The year was 1792, and the woods of Vorthrane whispered secrets older than the empires that had crumbled before them. Beneath blood-hued moonlight, a storm of silence settled like a velvet noose over the cursed land. Somewhere within those ancient, snarling trees, something breathed—a hunger cloaked in flesh and lust.

Tae stood on the steps of the abandoned monastery, his cloak soaked through with the rain of centuries. His eyes, molten silver in the moon’s reflection, betrayed nothing of the massacre he’d orchestrated just hours ago. Blood still stained his gloves. The village below would wake to screams and ash.

But Tae was not waiting for screams. He was waiting for him.

Thunder cracked as Kook emerged from the shadows, as silent as the death that followed him. Drenched and barefoot, his shirt torn open and chest painted with the claw marks of another conquest. He looked like sin molded into man—part wild, part ghost.

“You’re late,” Tae murmured, voice silked in venom.

Kook tilted his head, revealing the jagged bite on his throat that was still healing. “You’ve slaughtered your way through a chapel just to remind me how little time means to you?”

Tae smiled. It was the kind of smile that didn’t touch the eyes. “I had to prepare the altar.”

Kook’s nose twitched—he could smell the blood. Priests, nuns, acolytes. All drained. All arranged in a grotesque circle inside the church.

Tae turned and walked inside, not checking if Kook followed. Of course he would. That was the nature of their curse—drawn to each other like blades to flesh.

Inside, candlelight flickered, illuminating the horror of Tae’s work. The bodies were not strewn; they were art. Limbs arranged like petals, faces locked in silent screams. And in the center, the altar draped in black silk. An offering plate lay empty.

“You’ve outdone yourself,” Kook muttered, stepping past the threshold. “Even for a vampire.”

Tae sat upon the altar, one leg crossed over the other, watching the werewolf with a gaze heavy enough to pin a man. “You said you’d offer me a heart.”

Kook chuckled darkly. “Didn’t say it’d be mine.”

Lightning sliced the sky. In the silence that followed, tension crackled, electric and furious.

They had met a hundred years ago on the battlefield of Vienne—Tae, the vampire prince with an empire of shadows; Kook, the bastard-born alpha of a dying bloodline. The war between their kinds had never truly ended. They’d burned cities together, hunted kings, and destroyed each other again and again.

But it was this—these meetings under cursed moons, this dance of destruction and desire—that neither could abandon.

“You smell like her,” Tae said suddenly, standing. “The witch.”

Kook’s lips curled. “Jealousy, Tae? Didn’t think your heart beat at all.”

“I ripped it from a cardinal this morning. Wanted to see if it fit.”

Tae moved closer, steps silent, until they stood inches apart. Kook didn’t flinch when the vampire touched his throat, tracing the fading bite mark.

“You’re healing too quickly,” Tae whispered. “She’s feeding you spells.”

“And you’re starving yourself again. Does the blood not satisfy anymore?”

“Only yours.”

Kook grabbed Tae’s wrist, crushing it hard enough to snap bone—but Tae didn’t react. Not physically. His eyes darkened. Pleased.

“You’ll never own me,” Kook snarled, voice low and shaking.

“I already do,” Tae whispered, and kissed him.

It wasn’t soft. It wasn’t even human. It was a collision of hunger and fury, of claws scraping against marble hearts. Kook shoved him back against the altar, and for a moment, the chapel filled with something unholy—not quite love, not quite hate. Something far worse.

Tae’s laugh was muffled against Kook’s mouth. “Go ahead, little wolf. Mark me. See what happens.”

Kook’s hands were at Tae’s throat now, claws half-formed, lips still wet with the taste of him. “One day I’ll rip out your spine and feed it to your own fledglings.”

“And I’ll resurrect myself through your blood,” Tae said, tilting his head in offering. “Again. And again.”

Thunder struck once more. Outside, the wind howled like a dying god.

And inside, amidst corpses and candlelight, two monsters writhed in the oldest covenant of all—power, pain, and desire. Neither lover, nor enemy, but something blacker than both.

---

The bodies on the floor hadn’t cooled yet, and already, the walls pulsed with something ancient.

The chapel was still. Sacred in the way that desecration can sometimes be—ritualistic, reverent, reeking of sweat and blood and need. A sacrilege so perfectly curated, even the gods held their breath.

Kook hadn’t moved, even after he shoved Tae against the blood-slick altar. His claws were half-shifted, bone cracking beneath skin, a body caught between forms—between beast and man, between domination and desire. It was always like this with Tae. He brought out the in-between. The unfinished. The cursed.

“You reek of madness,” Kook said, voice deep and shredded at the edges.

Tae licked blood from his own lip. “Good. Then we match.”

Outside, the rain returned—slamming against the ruined stained glass, blurring the grotesque saints that watched from the broken windows. Each face marred. Each judgment erased.

Tae moved again, and Kook let him.

He slid off the altar with grace that belied his nature, trailing gloved fingers across the corpse of a nun whose mouth had been sewn shut. Her rosary was missing. Tae had given it to Kook years ago after ripping it from the neck of a child prophet. Kook had thrown it into a river.

“You could have brought me something more valuable than a massacre,” Kook muttered.

Tae turned slowly. “I brought you myself.”

That was the worst part—because it was true.

Every time they met, Tae unraveled. He spilled himself out, an offering neither asked for nor deserved. He bled for Kook. He begged in silence. But never once did he call it love. Never once did he bow.

And Kook hated that he wanted to be worshipped by him anyway.

“I should tear your throat out and be done with it.”

Tae’s smile returned—slower this time, quieter. “You won’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because even your gods need monsters to kneel to.”

