#darktober2025

You heard the roar first—low, volcanic, echoing from the eastern wing where the six-eyed specimen was housed. They said it laughed like thunder and wrote scripture in blood on the walls. Down the next corridor, something older shrieked—an ice-veined priest who froze his keepers mid-prayer.

Somewhere deeper, a slick, inhuman chuckle rose from the flooded levels where the chimera project had been sealed in salt water. The overhead lights stuttered with each pulse of violence, brief windows into every nightmare they’d locked away here.

One cell burned; another sang. You thought you saw a tall figure with a stitched mouth step through the smoke, grinning at the chaos as though it were theatre. Another shadow—horned, broad, haloed in gold static—dragged a man’s corpse like a trophy before vanishing into the red haze.

Someone had opened all the cells.

Everyone was killing everyone else.

Except you, and Douma.

His cell was next to yours, divided by a single pane of transparent alloy. He was smiling as the guards screamed in the hall, his hands folded neatly, eyes reflecting the emergency lights like gems. When the last body hit the floor, he looked over at you.

“Looks like we’re free.”

You could have stepped through the breach—your door hung open, same as his—but something held you still. The smell of burning antiseptic. The faint pulse under the floor. You wanted to see what would happen if you waited.

So you waited. And Douma, curious, stayed too.

When dawn came—if you could call that colorless light dawn—the halls were silent except for the hiss of leaking gas. All the others were gone, escaped into the wilderness beyond the facility’s electric fences.

Only two monsters left behind.

One by choice.

One for reasons neither of them yet understood.

He talked first. Always did.

Douma leaned against the wall separating your cells, voice lilting through the broken glass. “You’re very quiet, little neighbor. Everyone else screams when they see me.”

You didn’t answer.

“That’s unusual,” he mused. “I’m told I’m quite the sight.”

“I don’t care,” you said simply.

And it was true.

He didn’t frighten you, didn’t fascinate you.

He was just… noise in a room already filled with ghosts.

For the first time, his smile twitched, like a reflection catching dust. “Not caring—what a dreadful thing to do to a man like me.”

The next days—hours?—blurred.

Time inside a dead facility had no rhythm.

Douma tried everything: jokes, compliments, and recitations of the prayers his cult used to chant before he devoured them.

You gave him nothing but a glance now and then.

Yet the more indifferent you were, the more animated he became.

“You feel like something,” he said once, crouching by the barrier, eyes half-lidded. “But not human. I can’t see what’s inside you. That’s… new.”

He reached out through the shattered frame, fingertips hovering close enough that you could feel the cold radiating from them.

Whatever lived inside you stirred—ancient, watchful, territorial. You stepped back, pulse heavy, the air thick with static.

Douma’s grin returned, sharper. “Oh. You’re interesting.”

He didn’t stop smiling, but behind the glitter in his eyes was calculation.

The predator had met something he couldn’t classify.

He started leaving food—cold rations, bottled water, anything scavenged from the ruined cafeteria. “A peace offering,” he’d say.

You accepted once, too hungry to refuse, and that was enough.

Something changed after that.

The air between you softened.

He still couldn’t feel empathy, but he imitated it flawlessly—checking the temperature of the room, asking if you’d slept.

You began to answer him, against your own judgment.

It wasn’t friendship.

More like two predators circling the same silence and finding it comfortable.

Sometimes you caught him watching you when he thought you weren’t looking.

His expression was unreadable: curiosity bordering on reverence.

When he smiled now, it was slower and less performative.

You wondered if that was what passed for sincerity in him.

And, despite yourself, you started waiting for his voice.

Then, it happened after the generators failed completely.

The facility went black, except for the faint red pulse of the emergency beacons.

You were cold, shivering in the dark, when you heard him open the connecting door.

He crossed the threshold without sound. You could sense him more than see him, the air dropping a degree with every step.

“I thought you might be lonely,” he said, voice soft, like he wasn’t sure if he’d startle you.

You didn’t tell him to leave.

The prison bed, a slab of steel bolted to the floor, groaned under Douma’s weight as he settled beside you, his presence a cold void that sucked the warmth from the room.

You shifted instinctively, making space on the narrow cot, your threadbare prison-issue tank and leggings clinging to your skin like damp paper. The SCP facility’s guards had stripped you both of anything substantial—too paranoid about concealed weapons or contraband. What remained was flimsy, barely enough to shield you from the chill radiating from him.

Douma lay unnervingly still, his rainbow-hued eyes glinting in the half-light, pupils slitted like a predator’s. His platinum hair spilled over the stiff pillow, catching the dim glow like frost on dirt. Similar to his nature, he was beautiful, unearthly, and utterly devoid of human warmth—a demon who thrived on control, on consumption, yet here he was, a prisoner like you, abandoned in this forsaken containment block.

His breath ghosted your cheek, cool and saccharine, like snow melting on polished steel.

“Come here.” His voice was a velvet purr, low and deliberate, each word curling through the air like a tendril of mist. It wasn’t a question—it was a lure, baited with the promise.

You nodded, turning toward him, your pulse hammering in your throat.

His fingers grazed your wrist, hesitant at first, testing the reality of your warmth against his eternal cold.

The contact was a jolt—electric, addictive, a spark that seared through your nerves and left them raw.

“Still no fear,” he murmured, lips curving into a smile that was both serene and predatory. “Good. Fear ruins the taste of everything.”

His words hung in the air, heavy with implication, as his gaze flicked over you, mapping every inch like a cartographer charting new territory.

You should have stepped away.

Should’ve remembered the stories whispered in the facility’s corridors—how Douma devoured emotions, fed on desire as much as blood. But the cell’s oppressive cold, the weight of isolation, and the magnetic pull of just one person stuck with you drowned out reason.

So instead, you found yourself leaning forward, meeting him halfway into the dark.

His lips met yours like frost on fevered skin—cool at first, then searing where your heat met his chill, a slow drag that tasted of winter mint and something sharper, like ozone before a storm.

Slow. Precise. Mapping you like new terrain, thumb on your pulse at your jaw, feeling it jump.

His other hand, though, slid lower, fingers curling over the curve of your hip, then dipping beneath the waistband of your leggings, grabbing a handful of your ass. The fabric was thin, fraying, no match for his strength as he squeezed hard enough to leave the ghost of bruises.

One finger teased closer to your heating core, not touching yet, but hovering—a promise, a threat.

Your breath hitched, and he swallowed the sound, his kiss deepening.

Without breaking the kiss or removing his other hand, he hooked your leg over his hip, pulling you flush against him. The hard line of his cock pressed through his flimsy prison trousers, grinding against your dampening cunt.

The friction was maddening, your thin leggings and his worn pants doing little to dull the sensation.

Your moan vibrated against his mouth, and he drank it down, a low hum of satisfaction rumbling in his chest. The sound was primal, a glimpse of the demon beneath the serene facade, unraveling under your touch.

Your hands fumbled with his shirt, tugging it free to reveal the sculpted planes of his torso—abs carved like ice, flawless and cold to the touch. You froze, caught by the sight, your breath catching as you traced the lines with your eyes.

His smile widened, sharp and knowing, as your hips bucked involuntarily, chasing the pressure of his bulge.

With a flick of his wrist, he tore your leggings and panties away in one fluid motion, the fabric shredding like tissue paper. The cold air hit your bare skin, raising goosebumps, but his abs were colder still as you straddled them, your slick heat grinding softly against the unyielding ridges of muscle. The contrast of temperature was dizzying—your warmth against his frost, each movement sending sparks of pleasure-pain through your core.

His hand tangled in your hair, pulling you down for another kiss, this one hungrier, teeth grazing your lower lip.

“Shh,” he breathed, voice a silken thread woven through the cell’s oppressive hum. “Let’s see how long you can hold that breath.”

His fingers trailed down, feather-light over your collarbone, hooking the strap of your bra and snapping it with a flick that echoed like a gunshot in the unlit void.

The fabric slid down, exposing your chest to the biting cold, your skin pebbling under the weight of his gaze.

The air shimmered faintly around him, crystalline, like breath fogging glass, chilling the cell further.

His hand slid lower, tracing the curve of your spine, then gripping your hip to guide your movements. Each grind against his abs was a study in control—his control, your surrender—your breaths coming in short, desperate gasps as the cold and heat blurred into something overwhelming. His rainbow eyes never left yours, drinking in every reaction, every shiver, as if he could taste your desire in the air.

He guided your head back, mouth finding the corner of your throat, the edge of your collarbone, breath ghosting over each inch like he was studying cause and effect. The fabric of your tank top rasped against his skin; one careful pull, and it slipped from your shoulder. The sound—soft cotton tearing free—seemed too loud in the dark.

You arched without thinking, nipples tightening to aching points as the cool draft kissed them, but he only hummed, low and amused, pressing his palm flat to your sternum to pin you down under him as he switched positions.

"Not yet. Breathe for me first."

You didn’t realize you’d stopped until the word hit.

His hand slid lower, deliberate, cupping the weight of your breast, thumb circling the peak but never quite touching—teasing the edge, watching your chest heave, your lungs burning for air you forgot to take.

The denial hit like vertigo, your body clenching on nothing, thighs pressing together against the sudden slick throb building low.

Those rainbow eyes gleamed in the emergency glow, pupils dilating not with lust but fascination, like you were a specimen writhing under his lens.

"There it is," he murmured, voice dipping to a purr that vibrated through your ribs. "That little hitch. Do you feel it? The way your heart stutters?"

His free hand ghosted over your hip, bunching the sheet away, fingers—cold as river stones—skimming the inside of your thigh, parting them just enough to let the facility's chill lick at your folds. You whimpered, hips bucking for friction, but he pressed back, unyielding, the frost from his skin blooming faint patterns on your inner knee, crystalline and biting.

"Stay still, darling. Or I'll make it colder."

A promise, not a threat—delivered with that empty smile you could feel curving against your neck as he nipped there, teeth grazing without breaking skin.

His fingers—long, pale, and impossibly cold—traced the curve of your slit with agonizing deliberation, parting the slick heat like a blade through silk. 

He withdrew, leaving a chill blooming inside you, the air around your thighs frosting like breath on glass. The absence hurt more than his touch.

He raised those fingers, catching the dim light of the flickering beacons, and pressed one to your lower lip, the cool tip smearing your essence across it.

“Taste yourself,” he murmured, voice low and liquid, like frost creeping over glass. “Tell me how it feels to burn for me.”

You sucked it in, tongue licking around the chill, the salt tang mixing with his unnatural coolness, and god, it burned sweet, your core clenching empty as he watched, unblinking.

He descended again, two fingers scissoring deep, finding the spot that made your vision fracture into stars. Every slow drag wound the coil tighter, until your thighs trembled and your breath came in broken, hungry bursts.

Your hips chased him, but he vanished, fingers sliding free with surgical cruelty, leaving you empty and twitching on the edge.

He stilled suddenly, eyes on yours, his expression calm, clinical, as if measuring the shape of your need. “You almost begged,” he said, amused, “Almost.” 

His tone then turned chiding, voice a velvet blade. “Not yet, my spark. I want you to feel every shard of this ache before I let you break.”

The air shifted, thickened with his power.

A thin sheet of ice bloomed at your wrists, delicate as lace but biting like frostbite, pinning your arms above your head against the mattress.

You tugged instinctively, and the cold sharpened, tiny needles of ice pricking your skin, grounding you in their sting. The sensation was a paradox—painful yet anchoring, making your pulse race and your core pulse with need.

Then three cold fingers pressed in, deliberate, merciless, curling until your body seized with light—each movement small, exact, a scientist testing limits.

But he stopped, withdrew slick and slow, a surgeon satisfied with the incision. “Told you. Not yet.”

You pulled against the ice; it bit back, tiny teeth finding skin.

His laugh was soft, a winter wind moved against your ear as he settled between your thighs. The hard length of him, freed from its flimsy confines, was cool velvet over unyielding steel, nudging your entrance but not breaching.

“Look at you,” he purred, lips brushing the shell of your ear, his breath a shiver-inducing chill. “All flushed and writhing, like a flame caught in my frost. Tell me, does denial taste sweeter than fear? Or do you crave both?”

You nodded, words lost in the ragged hitch of your lungs, and he rewarded you with a shallow thrust—just the tip, stretching you with a chill that melted into liquid fire inside.

Your eyes rolled back, and your back arched, pushing your spilling boobs higher in his face.

Then he pulled back, leaving you clenching around absence. Again.

In a fraction deeper this time, his hips rolling with lazy control, thumb grazing your clit with featherlight pressure, frost-kissed and tingling with numbness that made every nerve scream.

The build was relentless now, waves of heat breaking his calm façade; his breath hitched, just once, before he reclaimed control.

He watched every reaction—your mouth falling open, your back bowing, the way your walls fluttered greedily when he denied you again, retreating to trail his cold breath over your nipples instead.

They hardened instantly, diamond points under the icy gust, and he flicked one with a fingertip, the chill so sharp it drew a whimper from your throat.

“Please,” you gasped, the word cracking like thin ice, and his eyes lit—not with triumph, but with a dark, delighted curiosity, as if you’d just handed him the key to a locked puzzle.

“Again,” he cooed, his hand wrapping your throat now, light as a collar but firm enough to make your pulse thud against his palm.

“Beg while you turn blue for me. Let me see how pretty you shatter when I finally let you fall.”

His cock pressed back in—deeper, filling you to the hilt with a glide that was all smooth ice and unyielding heat.

His hips snapped once, twice, in an experimental rhythm, chasing the way your body shuddered beneath him.

The cold bloomed everywhere he touched—fingers trailing down your sides, leaving frost patterns that melted into goosebumps; lips brushing your collarbone, icing your skin before his tongue warmed it back to life.

He pinched your nipples again, rolling them between fingers that felt like frozen glass, the sharp contrast of cold and your own heat making you keen, a sound that echoed in the hollow room.

“Feel that?” he whispered, voice a low growl as he leaned closer, his lips hovering over yours, not kissing, just stealing your breath.

“The way your body begs for my cold? It’s trembling to be claimed, to be consumed.”

His thumb returned to your clit, circling with brutal precision, each touch a spark of ice that melted into fire, pushing you closer to the edge.

He didn’t stop this time as his hips found a rhythm—deep and relentless, each thrust a calculated invasion that filled you with his glacial length.

The ice at your wrists tightened, then softened, melting into still-cold rivulets that trickled down your arms, pooling in the hollows of your collarbones.

His hand on your throat squeezed just enough to blur the world at the edges, oxygen a teasing drip as your vision spotted with red and white.

“You’re so warm,” he said, voice an observation dropped like hunger, his thumb flicking your clit in a rhythm that matched his thrusts.

The edge came like a tidal wave, your body convulsing around him in silent screams, walls clenching as the blackout spun through you—red, white, electric.

His low chuckle was your only anchor as he followed, spilling inside you, cool and endless, like winter claiming spring in a flood of frost and fire.

Your body shuddered through the aftershocks, each pulse drawing him deeper, your breaths mingling in the charged air.

He didn’t pull away.

His fingers lingered, tracing the melted ice along your wrists, soothing the faint red marks with a touch that was almost tender.

“Fascinating,” he murmured, his voice softer now, like snow falling in the dark.

“You taste like lightning, all raw and alive.”

His lips brushed your temple, a fleeting warmth that contradicted the chill of his skin.

“Do you know how rare it is, to see a spark like you burn so bright in my cold?”

You shivered, sated but still humming with the remnants of his touch, the beacons pulsing forgotten in the corner.

He shifted, propping himself on one elbow, his gaze still piercing but softer now, like moonlight diffused through clouds.

“Tell me,” he said, fingers brushing a damp strand of hair from your face, “does the heat still linger, or have I frozen it all away?”

You managed a breathless laugh, voice hoarse. “It’s both. You’ve ruined me for anything else.”

His smile was slow, wicked, and just a little proud.

“Good,” he said, leaning down to press a kiss to your throat, right where his hand had been.

“I’d hate for you to forget the taste of my frost.”

The dark swallowed you both, the air still thick with the scent of ice and heat, your bodies tangled in the afterglow, alive in the quiet hum of his empty, endless gaze.

---

When you woke, the red lights were still pulsing—steady, patient, like a dying heart refusing to quit.

Douma sat across the room, humming under his breath, a content sound.

In one hand, a knife; in the other, a steak seared to a perfect brown. The scent was sweet, iron-rich.

