#dreadtober2025

The prompts are as follows:

1. Masks/Masquerade, 2. Demons/Spirits, 3. Possession/Abominations, 4. Deep Roads, 5. Blood Magic, 6. Blight, 7. Lyrium, 8. Necromancy, 9. The Fade, 10. Veilfire, 11. Evanuris, 12. Forgotten ones, 13. Tarot, 14. Memories, 15. Ritual, 16. Betrayal, 17. Eluvians, 18. Ruins, 19. Darkspawn, 20. Regret, 21. The Black City, 22. Bad Ending, 23. Wraiths, 24. Time Travel Gone Wrong 25. Vampires/Werewolves AU 26. Cursed/Summoning Evil/Priest AU 27. Psychological/Gothic horror AU 28. Slasher/The Final Girl AU 29. Deal With The Devil Trope 30. They Came Back Wrong Trope 31. Modern Halloween AU / Author’s Choice

Raven watched the magic pulse from her fingertips in awe, feeling no resistance or strain as it flowed. “This is incredible,” she murmured to her mirror image. 

“You are no longer commanding the Fade, but enticing it,” Solas explained, adjusting her arms from where he stood behind her. “It is a living extension of magic itself, and it responds well to encouragement—similarly to others I know.” He cocked an amused eyebrow at her in the mirror and she laughed, attempting to conceal the blush rising to her cheeks. She failed. Solas’s heart thrummed with a giddy kind of affection at the sight. It took him by surprise yet again—ages built by self-inflicted tragedy had all but eliminated the memory of feelings as kind as these. Raven had resurrected them in a feat he thought wholly impossible. 

“I have no idea what you're talking about, Solas,” she tittered, a sweet defiance ever-present in her gleaming blue eyes. 

“Mm,” he hummed, ghosting his fingertips along her arms. Her shiver would have been imperceptible to the untrained eye, but his observation of her in their time spent together was extensive, and he was certain that he would be able to recognize even an oncoming upset stomach in her before she did. A smirk tugged at the corners of his lips as an idea took form. 

“Since you are having relative success with this new technique—” he leaned in close, his lips brushing the shell of her ear, “—let us test your concentration.” Her blush deepened significantly and he chuckled, the fondness he felt for her gnawing at his chest, a hungry beast, never to be fully sated. She was far easier to tease than she had ever been to intimidate. 

“It…may need some work,” she giggled, tilting her head to give him access to her neck, which he seized greedily, pulling a gasp from her lips as he nipped the skin there. 

“Humility does not suit you, vhenan,” he murmured into the crook of her neck as his arms enfolded her. 

“Humility suits everyone,” she chided gently. Her voice was delectably breathy and he glanced up at her reflection to find her lidded eyes already on him. 

He grinned against her skin. “Pull on your magic again, ean’sulahn.”

“Solas,” she warned, but in the absence of malice, it sounded more like a pout. 

He huffed a laugh into the crook of her neck and trailed a line of open-mouthed kisses there, drinking in the scent of her—the taste of her. Honeyed spice and lavender. She shook her head, the ghost of a chuckle rumbling through her, but humored him anyway and threaded her magic through her fingers, forming an orb of necrotic energy above her head. 

Solas purred his approval onto the nape of her neck and rewarded her with another line of kisses, worrying the skin at her shoulder blade between his teeth as he passed. Her quiet gasp only spurred him on, his fingers trailing the hem of her skirt with the kind of restraint he had only his millenia-long life of patience to thank for. His lips found her spine and she shuddered, much to his delight. “Shall I test you?” Her breath heaved beneath his touch and he grinned, already knowing the answer but needing desperately to hear her agreement. 

Raven lifted her skirt above his fingers playfully. “Do your worst.” He laughed as he sank to his knees behind her, glancing around her hips to meet her eyes in the mirror. 

“Oh, da'ean, my worst may unmake you.”

She smirked at him and spun the orb around her hand. “Then may the Dread Wolf unmake me.” 

Not one to waste an invitation, he rose, rounding her like prey, then kneeled before her with all the reverence she had earned—not taken—earned. Not a moment after, he found himself rocking her skirt up around her hips and tracing the waistline of her small-clothes with his fingers until they met the ties at the front. He drew closer, nudging the ties with his nose. “Thread the light again,” he murmured, his eyes falling closed as the scent of her arousal met his eager exploration. 

