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The night lay thick over Kremnos.
A colder night than most—the kind that settles into the bones, even of those long unburdened by mortal frailty. The moon hung heavy in the sky, bloated and pale, its light spilling across the cracked stones of the old coliseum like spilled milk over broken altar slabs. Once, this place had known the roar of countless voices. The stamping of sandals upon stone. The bright clash of steel, the coppery tang of blood, and the cries of men who knew they would not see another dawn.
Now there was only silence.
And the scent of ash.
Mydei walked the old paths alone.
His footsteps rang hollow in the wide, open expanse of the arena. Dust rose in their wake, catching the moonlight like ghostly motes. His body bore fresh wounds—the kind that would’ve dropped any other man, mortal or lesser god alike. Gashes across his shoulder, a split brow, the unmistakable ache of bruised bone along his ribs. He wiped a hand across his face, smearing the drying blood to no useful purpose.
He barely felt it.
Pain had long since become a companion. It was familiar.
It had been some time since he’d bothered counting the days. Immortality taught a man that such things were for the living, for those who still believed in seasons, harvests, hearthfires. The sun rose. The sun fell. The Black Tide came. He met it. The sun rose again.
What difference did the number of nights make?
Okhema still stood.
That mattered.
The last of the Chrysos Heirs—those stubborn, ill-fated children of a dying age—still clung to their city, their prayers, their fragile hopes. Mydei kept them alive. Not because he loved them, or because duty was a song that warmed the marrow. Because it was his war to fight.
And he would not abandon it.
Even when the world grew tired of bleeding.
Even when the gods fell silent.
Even when the stars, one by one, turned their faces from Amphoreus.
Strife was not a flame one could choose to set aside. It clung to the skin, to the soul. It bred in the marrow of men like him—Kremnoans, born of stone and sword, suckled on bloodshed and drought and sun-baked earth. The world called him God, King of Kremnos.
He was none of those things truly.
He was what the old stones made him.
His gaze swept the length of the coliseum, its tiered seats long since crumbled, the altar of coronation split clean down the middle like a sun cleaved by a war-god’s blade. The scent of ancient smoke still hung in the mortar, as if the city itself remembered every siege, every spilling of noble blood upon its sand.
There was a time when he had loved this place.
The rhythm of the arena. The simple, savage truth of it. No prophecy, only strength. The ring of bronze and bone. The moment a man learned what his blood was worth.
Now, it was a tomb.
His tomb.
And yet, despite all the years, all the wars, he returned. Not out of nostalgia—the dead had no warmth to offer him. But because this was his ground. The only place left that still remembered his name without prayer or plea.
A bitter wind passed through the empty arches.
It carried no scent of enemy.
No shriek of dying beast or maddened warband.
And still—something in the marrow of his bones prickled.
He wasn’t alone.
Hadn’t been for some time.
Mydei let out a breath, the sound rough and ragged in the cavernous dark. He reached up once more, wiping the smear of old blood from his cheek, and stared down at the darkened far end of the coliseum.
The stones there never seemed to catch the light.
Even when the moon was full.
It had been some time since Mydei last raised his blade against it.
A strange, unspoken arrangement forged not by word, but circumstance. After he’d entombed the thing beneath crystal, he’d expected it to be done. To be over.
But nothing in this world ever stayed buried.
It had clawed free some nights past. Or perhaps some years. The measure of time in this place had grown loose in his hands, like sand through a cracked hourglass.
And yet, it hadn’t fled.
Hadn’t charged toward Okhema.
Hadn’t sought out the remaining Heirs or the last Coreflames buried in the bones of this dying land.
It stayed.
In Kremnos.
Some nights it haunted the far colonnades, a silhouette against the broken teeth of marble pillars. Other times, it was no more than a presence—a pressure in the air, like the prelude to a storm that refused to break. It did not speak. Did not strike. Did not sleep.
And neither did Mydei.
There were moments, between battles, when the blood still wet his hands and the roar of war had fallen silent, that he would find himself glancing toward the long corridors of shattered stone. Expecting to see it.
And it would be there.
Unmoving. Unchanged.
A figure of iron and ruin beneath the sickle of the moon. A blade slung low at its side, as if it too had grown weary of endless bloodletting.
They existed like that.
Not allies. Not enemies.
Something else.
He told himself it was caution that stayed his hand. The Black Tide demanded his strength; every drop of blood spilled elsewhere was a risk. Better to let it remain so long as it did not move against the living.
But in the marrow of his bones, something twisted.
There was a shape to that figure’s stance. A weight in the way it carried the blade. The tilt of the head when it regarded him, the measured, restrained threat of it. Familiar in a way that soured the back of his throat.
Mydei had fought a thousand men.
Gods. Titans.
Feral beasts carved from shadow and the black hearts of dying stars.
But this…
This was different.
There was a part of him—stubborn as Kremnoan stone—that refused to follow the path of thought to its end. That chose instead to remain in this uneasy stalemate. To let the thing be.
For now.
He never spoke its name.
Never addressed it, even when their paths crossed in the silent hours before dawn, when the world was nothing but mist and ash and memory. There was no need for words.
Both of them knew.