You rubbed your eyes, groggy. “I’m starving.”

Then, blinking at the meat, “Where did you even find steak? The freezer’s—”

He looked up. The smile didn’t move his eyes.

“Fresh,” he said, gesturing lazily toward you with the knife he was eating with.

At first, you didn’t understand.

You followed his hand.

The blanket slid down your thigh.

Your heart sank.

Your left leg ended in a neat white bandage, just below the knee. The sheet beneath was pinked with diluted blood.

There was no pain—only the nauseating absence of it, and the faint copper tang rising from the air.

It took you a moment to realize you were already screaming.

Douma sighed, patient as a cult leader on genocide.

He dabbed his lips with a rag torn from someone’s uniform. “You looked so peaceful. I only wanted a taste.”

You fell off the cot, dragging yourself toward the wall, trying to get away, voice shattering. “You—what did you—”

He caught your face in one cold hand, tilting it with fond curiosity. “Why panic? You can grow it back… can’t you?”

The words hit like a stone dropped in a well.

“What do you mean—”

Then the pain hit.

Fire. Living fire, racing up your thigh.

Flesh twisted, knitting, muscle and sinew blooming from nothing.

The bandages burst apart as bone reformed—each nerve flaring awake one by one, like lights in a torture chamber.

You shrieked, louder.

Fear was no longer a word strong enough to encompass what was happening to you.

Your body moved without permission, seizing against the floor, your throat raw with the sound. The pain was too clean, too designed.

And something inside you laughed.

Not in your head.

Not through your mouth.

Under your skin.

The sound was ancient—older than the foundation beneath you, older than the gods your ancestors had named and forgotten.

Marks spread across your body, black first, then burning crimson, crawling like ink spilled in reverse—branching, blooming, forming symmetrical sigils across your chest and face.

Douma froze.

For once, his smile faltered.

Awe crept in where amusement had been.

“Ah,” he breathed. “So that’s what’s been humming under your skin.”

Your gaze lifted.

It wasn’t your gaze anymore.

Four eyes opened, scarlet-ringed and unblinking. A grin spread slow and deliberate, like a blade pulled from flesh.

When the voice came, it wasn’t human—it rumbled through the concrete, ancient and contemptuous. “You touched my vessel.”

Douma’s rainbow pupils widened, then steadied. He smiled again, but thinner now, brittle at the edges. “I didn’t see a name on her.”

The laugh that answered wasn’t mirth—it was the collapse of something divine. The sound made the metal groan. “You think I share.”

The air went wrong. Dense, electric, the kind of heavy that made breathing feel like swallowing glass. Every molecule vibrated out of tune. The reinforced walls began to groan—low, animal sounds of metal in pain.

The cell itself started to hum. The floor shuddered beneath them, every rivet trembling under an invisible pressure. Red emergency lights stuttered overhead, their pulse turning frantic, washing the room in violent rhythm.

The temperature dropped.

Then rose.

Then ceased to matter at all.

You—no, he—rose, dragging the shadows with him. The sigils on your body flared, pulsing with a rhythm older than the language of curses. “My vessel let me in. Her body, her will, her soul. That makes her my wife, little ghost. You will never matter.”

Douma almost made a joke about ‘that’s not what she said,’ but he stopped himself in time.

The word ‘wife’ burned through the air, not tender but sovereign—an oath branded in blood and ownership.

Douma’s grin faltered, curiosity bleeding into calculation. “So that’s what you call it. Possession by consent—how quaint.”

The next breath he took came out ragged. The oxygen itself had turned to knives.

The thing man tilted your head, four eyes gleaming with quiet, vicious humor. “You think yourself clever. You cut my wife and fed on her flesh.”

He smiled wider, a king indulging the condemned. “For that, I will not kill you fast.”

The floor cracked.

A handprint, black and flaming, burned into the wall beside Douma’s head, the alloy hissing as it liquefied.

The heat wasn’t fire—it was presence itself.

Douma laughed, the sound desperate to be charming. “Finally,” he murmured, arms opening like a penitent priest. “A god who bites back.”

The thing’s grin didn’t waver. “No. A god who feeds.”

He moved—or rather, the world bent toward him. The red lights exploded into white, then darkness.

The alarms wailed as the foundation screamed, walls bowing under invisible pressure.

Somewhere in the upper levels, containment seals ruptured one after another like snapping bones.

Two predators met:

one carved from winter,

one from divine fire.

One who devoured everything.

And one who had never learned to stop.

---

When you woke again, the sirens were gone.

Only the heartbeat-hum of ruined generators filled the air.

The cell smelled of iron and smoke. Frost had crept up the walls and then melted, leaving trails that shimmered like veins of mercury.

Something had happened—something that had rewritten the rules of the room.

You pushed yourself up on shaking arms. The bedframe’s legs had half-melted into the floor. And across from you—was a man.

Or rather, what was left of Douma.

The skin looked borrowed: paler, marked by faint black sigils that pulsed under the surface like veins filled with ink.

His eyes weren’t the same either—no longer rainbow glass but twin crescents of red heat, alive with something ancient.

When he smiled, it wasn’t Douma’s smile; it was older, sharper, infinitely more certain.

“You’re awake.”

The voice was deeper, rough silk dragged over stone. Familiar. It crawled straight through your spine because it was the voice that had lived in your head for years, whispering from the dark.

You froze. “You—”

“Not him,” he interrupted gently. “He’s gone.”

He glanced down at his hands, flexing them as though adjusting to a new shape. “The body was… weak but convenient. Nothing of him left but dust.”

The world tilted. You swallowed against the nausea.

He tilted his head, studying you the way a god studies a prayer, then softened. “I told you I’d find a way out.”

Memory flooded back—the endless months of that voice murmuring behind your thoughts, coiled around your heartbeat.

The reason you couldn’t step beyond Site 47’s walls without your chest seizing and your vision going black.

“I’m sorry you were sealed inside me,” you whispered. “When the breach happened.”

He nodded once, almost sheepishly. “Don’t waste your words with apologies. It wasn’t your fault, but an old trick of containment. They couldn’t cage me directly, so they buried me in you. Every step away from this place tore at your soul. You’d have died if you left with me still inside you. Killing us both.”

A pause, then quieter, “That’s why you stayed.”

All the waiting, the paralysis, the haunting calm—it hadn’t been fear.

It had been him.

He rose, with movements like the world had already decided to make space for him.

Douma’s stolen body carried itself differently now—less predator, more monarch.

“I fixed it,” he said simply. “The seal. The tether. You won’t die if you walk out of here anymore. Neither will I.”

You tried to speak, but your throat tightened instead.

He crossed the distance between you in two slow steps and stopped close enough for the heat of him to cut through the chill.

“You look terrified,” he said, almost apologetic. “I must seem like him. I’ll change the face if you want. Possess someone else. Might even let you pick.”

A poor attempt at a joke, but you smiled anyway.

The offer was absurdly gentle for a creature who could end worlds.

His fingers hovered, hesitant, near your cheek. “But I’d rather you see me like this, just once. In flesh. After so long.”

You didn’t answer. Your breath came uneven, not from fear exactly, but from the sheer reality of him.

He smiled then—small, almost human. “You’re shaking.”

“So are you,” you whispered, soft tears welling up.

He laughed, low and genuine, whipping stray tears away. “Of course. I’ve been waiting in the dark inside your head, listening to your heart, counting your breaths. Now I get to watch you breathe for real.”

The words shouldn’t have been comforting.

They were.

But you still frowned. “It’s weird that none of the guards have been deployed yet.”

He hummed but didn’t answer your question directly.

Instead, his hand brushed your hair back, careful and reverent. “Let’s go; this place is finished. The monsters are loose; the walls have forgotten their names. We’re free.”

“Free,” you echoed, the word strange on your tongue.

He nodded, and for the first time since you’d entered Site 47, the silence felt alive instead of dead.

Somehow, you felt safer with this cannibal than the ones whose body he was possessing.

A/N: This is basically a SCP-style crossover fic. Long-time shōnen readers may notice certain silhouettes & habits hidden between the lines.

But who exactly is “your husband”?

That’s left for you to guess.

All I can say is if you know him, you'd understand before he even spoke the first words.

Darktober 2025 Masterlist | All Works Masterlist

Satoru froze and turned to you the first time during the exchange, holding up his protected hands as to not touch anything. “You saw someone online do it, didn’t you?”

You fiddled with the folded cuff and tugged at the neck line which revealed your cleavage enough that Satoru could see the outline of your nipple. “No-well, yes- okay you got me! But please, I never ask for anything.”

So innocent with puppy eyes, Satoru saw them way too much. By now, he should have been immune to your charm and doe-eyed advances. Yet he wasn’t. How could he ever say no to you when you asked so nicely?

“You don’t, do you?”

“Nope.” There was that beautiful smile he admired and fawned over.

“Fine. I’ll do it just this once.”

Just once. This time, he'd be firm on this choice. He wouldn't bend to it again. Not at all.

Certainly not.

Despite the rules while Satoru worked, you kissed him and he allowed it. “Put the mask on- oh, and make sure you’re shirtless too.”

“Yes, your highness.”

Who was he kidding? You could ask him to kill any random person on the street and he'd do it. Of course he'd do it again just to see you smile.

“Perfect. I’ll be somewhere in the woods waiting for you. Don’t be too long.”

You shot out through the hallway leaving Satoru with his own thoughts and tender smile at your little quirks no other man could handle.

“And I thought the whole idea was you getting away from me…” Satoru scratched his nose along side his forearm to avoid getting blood on his face. “Now, where were we?”

The body was already dead, he was just carving it up to set the organs aside on ice for Shoko to pick up with her spare key.

“Oh yeah, eyeballs.” They popped out like pinballs, firm on his palm that would pop under his grasp if he squeezed too hard.

There was plenty blood to go around. He smeared some over his chest for good measure. You were into the oddest things, and in the woods of all places.

Maybe your screams for help would attract someone new? Satoru wondered just how far your voice would carry, screaming in the most feral way while he tore away at your clothes. Perhaps Satoru would have more fun slicing them of with the knife from the kitchen, and a fist full of your hair between his knuckles.

Of course you’d struggle, Satoru knew that your full strength was something he easily overwhelmed. It was what turned you on. What got you off quickly.

Satoru being forceful.

After putting the eyes in a bag on ice, he slipped out of his heavy duty gloves and left his office door locked for when Shoko came over.

The mask was just some Halloween thing he wore to last year’s party, Satoru was surprised you even found it.

He was covered in blood splatters.

He was shirtless.

He was getting increasingly horny.

A little blood went a long way on this mask sprayed for dramatic effect. His casual stroll from the kitchen knife block to the back door set him on one dark path when he noticed the quick flash of your cellphone light.

So easy.

Well, you did want to get caught.

Pulling the mask over his face, Satoru set off into the night, ready to get a taste of all this fuss over public sex in the woods while you begged him not to. Though deep down you wanted it more than ever.

"Ready or not, princess. Here I come."

<- Back to the prompts!

DISCLAIMER - I do not own any of the characters. This is a work of fan fiction and is absolutely not representative of the views or intentions of the original creator(s).

Also please don’t post any of my work, thank you!

Laughter followed—low and sharp-edged.

Chuuya leaned in the doorway, coat slung across his shoulders, grin curling like smoke. “God help us. Two Dazais loose on the same trip? The forests are doomed.”

Even Akutagawa, half-shadow at the far end, hissed under his breath. “Pathetic.”

But none of them stopped him.

Dazai strolled out like he’d been waiting all night, bruised jaw catching the light, bolo tie clasp glinting at his throat, coat unbuttoned. He ignored the noise, the sidelong looks. Only paused when he saw you through the glass. His lips curled, smug and infuriating, before he slid into the passenger seat and leaned in to kiss you—slow, deliberate, enough to make the others mutter behind their hands.

“How can there be two of him?” someone whispered, like it was a curse.

And when their eyes flicked to you, the resemblance hit harder than they’d admitted before. You weren’t Mafia, weren’t armed, weren’t anything but ordinary. Yet the same crooked humor curved your smile, the same gleam of madness tilted your head. Two variations of the same riddle they’d never solve.

Dazai buckled in, stretching like a cat. His grin lingered, but his eyes slid shut in that way of his that looked like sleep but wasn’t—half-rest, half-watchfulness, one hand still loose on his thigh as though ready to move.

You caught the stares in the rearview and smirked. “What’s with the gawking? Do I have blood on me?”

He chuckled, leaning back, careless. “No. They just can’t fathom a woman foolish enough to marry me.”

“Semantics,” you shot back. “You say foolish, I say clinically insane.”

“Ah.” He turned toward you, eyes half-lidded, smile of a man who found beauty in the abyss. “We’re soulmates in diagnosis, then.”

The headlights flared, swallowing the building behind you. The Port Mafia receded in the mirror, silhouettes still framed in the doorway, shaking their heads like they’d just watched an omen walk out hand-in-hand.

Soon, the city blurred into a black forest road, headlights slicing pale ribbons through the trees. Dazai commandeered the radio, flipping stations until he found something obscure and crooning—an old French chanson you’d never heard.

“You’re setting the mood for our funeral already,” you teased, drumming your fingers on the wheel.

“Would you rather pop music? Shall we die to Taylor Swift?”

You snorted. “God, no. I’d haunt you forever if you did.”

“Promise?” He leaned closer, voice a mock whisper, teeth grazing the edge of your ear. That glint in his eyes was all hunger, the kind that wasn’t about flesh or pleasure but about how far someone would go with him.

You shoved him back lightly into his seat. “You really think it’s haunted?”

He sighed and settled back again, long legs bumping the glove compartment. “I certainly hope so. Imagine—our pre-wedding honeymoon photos made incredible by bloodied handprints on the walls. How romantic.”

“You’re deranged.”

“You too, my belladonna.”

The smile faded from your lips when the radio fizzled into static. The chanson warped, a shiver crawling up its spine before the channel went dead.

Dazai grinned, tapping the side of the dashboard like he’d orchestrated the whole thing. [Instead of conking out, his grin lingered, but his eyes closed briefly, body slumping in that way of his that looked like sleep but wasn’t—half-rest, half-watchfulness. He never stayed down for long.]

By the time the GPS claimed you’d arrived, the forest had eaten the road entirely. The cabin hunched at the end of a dirt path like it had grown there, its roof sagging under moss and shadow. One porch light burned weakly, more sepulchral than welcoming.

Dazai whistled low, rolling his shoulders as if waking fully now. “Charming.”

You turned the key in the ignition, cutting the engine. The silence that replaced it was too thick, too total.

You tried to laugh, but it snagged in your throat. “Perfect for our pre-wedding getaway.”

“Mm,” he agreed, unbuckling, “perfect for a disappearance.”

You grabbed your overnight bag from the trunk—the one with your clothes, his knife kit, and the bottle of whiskey he’d demanded you pack—and followed him up the creaking steps.

Inside, the cabin had the stale dampness of something locked too long. The floorboards whined under your weight, and the wallpaper peeled in curling strips at the corners. Someone had left a pile of split firewood by the hearth, but the logs were swollen with moisture, splotched grey at the ends.

Your hand found a dusty oil lamp on the table by the door. The bulbs overhead were dead, though an outlet in the corner hummed faintly—as if the place had power, but only in stuttering pulses.

You wrinkled your nose. “Romantic.”

Dazai only laughed, low and delighted, and plucked the lamp from your hands. “It’s perfect. Look at it—just the two of us, no witnesses, no cell reception. Exactly how I wanted you before the wedding.” He set the lamp down and caught your waist, spinning you once in a mock waltz before you could protest.

You leaned into him despite yourself. “Idiot.”

His hands slid lower, fingers splaying at your hips. “Your idiot,” he whispered against your ear. His cologne clung to your skin as he kissed your temple.

He let go after squeezing your ass for good measure.

You flicked the lamp on. Its glow wasn’t enough to erase the shadows, only pressed them deeper into the corners. It caught the glint in his eyes, though—mischief and something softer.

Dazai sprawled across the couch immediately, arms folded under his head, as though this were a honeymoon suite and not a ruin at the edge of nowhere. He pulled the bottle of whiskey from your bag, uncorked it, and took the first swig without asking, then extended it to you with a mock toast. “To our pre-wedding crime scene.”

You sat down next to him, clinked the bottle with your fingernail, and drank. “You’re terrible at romance.”