For a moment, neither moved. And then the candlelight flickered, casting shadows on the far wall.

A third presence had entered the chapel.

It was subtle at first—like a shift in gravity, or a soundless scream pressed against the ribs of the earth. The corpses twitched. The air grew heavy. And the altar began to weep blood from its edges.

Kook turned sharply, instinct flashing.

Tae only laughed.

“You brought it here,” Kook growled. “The blood-thing. The one you sealed under Verona.”

“I didn’t bring it. I freed it.”

“You insane bastard—”

“You called me a monster,” Tae said, walking toward him again. “So I thought, why not make it official?”

The thing in the chapel was old. Older than their kinds. It had no shape, only hunger. It fed on the blood of sacred things. Priests, oracles, kings. And now, it stirred again—awakened by the scent of forbidden intimacy.

“Are you trying to summon it?” Kook asked, voice suddenly lower. Dangerous. “Or feed it?”

“I want it to watch.”

Kook’s eyes flared gold.

Tae stopped just in front of him. The air between them buzzed. The thing in the shadows hissed its approval.

“I want you,” Tae said, soft now. “And I want to break you where it can see.”

Kook surged forward, grabbing Tae by the throat and slamming him against the wall. The stones cracked. Candlelight trembled. The thing watching from the crypt’s edge purred.

“You want to be destroyed that badly?” Kook hissed.

“No,” Tae gasped, still smiling. “I want to be remembered.”

And then they collided again.

This time, it wasn’t a kiss. It was a war. Tongues like blades. Teeth against skin. Hands hungry enough to tear flesh. And underneath it all, the altar bled.

Kook bit into Tae’s lip hard enough to draw blood. Tae moaned, delighted.

“You taste like ash.”

“You taste like something dying.”

Behind them, the darkness in the chapel shifted. The thing wasn’t just watching now—it was wanting. It wrapped itself in their hunger like a second skin.

Tae pulled Kook close, lips brushing his ear.

“If we keep going, it’ll mark us.”

“It already has.”

At that, Tae faltered—for the first time, the smile slipped. “You let it mark you?”

“I let you mark me,” Kook whispered. “And now I belong to nothing.”

Tae’s grip on Kook’s waist tightened, possessive. Furious. Reverent.

He pressed their foreheads together. “Then let’s give it something worth remembering.”

And they did.

On that altar, surrounded by the dead and watched by the thing that should not be named, the vampire prince and the cursed wolf enacted their own unholy sacrament. Pleasure laced with pain. Hate tangled with hunger. It was not love.

It was something deeper.

The start of ruin.

The temple was carved into the bones of a mountain no map remembered. It breathed like a living thing—walls pulsing with old blood, ceilings dripping with whispers. No light, save for the violet flames licking up from bone-fed braziers. Time didn't live here. Only prophecy.

Tae walked barefoot through the offering hall, robes dragging through sacred ash. His heartbeat was still. The dead didn’t need rhythm.

He had traveled through seven hells to reach this place. Walked blindfolded across plague-swallowed cities, traded a choir of children’s voices for the map etched on a madman’s tongue. All for this moment.

Behind him, the doors sealed with a sound like a breath being buried alive.

She waited in the center—an oracle of flesh and shadow, veiled in silk soaked with moonwater and martyr’s blood. Her eyes were sewn shut with thread made from angel sinew. Her mouth was not.

He knelt.

She did not move.

"Speak," Tae commanded.

"I do not speak for you," she rasped. "I speak through you."

Tae’s lips curled. “Then speak through me.”

She laughed—dry and dark, like old parchment catching fire. “You smell like grave dust and spoiled divinity. Perfect.”

She reached out, her hands trembling—though not from fear. Her fingers trailed over his face, tracing the curve of cheekbones that had once belonged to a prince before they were carved hollow by time and hunger.

“The wolf prince comes,” she said. “He who was born under the black moon, teeth first, screaming.”

“I know him,” Tae replied. “I know his scream.”

Her smile was obscene. “You will taste him before you kill him. He will mark you before you ruin him. And in the end—he will kneel.”

Tae’s pupils flared. “He would rather die.”

“He will die,” the oracle said. “But first, he will beg.”

Her hand—trembling and wrong in its angles—rose and pressed to her own throat. “You will fuck him where gods once prayed. He will choke on your name.”

Heat coiled low in Tae’s stomach. A rare thing. Dangerous.

“And after?”

“After,” she whispered, “you will break the world for him.”

The fire dimmed. The walls of the temple grew closer—tight, oppressive, hungry.

“And what of me?” Tae asked. “Do I get to survive?”

“No,” she said. “But you will matter.”

A silence bloomed, vast and terrible.

He moved closer.

When Tae touched her, her skin was fevered—too hot, too alive. Her lips opened wider, and not all the teeth inside were human. Still, he kissed her. A gift. A threat. A promise to come true. A prayer meant for ruin.

When he pulled away, his mouth was not his anymore.

It tasted of wolves.

He staggered back.

The oracle laughed softly, almost kindly. “Your tongue will remember him, long after your name has turned to ash.”

“And his?” Tae asked, licking blood from his lips.

“He will carry your madness in his marrow,” she said. “And long after your corpse stops bleeding, he will still love you wrong.”

Behind her veil, the oracle smiled. Her sewn eyes leaked black ichor down her cheeks.

“There is no fate,” she whispered. “Only desire that refuses to die.”

Then she reached into her own mouth, pulled free a single fang—elongated, dark as obsidian—and placed it in his hand.

“Give him this when the stars go silent,” she said. “He’ll know what it means.”

Tae bowed once, not out of reverence.

But because a part of him—the part not yet monstrous—was afraid.

---