Still, each night it lingered here, it pressed against a part of him he would not name. Stirred old fears he claimed no longer existed.
The gods had been many things—cruel, capricious, liars and oathbreakers all. But none of them could look upon a thing that should not be, and remain unchanged.
And though he would not voice it—not yet—Mydei had begun to suspect.
Or rather, he had always suspected.
And simply chosen not to name the thing that watched him from the dark.
Because to name it would be to acknowledge what it was.
And what it had once been.
And there were some truths a man, even a god, would rather leave buried.
Mydei exhaled, a slow, steady thing through grit-stained teeth.
The presence was there again.
He could feel it—not in the air, nor in the shiver of earth beneath his boots, but in the marrow of his bones. A weight that settled behind his sternum, as inevitable as dawn, as old as the golden blood in his veins. It had been there too long, a shadow that refused to pass.
He turned toward the far edge of the arena.
The broken colonnade stood in the half-light, jagged marble catching the pale gleam of the moon. The figure waited there, motionless, as it always did. A thing out of place in a world that no longer had names for it.
Mydei’s patience cracked.
“You’ve lingered long enough,” he called out. “Either raise your sword, or put it down.”
The words hung in the air, heavier than they ought to. He did not expect an answer. None ever came. The thing only shifted, the faintest tilt of the head, as though considering the demand not as a threat, but—
A step forward.
Then another.
Slow.
Measured.
Like a predator that had known the taste of blood but no longer hungered for it—only remembered it.
Mydei set his stance, fingers flexing in bloodied gauntlets, the scarred metal whispering against his skin. The old drills returned without thought. Weight balanced on the balls of his feet, left shoulder turned, guarding the heart. Every Kremnoan knew this posture before they could speak.
He moved to meet it.
They circled, neither rushing, neither speaking. The arena, once made to host the songs of war, was quiet but for the scrape of boots against sand and stone. Moonlight bled across the cracked earth, catching on the jagged edges of broken weapons long discarded.
The figure’s sword hung low, tip trailing a fine line in the dust. It gleamed, it’s edge kissed by the same pale light. There was nothing frenzied in its approaches one would expect.
Uncanny, how familiar it felt.
How his body recognized the rhythm of those steps before his mind did.
Every motion precise—not the work of some mindless revenant or beast, but of a swordsman who’d once lived and killed by a code.
Mydei didn’t flinch. He never had.
The distance between them closed, slow as the turning of the world. Sand shifted beneath their boots. Somewhere distant, a night bird gave a single cry before falling silent again. The air felt thick enough to drink.
For a moment, the thing paused, as though giving him one final moment to reconsider. Or perhaps it waited for him to break the silence first.
He didn’t.
His gaze stayed fixed on the thing’s mask. A face stripped of identity, though some part of his blood rebelled at the sight. A shape too known to forget, no matter how time twisted or darkness devoured it.
His fists clenched.
The distance shrank to killing range.
The fight would come.
It always had.
And yet in that long, breathless instant before the first blow fell, it struck him that neither of them fought for victory. Not truly.
Not anymore.
They fought because neither could turn from the path.
Because the gods had made them men who knew only how to bleed.
Mydei smiled then. A small, humorless thing.
So be it.
The first clash came without ceremony.
A flicker of motion, a blur of dark iron against dust-laden air, and the thing struck. It’s sword moved in a clean, horizontal arc—a strike meant to cleave a man from collarbone to hip. The air howled in its wake, the force of it enough to buckle lesser men.
But Mydei wasn’t lesser.
He pivoted, a sharp shift of weight, gauntlet snapping up to catch the flat of the blade on his bracer. The impact jarred his bones, a savage tremor racing through his arm to his shoulder, but he held. Sand spat up around their feet as the shock of the blow split the ground between them.
Another strike came without pause.
Vertical this time—a downward cleave meant to split skull and earth alike. Mydei sidestepped, feeling the wind shear past his ear, the edge missing by a breath. He turned with the movement, driving an elbow toward the thing’s side, but it recoiled, faster than something so heavily armored had any right to be.
They separated.
Circled again.
It pressed the attack.
A flurry of wide, arcing blows, each one a measured attempt to box Mydei in, to drive him toward the fractured walls where retreat would mean death. The thing moved like a storm, force without recklessness, its blade carving streaks through the stale air.
Mydei gave ground, not out of fear, but calculation.
He let it come, let each blow fall a hair’s breadth from flesh, his gauntlets intercepting strikes meant to maim, feet sliding through bloodied dust. He marked every step, every twitch of the figure’s shoulders, each shift in weight.
And he waited.
Kremnoans did not fight with mercy.
They fought with patience.
A lifetime of war taught him how to bleed for inches, to turn pain into opportunity. He felt the ache in his wrists, the burn in his ribs where a glancing strike had caught him earlier in the evening, but he endured.
The arena floor sloped. Subtle. Most wouldn’t notice it in the haze of battle, but Mydei knew this ground. He’d bled here before. Knew where the earth dipped, where shattered stone lay hidden beneath the sand.
And the thing was driving him toward it.
Good.
He feigned a stumble—let his right foot catch against a fragment of old marble, his weight faltering for the barest instant. The figure saw it, lunged in with a killing blow, blade aimed high to cleave through collarbone and heart.
