The night was swollen with heat, the kind that clung to the skin like a fever. The moon, red-veined and swollen, hung over the ruined chapel, bleeding its light through shattered stained glass.

She stood at the altar where a hundred vows had been broken, her chest rising and falling with desperate breath, lips trembling—not from fear, but from the hunger that had been gnawing her hollow for weeks.

He came to her from the shadows, not walking, not human, but unfurling like smoke through a crack in the air. Horns caught the moonlight in cruel arcs, and his eyes… molten amber, dripping fire and promise. She should have fled. She should have prayed. Instead she whispered, “I’ve waited.”

His smile was knives hidden in silk. “And now you offer yourself.”

She nodded once, throat tight. The covenant had a price—blood, body, soul. She had known it since the first time his voice slid into her dreams like velvet wrapping a blade. But the ache in her heart, the empty nights, the way mortal love had left her raw and torn—it had all led here. To him. To this.

When he reached her, his hands were cold, talons tracing her jaw as if carving his claim. He leaned down, lips brushing hers in a ghost of a touch. “A kiss,” he murmured, voice curling in her ear like smoke. “It begins with a kiss, and ends with everything.”

She didn’t hesitate. Her lips crashed against his, wild and bloody, teeth scraping, mouth opening to him like a wound. It was no mortal kiss—it burned. Fire seared her veins, claws raked down her spine, and something inside her cracked open. The air shuddered with it, the chapel walls groaning as if the stones themselves felt the covenant seal.

Her knees buckled, but his arms caught her, cruel and tender all at once. He drank from her lips, and when he pulled back, she was gasping, pupils blown wide, body trembling.

“Mine now,” he growled, low and final, pressing his forehead to hers. “Your heart, your blood, your last breath—I will have them all.”

And still, she whispered back, with all the fire she could summon: “Take me.”

The covenant was bound.

The Woman

Her name…, Seraphine, a cruel irony for a girl who fell into hell’s embrace.

She is mortal, but not ordinary. She walks through her days with shadows clinging, eyes a little too restless, lips a little too red.

People whisper that she is strange, that she does not sleep, that sometimes she speaks to herself in church pews when she thinks no one is watching. But the truth is worse: she dreams of him every night.

In those dreams, she always stands in front of the broken altar—the one she later dares to step into in the waking world. The demon appears as if he has always been waiting.

He does not kiss her mouth in those dreams, no, he parts her hair, tilts her head, and bites deep into the same hollow of her neck. The puncture burns, the blood drips, but instead of pain, it fills her with a shuddering, unbearable ecstasy. When she wakes, her neck tingles, sometimes bruised, as if the dream lingers in flesh.

Each time the bite returns, the mark grows darker, until she begins hiding it beneath scarves and high collars. She knows what it means, even before she admits it—he has claimed her. Her soul is a map, and he has already drawn the route.

By the time she stands before the altar in waking life, she is not just curious or desperate. She is obsessed. Half-devoured already. The kiss is only the final surrender, the last act to seal what was decided in her sleep.

Seraphine’s Story

Her father was a demon hunter, sworn to the blade, bound by sacred rites, a man of iron faith who carved his name into the underworld one kill at a time. Her mother… was no innocent.

A demoness, born of fire and shadow, who for one reckless span of nights tasted love instead of hunger. Their union was blasphemy, a fleeting flame, and yet from it came Seraphine.

But curses do not forgive. Her father was torn apart by the very thing he hunted—a demon greater than his strength. Her mother, hunted down by her father’s brethren, met her end beneath steel sanctified with holy water. Neither side claimed their daughter. She grew up among mortals, half-hidden, half-watched, carrying bloodlines that sang to one another like clashing swords.

She grew restless young, plagued with feverish dreams that began at her twelfth year. Always the altar. Always the crimson moon. Always him. The demon who lingered at the edge of her bed as she slept, his form perfect and terrible, whispering her name.

He never kissed her lips in those visions, never spoke of love. No. He would brush her hair aside, exposing the pale column of her neck, and then—sink his teeth into her.