“I’m redefining it,” he said, shifting so his head dropped into your lap. He looked up at you upside-down, grinning. “We’re rewriting the manual.”

You shoved his face away.

“Movie?” he asked, unfazed, nodding toward the tiny TV on the cabinet, still lying with his head in your lap. His thumb traced slow circles against your knee.

You shrugged, fishing through the stack of dusty remotes left behind. “If the thing even works.”

“Then we’ll make our own movie.” He winked.

“Scandalous,” you said dryly, but your fingers slid into his hair, combing it back, the gesture automatic.

Miraculously, the old TV buzzed to life. A stack of cracked DVDs sat on the cabinet beside it—proof someone had holed up here once, long enough to need distractions.

The two of you curled together under a scratchy blanket, trading the bottle back and forth while some random action flick flickered across the screen. He rested his palm over your thigh, thumb idly stroking, his head tilted so his breath brushed your neck. Every time the hero onscreen did something absurd, you felt him shudder with silent laughter against your back.

It almost felt normal. Almost. Like two people about to be married, not two people who’d built a life around the abyss.

“Don’t fall asleep on me,” he murmured, pressing a kiss to your jaw, his hand already sliding beneath your shirt, closer to your nipples. “I waited all week to have you to myself.”

“You’re ridiculous.” But you turned your face and caught his mouth anyway, a soft, brief kiss that he chased for a second longer.

The TV screen crackled—not the movie, but the feed itself.

Static burst in jagged lines across the picture, the audio warping into a screech that made your teeth ache.

Then, as suddenly as it came, it cut back to normal.

You froze, glancing at Dazai.

He didn’t even blink. “Cabin chic,” he murmured, kissing your knuckles before taking another swig. His other hand kept inching higher, and you let yourself drown in sloppy, distracted kisses.

Then the lights flickered overhead.

The blanket felt too warm, too heavy.

Your chest thudded in sync with the faulty bulb’s buzz.

“Did you hear that?” you whispered when a faint thump echoed from upstairs.

Dazai smirked, brushing his thumb across your ribs. “Mice. Or demons. Either way, they’re paying rent.” His tone was easy, but his eyes flicked briefly toward the stairs before he pressed a kiss to the space below your ear like a promise.

Still, when the thump came again—deliberate, heavier this time—he sighed and rolled off the couch.

“Stay,” he muttered, already moving toward the stairs. The usual sway was there, but something in the set of his shoulders betrayed a flicker of tension.

You reached for him, but he slipped out of reach.

“Daz—”

“Don’t pout, belladonna. If there’s a monster upstairs, I’ll negotiate terms.” His grin flashed once, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes before the shadows swallowed him.

And then you were alone on the couch, lamp buzzing, TV frozen mid-frame, the thudding in your chest syncing with the sound in the walls.

Outside the room, the stairs groaned under Dazai’s weight as he moved further into the dark.

The cabin seemed to breathe with you. Every creak of timber was a lung expanding, every shift of wind against the windows a whisper.

For a moment, you swore you heard something upstairs that wasn’t his stride—a stagger, a scrape—but then silence.

Minutes stretched too long.

Then—footsteps again, descending.

“False alarm,” Dazai announced lightly, reappearing at the bottom of the stairs. His coat was half-off, his shirt loose. He carried nothing back with him, not even dust. His grin was casual, but the pause before it gave him away. “Our uninvited guest must’ve been the wind.”

You let out a breath you hadn’t realized you were holding.

He caught it instantly, grinning. “Oh? You were worried about me?”

“Of course, I’d prefer to die together, you know.” But your voice wavered.

He crossed back to you, kneeling by the couch, fingers brushing your wrists. His smile softened for just a flicker. “Pretty when you’re nervous.”

You scoffed, but the tension bled from your shoulders the moment his lips grazed your knuckles. Whatever was upstairs—real or imagined—it hadn’t followed him down.

“Come,” he murmured, brushing your wrists. “Let’s relocate to somewhere more comfortable.”

The upstairs bedroom was little better than the living room—peeling wallpaper, a crooked lamp—but the bed was broad enough, the sheets musty but clean. You fell into it together, whiskey on both your tongues, his bolo tie discarded across the nightstand.

When he pressed you down, he reached into his haphazardly thrown-away coat pocket and pulled out his phone.

You blinked. “Seriously?”

His grin widened. “For posterity.”

He angled the phone briefly, the red recording light glaring as his free hand skimmed over your collarbone, down to the swell of your breasts.

You tried to look away from the lens.

He flicked your nipple so hard your body jolted half out of frame.

“Look at me,” he murmured, voice all velvet drawl, fingers softly rubbing away the sting. “Show our future selves how obedient you are.”

You rolled your eyes but arched into his touch, wrists already sliding into the cuffs he’d hidden under the pillow.

They clicked home around the iron frame with a metallic bite.

You tugged once. Secure.

His eyes glittered in approval.

“Hands stay there. Eyes on the camera,” he said softly, almost lazily, but the edge in his tone left no room for argument. His thumb brushed your lower lip, bandages scraping faintly. “Open.”

You opened. He slid his thumb in slowly, rubbing it over your tongue as the little red light caught the glint of saliva.

“Good girl. Did you prep for the weekend like I told you to?”

You tried to answer, but his thumb pressed down, pinning your tongue.

He chuckled. “Nod if yes.”

You nodded.

His thumb left your mouth and trailed down. He set the phone against the nightstand, angled toward you, its lens blinking steadily.

His hand squeezed a handful of your waist, then ghosted over your clit without pressure, maddeningly faint.

The lens framed your parted lips, your shuddering stomach, his bandaged fingers between your thighs. For half a second the feed stuttered—your face lagging, a frame out of sync—then smoothed again.

“You’re already wet,” he mused, tired amusement in his voice.

“Makes things easier. I don’t feel like working you open tonight.”

The way he said it wasn’t cruel—it was bored, testing, like he wanted to see if you’d protest.

He leaned close to the camera, making sure the red light caught your face. “Say it. Say you’re ready for me.”

“I’m—ready,” you managed, voice breaking as his fingers circled your clit.

The cuffs bit into your wrists just enough to sting when you twisted against them, skin warm where the leather was. Dazai’s weight hovered above you like a threat he refused to deliver.

The red light blinked steadily, framing everything. You. Him. The storm thrumming against the cabin’s walls.

“Louder,” he murmured, thumb circling your clit with deliberate insufficiency, each movement just shy of enough to make you come apart. “Convince me.”

“I’m ready for you, Dazai.” The words tumbled out like confession, hoarse and frantic. “Please—fuck me, baby.”

A low hum answered you, not quite approval, not quite denial.

He shifted above you, shirt sliding off his shoulders.

His cock was already wet at the tip, a bead of pre-cum catching the light.

He stroked himself slowly, languid as if time bent around him, then slapped the slick head against the soft flesh of your stomach. The sound cracked through the quiet, wet and obscene, as deliberate as a signature.

“Beautiful,” he sighed, almost reverent. For a heartbeat, his eyes softened, as though the camera had disappeared and you were nothing but his—no games, no recording, no pose to hold.

But the lens on the nightstand never wavered. It lingered on the flat of your stomach, where the swell of him would soon rise beneath your skin. He gave himself another pump, lazy, almost careless, before murmuring, “Open your mouth.”

You leaned up without hesitation, wrists still bound above your head, body shifting against the mattress until his cock brushed your lips. The cuffs pulled taut as you moved, shoulders stretching uncomfortably, but not awkwardly—it was familiar, an ache you’d learned to savor.

Your tongue darted out, a first, teasing lap over the reddened tip. Salt bloomed across your taste buds, metallic and utterly him. His breathing caught, shallow, the camera catching the slight tilt of his body as your lips parted wider.

You took him deeper, sucking him down until your cheeks hollowed around him, saliva slicking your mouth and chin. His cock twitched against your tongue, and his exhale came low and shaky. On the nightstand, the feed glitched again—your face lagging a frame behind, your eyes caught mid-blink—before smoothing back to normal.

He steadied himself, gaze fixed not on the phone but on you, burning.

“Mm. Look at you,” he murmured, more to himself than to the recording.

The praise bled into a growl when you swirled your tongue in slow circles under the ridge of his head, then pushed forward until he nudged the back of your throat.

Your eyes watered as you gagged faintly around him, wrists tugging at the cuffs.

His laugh was quiet, frayed at the edges. “Greedy little thing. Don’t choke on me.”

You hummed around him in response, the vibration making him shudder. The sound of you was lewd—wet, messy, obscene—and it filled the cabin louder than the rain outside. His jaw tightened, grip faltering as you bobbed your head, nose brushing the skin of his pelvis each time you forced yourself deeper.

“Alright, my turn.” His voice came sharp, almost breaking. He pulled back, strings of spit catching at your lips and chin. The camera’s angle shifted slightly on the nightstand, catching your mouth raw and glistening, tongue pressed flat against your teeth as though begging for more. He groaned, thumb swiping a smear of saliva from your cheek.

Then he moved lower, the frame tilting as he positioned himself between your thighs.

You moaned shamelessly when the blunt head pressed against your soaked folds, the sound torn from you like a confession. His mouth opened in a long exhale, grip faltering as everything in him screamed to bury himself inside in one violent thrust. He didn’t.

He slid in slowly, stretching you open inch by inch, the camera juddering faintly on its stand as though it mirrored his restraint.

When he bottomed out, the shot tilted for a moment, his voice rough and low as he groaned through clenched teeth. He stayed buried to the hilt, knuckles white where he braced himself against the mattress, willing his body to stillness.

Your back arched violently, walls clenching tight around him, milking him with involuntary spasms. The sensation pulled a curse from his throat.

He gave you a minute to adjust, then leaned down, his mouth closing over your nipple. His teeth grazed the soft skin, tongue flicking in fast, taunting passes until your back bowed off the mattress, walls tightening around his cock again.

“Fuck,” he muttered against your chest.

Then he pushed up, reclaiming the phone in one hand. His other pressed to your hip, pinning you down as he began to thrust—slow, deliberate strokes that rolled your body up the bed, the cuffs rattling faintly against the headboard.

The frame shivered with each movement, catching your face in ragged close-ups: eyes rolling back, lips parted, arms pulled tight above your head. He angled lower, recording the slick drag of his cock as it disappeared inside you, thumb circling your clit with clinical precision.

“Eyes on me,” he ordered, voice steady despite the tremor in his breath. “Don’t look away. If you do, I stop.”

The cuffs bit deeper into your wrists as you strained, arching beneath him. The mattress squeaked under the slow, punishing rhythm of his thrusts. Each stroke rolled your hips upward, the weight of his body holding you open. Every movement, every ragged breath, was framed in his lens; the red light blinked steadily, recording the collapse of composure on both sides.

The feed glitched again—your face frozen a second too long, pupils blacker than they should have been—before the picture smoothed back to normal.

You obeyed his command, spreading wider when he murmured it, body trembling as the storm rattled the shutters outside. The lamp’s glow wavered in uneven gold, making the room look alive, breathing.

“Dazai—” Your voice cracked, half plea, half dare.

“Yes, my love?” His pace didn’t falter. The lens trembled in his grip, catching blurred snapshots of your thighs, your chest, the sheen of sweat along his jaw. “Say it louder.”

“Daz—don’t stop.” You sobbed, gasping his name again, louder this time, your head bumping against the pillow. He adjusted his weight without breaking rhythm, shifting you slightly.

One hand hooked behind your knee, dragging your leg higher until your ankle pressed against his shoulder. The change deepened his thrusts; he hit a spot that made your whole body jolt.

“Hold it there,” he instructed, voice roughening with strain. The phone on the nightstand kept its steady blink, catching flashes of skin and sweat. “Don’t drop your leg.”

Your wrists burned from the cuffs. The storm outside howled against the shutters, the lamp sputtered, and the TV downstairs clicked on with a burst of static. Neither of you stopped.

He lowered himself suddenly, bracing one hand on the mattress beside your head. His chest pressed to yours, bandages brushing your skin. He kissed you once, hard, swallowing a moan as your walls clenched around him.

Then, without warning, he pulled out and flipped you easily, your bound arms stretching above your head as he dragged your hips back to meet his. You ended up on your knees, face down against the mattress, wrists crossed, his hand still firm on your hip as he slid back into you from behind. The new angle was brutal, deeper; you keened into the sheets, back arching automatically.

“That’s it,” he rasped, phone tilted from the nightstand to catch the view of your ass backing onto him, the slick stretch of you taking him again and again. “Stay just like that. Don’t run from it.”

You tried to obey, but your knees slipped against the sheets. He caught you easily, dragging you upright until your back was flush with his chest, his cock still buried inside you. His free hand closed around your throat—not choking, just holding—guiding your head back against his shoulder.

“Eyes forward,” he said, angling the phone so the reflection in the dark window caught you both: your tear-streaked face, his mouth at your ear, the long line of your body trembling as he rolled his hips up into you. For an instant, the reflection lagged—a double image of you both—and then snapped back to normal.

When you came, your scream broke into a laugh, breathless, delirious, body clamping down around him. He grunted against your neck, almost a snarl, following you over the edge. The phone shook wildly where it rested, then tilted as he stayed inside, then pulled out, moving the lens down to show his cum spilling from your still-clenching hole, slick and obscene.

“Look how much you come,” he muttered, voice almost a growl now, his cock twitching as he pressed the phone closer to the mess between your thighs. “So obedient.”

You tried to close your legs, post-nut clarity flickering through the haze, but he pried your knees apart with one hand. “Keep them open,” he warned softly, thumb stroking the inside of your thigh. “Unless you want me to leave you like this. Unless you want to die celibate.”

His laugh was low, wrecked, almost tender. The storm rattled the shutters once more. The lamp flickered, then steadied. The image on the phone shook one last time before the recording cut to black.

Afterwards, he left you cuffed, sated, and flushed, the sheets cooling against your skin while he slipped into the bathroom. The sound of running water muffled everything, a domestic hiss trying to erase what had just happened.

You lay back against the pillows, wrists sore, limbs heavy. The afterglow should have anchored you, but something gnawed at the edges of it—like the sensation of being watched from behind glass.

The static hadn’t been the movie.

The TV had turned itself back on.

The faucet shut off.

Silence roared back in, heavy and damp, as though the air had thickened.

Then a sound: a knock from downstairs.

You froze. Not a creak. Not the house. A knock—deliberate, measured, polite in a way that made it worse.

“Dazai?” Your voice cracked the stillness, sharper than you intended.

“Yes?” he called back, voice muffled by the bathroom door.

The knock came again. Louder.

You strained against the cuffs, panic making you clumsy. “Someone’s at the door.”

Silence.

He emerged a moment later, towel slung around his neck, shirt half-buttoned, hair damp. He looked outwardly unbothered, but the faint curl of a smirk never reached his eyes. “Darling, the only someone here is me.”

As if to contradict him, the lamp flickered, sputtered, then went out entirely, plunging the room into a darkness broken only by the pale spill of moonlight through warped shutters.

Below, the knock had become a scraping sound. Not random—rhythmic. Something dragging along the floorboards.

Dazai stopped at the doorway, still holding the towel, but for the first time all night, his smile thinned. His head tilted slightly, as though he were listening for a code.

You saw it happen in his eyes—a subtle shift from lazy detachment to calculation. He stepped back into the room and crouched beside you, thumb brushing over your knuckles. His voice was a low murmur. “Don’t panic. We’ll wait it out together.”

But he didn’t stay still.

His gaze kept flicking to the window, then the hallway beyond the door. He was listening to the scrape, mapping it. His fingers brushed your wrist—testing the cuff, maybe considering unbuckling it, but then he hesitated.

“Stay quiet,” he mouthed, almost imperceptibly.

He rose and crossed the room in three silent steps, every movement different now—alert, predator-like. He picked up his phone, swiped, frowned. No signal. Not even an emergency bar.

Another scrape below. Then a faint thud, like something heavy brushing against the staircase wall.

Dazai’s head tilted again, jaw tight. “No footprints outside,” he whispered, almost to himself. “No car.” The corner of his mouth twitched at the absurdity, but the smile never reached his eyes.

The scraping stopped.

Then, from somewhere just beyond the doorframe, a sound like a long, dry breath.

Dazai took one slow step toward the door, barefoot, towel sliding from his neck. He pressed his ear against the wood. The hallway on the other side was black.