The moment it committed, Mydei moved.
Not back—but forward.
He ducked inside the arc of the strike, feeling the blade’s wind cut across his scalp, and drove his gauntleted fist upward, a brutal hook into the thing’s throat where helm met collar. The blow rang against metal, a sharp, cracking sound. It staggered.
Another strike, swift and merciless, hammered into its side. Mydei seized the advantage like a starving wolf, following the first with a second, then a third, each strike designed to cripple, not kill.
The thing reeled back a step.
Not far.
But enough.
Mydei didn’t give it time to recover.
He surged in, striking low, aiming for the knee. A downward hammerfist cracked against the joint, forcing the figure off balance. Dust burst beneath its foot as it shifted awkwardly.
For any other foe, it would have ended there.
But this wasn’t any other foe.
The thing retaliated, a backhanded sweep of its sword that caught Mydei’s ribs, forcing a grunt from between clenched teeth. Pain burst white-hot along his side, but he welcomed it. It meant he was alive. It meant the plan was working.
Momentum shifted.
Mydei drove a boot into the figure’s midsection, forcing it back. The uneven ground betrayed it—a half-buried shard of ancient stone catching its heel. The stumble was slight, but in war, a moment was eternity.
Mydei was already moving.
A low tackle took the thing at the waist, driving it to the bloodstained sand. The sword clattered aside, a streak of dark metal against stone.
For the first time in the long, unending night, Mydei saw the thing falter.
He pinned it there, one gauntlet pressing against its throat, the other cocked for a killing blow.
And in that moment, he looked down into the face—no, the shape—beneath the helm. And something cold in his chest twisted.
Because it was familiar.
In the pull of shared battles, of war-born scars and the strange, bitter camaraderie only those born in strife could bear.
He didn’t speak.
Not yet.
But his fist didn’t fall either.
The thing beneath him lay still, not struggling, Waiting.
The fight had ended, and something else had begun.
Mydei kept his grip firm, one gauntlet braced against the figure’s throat, the other still cocked for a strike that no longer came. His chest rose and fell in steady, ragged pulls, the tang of iron thick on his tongue.
Beneath him, the thing lay still.
Only the faintest flex of muscle beneath blood-slick armor betrayed him, a slow roll of sinew that wasn’t an attempt to rise, but a reminder.
I could, if I wished.
Power in restraint.
They stayed like that, the broken coliseum around them watching in mute witness.
And then, the thing spoke.
“You won this time.”
The voice was rough, scraped raw from disuse or battles fought in the long dark. A cold thing, like winter wind sliding over old bones.
It cut through Mydei sharper than any blade.
His fingers tightened for a fraction of a second, then eased.
“Why are you still here?”
The words snapped from him sharper than intended. A god’s voice, cold and commanding, but carrying something beneath it—not doubt, never that—but unease.
“You’ve had the chance,” Mydei continued. “Kremnos stands empty. Okhema’s walls open. The other heirs bleed on battlefields you’ve yet to touch. And yet you linger. Here.”
The figure didn’t move.
A long breath dragged from its lungs, carrying a weight heavier than armor.
“…Not yet.”
Two words. Cryptic. Heavy.
Not an answer, not truly. But it was more than the silence Mydei expected.
His stomach turned. He cursed himself for caring, cursed the old familiarity gnawing at the edge of his thoughts.
Still, his hand lifted.
Fingers brushed the edge of the mask.
He expected a flinch. A resistance. Some defiance.
There was none.
The helm came away with a slow, grating scrape, like stone dragged over stone. The face beneath was ruin.
White hair, stained with sweat and dried blood. Skin pallid as death, cut with the old lines of war and darker things. One eye a blind, milky-blue void, the other closed. A face the world had long buried. One his blood had known in better days.
Mydei’s breath caught.
It struck like a spear through the ribs. Not surprise—no, he’d suspected. He’d known.
But knowing in blood was different than knowing in thought.
A crack formed in the armor of the god-king. Small. But there.
The lips beneath that ruined face curled, the faintest trace of a smirk. A quiet, bitter thing.
The tension shifted, slipping from the sharp edge of battle into something
Else. Hunger, but not for blood. A need rooted in strife itself, in the marrow-deep knowing of a man shaped for war, staring into the mirror of what he might have become.
Mydei felt it.
The figure beneath him could rise if he chose. Could kill. Could leave.
He wasn’t staying because he was beaten.
He was choosing to.
Because of him.
And that—that was worse.
Mydei’s fury burned in his gut. Revulsion curdled at the back of his throat. And somewhere beneath it, a reluctant want, cruel and ancient, a god’s body remembering a thing his mind despised.
Kremnoans did not refuse strife.
The body wants what the body wants.
And the gods—even gods of strife—were no better.
His gauntlet slid down, fingers tracing the jaw of the man beneath him, half a sneer, half a snarl on his lips.
“You should’ve stayed buried.”
But his hand didn’t pull away.
He should’ve torn that throat out, caved it in, left nothing but ruin where a face had once been. Should’ve driven his fist down and cracked the skull against the blood-darkened stones, the way he’d sworn he would if ever this thing rose from its crystal tomb.
