she doesn’t move.

Gripping my cock, I lift her enough for me to coat the tip with her arousal. Warning her.

She shoves me and leaps away onto her feet, her hands covering her breast and crotch.

With much amusement, I push up from my throne and watch as her eyes land on my jutting cock.

“Rejecting me again, angelica? Even after wetting my entire hand with your arousal?”

“You’re forcing my body to your will. None of this is real!”

I take a step down my dais toward her and hungrily watch the way she retreats.

“You wound my pride, angelica. Do you not understand how your mere existence forces my body’s reaction?

How my cock painfully strains and burns to be buried in you?

” I watch as she continues to take steps back until I mentally create a wall to stop her movements.

She gasps and I close the distance, caging her in, my wings itching into refractory blades that crave bloodlust.

“Bury your cock in someone else,” she grits out bravely while her body trembles. “I’m not yours.”

“Then leave,” I say gently, tracing my finger along the side of her breasts. “Walk away. Let them all burn. Let your mother’s voice fade from memory. Let the blood on your hands be for nothing.”

Her jaw tightens. She doesn't move. Not that I would let her. Not now.

“You want choice,” I whisper, my breath just at the shell of her ear. “But choice has already passed. Destiny runs like blood—once spilled, it cannot return to the vein.”

“You’re lying.”

I watch with amusement as she struggles against me, this little feral beast that stands to my chest.

“You’ve enjoyed my taste before, angelica,” I hum, placing my hands on her shoulders and forcing her to her knees. “Is that why I anger you? Are you hungry for what only my cock can feed you?”

She whimpers beneath me and my form writhes against itself, the shape I wear faltering as something older, darker, stirs beneath.

I feel the ancient hunger clawing its way to the surface—spines aching to tear through flesh, bone yearning to twist into the predator she’s forced me to become.

Within my skull, the throb of emerging horns pulses like a war drum, eager to split through.

Once, my brethren and I were radiant—firstborn of divine breath, sculpted in balance.

Now we are ruin given flesh, cursed to wear no single shape for long.

Our forms bend and break to mirror the vices that unmade us, endlessly shifting between what we were and what we’ve become.

Monsters fashioned from memory and wrath, our beauty warped by the weight of our fall.

And yet—some fragment of virtue remains, buried beneath the rot. It fights me still.

But she… she is the fulcrum. And I am tired of being pulled between what I am and what I once was.

“Be a good little human and open your mouth for me, angelica,” I rasp, my voice lacing with something monstrous.

“I can’t. Stop controlling me. Stop this madness?—”

I stroke my engorged cock roughly, leaving red marks along my shaft, showing her how much her denial tortures me deliciously.

“You’re hungry, angelica. You’re not thinking straight. Let me feed you divinity.”