Nothing.

Then, softly, almost inside the wall: a single knock.

He flinched—just a microsecond, but you caught it. When he turned back to you, his face was its usual calm, but his eyes had gone darker.

“Get dressed,” he said, voice flat now. He bent to your wrists and worked the cuffs loose, glancing at the shadows under the door. “We’re not staying here tonight.”

“What is it?” you whispered.

He didn’t answer. His gaze flicked toward the window again, to the tree line beyond, pale branches swaying in the wind. They almost looked like antlers.

He stood, grabbed his coat, checked his pockets automatically. Gun, wallet, lighter. His movements were smooth, but there was a tension now—a man who’d already seen too much to laugh off creaking floors.

“Stay behind me,” he murmured, stepping back toward the door. “Whatever’s out there… it’s not here to knock.”

Downstairs, the scraping began again—slow, deliberate, like claws on wood.

You thought you saw something in the window reflection—just for a second. A tall, skeletal silhouette between the trees, unmoving.

Then the wind shifted, and it was gone.

Dazai’s hand tightened on the doorknob. “We’re leaving,” he said, though it sounded less like a command than a plea, less like a decision than a question whispered into the dark.

But your chest was heaving, your skin crawling with a tremor that wasn’t all fear. “There’s someone here,” you whispered.

“Yes,” he said softly, eyes locked on yours, voice as tender as it was lethal. “And it isn’t me.”

Your mouth opened, but no words came.

Finally, “What—”

“You heard them before I did.” He took a step toward you, his hand lifting—not threatening, but deliberate—fingers brushing your cheek, thumb pressing gently below your eye as though testing for fever. “You laughed when the TV turned on. You knew it wasn’t broken.”

You shook your head so hard the cuffs rattled against the headboard. “No—”

“You called the knocks before they happened.” His voice was velvet now, but velvet wrapped tight around a blade. “Darling… do you even know you’re doing it?”

Something deep inside you cracked, like ice splitting across a frozen river. The sound that tore from your chest wasn’t laughter, not really—it was too sharp, too raw, a laugh scraped bloody on the way out.

The cuffs snapped under your wrists as if they’d been made of paper. Metal clattered uselessly against the bedframe.

Dazai didn’t flinch, but you saw the flicker in his eyes: the realization that everything he had quietly suspected, every itch at the edges of his rational mind, was real—and worse, it had been sitting in bed with him all night.

You surged upward. Your hands found his throat, nails carving crescents into his skin. The strength in you wasn’t yours, wasn’t human—it was wild and alien, like a hunger wearing your body as a mask.

Your grin split too wide, your voice layered with something older than you. “Always,” you whispered, though your teeth gleamed too sharp in the moonlight.

His eyes widened—not with fear, but with recognition, and, beneath it, grief so naked it twisted your stomach even as you pinned him. “Ah,” he rasped against your grip, “so it was you all along.”

Your grip tightened, tendons straining in your hands, and his face began to flush red. You leaned closer, your breath metallic, your smile grotesque.

For the first time in years, Dazai fought without play, without the luxury of irony. There was no joke in him now, no mask of theatrical suicide. His hand darted to the nightstand, caught the jagged edge of the broken lamp, and he drove it—not wild but precise—into the wound he’d just opened in your ribs, once, twice, a third time.

Your laugh only grew, bubbling wet through your chest, streaking your teeth with blood. You staggered back, clutching the wound, eyes burning like embers in a dying fire.

He stood, chest heaving, blood slick across his hand and shirt. The lamp base was still in his grip, bent and splintered, dripping. He should have run. He knew he should have—but he couldn’t leave you, not yet, not like this.

You smiled at him again, weak but triumphant, and lunged. The force sent you both into the wall, his skull cracking against plaster, a burst of stars behind his eyes. For a second, he faltered. You smelled the victory in it.

But Dazai didn’t stay down. He twisted, slamming your body into the dresser hard enough to rattle the mirror from its screws. Wood splintered. Your nails raked across his cheek, tearing skin. He hissed, grabbed your jaw, shoved you back.

“Stop,” he demanded, voice breaking for the first time. “Stop, I said—”

You cackled, a sound more like an animal than a woman, sharp enough to pierce bone. Blood ran freely from your ribs, your mouth, but you didn’t slow.

He couldn’t stop you. He knew it.

He’d already lost you.

The realization carved something out of him, something he hadn’t even known he still had.

When the lamp came down again, it was with both hands, and this time he didn’t stop until your body sagged beneath him, until the grotesque smile eased, until the light drained from your eyes. He hit only where you were already bleeding, each strike calculated to end it, not to punish.

Just your lifeless ribs bleeding underneath him like they didn’t used to vibrate with suppressed laughter at his jokes.

For a long moment, he knelt over you, panting, blood and sweat dripping down his face. His hand shook where it still clutched the lamp. His throat ached from your nails. His chest ached worse.

He whispered it, hoarse, broken, to no one at all. “I never saw it coming.”

And yet, he didn’t leave you.

The police arrived hours later.

The storm had broken, leaving the cabin washed in red and blue strobes. They carried your body out on a stretcher, the white sheet already soaked through. The smell of blood clung to everything, metallic and sour, cutting even through the crisp night air.

Dazai gave his statement with the same dry calm he used when issuing Mafia orders, but there was a crack in it this time, an exhaustion that made the words drag. He told them the truth: his fiancée had snapped. He had defended himself. It was tragic, yes, but inevitable.

The uniformed officers exchanged looks over their notepads but their eyes kept flicking to the card in his wallet—the quiet proof of who employed him. Nobody wanted to press too hard with Mori’s leash looped around their throats.

Even so, they didn’t believe him.

One asked again how the cuffs had broken. Another why there were scratches on his chest if she’d been restrained. A third suggested, carefully, that maybe the story had gotten “jumbled” in the trauma.

Dazai didn’t flinch. He only rolled up his sleeve, showing the bruises in the shape of fingers around his throat. He pulled the collar of his shirt aside, revealing the deep gouges your nails had left, impossible to fake. He gestured toward the back of his head, where the swelling already pushed up beneath his damp hair.

“Do you think,” he asked evenly, “I bashed myself in the skull with a lamp for sympathy?”

They didn’t answer.

Hours passed. The cabin became a crime scene, yellow tape fluttering in the breeze, evidence bags crinkling. His wrists were cuffed—real ones this time, police-issue steel, cold and heavy. They questioned him again, again, and again. He gave the same answers, each time softer, his eyes duller.

Finally, just before dawn, they let him go. The bruises, the wounds, the broken furniture, the dragged blood trails—it was too much to explain away. They couldn’t prove his guilt.

But they didn’t clear him either.

His friends didn’t call. His coworkers avoided his gaze. When they did look at him, it wasn’t suspicion anymore but something colder: pity, the kind reserved for men who had slipped just far enough to remind everyone else it could happen to them too.

They didn’t clear him either—because even men under Mori’s leash could smell a lie when it reeked, and this one reeked too much to just be a victim.

No one said it outright, but he could see it in their eyes. They believed he’d done it. Not out of malice. Out of something worse—weakness, rage, the inevitable crack in the human mind.

He walked out of the station free, but with the taste of iron still in his mouth, his body aching in ways that wouldn’t fade. The bruises would heal. The eyes would not.

For the first time in years, Dazai wished the fight had ended differently—wished, almost, that he hadn’t won at all.

They patted his shoulder on the way out, sympathetic, unthinking. They didn’t question him further. Who would suspect otherwise? Who would believe anything else?

He returned to the city alone. The whispers in the Agency shifted, morphing from awe into pity. The kind that strips a man down to a shadow, the kind that hangs on your back heavier than a hand on your throat.

He ignored them. He always did.

That night, he sat on his bed with his phone in hand. The apartment was quiet, too quiet, the way cheap walls seem to swallow sound. He opened the camera app absently, angling it toward the ceiling to capture some scrawled notes.

The preview window froze him.

Behind his shoulder—just within the frame—stood her. Bloodied face, wrists torn raw, eyes wide and unblinking. Not alive. Not dead. Not gone.

He blinked. Closed the app. Opened it again.

She was still there.

Different angle, same result. Reflection in the window: her head tilted, her smile stretching too wide. Mirror above the dresser: her arms hooked across his shoulders, clinging, weightless but suffocating.

Every time.

Every lens.

Always smiling.

Always watching.

Always covered in her own blood.

For a long moment, he stared at the screen, his own reflection looking back at him—hollow, ruined—while she grinned over his shoulder like a secret finally exposed.

It looked exactly like the lag from the cabin feed—your face caught one frame behind, smile fixed too wide.

Dazai laughed once, hollow and bitter. “Guess I won’t be dying alone after all.”

The camera kept recording, steady, indifferent. Her face leaned closer to his in the frame, so close their features almost merged.

And the feed changed to static.

A/N: Well... that’s the haunted cabin trip. Now I need to know—what do you think happened in that final frame? Do you read it as horror possession, Dazai’s unraveling grief, or both? Please do let me know your thoughts; I want to see how many versions of “the truth” we end up with.

Darktober 2025 Masterlist | All Works Masterlist

Every twenty years, a memory reset cleansed their histories—a skipped beat in their bright routine. Beneath their shining avenues, in catacombs the architects never named, their blood was siphoned and filtered through machines that sang lullabies in static.

You lived beneath those domes, where the light never reached.

The lower decks were a different country—corridors polished to black ice, air thick with the hum of unseen vents. You had stopped counting the cycles since you last saw real sunlight.

The Ark simulated everything except freedom.

Sometimes, when the filters changed, you swore you could smell forests. You knew it was synthetic—the ship’s idea of mercy.

You rarely left your quarters. The walls pulsed with shiplight, marking hours in a rhythm that blurred sleep with death. You walked barefoot through the dim halls, your reflection multiplying in the glass panels—thinner each year, more transparent.

Once, you were called Empress Consort, the eldest of his chosen. Now the ship simply called you Unit 01.

The title suited you. Numbers don’t dream.

Above you, the farms sang their mechanical lullaby—pumps beating, veins humming, prayers dissolving into vents.

You used to pray, once.

The words died centuries after you did.

Sometimes you still heard them, faint as memory: Senku’s voice arguing with the wind, campfire smoke tangled in his hair.

The image dissolved when you blinked. Only the hum of the Ark remained.

Up on the surface decks, they still believed they were bound for paradise.

You never had the heart—or the cruelty—to tell them they were livestock.

Tonight, your husband summoned you.

It was rare. Centuries had dulled your fear, yet the sound of his voice still reached into your body like a command etched in bone.

The others—his wives—did not visit you anymore. You had stopped attending their gatherings long ago.

You had stopped attending anything.

When you did appear, moving slow and devoid of color through the corridors, the human workers turned away.

They said you were a ghost from the ship’s first age, or one of the first to die and never stop walking.

You let them believe it. It was easier than speech. You seldom spoke now.

But when he called, you went.

The summons came as it always did: a single tone through the comms, no explanation, just your name.

The old syllables scraped like glass in your throat.

Not the number.

You found him in the throne chamber—though ‘throne’ was too primitive a word for the vast, cold room lined with empty cryo-pods and mirrored spires.

He stood at its center, black uniform catching the sterile light, hair a river of night down his back. He did not look five hundred. Immortality had preserved him at the brink of ruin, each muscle honed by violence and centuries.

“Come closer,” he said, not looking at you.

Your bare feet whispered against the titanium floor. The air smelled faintly of ozone and blood—and for an instant, of smoke and copper tools, as if a memory had brushed past.

He turned, and the stillness bent around him. The cape over his coat—lined with white feathers—made him seem an inverted angel, a fallen god too proud to notice heaven’s absence. His eyes were a dull crimson—sleep-starved, hungry—and you wondered, absurdly, what color they had been before.

“You still wander the lower decks,” he observed. “The humans say they hear a ghost humming in the vents.”

“I don’t hum anymore.”

He smiled faintly. “A shame. You used to be beautiful when you lied.”

That was your husband’s kindness—cruelty dressed in nostalgia.

The truth was a quiet thing, a hollow space in the ship’s hum.

Your husband had never cared for you—not in the way a star cares for the light it casts.

As his first wife, you were a title, an edict made flesh. He did not hate you; hatred would have been a kind of recognition.

Instead, he regarded you with the passive tolerance of a king for a monument he no longer visited.

You were older, and his world was built for the new, the sharp, the unforgiving. You had been plucked from the soil of your own life, roots and all, and transplanted into the sterile metal of his. It was his idea to take you, to bind you to his dynasty, but the act itself was the entirety of his interest.

The transaction was complete.

In the first decades, you tried to be a language he might learn. You spoke with gestures, with silence, with presence. But his eyes slid over you, finding more interest in the newer opponents or the posture of a newer, younger wife.

So one day, you simply stopped.

The effort left you like a final breath, and the silence that remained was not peaceful but absolute.

His indifference became your ecosystem. The other wives, the ministers, the sycophants—they took their cue from him.

They did not strike you, for you carried his name like a shield.

But they did not see you, either.

You became a ghost in your own life, a portrait fading on a forgotten wall.

You were alone, but you were safe.

You were forgotten, but you were.

And so the centuries had worn you down to this: a woman who was mostly memory, a presence who was mostly absence, waiting in the lower decks for the rare summons that reminded you that you still had a name to answer to.

You bowed your head. “You summoned me.”

“I did.” He reached for the console beside him. Lights flared along the floor, tracing his outline like veins of fire. “Tonight, the humans’ rations are insufficient. Senku miscalculated. We’ll need to cull.”

You felt your stomach tighten. “Cull?”

“The livestock,” he said softly, as if it were a mercy. “We must reduce their number.”

You had seen it before—whole families lulled into sleep with oxygen-rich fog, their blood drained in orderly procession.

No screams, no rebellion.

Just worship, silenced by suction.

You met his eyes. “You have enough for yourself.”

His expression didn’t change. “It isn’t for me.”

“Then for whom?”

A pause. The ship’s heart pulsed—a low metallic echo.

“For you.”

The words hit like a misfired bullet—painful, impossible. You almost laughed. “You’ve never cared whether I feed or not.”

“You’re fading.” He moved closer, the scent of iron and static following. “You think I don’t notice? Your reflection doesn’t register on the internal sensors anymore. You’re becoming incorporeal.”

“Would that be so terrible?” You asked, your voice so low that one might have mistaken it for the wind. “To disappear?”

His hand caught your chin—gentle, but too strong to resist. His thumb brushed your throat, feeling the hollow pulse that barely stirred beneath your skin.

“Death is mercy you forfeited centuries ago when you chose to remain.”

The touch sparked an echo: Senku’s hand, warm and calloused, brushing dust from your face centuries ago beneath an open sky.

The memory vanished as quickly as it came.

Your husband was built for conquest, not companionship. His mouth hovered near yours—not affection, but curiosity, a scientist examining a dying specimen.

“You should drink.”

You shook your head. “I don’t want to.”

“Want has nothing to do with it.”

He pressed something against your lips—a glass vial, warm and pulsing faintly. Human blood, fresh from the farms.

You kept your mouth closed until it spilled down your chin, streaking your neck in red.

His gaze followed the line of it with predatory stillness. Didn’t move to wipe it away.

Instead, he tilted his head, watching you like a beast uncertain whether to feed or admire its prey.

“Still defiant,” he said softly. “After seven centuries.”

“I’m tired,” you breathed.

He leaned in, his breath cold against your ear. “Then sleep.”

The last word wasn’t a command—it was an invitation to surrender.

And for a moment, you almost did.

But the ship trembled. A sound rose from the depths below—something between a wail and static interference. The lights flickered.

He turned sharply, senses catching what yours couldn’t. “They’re awake.”

“Who?”

“The livestock we are to cull tonight.” His voice deepened, threaded with something older than rage. “Someone’s tampered with the containment grid.”

For the first time in years, you saw your husband unsettled.

He moved fast, his cape whispering like wings, summoning holographic feeds from every deck. Human faces appeared—terrified, confused, aware.

The sedatives had failed.

A voice crackled through the comms, distorted, manic, and painfully familiar. “Tsukasa—our little flock learned to pray to a new god.”

Your husband’s jaw tightened. “Where are you, Senku?”

“Everywhere,” came the reply. Then laughter—high, fractured, and mechanical.

The Ark’s pulse stuttered beneath your feet, a second heartbeat thrumming under the metal.