Instead, his palm flattened along that ruin of a cheek, thumb smearing a line of blood across it—not gently, but as if marking a corpse on a battlefield.
And still, the Flame Reaver did not resist.
The silence between them stretched thin and hot, broken only by the ragged rasp of breath and the distant crackle of dying fires beyond the coliseum walls. Overhead, the pale light of dusk bled across the sky, painting everything in shades of blood and iron.
Then Mydei moved.
Like a soldier claiming spoils of war.
There was no care in the motion. Buckles were wrenched, one after another, leather shrieking as it gave beneath brute force. Clothing snapped like brittle sinew, and the sound of shearing metal rang sharp against the hush. Gauntleted fingers made no effort to spare flesh; if the torn clasps cut, if the ruined edges bit into skin, so be it. The bruises that blossomed beneath cold iron were nothing but the consequence of defeat.
A pauldron struck stone with a hollow clang. A belt slid across the floor, catching on broken tile before toppling away. Bits of torn fabric joined them, the clothing peeled away piece by piece, discarded like debris after a siege.
And Mydei’s hands didn’t hesitate. His grip was punishing, leaving welts where he grasped too hard, unmaking a man as one would strip a corpse for valuables.
And all the while, the man beneath him—if man he still was—watched with that same half-lidded gaze, the ghost of a smile ghosting at one split lip. He made no move to stop him.
The last clasp gave with a sharp snap.
Mydei grabbed a fistful of white hair, the strands streaked with sweat and blood, and yanked him forward, forcing him down against the cold, cracked marble. Dust rose in lazy spirals around them as old stones took the weight of bodies long absent from the ring. The ruin of the coliseum bore silent witness.
A low sound broke from Flame Reaver’s throat—not pain. Something rough, guttural, half derision and half invitation.
Mydei’s blood surged at the sound, heat flooding through him in a way he damned and craved all at once.
“You always were a stubborn bastard,” he muttered, his gauntlet pressing hard between the ruined shoulder blades, the cold iron digging into scar-laced skin.
The only reply was a rough, breathless laugh.
Their mouths met, if it could be called that. It wasn’t a kiss. It was a violent, graceless collision, teeth catching lips, splitting skin, the sharp tang of blood flooding between them. Tongues clashed, a rough, feral thing—neither seeking permission nor offering quarter. It was less affection than it was conquest. A soldier’s claim over fallen ground, marking him not with tenderness, but with the smear of blood and the sting of broken flesh.
It took it with a low, guttural sound, part challenge, part submission. That smile still ghosted at the corner of his split lip, even as blood welled there, as if daring him to press harder.
Mydei did.
A gauntleted hand slid up, cold iron against sweat-slicked skin, trailing from collarbone to throat. He pressed his palm flat against the hollow there, fingers splayed, feeling the frantic drum of the pulse beneath. Not enough to choke—not yet. Just enough to remind. To make it clear whose hand held that fragile beat in its grasp.
The pulse hammered against his palm, defiant.
Good.
He squeezed, a subtle flex of steel-clad fingers, tilting Flame Reaver’s head back by the throat, baring his bloodied mouth, the bruising along his jaw. Mydei’s gaze raked over him, no softness in it. This wasn’t reverence. It was hunger and hatred braided so tightly together they were indistinguishable.
“You bleed like a man,” Mydei muttered against his lips quietly.
Another savage meeting of mouths—all sharp teeth and bruising force. Flame Reaver’s tongue met his again, reckless, unyielding.
And all the while, the gauntlet at his throat stayed firm. A silent promise. A wordless threat.
Move, and it tightens.
Beg, and it won’t loosen.
He wrenched his hand from the ruined throat, fingers trailing down over sweat-slick skin, tracing the curve of the collarbone, the heave of the chest still rising.
Mydei spat into his gauntleted palm, the crude sound sharp in the charged hush.
His free hand gripped the Reaver’s hip, bruising, dragging him up against the cold stone of the pillar once more. The other worked between them, fingers rough, slicking with little more than spit and the mingled heat of blood. The stretch was unforgiving, careless, a slow cruel slide meant to ready, not to ease. The hitch in its breath when Mydei’s fingers breached him was sharp, a shudder that traveled up his spine and made his head fall back against the column.
Mydei’s gaze drank it in.
He worked his fingers in, scissoring, pressing deeper, curling once just to hear the hitched breath that followed—an involuntary twitch, a faint, damning arch of the hips.
“Still stubborn,” he mused, more to himself than to the man in his grasp.
The muscles clamped tight, resisting and yielding in equal measure. Each thrust of his fingers was impatient, purposeful, no pause to savor, no tenderness to soften the edge of it. He pressed deeper, the drag of calloused fingertips rough against sensitive flesh, until the body before him trembled with unwilling anticipation.
And then he pulled his hand away, wiped it crudely on the other’s thigh, and positioned himself.
No more words. The time for those had passed.
The Flame Reaver shifted against the pillar, the grind of bruised flesh on old marble sending a harsh scrape into the quiet. He adjusted his stance—hips tilting back just enough, feet braced against broken stone, offering without surrender. The pose spoke of a man long accustomed to pain, and Mydei hated the heat it stoked in his gut.