The first bite made her scream awake, hands clawing at her throat. She thought it was a nightmare, until she saw the bruise forming in the mirror, dark like the press of lips, sharp like twin punctures.

Each night it returned. Each night the bite sank deeper. Each night she woke more hollowed out, more trembling with desire she couldn’t name.

Her classmates teased her about the scarves she wore even in summer. They didn’t know she wasn’t hiding acne or a love bite from some boy—they didn’t know her lover came from shadows, and his mark was darker than sin.

And with every dream, she felt herself slipping further. Sometimes, when she looked in the mirror, her pupils swelled wide, swallowing color, as if the demon’s fire lived in her. Sometimes her heartbeat stuttered and she wondered if her blood was still human at all.

By the time she walked to the ruined chapel, it wasn’t a choice anymore. It was compulsion, obsession, destiny. She wasn’t coming to meet him—she was coming to surrender what was already his.

The Demon

He is not the first demon her father hunted. He is not the demon who killed her father. He is something worse: patient. Ancient. A predator who understood that the sweetest meat is marinated in longing.

His horns are black obsidian, curving like crescents, his wings vast and leathery, unfurling like storm clouds. His voice is velvet on one word, thunder on the next. He smells of smoke and iron, of blood spilt on stone.

But his habits are intimate, cruelly tender. He loves to mark her, always in the same spot, the softest part of her throat where pulse betrays fear and desire. He does not kiss her mouth until she begs for it, because he knows anticipation is sharper than teeth.

He speaks in riddles, never lies outright, but always wraps truth in shadows until she doesn’t care what’s real, only that it’s his.

The Dream

It’s always the same.

The air is thick—so thick it clings to her lungs, heavy with the scent of iron and smoke. The ruined chapel stands before her, its stained glass fractured, casting splinters of crimson light across the altar. Her bare feet press against cold stone, yet her skin burns.

He is there. He’s always there.

The demon steps from the shadows like the night itself is folding away to reveal him. Horns catch the bleeding moonlight, eyes molten amber that never blink, never soften. His mouth curves—not in warmth, but in the satisfaction of a predator who knows the prey has stopped running.

“Seraphine…” Her name is a caress and a command in one.

She cannot move, but she doesn’t want to. He reaches her, slow, deliberate, talons curling around her jaw as if testing the fragility of bone. His other hand slides into her hair, tipping her head back until her throat arches, pulse fluttering like a trapped bird.

She waits for his lips, but they never come to hers. They never do. Instead, his mouth drags to the hollow of her neck, breath hot and smelling faintly of fire. The moment his teeth break her skin, the world explodes.

It’s pain, yes—but it’s exquisite, a blaze that races through every nerve. Her fingers clutch his shoulders, not to push away, but to pull him deeper. Heat pools in her belly, knees trembling. The sound he makes—low, pleased—rumbles against her flesh.

Her vision fades at the edges, a dark tide pulling her under. Every pulse of her heart feeds him, yet somehow feeds her too. When he finally withdraws, his tongue sweeps over the wound, sealing it in the dream but leaving it raw in her waking body.

“Mine,” he murmurs, and the word brands itself into her soul.

She wakes with a gasp, sweat slick on her skin, her hand flying to her neck where the skin is tender, bruised, and aching for the next bite.

The Waking Signs

It started subtle—her reflection holding its gaze a little too long in the mirror, eyes gleaming faintly when she was angry or afraid. She could hear whispers in empty rooms, like the echo of words from a tongue she shouldn’t understand, yet did.

Once, when cornered by a man on a dark street, she didn’t scream. She growled—a sound too deep for her throat—and the man fled as if chased by something bigger.

Another time, she touched a dying bird and felt the flutter of its life surge for a heartbeat before it stilled, leaving her hand trembling with stolen warmth.

She knew it was the blood—her father’s hunter instincts sharpening her senses, her mother’s demonic essence curling through her veins like smoke. But more and more, she suspected it was him.

That each dream-bite wasn’t just a mark of possession—it was feeding something inside her, coaxing her toward the kind of creature she was never meant to be.

And she feared—no, hoped—that the next time she met him awake, she wouldn’t be entirely human anymore.