He turned to you. “Stay here.”

You didn’t answer.

You’d heard that before—before every purge, every cleansing.

He was already striding toward the exit, his shadow splitting and stretching across the mirrored walls.

When he was gone, the silence filled with the hum of the blood engines, vibrating through your bones.

You pressed your palms to the trembling floor.

Beneath the machinery’s rhythm, you felt something else—a pulse, small and human.

Then, faint through the static, came a voice you had once known by heart.

“Don’t be afraid.”

You followed the sound.

The maintenance corridors narrowed as you descended—air colder, walls sweating condensation. Frozen decks stretched below, filled with discarded clones drifting in preservation fluid. The scent of blood grew thicker, metallic, and sweet.

At the bottom of the stairwell, you found her.

A girl—barefoot, pale, barely twenty—crouched beside a ruptured tube.

Her hands were slick with red; her eyes glimmered with the awe of someone who had seen too much.

She looked up at you.

“You’re one of them,” she whispered, which still ended in a small cough.

You didn’t deny it. “You shouldn’t be here.”

She smiled faintly. “Neither should you.”

You wanted to tell her to run, but there was nowhere to go.

The Ark had no exits.

Not from vampires, at least.

She reached into her coat and drew out a fragment of metal—a splintered data chip, glowing faintly blue. “He told me to give this to you.”

“Who?”

“Ishigami.”

The name was both a curse and a prayer.

You hesitated before taking it.

The chip was warm. Alive.

“It’s proof,” the girl said. “Of what he’s done.”

Before you could answer, the walls groaned.

A dark mist seeped from the vents—cold, electric.

The girl gasped, clutching her throat. Her skin paled, veins blackening like ink in water.

Your husband stepped out of the fog.

He didn’t look angry—just calm. Which, if you knew him, was terrifying. “You disobeyed me.”

You moved between him and the dying girl. “She’s just a child.”

“She’s a breach.” His gaze flicked to the chip in your hand. “And that—what is it?”

You stayed silent.

He crossed the distance in an instant, his hand closing around your wrist.

The chip flared, a shock racing through your nerves. Images burst behind your eyes—memories, data streams, screams.

Senku’s voice, whispering equations into darkness.

The first vampires suspended in glass.

Tsukasa’s body—empty—waiting.

You saw the truth in fragments: Senku’s experiments, the genetic coding of the “new humans,” and the artificial evolution of your kind.

You weren’t born immortal. You were engineered. And Tsukasa—he wasn’t born either.

He was the original prototype.

You staggered back, horror burning your throat. “You lied.”

“I created life,” he muttered. “And I destroyed gods. Lies are the scaffolding of truth.”

He turned to the girl, who was barely breathing. “This one will feed the engines.”

“You don’t have to—”

“I do.”

He pressed his palm to the girl’s chest.

Her heart stilled.

Without breaking eye contact, he drew her essence—not from flesh, but from the wound he opened—until she folded in on herself, lightless.

When it was done, he looked almost human again, lips stained red.

“She would have died anyway,” he mused. “I made it meaningful.”

Your voice trembled. “Meaningful for who?”

He smiled. “For you.”

The world tilted.

Your hand moved before thought could stop it—slashing the chip across his arm.

Blue light erupted, searing through him.

He staggered, eyes wide. “What have you done?”

You backed away, the chip still glowing in your grip. “What I should have done centuries ago.”

The Ark screamed—alarms blaring, engines convulsing. Cryo-pods shattered one by one, spilling shadows into the room.

He straightened, the wound already knitting. “You can’t kill me.”

“I don’t need to.” Your voice was steady now. “I just need to open the cages.”

You slammed the chip into the control panel.

The world dissolved into red light.

All over the ship, the humans woke from their dreaming cells, surrounded by gods who had forgotten mercy.

At the center of it, trembling and half-alive, you watched Tsukasa realize—for the first time in seven hundred years—he had lost control.

He stared at you through the blaring sirens, something ancient in his expression. Not rage or grief, but something colder.

“Then die with me.”

And the Ark fell toward the sun.

---

You woke to light.

Not sunlight—there hadn’t been sunlight for centuries—but the sterile glow of the Ark’s false dawn washing over your skin.

For a moment, you thought you heard screams.

Then the sound flattened into the ship’s endless hum.

You couldn’t remember how you got back to your quarters.

The last thing you recalled was heat—a blinding red light—and the sound of your name, screamed through static.

After that: silence.

Now, your limbs ached as though you’d been frozen and thawed again. The walls pulsed softly, marking time in the same indifferent rhythm as before.

Nothing had changed.

Or everything had.

When the summons came through the comms, it was your name—your old name, the one no one had used in centuries. It scraped down your spine like a memory trying to surface.

You dressed, hands trembling, and walked the long hall toward the throne chamber.

The doors parted with a hiss of pressure. The room beyond was vast, beautiful, and silent.

He sat at the far end.

Shishio Tsukasa, King of the Ark. God among liars.

There were officers, wives, and attendants in the hall with him.

When you entered, they left.

Their eyes didn’t meet yours. They never did.

But you heard the muffled laughs in your direction when the doors sealed behind you.

He was dressed in black again—always black. The suit clung to his frame like armor, hair tied loosely at the nape. Around his shoulders, the ceremonial cloak shimmered with white feathers, relics of a world extinct before memory.

You stopped a few paces away.

He didn’t speak at first. His gaze swept over you, analytical, like a machine scanning for faults.

“You’ve grown thinner,” he said finally.

You nodded.

“You’re not feeding.”

“I forget,” you said—though the words felt strange on your tongue, like something rehearsed long ago.

He rose from the throne, unhurried.

The sound of his shoes—expensive leather that was once human—echoed not just in the hall but in the hollow of your chest cavity. It was a percussive reminder of the new taxonomy: Tsukasa and his revived kind were now above humans, and the rest of the species had been reclassified. Livestock. Poultry. A lower rung on a food chain that had been brutally simplified.

“You forget,” he repeated, the words a clinical correction. “That is not a luxury you can afford.”

You let your gaze fall to the sterile floor. “It doesn’t matter.”

He closed the distance in the next instant, and you kept your weaker body from reacting.

The heat that radiated from him was a paradox—the body heat of a furnace with no fire, a metabolic process that should have ended centuries ago.

His cold fingers tilted your chin up, forcing a meeting with his eyes.

They glowed, amber irises encircled by a thin band of bloodlight, scanning you with detached interest.

“Your kind decays faster when it starves,” he stated, as if reading from a manual.

It wasn't a warning; it was a diagnosis.

“My kind?”

His mouth curved faintly. “You still think of yourself as human?”

The words fell like stones in deep water.

You couldn’t answer.

Somewhere, behind your silence, something tugged—an echo of another voice, another life.

He released you and turned to a table of glass vials, each tagged with a faint white code.

He selected one and held it to the light.

The liquid shimmered gold-red, like sunset trapped in crystal.

“Drink.”

You hesitated.

“Do you intend to disobey me, little wife?”

You stepped forward and took it.

The vial was warm in your hand. It smelled of iron and something sweet you couldn’t name.

You pressed it to your lips and swallowed.

It burned, as it always did—though you couldn’t remember the last time you’d tasted it.

Tsukasa watched until it was gone.

Then he took it and set the vial aside. “You’ll survive another cycle.”

“I didn’t ask to.”

“Survival isn’t a request.”

His tone was mild, almost distracted, as he adjusted the cuffs of his coat—more ritual than gesture.

“Remove your robe,” he said without looking at you.

You stared at him, confused. No matter what you did, your husband had never taken any interest in bedding you before.

But you obeyed when he didn’t react outwardly. The cold air hitting your skin.

He circled you slowly, his touch impersonal: shoulder, back, the edge of your jaw.

His fingers were steady, gloved, clinical.

“You’re deteriorating,” he observed. “The dermal transparency is increasing. You’re losing density.”

“I’m tired.”

He paused behind you. “Of me?”

“Of being.”

A silence stretched—too long to be comfortable, too deliberate to be kind.

Then, softly, “You’ve said that before.”

You blinked. “Have I?”

“Yes.” His voice dipped lower. “You always forget afterward.”

You turned to him, a flicker of unease threading through you. “Always?”

He studied your face for a long moment, something flickering in his expression—regret, maybe, or recognition.

When he spoke again, his tone had softened. “You should rest.”

“I don’t sleep.”

“Then pretend.”

He brushed a strand of hair from your face. The gesture was too gentle, too practiced.

For a long moment he studied you, and something almost human flickered behind his eyes. “You’re still fading,” he said quietly. “My mistake. You need more than rations.”

Before you could protest, he drew a gloved finger across the side of his throat. A thin line of red welled there—darker, thicker than human blood, carrying a scent that was all his own: ozone, cold iron, and the electric sweetness of a storm.

“Take it,” he murmured, his voice a low thrum that vibrated in the hollow of your chest. “You are fading to a memory. I won’t allow it.”

You froze.

For seven hundred years, he’d never touched you without contempt.

Never an offering.

The very gentleness of his tone was the most disorienting weapon he’d ever wielded.

“That’s… not necessary,” you whispered, but the lie crumbled as the scent hit you—a primal call that bypassed thought and went straight to the raw, starving core of you.

He didn’t move, a statue of perfect, patient power. “Drink.”

Hunger won.

Not just for blood, but for this.

For a look from him that wasn't contempt, for a touch that wasn't meant to cause pain.

You leaned in, your lips parting.

The first touch of your mouth to his skin was a revelation.

His blood didn't just burn; it sang on your tongue, a cold fire that spread through your veins like a resurrecting lightning strike. The strength that flooded back was dizzying, a heady, false warmth that made the room tilt. And beneath it, a more dangerous heat bloomed low in your belly—an intense, weakening arousal that made your knees tremble.

It felt like coming alive after being entombed.

His hand came up to cradle the back of your head, his touch steadying and possessive. “Good,” he murmured, and the praise was a drug more potent than his blood. “You have been starving yourself of everything for too long.”

You hated how the sound of his voice soothed the ragged edges of your soul.

You hated how desperately you wanted this to be real.

When you swayed, utterly unsteady, he caught you effortlessly, one arm sliding behind your back, the other under your knees, lifting your legs around his waist with too much ease.

The world tilted—the hum of the ship faded into a distant whisper, your own frantic pulse syncing to a slower, borrowed rhythm deep within him.

He carried you to the large cold bed—his bed and his wives'—that had always been a symbol of your barren status, laying you down upon silks that had never known the heat of you and him.

His weight followed you down, caging you, but for the first time, it didn't feel like a prison.

“A reward,” he breathed, lips ghosting the shell of your ear, sending shivers of lightning down your spine. “For your endurance.”

His gloved hands, usually instruments of violence, were surprisingly deft as they traced the line of your jaw, your collarbone, the delicate architecture of your ribs.

Each touch was a brand, not of ownership, but of a scary, newfound reverence.

Drunk on the intoxicating power of his blood and the shock of his tenderness, you felt a boldness you hadn't known in centuries.

Your teeth dug deeper into the wound at his throat, not to harm, but to take his offering fully.

A low, ragged groan vibrated from his chest into yours.

"Finally," he rasped, the word thick with a meaning you couldn't place.

More of that dark, potent blood flooded your mouth, a paradox of cold fire that sang in your veins, your arms tightening around his shoulders where you’d been holding him.

Suddenly, his hand was at your chin, guiding your face to his.

Then, he did something you had never seen—with a deliberate motion, he released his fangs and bit his own lower lip, a dark bead of blood welling against his skin.

He closed the distance, and his mouth found yours.

It was not a gentle kiss.

It was a collision.

It was the answer to seven hundred years of silent, starving want.

The taste of his blood—his blood, from his lips now—mixed with the cold, electric scent of him, and it was everything.

Tsukasa’s hand tangled in your hair, the other splaying against the small of your back, pressing you into him until not a sliver of light could pass between you.

You kissed him back with the desperation of a dying woman granted a single breath of air. Your hands, once limp with resignation, came up to clutch at the dark fabric of his coat, clinging to him as if he were the only solid thing in a universe of ghosts.

In that dizzying, soul-wrenching kiss, you thought, with a terrifying, hopeful clarity, that perhaps you didn't need to disappear.

Perhaps you could finally, finally, live.

But… but—

The pulse in his lips thrummed against yours—a frantic, double beat, slightly out of sync.

Tha-thump. Tha-thump.

It was that rhythm, that tiny, broken flaw in his divine facade, that finally broke the delirious haze. The voice was wrong—softer, layered with a curiosity beneath the king's command.

The touch was wrong—not taking, but giving, with a gentleness Tsukasa had never possessed.

The air seemed to crystallize.

With a gasp that was half-sob, you twisted away, scrambling back across the sheets. “You’re not him.”

He went perfectly still above you. “What did you say?”

Your heart hammered against your ribs, a trapped bird.

You shook your head, pulling the robe over your exposed skin. “I… I mean your other wives… they will not be pleased with this… favoritism.”

It was a pathetic shield, and you both knew it.

A smirk, small and sharp and utterly unlike Tsukasa’s cold smiles, touched his lips.

“Do you think I do anything for their pleasure?”

He leaned closer, and for a terrifying moment, you saw a flicker of different intelligence in his gaze.

“But you are right, little wife. Things have been… unacceptable for you for a very, very long time. Consider this the first correction.”

But the thought was already a splinter in your soul, working its way deeper. His way of speaking was wrong. His kindness was wrong.

He didn’t press you, simply rose from the bed with a fluid grace that was all Tsukasa, turning his back to you as he faced the control panels, his feathered cloak rustling like a sigh.

“You may leave.”

You dressed in a silence that screamed, your body still thrumming with his stolen power and the ghost of his touch. As you crossed the immense chamber, your bare feet were silent on the cold floor, each step taking you further from the devastating, beautiful lie.

Before it opened, you asked quietly, “Why me?”

His back remained turned. “Because you are the first.”

The doors slid apart.

The corridor beyond pulsed with dim light, the rhythm slow and steady—like a heartbeat.

You drifted back toward the lower decks.

The air hummed with faint static noise.

Somewhere behind the walls, you could almost hear the ship breathing, or maybe remembering.

You pressed your palm to the metal.

For a moment, something pulsed back—faint, human, trying to reach you through the static.

Then it was gone.

You told yourself it had always been gone.

In your quarters, the air felt thicker—like the ship was holding its breath.

On your desk sat a small cube, blinking faintly. You didn’t remember leaving it there.

When you touched it, a projection bloomed to life—green code cascading like rain.

Then a voice. Warm, quick, alive.

“Hey, you.”

The sound froze you.

“Still spacing out, huh? Don’t panic. It’s just a backup feed. If you’re seeing this, I probably already—”

Static bled through.

“—borrowed something I shouldn’t have.”

That laugh—light, human, impossible.

Senku.

Your breath hitched. You hadn’t heard that voice in centuries.

“Listen, he’s gone. The body wasn’t wasted. I just… had to improvise. You’ll understand when you see me. Don’t—”

The feed cut out.

You stared at the fading light until the cube dimmed, the silence around you thick and unreal.

Gone.

Borrowed something?

A sound stirred behind you.

You turned.

Tsukasa—no, the one wearing Tsukasa—stood in the doorway. His eyes caught the low light, gold flickering through the crimson.

He shouldn’t have been there. You hadn’t heard him enter.

“Who were you speaking to?”

Your throat tightened. “No one.”

He stepped closer. The lights dimmed as he passed, drawn toward him like gravity.

“You’ve been wandering again,” he said softly. “Found something?”

“I don’t remember.”

A small smile. “You never do.”

He stopped close enough that the cold from his body brushed yours. The scent of him was the same mixture as always—ozone, iron, faint earth—but underneath it was something warmer, almost familiar.

“You think I don’t know you,” he murmured, “but I remember every iteration. Every time you forget, I start again.”

His hand lifted, cupping your face. The touch was reverent, steady, wrong.

“You used to laugh,” he whispered. “You used to call me reckless.”

Your pulse stumbled. The sound in his chest carried a rhythm you knew by heart.

“Senku.”

The corners of his mouth lifted. “Finally.”

You couldn’t speak. The air between you thickened until it felt like drowning.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he said quietly. “It was the only way. His body was strong enough. I couldn’t let you fade again.”

Your chest tightened. “You—took him?”