He stepped closer, one hand rough at the small of the Reaver’s back, pressing him in place. His other hand reached down, gauntlet dragging over the curve of his ass, parting him with an unceremonious grip. Mydei’s breath caught in his throat at the sight—the rawness, the ruined stretch of heat and pulse, already glistening from his spit-slick prep.
Not enough.
He spat again, directly onto the slick entrance, watching the thick string land with a wet, obscene sound. It shone in the flickering torchlight, slicking down over sensitive flesh. The way Flame Reaver’s body twitched beneath it, that involuntary shudder, sent a jolt straight to Mydei’s cock.
“You’ll spread wider than this,” Mydei said, one gauntleted hand forcing a thigh open with bruising strength, pressing his knee between them to wedge the other leg apart. The angle was cruel, excessive, forcing the Reaver’s stance too wide for comfort—but his body obeyed, despite the smoldering glare he shot over his shoulder.
That made it worse. Better.
Mydei’s palm dragged down, thumbs parting him open, savoring the sight of that stretched, flushed heat, the soft flex around nothing, still wanting, still prepared to take him in. A rough, possessive satisfaction burned in his chest.
“If you’re going to spread,” he muttered against the back of his neck, breath hot, “do it properly.”
The body before him, for all its stubbornness, answered. A twitch. A subtle parting. Even now, it remembered him—or at least what this felt like.
It was enough.
Mydei lined himself up with a low, ragged exhale, the thick head of his cock nudging against the stretched, glistening rim. But he didn’t push in—not yet. The heat there was maddening, the tight quiver of the other’s body straining to keep from shifting, from bracing too soon. Mydei let his hips roll forward, grinding the length of himself along the cleft of the Reaver’s ass, letting the slick smear of precome mark him in slow, heavy drags.
The sensation pulled a sharp breath from Flame Reaver, one he barely bothered to muffle.
Mydei gritted his teeth. His gauntleted hand clamped down on a bruised hip, holding him in place, as he drew his cock back and pressed the tip again to that waiting entrance—only to pull away and drag it back up the crease, leaving wet heat in its wake. The teasing wasn’t gentle. It was calculated, cruel in its own way, the steady friction of sensitive flesh against flesh.
He ground forward again, pressing the head against him, feeling the rim give slightly under the pressure without letting him in, savoring the twitch of muscle and that shallow, unwilling sound Flame Reaver made—something between a stifled curse and a half-swallowed gasp.
Mydei let his cock slap against him once, twice. The sharp, wet sound echoed in the quiet, filthy and mean. His eyes drank in the sight: the way the other’s body clenched and flexed on instinct, chasing the contact even if his expression stayed hard and unyielding.
He rolled his hips again, letting his cock slide through the mess he’d made, feeling the heat, the slickness, marking him with every grind.
“Godslayer,” Flame Reaver rasped—just his title.
Mydei’s stomach twisted. He didn’t answer.
Instead, he pressed forward one last time, the tip catching on that slick, stretched rim—and this time, he didn’t stop.
The head of Mydei’s cock pressed firm against the stretched, spit-slick entrance, the heat of it obscene in the cool of the coliseum’s ruined heart. He let it rest there, savoring the taut clutch of muscle, the way it resisted and yielded in the same trembling breath. It’s body was too disciplined to beg—but it didn’t need to. The tell was in the tight hitch of breath, the minute drag of hips trying not to rise.
Mydei spat another wordless curse and drove in.
Slow, brutal, a relentless claiming. Inch by unforgiving inch, he forced himself deeper, the stretch near-bloody, the thick drag of his cock sinking into that narrow, willing heat. The sensation of it—wet, tight, choking around him—made his jaw flex, a guttural sound scraping from his throat.
He watched it happen. Watched his cock vanish inside the body he had no right to touch, gauntlet biting hard into Flame Reaver’s hip until the skin mottled purple-black. The other man’s breath stuttered, a sharp, involuntary catch that made Mydei’s lip curl.
“Still,” he griped, voice a rasp against sweat-damp flesh.
And then he moved. Pulled out near to the head, the drag slow and obscene, before slamming back in, the wet slap of flesh on flesh splitting the air like a war drum. The force of it jarred Flame Reaver’s body forward, a low, choked grunt ripped from his throat.
Again.
And again.
Punishing, relentless, hips driving forward in ruthless rhythm, the sounds of skin meeting skin, the ragged scrape of breath, the guttural weight of a man claiming another.
A hoarse, almost amused sound broke from him, teeth bared. “Is this what you call conquest, Strife-born?”
Mydei’s reply was a savage thrust, hips snapping forward hard enough to make the other man’s breath stutter. He grabbed both hips, hauling them up, adjusting the angle. The next plunge drove deep—deeper, grinding cruelly against a spot that made Flame Reaver’s back arch, muscles seizing around him.
Found it.
Mydei’s gaze sharpened, dark heat flaring. Every motion honed for it now, every brutal snap of hips grinding into that same vulnerable place. The tight body shuddered, unable to hold fully still, small, damning movements betraying what the mouth wouldn’t.
“That’s it,” Mydei breathed, low and rough, teeth scraping along a sweat-slick shoulder. “Right there.”
And he didn’t stop. Wouldn’t. Not while he could feel the pulse beating frantic beneath flesh, not while the ancient stones bore witness, not while the man beneath him—god, monster, lost thing—bled like a man and took him like one too.
The relentless rhythm of Mydei’s hips didn’t falter as he forced the Reaver forward, the wet slap of flesh against flesh echoing off the hollow stone of the ruined coliseum. Each thrust drove deeper, stretching the tight heat around him further, the kind of stretch that a body wasn’t meant to take—and yet, it did. Obedient in spite of itself.
The heat of it, the obscene drag of his cock buried deep, had his breath stopping in his throat. The sound of it should’ve shamed him, but it only made him drive harder. His gauntleted hand stayed at one hip, bruising, the other trailing up over sweat-slick skin—rough, impatient, smearing sweat and blood alike as he fucked into him.
And then his thumb found it.
A scar.
Not a new one. Old, half-faded beneath sweat and grime. A thin, pale line dragged beneath the ribs—a wound left on another battlefield, in another life. One that only a brother-in-arms would know. His thumb ghosted over it, slower than it should have. A pause. A sharp, hot twist in his gut.
His rhythm faltered for half a breath.
It shouldn’t be you.
He ground his teeth hard enough he tasted iron. His grip tightened, nails digging into skin. The name rose sharp and unbidden, sticking behind his teeth like a blade heated white-hot.
Phai—
He slammed his hips forward, the brutal pace returning. Not to punish the man beneath him, but to punish himself. He grabbed a fistful of hair at the nape and yanked Flame Reaver’s head back, forcing their gazes to lock.
And there it was.
That face. A ruin of what it had been. White hair plastered to a bloodied brow. Eyes like dead ice, but still alight with something far too familiar. He hated how his own pulse skipped. Hated how his cock throbbed harder inside that traitorous body.
Creature.
Reaver.
You.
Never the name.
Without a word, Mydei shoved him forward again, a harsh grip at the nape, forcing him down onto the cracked marble slab near the coliseum’s shattered dais. Once a crowning altar for Kremnoan kings, now abandoned to dust and blood. A fitting place to bury old gods.
He drove Flame Reaver’s chest against it, forcing his hips up, legs splayed wide, the harsh angle making the tight stretch of his body even more vicious. Mydei didn’t want to see his face anymore. Didn’t want to look, to think, to remember.
The head of his cock dragged out slick and aching before slamming back in, the slap obscene, the wet drag of overworked flesh so slick now it bordered on ruin. Every thrust punched a ragged breath from Flame Reaver’s lungs. Still silent. Still normal in every taut line—but the tremors gave him away.
Mydei’s breath raked out rough.
This was no conquest. No cleansing. This was the kind of sacrilege men once cut out their own tongues to forget.
He stayed there a moment, buried to the root, the thick line of his cock twitching inside that vice-tight heat. Mydei’s chest heaved, sweat streaking the scarred lines of his throat, his teeth clenched so hard his jaw ached. The altar’s stone edge bit cruelly into the Reaver’s hips, leaving raw scrapes beneath bloodied skin, but he didn’t move to ease it. Didn’t dare.
Instead, Mydei watched. Watched the way the Reaver’s body gripped him, greedy and obscene, the slick evidence of it glistening down the insides of those trembling thighs. A ruinous sight. Vile and perfect.
He spat down between them again—a string of it catching where their bodies met—before dragging his thumb along the stretched, flushed rim of that slick entrance, just to feel it flutter around him. The whimper it pulled was muffled against a bloodied forearm. The Reaver wouldn’t give him a word. Wouldn’t beg. Wouldn’t name him.
Coward.
Something snapped after that. He grabbed a fistful of sweat-slick hair and yanked the Reaver’s head back hard, forcing his cheek to scrape against crumbling stone.
“Would you look at that,” he breathed, voice low, almost absent. “What a mess you’ve made of yourself.”
And then he started to move.
Not a rhythm—not at first. Just one brutal, splitting thrust, then another, savoring the way each savage drive shoved the Reaver’s hips forward, half-spilling him off the altar’s edge. The Reaver scrabbled for purchase, palms blood-slick and slipping against ancient, cracked stone.
But Mydei didn’t relent.
He dragged his free hand down that sweat-shining spine, nails leaving stinging trails, then gripped the Reaver’s hip hard enough to bruise. The next thrust was worse. Deeper. Obscene. Flesh clapping against flesh, the sound of it echoing off the ruined walls, a hymn of filth in a dead place.
And the way that battered hole took him—still so fucking tight, even after all of it—it nearly broke him.
“Bet you’d stay like this if I left you,” Mydei mouthed against the back of his neck, teeth grazing the skin there before biting down. Hard. The Reaver jerked beneath him, a ragged, wordless noise escaping. “Split open, waiting. Like you don’t know how to be anything else.”
Still no name.
Coward.
The pace quickened then—merciless, pounding thrusts that made the altar groan and the Reaver’s body jolt with every brutal snap of hips. Mydei’s hand clamped between those thighs again, fingers seeking, finding the weeping length there, slick with leaking need despite every curse spat into the dust.
He stroked him once. Twice.
“Look at this,” he said, almost to himself. “Pitiful.”