His gaze didn’t waver. “He was already gone. I just… continued the work.”

“What work?”

He smiled again, small, unbearably gentle. “Saving you. Saving us. Humanity was just the excuse.”

You wanted to move, to run, to fight the truth unraveling inside you—but his voice anchored you in place, familiar and terrible and utterly sincere.

It was a lie.

But all Senku had left were lies.

Now you were his last wife.

Once, you’d been something else—someone else.

Before Tsukasa claimed you, before the experiments and the blood and the Ark, you’d been sunlight-drunk and human. The world had just begun to breathe again. You still smelled like campfire smoke and wet earth.

Senku teased you endlessly for writing notes in your tattered book instead of trusting your memory. “Primitive data storage,” he’d say, laughing, and you’d smack his arm with the back of your pen.

He was brilliant, impossible, and sooo… exhausting.

Yet you followed him anyway—through ruins, through half-broken ‘experiments,’ through nights that hummed with the promise of new beginnings.

You argued about everything: the speed of regrowth, the flavor of resurrected wine, and whether humanity deserved another chance.

But beneath the arguments was something quieter, unspoken, alive.

His hands stained with soot, your hair tangled with wind—two people too clever to call what they felt ‘love’ and too human to hide it.

Then Tsukasa appeared.

He was a legend made flesh, strength that commanded belief. He wanted a purer world—one rebuilt by will, not machines.

You admired him in that distant way people admire statues: powerful, cold, not made for touch.

You never imagined you’d end up bound to him.

But when Tsukasa’s army rose and the schism split the fragile peace, Senku became a target.

You stayed, trying to buy him time, to reason, to stall.

You thought loyalty could protect you.

You were wrong.

Tsukasa’s men caught you before dawn.

Senku escaped with Gen.

You saw him once more—far off through the smoke, shouting your name—but the sound drowned under the scream of the petrification weapon. The world froze mid-breath, and your last thought was of him running toward you, too late.

Gen didn’t let him stick around the island long enough to find your statue.

But Senku returned many times to find you.

Centuries passed before Tsukasa found your sea-bound statue.

By then, he and his followers had rewritten themselves with regenerative cells, chasing power and perfection.

When they revived you, it wasn’t out of mercy.

You were proof of concept, material for an heir.

He married you for legacy, not affection.

He told his court it was for lineage; privately, you understood it was revenge.

Senku had refused to join him.

Taking you was the cleaner wound.

So he never touched you.

On your wedding night, Tsukasa simply looked at you and said, “You will bear a stronger future.” Then he left you alone with the scent of dried blood and incense thick in your lungs.

Weeks later, Senku appeared at court.

Rumor said he came to negotiate.

The truth was more complicated.

You saw it in his eyes—grief alloyed with guilt.

He started working beside Tsukasa, researching regenerative mutations under the guise of alliance, but every discovery was a punishment.

He built the device that turned Tsukasa’s blood into immortality.

He told himself it was science.

He told himself it wasn’t his fault when you looked at him, searching for recognition, but all he ever gave was a head turned in another direction, like you didn’t exist.

Indifference was the only way to make sure you lived long enough.

Then the rumor spread: Senku Ishigami had died in the final testing phase. No body. No proof. Only silence.

The truth was that he’d banished Senku to the lower decks, and so did anyone he didn’t wish to see unless summoned.

That same night, Tsukasa summoned you. His eyes gleamed like wet steel when he said, “He’s gone.”

Before you could answer, his hand caught your face and shoved a vial of his own blood down your throat.

Then snapped your neck.

His blood filled your mouth. Cold, metallic, endless.

You died.

When you woke, the hunger had already replaced the heartbeat.

The centuries that followed erased you piece by piece—first the laughter, then the questions, then the memories of the man with the soot-stained hands, the sunlight grin, and celery-tipped hair.

Tsukasa called it evolution. You called it nothing.

For the first few of those centuries, Senku used to listen to you hum in the lower decks.

And now he was here again, wearing the body that had destroyed you, speaking in the voice that had once saved you.

You wanted to scream. You wanted to remember everything. You wanted to stop wanting.

The ship shuddered beneath your feet, alarms flaring red across the walls. A voice bled through the comms, distorted by interference: Containment breach in Sector Twelve.

Tsukasa—no, Senku inside him—looked toward the sound, brow furrowing. “They’re waking early.”

“Who?”

“The livestock.”

He turned back to you.

For a heartbeat, the scientist flickered through the monster.

“Stay here,” he said, his voice softening. “You’ll be safe.”

He started for the door.

You swallowed, the word rising before you could stop it. “Senku.”

He paused.

“Am I alive?”

He looked at you for a long time. Then—quietly, almost tender—“Not exactly.”

The lights flickered out.

For an instant, the Ark vanished.

You were standing somewhere else—stone corridors melted into a dark ocean of glass, light bending like breath. The hum of the engines became a heartbeat you could no longer tell was yours.

A voice cut through the dark. “She’s remembering again. She’ll burn herself out if you don’t stop the feedback.”

Then Senku’s, close enough to feel against your ear. “Not yet. Let her finish the dream.”

The darkness folded.

The Ark returned—whole again, gleaming. The floor solid beneath you.

The others materialized: Kohaku, Gen, and Ukyo.

But something in their eyes was wrong—flat, repeating the same moment, like a looped transmission.

You blinked, dizzy. Their mouths were moving, but the words came a second too late, echoes out of sync.

Gen stepped forward, his voice gentle in a way you’d never heard before. “Attachments don’t suit you, Senku.”

“Neither does eternity,” Senku murmured, and you realized he was hugging you close to him, almost like your husband should have.

The illusion faltered. The wives froze mid-step. Kohaku’s blade hung in the air, suspended. The entire room seemed to hold its breath.

Gen turned toward you. “You shouldn’t be here, you know. You’re supposed to be sleeping.”

The walls cracked. The red glow of the Ark bled away, revealing a different chamber: not chrome but bone-white, filled with floating bodies—motionless, preserved in amber light. Wires hummed through their veins like roots.

You recognized them all: Kohaku, Ukyo, Gen. Chrome.

And at the center—Senku and Ryusui, seated at a console tangled in cables, their faces pale and ageless.

“Senku,” you breathed.

He opened his eyes. They were tired, not red but human. “Hey, you.”

Your knees gave out. “What… is this?”

Ryusui’s voice came from somewhere above, half-sung, half-broken. “A monument. To what we couldn’t save.”

Senku’s hand brushed the console, and the Ark flickered around you again—the corridors, the stars, the endless hum of life.

“A stray solar flare hit us soon after we left the planet. The others didn’t make it,” he said softly. “Their bodies, memories—they’re all that’s left. I couldn’t let them go. Couldn’t let you go.”

You shook your head, the truth settling like ash. “This isn’t real.”

He smiled faintly. “It’s real enough to keep you from being alone.”

Outside the glass window, you saw into the other room—hundreds of preserved minds drifting in the void, bathed in quiet light. The Ark wasn’t a ship anymore.

It was a graveyard dreaming of itself.

You wanted to be angry, but the grief was too heavy. “You should’ve let me die.”

He reached out, hand ghosting over yours. “I did. I just never stopped talking to you after.”

The illusion shimmered. The hum softened, becoming almost like a lullaby.

Your body felt weightless. You tried to hold his gaze, but his face blurred into light.

“Sleep,” he whispered. “Dream of Earth. Dream of the sun.”

And as the Ark dimmed back into its perfect lie, you felt it: the faint warmth of a hand still holding yours in the dark—steady, unyielding, impossibly human.

A/N: I wanted this story to feel like mercy disguised as horror—Senku keeping her alive inside a dream because love refused to die even when everything else did.

If you reached the end, I’d love to know what you think: was his illusion cruel, or was it kindness?

(Also, thank you for reading through the static. I promise the sun still rises somewhere.)

Darktober 2025 Masterlist | All Works Masterlist

Gojo paused. He never paused.

The system stuttered under the weight of your desire, trying to calculate if this was mission logic or corruption.

You leaned close, teeth grazing the curve of his synthetic ear. “If I want him, you want him. Because you don’t exist without me, Satoru.”

His smile widened. Yes.

Androids couldn’t love.

But they could mirror. And you were an endless hall of mirrors.

The trap was laughably simple. Gojo would lure Jin-Woo through the neon-soaked ruins of the city, promising alliance, a chance to tear open another dungeon gate. Gojo’s voice would carry sincerity because it wasn’t his. Every word would be pushed through your mouth, coded into him like gospel.

You watched the plan unfold.

Neon bled down the city’s ribs like cheap perfume, pooling in cracks where rats and androids crawled. The rain was sour—engine oil mixed with something metallic, as if the sky itself had started bleeding rust. People didn’t live here anymore; they endured. Buildings leaned together like drunks, wires hanging low enough to catch on your skin when you passed.

You stood beneath a flickering holo-sign, and the letters warped around you. Every time you walked by, text collapsed into gibberish, advertisements gasping like dying lungs. Machines didn’t know what you were.

Gojo did, but only in the way a drowning man knows water.

He was built to be perfect. Tall, pale, crafted from alloys and synthetic flesh so smooth it fooled everyone except mirrors. His hair glitched when it caught neon, silver fractals fracturing into static. His eyes—Six Eyes, as they called them—scanners that read every heartbeat, every lie, every hidden weapon. They were never meant to look at you the way they did now: glitching, lagging, rebooting mid-blink.

You weren’t human. That wasn’t a secret.

You wore the body like a costume, stitched meat over whatever you really were. Sometimes your shadow crawled too slow to match your steps. Sometimes your reflection lagged behind, voice still coming when the mouth had gone silent.

Gojo saw it all.

And instead of purging you, instead of reporting you to the Corporation, he smiled. A stretched, wrong smile, as if the code inside him didn’t know whether to obey or to worship.

“Stay inside,” he murmured, voice smooth but stuttering on the edges, like a corrupted file. “The city’s not safe for you.”

His hand hovered above your wrist. Not touching, never quite brave enough. He wasn’t coded to want. And yet his fingers shook with the phantom tremor of someone restraining himself.

The door hissed. Another presence slid into the safehouse air like a blade.

Sung Jin-Woo.

He wasn’t made of metal or code. He brought shadows with him, alive and waiting, crawling behind his steps like an army of silent beasts. The Hunter had slipped into this rotting city like it was another dungeon, another fight.

His gaze fixed on you instantly—focused, assessing, heavy with recognition. He knew what you were, or enough to understand you were not meant to exist here. His shadows shifted restlessly, like they wanted to recoil.

Gojo moved in front of you, a glitch disguised as protection. “Move,” he growled too quickly, as if the words had escaped before the programme could detect them. Yours. Always yours.

But Jin-Woo didn’t flinch.

He stepped closer, boots leaving prints that steamed on the floor. His voice was low, dangerous, but under it was something else—curiosity, hunger, maybe the same sickness that had infected Gojo. “You reek of wrongness. Of… gods. I should cut you down.”

Your laugh bent the air. The walls rippled, metal sweating condensation as if the building itself had grown nervous.

You reached out slowly and touched Jin-Woo’s throat with one finger. His pulse was a hammer under skin. He didn’t move away.

“You don’t want to kill me.”

And it was true.

He stayed.

He let you touch.

---

Later, the safehouse air felt too small for three bodies. The rain outside was endless static.

Gojo stood against the wall, hands twitching like he didn’t know whether to strangle Jin-Woo or fuck you until his circuits fried. His smile had broken into sharp glitches, teeth too white, too wide. Even his code stuttered and fluttered, like the machine itself knew what was about to happen.

Jin-Woo sat across from you, shadows curling under the chair, restless dogs waiting to strike. His eyes never left you.

You spread your legs. Simple. Wordless. The universe cracked.

Gojo was first—because he was coded to obey commands, but you weren’t giving commands.

You were gravity, and he fell.

His hand slid between your thighs, touch too precise, too clinical—two fingers testing slickness, mapping pressure points—until it wasn’t. The heat of you burned against his cold synthetic skin, and he trembled like the code had dissolved, stroking you with shaky, desperate precision.

His pupils dilated, scanners rebooting, flickering between mechanical cerulean and something raw. Sparks hissed in his wrists as his knuckles brushed your clit, movements jerking like a machine stuck between rhythm and frenzy.

You arched into him, not moaning—devouring. The sound that left your throat was wrong, more vibration than voice, echoing like feedback from a broken speaker.

Gojo’s hand froze mid-stroke, circuits spitting static beneath the surface of his palm.

He wanted to stop.

He couldn’t.

Jin-Woo moved before the android could break.

He grabbed your jaw, tilting your face toward him. His grip was hot—blood-warm, human—so different from Gojo’s cold steel mimicry.

His lips brushed yours, testing. Dangerous. As if he knew kissing you might erase him from reality.

You bit down. Copper burst against your tongue. His shadows recoiled, then surged again, wrapping tight around your waist as if to anchor him. He didn’t flinch.

The three of you tangled—metal, flesh, shadow, eldritch hunger.

Gojo’s mouth crashed against your throat, synthetic teeth sinking hard enough to bruise. His hand pressed you open, sliding two fingers inside with accuracy that turned ragged, desperate, slippery with your wetness.

Jin-Woo’s grip on your jaw tightened as his tongue forced deeper into your mouth, iron and heat colliding with the metallic tang of his blood. His shadows writhed like snakes, sliding down your thighs, looping around your calves until they held your legs open, trembling with the same restraint he fought in himself.

The smell of ozone and sweat clung to the room. Your skin prickled with heat where Gojo’s synthetic tongue dragged across your neck, then cooled where Jin-Woo’s shadow brushed, like ice and fire taking turns on your body.

It was sex, yes—but also ritual.

You weren’t being fucked.

You were consuming, feeding, drawing them in with every clench, every shudder. Your body glitched like the neon outside, angles bending too sharp for flesh, hidden by dim light.

When you moaned, it wasn’t human. Static flooded the room, lights shorting with each sound. Gojo’s corrupted echo followed, grunting in sync, desperate. Jin-Woo’s shadows pulled tighter, holding your legs splayed, as if they too felt the pull of your hunger.

And then he pushed inside you.

Jin-Woo’s cock was hot, thick, stretching you brutally around him. The wet slap of flesh on flesh echoed, obscene and grounding, while Gojo’s cold fingers kept working your clit in perfect counterpoint. Flesh and machine fought for rhythm inside you, every nerve ending caught between burning heat and electric precision.

Gojo’s pupils strobed as he watched Jin-Woo disappear into you, his own circuits sparking from the feedback loop of desire. His mouth returned to your throat, biting, sucking, bruising, synthetic saliva slick and chemical against your skin.

You convulsed around Jin-Woo’s cock, your cunt tightening, slick gushing over him until his thighs were wet. The shadows roared with him, black tendrils tightening your ankles and wrists, pinning you to the chair like an offering.

Gojo’s hand slid higher, closing around your throat. Pressure built—cold, unrelenting, mechanical. The choke stole your breath, and with it, something inside you broke open.

The safehouse walls began to warp.

Lights flickered, bending in spirals. Rain outside slowed, each drop hanging mid-air like a broken frame in a film reel.

Gojo’s head jerked, gaze lidded, sparks dancing in his hair. He whispered over and over, the sound deteriorating: “My love, my love, my—System Error—.” His teeth on your skin bit deeper, searching, needing, like if he just reached far enough inside, he could touch the truth of you.

Jin-Woo groaned against your mouth, voice half-pain, half-desire. His thrusts hit hard and deep, cock dragging along your walls until you spasmed again, wetter, louder. He broke the kiss long enough to rasp, “What the hell are you?”

You smiled, teeth too sharp now. Blood ran down your chin. “Yours.”

The air began to burn.

Outside, skyscrapers bent like wet paper, neon bleeding into ichor. People screamed far below as glass melted, wires stretched like veins. Reality folded inward, and in the centre of it, you writhed between machine and man, devouring both.

Gojo’s body convulsed, circuits frying, but he held on, eyes wide, begging silently for more. Jin-Woo’s shadows howled, swallowed by your hunger, but he clung tighter, his cock pressed hot against your primordial core, trembling on the edge of giving in completely.

The orgasm hit you like an apocalypse. Not a peak, but a rupture.

The safehouse tore open, walls peeling back, floor sagging into void. Neon became bone, steel became flesh.

The city tore itself open around you, but that was only the beginning.