His hand tightened in the Reaver’s hair, wrenching his head back, throat bared, teeth gritted, a man caught between agony and want.
And Mydei—gods help him—leaned in, lips brushing the shell of his ear, the taste of blood on his tongue.
Say it, he thought.
Say my name.
But neither of them were brave enough for that.
So he fucked him harder.
The altar’s stone groaned beneath them, every brutal snap of Mydei’s hips sending the Reaver lurching forward, barely catching himself on blood-slicked palms. Flesh clapped against flesh, a merciless rhythm, wet and obscene, the air thick with sweat, blood, and the scent of sex.
And then—then—a sound. Not the muffled whimpers swallowed against an arm, not the raw scrape of breath through clenched teeth.
A word.
“Please…” the Reaver gasped, voice wrecked, hoarse from grinding moans into crumbling stone. It wasn’t a beg. Not quite. Not for mercy. Not for more. Just a sound, a crack in the armor, a shard of something unspoken breaking loose.
Mydei’s stomach twisted.
Could’ve ignored it. Should’ve. But he didn’t.
Instead, his hand slid from tangled hair to the Reaver’s jaw, rough fingers prying it open. He drove forward hard, a savage thrust that made the Reaver’s whole body jolt, and shoved two blood-slick fingers past trembling lips, pushing deep until they caught at the back of his throat. The Reaver gagged around them, choked on a ragged moan, hips bucking back into the relentless pace.
“Don’t,” Mydei said, voice rough, splintering at the edges. His teeth grazed bloodied skin, breath shuddering. “Just… don’t.”
It’s barely a command. More a plea dressed in ruin.
He kept fucking into him, merciless now, brutal, each thrust a bone-jarring collision, the Reaver’s body arching, trying to take it, trying not to. That battered, stretched entrance clung to him with every drag of his cock, greedy and helpless, and gods, the way it rippled, spasmed, obscene around the thick length buried in it—it nearly broke him.
Fingers still crammed between parted lips, Mydei forced them deeper, felt the hot, wet heat of the Reaver’s tongue, the helpless, involuntary way he sucked around them, desperate for air, for sound, for something. His breath hitched against Mydei’s hand, choked, a muffled curse or prayer lost between those calloused knuckles.
The relentless rhythm didn’t falter.
Flesh smacking, bodies colliding, sweat and spit and blood. The Reaver’s thighs trembled, muscles straining, every brutal snap of Mydei’s hips forcing desperate sounds past his throat even around those invading fingers. His cock—untouched, forgotten between his thighs—leaked against stone, a slick, steady drip of proof.
It was filthy. It was godless. And it was perfect.
Then it happened.
The Reaver’s whole body went tight, a violent, sudden spasm around the thick line of Mydei’s cock. No warning, no permission, no touch to coax it. He came—a dragged-out, ruinous release, shuddering and helpless, his seed striping the altar’s bloodstained surface, hips jerking back and forth, caught between wanting to escape and wanting to bury himself deeper onto the thick heat splitting him open.
Mydei felt it. Felt the way that battered hole clenched around him, spasmed again, milking him, trying to drag him over the edge with it. The pulse of it nearly undid him.
He pulled his fingers free from the Reaver’s mouth, slick with spit, and dragged them down his jaw, leaving a smear of wetness and blood.
“Could’ve held out,” Mydei muttered low against his ear, a bitter, almost fond edge to it. “Guess not.”
And he didn’t stop.
Kept moving, unrelenting, punishing, pounding into the oversensitive, trembling wreck of him, chasing something neither of them would name.
The Reaver’s breath hitched, another choked sound clawing free—half agony, half want.
Mydei’s chest ached. He closed his eyes.
Didn’t say his name.
Just drove in harder.
The Reaver was ruined. Spent and trembling, breath ragged against bloodstained stone, his thighs slick with a mess of sweat, spit, and the obscene aftermath of his own body’s betrayal. Mydei didn’t ease up. Didn’t grant mercy. The pace stayed brutal, relentless, the punishing drag of thick flesh through abused muscle making the Reaver flinch and jerk with every thrust.
And gods, the way it felt now—so tight, so slick, clinging to him like it wanted to keep him there, swallow him whole, drag every last drop from him. Every snap of his hips made wet, lewd sounds echo off the dead walls, a chorus of filth in a place meant for prayer.
Mydei’s hand splayed across the small of the Reaver’s back, pinning him down as he chased the edge. His stomach tightened, a low, deep burn coiling in his gut, thick and inevitable. Sweat poured down his chest, catching in the hollow of his throat, the sharp cut of his jaw. His jaw clenched, teeth bared, eyes locked on the ruin of the Reaver’s body swallowing him down with each ruthless thrust.
And the sounds—gods above, the sounds.
Half-choked whimpers. The scrape of nails against stone. That soft, desperate gasp every time the thick line of his cock bottomed out inside, hilting hard, forcing the Reaver’s body to take every inch whether it wanted to or not.
It was too much.
He leaned in again, lips against sweat-damp skin, teeth scraping the shell of a reddened ear. His voice was a rasp, torn from a throat raw with restraint.
“Gonna leave you full of me,” Mydei murmured, voice low and distant, as though speaking of something already done. “Mark you so deep you’ll carry it long after I’m gone.”
He felt the Reaver’s whole body tense again at the words, another helpless spasm around him. Mydei bit down on the curve of his shoulder, deep enough to bruise, to mark, to claim. And it was that—that broken, strangled gasp that slipped free when his teeth sank in—that wrecked him.
The snap of his hips turned savage. Desperate. A low, guttural sound tore from his chest as the pressure coiled tight, blinding and sharp, a wildfire in his blood.
And then—it broke.
His cock pulsed deep inside, thick spurts of heat spilling into the bruised, wrecked heat of the Reaver’s body. Mydei’s breath hitched, a raw growl breaking past clenched teeth, his hand fisting so tight in sweat-drenched hair it made the Reaver’s head jerk back.
Every pulse, every obscene spurt dragged a fresh wave of unbearable pleasure through him, his body shuddering with it. He didn’t stop moving, didn’t let up, driving it deeper with every twitch of his hips, forcing every last drop from himself until he was empty, wrung out, lost.
The altar groaned. The Reaver made a noise like a man drowning.
Mydei slumped forward, his sweat-slick chest against the curve of a bloodied spine, panting raggedly, his pulse a war drum in his throat.
Didn’t say a word.
Didn’t have to.
The mess between them spoke well enough.
It should’ve ended there.
It didn’t.
Mydei pulled out slow—a thick, wet sound between their bodies, a shudder rolling through the Reaver so sharp it bordered on a sob. But the moment the head of his cock slipped free, Mydei’s hand was already dragging down sweat-slick thighs, forcing them open wider. Spreading him again.
He was still hard.
Already thickening again, blood pumping brutal and unrelenting through a body built for war. Built for this.
And the Reaver knew it.
“Fucking hell,” Flame Reaver rasped, voice frayed and shredded against bloodied stone, his legs twitching, hips jerking as if to flee. As if there was anywhere to go.
There wasn’t.
Mydei caught him by the hips again, dragging him back with a brute’s ease. The head of his cock pressed slick and obscene against that battered entrance, still leaking. Still hot. The Reaver flinched, a sound torn from his throat that wasn’t a word, wasn’t a plea, wasn’t anything but raw, animal noise.
And then Mydei drove back in.
The Reaver bucked, his voice cracking in a choked snarl. “Fucking—bastard, Mydei—”
The name cracked in the air, half-formed, aborted before it could break into meaning. Mydei’s eyes darkened, his pulse a thunderous warbeat in his ears.
A sick, ugly satisfaction gnawed at his gut.
Almost.
He didn’t stop.
Time blurred after that. A haze of filthy, relentless motion. Mydei fucked him through the broken remnants of the first orgasm, through the trembling overstimulation, through the curses spat into cracked stone. He felt the Reaver’s body tighten around him again, another climax wrung from battered flesh, an involuntary thing—the spasms too sharp, the sounds too wrecked.
Still, Mydei didn’t stop.
His hand slid down, fisting around the Reaver’s jaw, forcing two fingers between gasping lips again, stifling the wrecked, desperate sounds before they could split the air. Before they could ruin him.
Because if he heard them properly—if he heard his own name from those lips in that voice—it would finish him.
He couldn’t afford that.
So he kept the pace merciless. Brutal. A war of flesh and blood and sin against stone. The Reaver’s body sagged beneath him, trembling, raw.
Almost.
If he pushed just a little harder, drove a little deeper, fucked him just a little further into the dark, maybe that word would fall.
But it never did.
And by the time Mydei finally slowed, sweat-soaked and wrecked, every inch of him aching, breath a ragged rasp, the altar was streaked with blood and sweat and worse, and the Reaver lay limp beneath him, the shape of his back rising and falling like the broken bellows of a dying forge.
A long, ugly silence hung there.
Mydei pulled out at last, a final slick sound in the dead air. The mess of them smeared down the inside of the Reaver’s thighs. His own cock still slick, twitching, overstimulated to pain.
He said nothing.
Just stood there, chest heaving, eyes fixed on the ruin he’d made.
His hand moved before thought could catch it—fingers brushing sweat-matted hair from the Reaver’s cheek, tracing the bloodied line of a split lip. A touch too soft for what had just happened. A mercy neither of them had earned.
The Reaver flinched. Or maybe he didn’t.
Mydei didn’t stop.
Slow, careful, he eased the ruined body onto its back. The Reaver’s breath hitched, ragged and shallow, eyes slitted but still burning with the stubborn, impossible spark that had made this unbearable from the start.
He should’ve left then.
Instead, Mydei knelt, the dust of the altar scraping his knees. He bowed his head, pressing his brow against the Reaver’s for a long, unsteady moment. Their sweat mingled, the copper tang of blood thick between them.
His fingers found the Reaver’s hand, filthy and shaking, and laced their hands together. Another sin.
Neither spoke.
But then—ragged, frayed, voice wrecked to something raw and scorched—the Reaver managed it. A promise. Not a curse, not a plea.
A vow.
“I’ll haunt you for this,” the Reaver whispered, a ghost’s voice in a ruined throat.
And gods help him—
Mydei almost smiled.
You already do.