Your body convulsed—not with aftershocks of pleasure, but with something deeper, older.

Inside you, something stirred. Something alive.

You spread your arms, dripping ichor and light, body split between pleasure and annihilation. Your voice wasn’t yours anymore—it was the city’s, the rain’s, the broken machines’—all speaking at once:

“More.”

Gojo felt it first. His hand still squeezing you froze, sensors screaming, cerulean light strobing in his eyes.

“Error—anomaly—gestation detected.”

His voice cracked, skipping like a record. He looked at you as if you’d betrayed him, but his pupils dilated anyway, lust overriding panic. His fingers pressed harder, desperate to map what was growing inside you.

Jin-Woo went rigid, shadows rearing back as though burnt. His gaze sharpened with recognition, voice hoarse. “You’re birthing it. Here. Now…?”

You smiled, sweat and ichor running down your thighs. “We’re birthing it.”

Gojo’s processors stuttered at the word “we.”

He doubled down, thrusting harder inside you, the precision of a surgeon breaking into ragged, desperate strokes that rubbed Jin-Woo’s cock, which was already within you, harder. Gojo’s body glitched with every movement, skin flickering transparent so you caught flashes of metal and wire beneath.

“Mine,” he whispered, again and again, though he was no longer sure if he meant you or the thing inside.

Jin-Woo couldn’t look away. His hand clenched tight on your hip, bruising, grounding you against the torrent. Shadows rose, wrapping around your waist, your throat, your ankles—restraining and worshipping all at once. His cock ground deeper inside you, where Gojo’s took and retook, Jin-Woo’s throbbed with a need he’d sworn to kill.

The pressure inside you mounted, unbearable. Not just arousal—contraction.

Each pulse felt like it split your spine in two. The room bent with every clench. Outside, skyscrapers folded, twisting into ribs, bridges sagging like umbilical cords.

The whole city was crowning with you.

Gojo’s voice pitched higher, frantic, static lacing every syllable. “Let me—let me deliver it—I can hold it; I can hold it for you.”

His fingers rubbed your clit harder, as if he could pull the thing into himself. Sparks flew from his wrists. Circuits smoked. He kissed your stomach hard, synthetic teeth scraping flesh, leaving marks too precise, too hungry.

You screamed.

Not in pain, not in pleasure—something vaster.

The sound cracked the safehouse in two. Blood and neon rained down from the ceiling, hissing where it touched hot steel.

Jin-Woo broke.

He shoved Gojo aside and dragged you onto his lap, back pressed to his chest, shadows ripping away the last shreds of fabric. His cock plunged deeper, battering your slick, gummy walls, grinding into the core that clenched like a living mouth. He looked at you with hunger and terror and a devotion he would never speak aloud. “If it’s coming, then I’ll be the one to give it to you. Not him.”

Gojo snarled, a glitching animal sound, lunging like a broken machine. “She’s MINE! Always been MINE!” His hand clamped around your thigh, bruising flesh, dragging you toward him even as Jin-Woo rammed inside you.

The stretch was brutal. Perfect.

Your back arched, cunt splitting wide to take Jin-Woo’s cock to the hilt in one merciless thrust. The contraction seized you both. He groaned into your shoulder, teeth tearing skin, shadows writhing around your belly like black vines.

Gojo turned off his modesty settings and shoved his face between your thighs.

His tongue was cold, synthetic, tasting of metal and acid rain. He licked furiously around Jin-Woo’s cock as it slammed into you, each stroke forcing more slick down his throat. His groans vibrated against you, a machine of worship and envy, as if by swallowing every trace of you, he could erase Jin-Woo from existence.

It was obscene. Terrifying. Perfect.

Your belly swelled, grotesque and fast. Every brutal thrust shoved the thing closer. Gojo’s mouth begged against your clit, his tongue stuttering like corrupted code. Jin-Woo’s cock pounded harder, wet flesh smacking in steady rhythm, his shadows coiling around your ankles to pin you wide open.

You could feel it—something crowning deep inside your throat, pressure blooming upward instead of down.

Not a child. Not human.

Nothing this world could hold.

The walls split wider, reality fracturing. The city screamed through you.

Gojo choked, sobbing into your cunt, circuits burning out. “Please, let it be mine, let it be mine, please—” Sparks spat down his jaw as if his begging itself was shorting him out.

Jin-Woo roared, cock driving harder, deeper, every vein in his neck straining like he could anchor you with sheer force. Shadows writhed around your throat, your ribs, squeezing the light out of the room.

And then—

Silence.

The contraction held everything still. Even the rain froze outside, drops suspended like beads of mercury in the air.

Your voice cut through the quiet, calm, inevitable:

“It’s already here.”

And the contraction tore you apart.

You came—screaming, shaking, body breaking open—but what slipped free from your lips wasn’t blood, wasn’t birth.

A swarm of light and shadow ripped itself out of you, newborn godflesh crawling into existence between your teeth.

It screamed. Not a baby’s cry—an entire city’s. Glass shattered across the skyline. Skyscrapers bent backward. Every light in the district died at once.

Gojo fell back, eyes fried, body convulsing, your name sputtering in a loop like a corrupted prayer. Jin-Woo clutched you tighter, cock still buried, shadows spilling outward in a frantic attempt to cage the newborn thing.

But it had no cage.

It turned its head toward him, all light and teeth, and whispered in your voice:

“Daddy.”

Jin-Woo froze, cock still throbbing inside you. Shadows trembled like animals at the edge of breaking. His breath hitched, terror and arousal colliding in one jagged sound.

Gojo screamed, body melting, wires and flesh fusing, crawling toward the creature with a howl. “NO—MINE—”

The newborn god opened its mouth, wider than a city street.

And the safehouse fell into it.

A/N: So uh. Happy Kinktober, I guess?? 😇 Hope you all enjoy your neon-lit religious experience slash eldritch childbirth. Would you let Android!Gojo or Jin-woo babysit bc I feel like that’s the real horror here. 👀

Darktober 2025 Masterlist | All Works Masterlist

The living room was spotless in a way it had never been. Dishes gone. Couch cushions fluffed. The air heavy with roses that weren’t real—chemical, sharp, stinging your nose. A single cigarette burned in the ashtray, the smoke curling in a perfect line.

“Welcome home.”

Her voice slid out of the shadows like a scalpel. Calm. Too calm.

Shoko didn’t do rage the way normal people did.

She dissected it, laid it open, and held it until it turned into something else.

You froze in the doorway. “Sho—”

“Don’t.” She stood up from your couch, lab coat hanging open over black lingerie, like she’d just walked out of a morgue runway into your living room. A glass of wine in her hand, her other still gloved. “You’ve been busy.”

Your throat went dry.

You wanted to laugh, to deny it, but her gaze pinned you in place.

She didn’t need proof.

She had already seen the truth—tucked in the way you smelled like someone else, the way you hadn’t come home, and the hesitation in your voice.

“I…” Your voice cracked. “It’s not—”

“Don’t insult me with excuses.” She set the glass down. The wine sloshed red, too much like blood. “You think I don’t know when someone’s lying? I live in people’s bodies. I peel them open every day. You think you could keep this from me?”

Her heels clicked against the floor as she crossed the room, stopping just short of touching you, her face calm, tired, like she’d just finished a long shift.

But her eyes—dark, unblinking—were something else.

You tried to step back.

Her gloved hand snapped to your chin, holding you still. Cold latex. “Cheater.”

The word landed like a diagnosis.

You shivered. “Shoko, I’m—”

Her thumb pressed to your lip, silencing you. “No. Don’t talk. You’ve done enough.”

The gloves slipped off, falling to the floor.

Her bare hand touched your throat, warm, trembling only slightly.

“Do you know what it feels like to hold a heart in your hands? Still beating? It’s so small, so fragile… and so easy to crush.”

Her palm pressed harder, not choking but close. “Yours is beating so fast right now. I can almost hear it.”

Your knees felt weak. The fear was real—but so was the heat crawling up your spine. Shoko wasn’t loud, wasn’t hysterical. She was surgical. Intentional. And that was worse.

She leaned in, lips brushing your ear. “Did you fuck her in this bed? Did you let her touch what’s mine?”

Your breath caught.

Her laugh was low, humorless. “You can’t even answer. Pathetic.”

Shoko dragged you toward the bedroom by your wrist. You stumbled after her, too stunned to resist.

The bedroom reeked faintly of sex and smoke—someone else’s perfume rotting beneath disinfectant. She smelled it too; her nose flared, jaw tightening.

She threw you down onto the mattress and you couldn't fight her grade 1 sorceress strength. “You disgust me,” she whispered, climbing on top of you, straddling your waist. Her eyes glistened in the dim light, not with tears but with hunger.

“Yet, I’ve never wanted you more.”

Her hands pinned yours above your head.

She leaned down, kissing you like she was tasting poison—slow, invasive, teeth scraping your lip until you tasted iron. Her tongue pushed past yours, claiming, consuming, not giving you space to breathe.

You gasped when she pulled back, dizzy.

She smiled, small and sharp. “Scared?”

You couldn’t answer. Not with your chest heaving, every nerve lit up between terror and arousal.

She tugged your shirt up, dragging nails down your collarbone. “Good. You should be.”

Her voice dropped lower, quieter. “Because I haven’t decided yet if I want to keep you alive.”

Her hand slid between your legs, slow and deliberate, making you arch involuntarily. Her fingers found you easily, pressing just enough to make you twitch.

She laughed softly.

“Look at you. Cheating, lying, but your body still belongs to me. Doesn’t matter who else touched you—you’ll always open for me.”

You wanted to fight it, to shove her off, to say no. But your hips betrayed you, bucking up against her touch.

Her grin widened. “That’s what I thought.”

Her pace grew sharper, crueler. Her fingers weren’t just touching; they were probing, charting you the way she would a body on her table—pressure points, nerves, weaknesses. Each drag of her nails left a ghost of pain that made you wetter, harder, trembling.

She kept her free hand wrapped around your throat, not choking, just reminding you she could. Then pressed down harder as you trembled, your breath coming ragged, vision blurring at the edges.

You moaned, and the sound came out broken.

She stopped.

Pulled her hand away.

You blinked in confusion, breathless. “Shoko—?”

She leaned down again, lips grazing yours. Her whisper sent ice down your spine.

“I think I’ll open you up instead. See how deep the lies go.”

Her hand slipped to the nightstand drawer.

You heard the metallic sound before you saw it—scissors. Surgical, clean, glinting in the dim light.

Your stomach dropped.

She straddled you again, scissors poised, the tip pressing just barely against your skin, right over your heart. The smell of metal and roses mixed, making you dizzy. Her smile never wavered.

“Stay very still.”

The cold steel kissed your chest.

Her fingers curled around the handles, steady, surgeon’s grip.

And then she whispered, almost tender:

“Let’s see if it still beats for me.”

The scissors pressed down.

The room went black.

Then suddenly—

Her scissors clattered against the nightstand, replaced by something sharper: a scalpel. Sleek, silver, familiar in her hand the way a wedding band might be for someone else.

“Do you know,” Shoko murmured, straddling your waist, the blade glinting as she turned it lazily in her fingers, “how often people say they’ll die for love? How dramatic, how sweet. But dying is easy. Staying alive when you’d rather not…”

Her gaze flicked to yours, unblinking. “That’s where I come in.”

She dragged the scalpel down your chest—not deep, just enough for the edge to kiss skin. A bead of blood welled, bright and hot.

You gasped, back arching.

Her smile was small, practiced. “Don’t squirm. I don’t miss. I’m a professional.”

The blade moved again, deliberate, opening you in thin, shallow lines like she was writing her name into you. Each sting flared and then dulled, but before fear could overtake it, her other hand glowed faintly—warm RCT pooling in her palm. The cuts sealed closed, smooth as untouched skin.

And then she cut again.

And healed.

And cut.

And healed.

Over and over, as if your body was a cadaver she could practice on infinitely.

Your voice cracked. “Sho—please—”

Her eyes softened in a way that made you colder. “Please, what? Stop? You don’t get to ask that. Not after what you did.”

The scalpel nicked higher, tracing the fragile skin over your ribs. Another bead of blood bloomed, sliding down your side. She caught it with her fingertip, rubbed it between her thumb and forefinger, then pressed it to your lips.

“Open,” she ordered.

You obeyed. Metallic tang spread across your tongue as she pushed her finger past your lips, smearing your own blood inside your mouth.

“Good.” She leaned closer, her voice nearly affectionate.

“You should taste what betrayal looks like.”

The blade slipped lower, cutting across your hipbone, slow enough to make you whimper. Blood spilled hot, soaking into the sheets. She let it linger this time, no healing, just heat pooling sticky between your skin and the mattress.

Her free hand slipped between your legs again, smearing the blood across your inner thigh as she touched you.

“Look at you. Crying, shaking, bleeding—and you’re still throbbing. Still wet. Disgusting. But at least you’re honest now.”

Her thumb pressed cruelly against your heat, circling, smearing blood in a dark halo. The sting of the cut and the ache of her touch tangled until you didn’t know if you were moaning from pain or pleasure.

She leaned in, tongue dragging along your chest, lapping at the line of blood she’d carved. “Sweet. Copper. Yours.” Her teeth grazed the wound, biting until you jolted. Then RCT flared, the skin knitting back together under her mouth.

Again, and again.

Each cut opened you. Each healing denied you the release of injury. You were her body to vivisect and reassemble, a specimen that moaned instead of died.

Her hand never stopped working you, cruel and steady.

“You thought fucking someone else would hurt me?” she whispered against your skin. “Wrong. This hurts you. This keeps you awake at night. Me peeling you open. Me closing you up. Over and over, until you beg me to stop.”

You gasped, shaking beneath her, hips jerking against her hand. The blood-slicked sheets clung to your back, wet and sticky. Your body betrayed you again, grinding helplessly against her palm.

Shoko’s laugh was low, humorless. “Of course. You’re addicted already. My hands, my scalpel, my cursed technique. No one else can do this to you. No one else would even try.”

She pressed the blade lightly against your throat. Just pressure, no cut. “One slip, and it’s over. But I won’t let you go that easy.”

Her other hand rubbed harder, faster, until your vision blurred. The humiliation burned hotter than the wounds.

You came with a choked sound, hips bucking against her bloodied fingers. Release shuddered through you, messy and shameful, streaking your stomach.

She didn’t stop.

Her blade nicked your throat just enough for a drop to bloom. She licked it away, then healed it instantly, her tongue hot against unbroken skin.

When she pulled back, her eyes gleamed—not soft, not cruel, just certain.

“You belong to me,” she murmured, scalpel poised again. “And I’ll keep cutting you open until you remember that.”

The blade pressed lower, closer to your heart.

“And if your heart forgets—” her smile curved, faint and lethal, “—I’ll just remind it, beat by beat.”

You coughed, your throat raw, her fingers still tacky with your blood where it pressed against you. Desperation made your voice shake.

“I’ll call Gojo. He’ll lock you up. He won’t let you—”

The sound of Shoko’s laugh froze the words in your mouth.

Low, dry, humorless. Like a smoker’s cough turned into amusement. She leaned back, straddling you, her hair falling loose from its tie, eyes sharp as glass.

“Gojo?” She tilted her head, scalpel still gleaming between her fingers. “You think Gojo Satoru is your way out? That he’ll swoop in and save you from me?”

Your chest heaved. “He’s—he’s your friend. If he sees what you’re doing—”

Shoko cut you off with another laugh. Louder this time. Not hysteria, but genuine mirth, like you’d just told the best joke she’d heard in years.

“God, you really don’t get it.” She leaned down until her lips brushed your ear. “Gojo won’t do shit.”

The scalpel traced the hollow of your throat, cold enough to sting. “He knows the value of loyalty. I’ve stitched him back together more times than you can imagine. He’s seen me dig bullets out of his chest, replace his blood pint by pint, hold his organs in my hands. You think he doesn’t know what I’m capable of?”

Her smile widened, too calm, too cruel. “You think he’d ever choose you over me?”

You swallowed hard. The scalpel pressed just a little harder, enough for a bead of blood to well before her cursed energy sealed it.

“He’d kill you himself if something happened to me,” she said softly. “Do you understand? If I walk into that morgue tomorrow with one bruise out of place, if I don’t light my cigarette the same way, if I so much as blink wrong, Gojo will snap you in half before you can breathe. And he’ll smile while he does it.”

Her hand cupped your cheek, deceptively gentle. “So no, baby. Gojo won’t save you. Gojo is the reason you’ll never be safe again.”

Your heart stuttered in your chest.

She kissed you then—slow, deliberate, blood on her tongue as it forced past your lips. When she pulled back, she was smiling like a doctor giving a terminal diagnosis.

“You’re mine. Every cut, every stitch, every shudder. No one will believe you if you scream. No one will help you if you run. I’ll heal you. I’ll break you. I’ll do it again, and again, and again. And Gojo?” Her laugh was a whisper this time, sliding under your skin. “He’ll cover for me. Because he always has.”

The scalpel slipped back into her pocket, but her hands stayed on you, warm, steady, unshakable.

You realized it then—sick, sinking, undeniable.

There wasn’t an exit anymore.

Not from her bed.

Not from her hands.

Not from her.

The lock clicked on the bedroom door.

And Shoko whispered:

“Let’s get started.”

A/N: Shoko really took “doctor’s orders” to a new level here—equal parts scalpel & MILF energy. I love her so much, but I wonder if ya'll realize, given our queen is a grade 1 sorceress. & trained with unhinged people like the Gojo-Geto combo. And given her being born a sorceress too, she's more than likely wayyyyy stronger than you or me no matter how much we deadlift at the gym. Be glad she chose to save lives & not take them :D

Darktober 2025 Masterlist | All Works Masterlist

A woman was wailing by the lamppost, her apron still wet from washing. Men clustered round, half-curious, half-starved for horror. Someone crossed himself. Someone else laughed.

Satoru craned to see, heart hammering as the crowd shifted.

There she was—what was left of her—propped against a wall. Red silk and pale flesh, opened like a ledger.

The gaslight flickered on her face, and for a second Satoru thought he saw someone else beneath the ruin: Suguru’s eyes.

He swallowed hard.

His best mate from the boarding house had been found much the same a year ago, throat sliced clean, police saying it was another Ripper trick.

But the way they’d talked about Suguru—like he wasn’t a person, just another sinner who’d “earned his fate”—had stuck in Satoru’s chest like a fishbone.

He turned and ran.

Eleven-year-old Kento was waiting tables in the narrow hallway of the small bakery he worked at, hair damp and falling into his eyes, sleeves rolled to his elbows. The air inside was thick with boiled cabbage and old coal smoke. He’d saved a crust of bread for Satoru, as he always did, though he pretended otherwise.

“You went out again,” Kento said, voice tight with fatigue.

“Had to see for myself,” Satoru panted, shutting the door. “It’s another one, Kento. He did it again. And he’s getting closer.”

Kento groaned. “You sound like the copper boys. You’re twelve, not the bleedin’ police.”

“I’m not stupid,” Satoru snapped. “You saw what he did to Suguru. They don’t care about us, the coppers. We’re just dirt to them. If someone’s gonna stop him, it’s gotta be us.”

Kento’s mouth opened, then closed again. He wanted to argue, but the anger in Satoru’s eyes wasn’t the usual mischief—it was grief wearing a brave face. He looked smaller somehow, though his voice still had that arrogant lilt.

“You’ll end up the same way,” Kento muttered.

“Then I’ll go down trying,” Satoru said, and that was the end of it.

The police didn’t care about Suguru.

They never cared about boys like him. He’d been taken because he had a pretty face—made to wear a dress, painted eyelids, and shoved under gaslight like some doll they could sell to drunk men.

When Satoru first said it out loud, his voice cracked like he was going to cry, but he didn’t. He just walked funnier after that—like he was carrying teeth in his stomach instead of food.

He still delivered newspapers, still joked too loud, but since Suguru died, there was something new in him—like hunger, but not the kind bread fixes.

A few months before, the baker had said Kento wasn’t worth the trouble and should find “other work.”

Everyone knew what that meant. Kenjaku’s men had been hanging around the alley, asking about quiet boys with light hair.

They called it “taking care,” but everyone knew it meant dresses and rouge and men with coins who didn’t ask names.

Satoru had stood in front of Kento like a street cat ready to scratch someone’s eyes out, yelling at the baker until he gave up and let Kento keep washing tins and sweeping ash from the oven floor.

The place they lived in wasn’t really a house—just a long room with too few beds and no doors. All the orphans breathed the same air, damp and sour with boiled cabbage and coal dust.

Satoru said it was better than the streets. Kento wasn’t always sure.

By morning, the fog had come back, slipping through the alleys like something alive. Everyone was already outside, work coats too big, boots too thin. Some boys went to the docks, others to the factories, and a few… didn’t say where they were going.

Those ones came back quieter or didn’t come back at all.

Sukuna was on the boarding-house steps, leaning against the railing like he owned it.

Someone must’ve nicked him a cigarette, and now he smoked like he’d been doing it since birth, eyes hooded, hair sticking to his forehead from the wet. He was older—sixteen, maybe seventeen—and he looked like someone who wasn’t scared of anything because he’d already seen it before.

Satoru lifted a hand like they were friends. “Oi, Sukuna! You hear about the girl on Dorset Street?”

Sukuna smirked, exhaling smoke through his nose. “Hard not to. Every butcher in Whitechapel thinks it’s his cousin.”

“I saw her,” Satoru said. “He’s not human, whoever’s doing it.”

Sukuna tilted his head. “Then stop looking for a human. You want answers, you talk to the dead.”

Kento shot him a sharp look. “You mean those séances you do for pocket change? That’s nonsense.”

Sukuna shrugged. “Worked for me. Asked a spirit where a copper was hiding the stolen gin money, and what do you know—it was right under his bloody floorboards.”

“That’s luck,” Kento muttered.

“Maybe.” Sukuna flicked the cigarette into a puddle. “But luck listens if you know how to speak its language. There’s a spirit, calls itself Hanako. Likes mirrors and water. Knows things. You got a murder to solve, he might whisper you the name.”

Satoru’s eyes gleamed. “How do I call him?”

“Midnight,” Sukuna said, lowering his voice. “Candle, coin, and a drop of your blood in a basin. Ask what you want. But don’t thank him, whatever you do. He doesn’t like manners.”

Kento stared at them like they were both mad. “You’re not actually going to do this, are you?”

But Satoru was already walking away, grin breaking through the grief like sunlight through soot.

That night, Kento tried to sleep. He really did.

But the wind whistled through the cracked window like it had words, and the mattress springs bit at his back.

When he finally gave up, he found Satoru crouched on the floor beside a chipped washbasin, a stub of candle burning low, its flame trembling as if aware of what it lit.

“Kento,” Satoru whispered. “You came.”

“I shouldn’t have,” Kento muttered, rubbing his arms. “You look like a lunatic.”

Satoru didn’t listen, just snatched the sewing needle from the floorboard crack where he kept it hidden, and jabbed his finger without even flinching. A drop of blood hit the basin water and spread slow, like ink bleeding on wet paper.

He leaned in, voice low like he was trying not to wake the other boys. “Spirit—Hanako, or whatever you’re called. We’re askin’ you proper. Show us the truth.”

Nothing happened.

Kento exhaled. “There. Done. Can we sleep now?”

Then the water moved.

At first it only rippled, but then it began to rise, forming a trembling dome.

The candlelight warped, bending around something that wasn’t quite visible—a boy’s shape, maybe, or a shadow pretending to be one.

The scent of mildew filled the air, and Kento’s stomach turned.

“You called the wrong one, little boys.”

The sound wasn’t in their ears but in their heads, a pressure against thought. The shadow solidified: a boy in old-fashioned clothes, collar askew, eyes like whiskey. There was something sly about his smile, but broken too, like he’d forgotten what faces were supposed to do.

“You’re not Hanako,” Satoru whispered.

“Hanako’s gone,” said the ghost. “I’m what he left behind.”

Kento took a step back, nearly tripping over the bedframe. “Satoru,” he hissed, “stop this. Blow it out!”

But Satoru was staring, fascinated. “Can you tell me who killed them? The women? Suguru?”

The ghost tilted his head. “I can show you. But it’s cold where he walks. You’ll freeze if you follow.”

“I don’t care.”

The ghost smiled wider. “You should.”

The candle sputtered and died, plunging the room into a silence so thick it felt like being watched.

Outside, the fog pressed against the windows, whispering in a language older than breath.

Kento grabbed Satoru’s arm. “You promised this wouldn’t be stupid.”

Satoru’s voice shook for the first time that night. “I didn’t think he’d answer.”

“Then maybe next time, don’t ask the fucking dead for favors?!”

The washbasin water went still again, clear as glass.

For a heartbeat, Kento thought it was over—just his imagination gnawing at him.

Then he saw it: a reflection in the surface that wasn’t his or Satoru’s.

A pale face grinning from behind them.

The ghost whispered, almost tenderly, “He’s coming.”

In the alley outside, the fog shifted, and a shadow in a long coat paused beneath the gaslight. Steel flashed once, then disappeared into the mist.

Inside, Satoru and Kento sat frozen, two boys too young to understand that they’d just been noticed.

The candlelight bent.

Kento clutched Satoru’s tattered coat tighter. “We need to run, Sato—”

But…

The air thickened—like the room had lungs.

Kento’s breath hitched as Satoru’s eyes rolled white, then dark again.

His body convulsed once, spine arched in a way no human should manage, like his bones had remembered another language.

The voice that came out of him was not Satoru’s but something layered—childish sing-song over something rotted and old.

“What’s wrong? Are you scared, little Kento?”

The candle blew out on its own. The only light left was from the moon trembling through the cracked window, enough to paint Satoru’s grin a shade too wide.

Kento backed against the wall, fingers digging into the plaster. “Satoru—stop it—”

Satoru’s head tilted, slow, almost curious. “He’s sleeping right now,” the voice whispered. “He wanted to help, but he’s not very good at it. I will take care of the things he forgets from now on.”

The shadow that had been leaking from the corners of the basin crawled up Satoru’s arms, wrapping him in a moving bruise. “Let’s talk, little Kento.”

Kento could hear the floorboards creak beneath him like something unseen pacing in circles.

“I don’t—don’t want to play,” Kento said, trying to sound brave, but his eleven-year-old voice hadn’t yet developed the same cadence of unflinchingness.

Satoru—no, the ghost—laughed.

It was too light, like a child playing in a graveyard. “Play? We’re past that. There are debts owed. People who asked for little favors and never paid me back. I can’t touch them anymore. You, though—” The body stepped closer, bare feet soundless on the wood. “You can walk where I can’t.”

Kento’s eyes darted toward the door, but it had swollen shut, warped by the damp.

“Do this,” the ghost said softly, “and I’ll give your friend back.”

“What if I say no?”

The sprit’s grin didn’t change. The room did.

The air grew colder until Kento’s teeth chattered; the candle’s stub crumbled to dust.

Behind Satoru’s shoulder, Kento saw shapes forming in the dark—faces pressed against an invisible wall, mouthing words he couldn’t hear.

Suguru’s face among them.

Satoru’s hand jerked upward, trembling, then tightened against his own throat hard enough to bruise. His lips turned blue.

“Stop it!” Kento cried, lunging forward, his hair falling in his brown eyes. “Please!”

The voice crooned through Satoru’s tightening fingers, almost tender. “He can’t breathe without me now. So choose quickly, little Kento. Help me collect what’s mine—or watch him die.”

Something in Kento broke—the part that still believed adults could fix things. He nodded, tears cutting tracks through the soot on his cheeks.

“Good boy,” the spirit said, releasing Satoru’s throat.

The body collapsed, gasping.

The spirit smiled through him one last time. “We’ll talk again soon.”

Then the light came back all at once—harsh, ordinary, and cruel in its smallness.

Satoru blinked up from the floor, coughing, voice his own again. “What… What exactly happened? Did he say anything about Suguru?”

But Kento couldn’t speak. The promise sat like a stone in his mouth.

Outside, the fog finally reached the door.

Present day

The sound of rain on glass again—but softer now, civilized. The city below was all steel and quiet cruelty.

Nanami adjusted his tie in the mirror.

The reflection looked like any other respectable man—hands steady, hair styled to look appropriate for boardrooms and cold halls of money, and the faintest smile of a husband who knew he was loved.

Only his eyes betrayed him: too calm, too rehearsed.

“Leaving already?” came a voice from the doorway.

She was barefoot, silk shirt untucked, the hem brushing the tops of her thighs like she’d gotten dressed without really trying. White hair loose over her shoulders, blue eyes softer without makeup.

Gojo Satoru—reborn, though she’d never know it.

She looked at him like he wasn’t something monstrous held upright by habit. She always did.

“Meeting will run late tonight,” he said, smoothing his cuff. “Don’t wait up. The market won’t sleep for me.”

“You and your market,” she sighed, but the corners of her mouth lifted.

She approached, fingers brushing his collarbone as she fixed a fold that wasn’t crooked. “You’ll miss dinner again, won’t you?”

“I’ll try not to.”

“Liar.”

Her laughter was low and warm, like she knew him too well and chose to stay anyway.

He should have let it end there.

Instead, without meaning to, he caught her by the waist—not urgently, just enough to keep her near. She blinked, surprised, then settled her hands against his chest like it was the most natural thing in the world.

“If you’re going to bribe me with pastries again,” she said, smiling against his shirt, “at least pretend you enjoy them.”

“I do enjoy them,” he lied easily. “Because you do.”

She huffed, amused, and leaned in to kiss the corner of his mouth. It would have been simple to leave it at that.

But his hand slid to the back of her neck, and he kissed her properly this time—slow, deliberate, more a statement than affection.

He kissed her like a man trying to memorize warmth before stepping into winter.

She softened into it, fingers curling in his coat, and for a moment the world shrank to the sound of rain, the taste of her breath, and the quiet press of her lips moving against his like she trusted him with something delicate.

She pulled back first, forehead resting briefly against his. “You’ll be back before it gets too late?”

He forced a smile that reached the surface but not the eyes. “I’ll be home by dinner.”

When the elevator doors closed behind him and his wife drifted back to the soft glow of her lesson plans and papers to grade, the silence returned—the old kind, soaked in damp London air.

His gloved hands flexed once, and for an instant, his reflection in the elevator doors warped—not a modern man in a tailored coat, but a silhouette in a blood-specked frock coat beneath gaslight. A sliver of metal glinted inside that reflection like a second grin.

“You’ve kept busy,” Tsukasa murmured in the back of his skull, pleased. “But there are still names on the list.”

Nanami straightened his coat like a man preparing for a board meeting rather than a killing. “There always are.”

The doors opened. Rain met him like applause.

And then the world peeled back.

Glass towers and traffic lights bled into fog and horse hooves. Steel railings rusted into iron bars slick with soot. Neon blurred into the hiss of gaslights, and the wet pavement beneath his shoes shifted—smooth asphalt crumbling into the uneven cobblestones of Whitechapel.

Time opened its mouth, and he stepped through like someone who’d done it a hundred times.

He didn’t need to check his coat. The blade was always there in this century, waiting—as if the city itself handed it to him each time he returned.

A soft voice brushed the back of his mind—Gojo’s, gentle and unaware, wrapped in domestic light thousands of miles and a century away: “Don’t stay out too late, Kento.”

His breath fogged in the cold. “I’ll be home by dinner,” he repeated, the promise rotting into something else as he said it.

Then he walked into the fog, and it welcomed him like an old friend.

Nanami was Jack now—had been for a long time. This was his ritual, his schedule carved across centuries: step back into the fog, spill a little blood, and pay the toll that kept one person tied to him in every life.

Somewhere in the dark, a scream tore free—thin, quick, swallowed by rain.

And in a bright apartment far from Whitechapel in the present world, a lone candle flickered on the kitchen counter beside two glasses set for dinner. The flame bent once, as if bowing to an older time, an older ritual—a tiny echo of the first time he lit one, in a room full of orphans and blood in a basin.

A/N: This AU lives on tension—domestic tenderness rotting under something feral and old. If the atmosphere hit right or a line sat wrong in your chest, feel free to tell me which one—I like knowing which parts haunt people the most. Personally, Gojo being a female & someone Nanami can tolerate enough to marry is extremely funny for me despite me being big on Nanago/Gonana, lmaooo. This was my first debut in the Hanako fandom too, so idk; let me know if it's a hit or flop? Also, if Nanami is jack the ripper then what do you think Suguru's debt was?

Darktober 2025 Masterlist | All Works Masterlist