Raven complied, weaving strands of light into tendrils that circled them both, flowing seamlessly from the Fade to the physical. “Very good,” Solas breathed against her and Raven shifted above him, her legs squeezing together. “Still unaware of what I speak of, da'ean?” He grinned, taking great pleasure in her squirming. 

She shot him a withering glare and he laughed, holding her gaze as he took the end of that pretty little bow, the only thing left separating him from her, between his teeth. When she realized what he had in mind, all irritation in her face melted into a scalding heat that sent a shiver of anticipation down his spine. He tugged the tie free, relishing in the way her lips parted as he moved. Above them, the strands of her magic flickered. 

“Concentrate, vhenan,” he hummed, the sound morphing into a low groan when his nose found her curls. 

“This hardly simulates my usual state during battle, Solas.” Raven gasped when his fingers found her slit, a broken sound following as he dipped one between her folds to sample her arousal. 

“You must be prepared for any kind of distraction.” His voice was hoarse and so laden with desire that it surprised him. He tugged her small-clothes the rest of the way down, finding his patience beginning to wear thin. He was aching for her, his trousers already becoming uncomfortably tight in the wake of his fervor. 

She smirked down at him and he let out a groan, the twinkle in her eyes enticing and concerning in equal measure. He could not hope to escape her retaliation now, for his heart had seen his desire. And when her hips canted ever so slightly, bringing her core that much closer to his tingling lips, he began to wonder who the predator truly was. 

“You are meant to be practicing your magic, da'ean,” he chided, fingers tapping against her slit. She jumped, then moaned, her fingers coming to rest on his head as she wobbled. 

“And you are meant to be testing my concentration, my love, not my constitution.” She giggled, halfway between lust-addled and ludicrously fond, and the very foundations of Solas’s being shook in response. 

“Vhenan,” he murmured, unmoored by her gentle love for him. 

“Solas, please,” she breathed, the pad of her thumb brushing over his scalp in tenuous, restrained lines. “My love, please.” 

When he pressed his nose to her clit and allowed his tongue to gather a taste of her, she shuddered, deep and long, and her fingers found purchase on his shoulders. Her magic fizzled into nothing as his tongue traced slow circles around her opening, his nose nudging her swollen bud with each pass. He groaned into her wet heat, the heavy blend of salt and musk sending his greater sensibilities reeling as he drank her in. 

“Yes, yes,” she canted above him, hand lurching out to steady herself on the mirror's edge. 

Using more self-discipline than he had believed he still possessed, he paused, and she whined, bucking her hips in search of the friction. But he pulled back and gazed up at her, a wicked gleam in his eye. He would remind her who the predator was. “Wield your magic, da'ean.” 

“Solas,” she huffed, arching a disapproving eyebrow at him. 

“Would you like for me to continue?”

“Quite obviously.”

“Then thread the light, and concentrate.”

She glared down at him for several moments longer, but when she found no trace of relenting in his eyes, she acquiesced him and drew in the cords of light once more from the Fade. In defiance, she wrapped them around him, the threads pulling taut against his trousers where the evidence of his arousal jumped in response to the pressure. A moan ripped free from him before he managed to temper it and he pressed his thumb down on her clit in retaliation. 

She nearly crumpled, crying out as he circled the bud with maddening precision. “You should observe your progress, ean'sulahn,” he chuckled, tapping the glass behind him with his free hand. 

“Solas,” she whimpered, fingers trembling as they held tight to her magic. The threads began to crumple under the pressure and his fingers came to a halt, prompting another pitiful cry from above him. 

“Do it the right way,” he reminded her. “You are fighting the natural flow again.” 

“Urgh,” she grunted, flexing her hand. The strands began to smooth again and he nodded in approval. 

“Better.” 

His tongue rejoined his fingers and he pushed into her tightening hole, the heat of her nearly sending him over the edge untouched. Her hips snapped forward and he hummed, sending vibrations up through her as his tongue plundered her in a punishing rhythm. Each mewl and cry of his name was more beautiful to him than the last; his little songbird, singing his praises. 

But it was not enough—having enough of her was an ideal too lofty to consider conceivable—he wished to see her, to watch her come apart for him the way she had done before. His eyes required proof of her heart's surrender. When he pulled away from her, she whined—a sound so pitiable that his chest tightened. He shushed her gently, rising to capture her lips with his own, sharing with her the gift that was her own arousal. 

She moaned into his mouth—acceptance; appreciation. He tasted it on her tongue and groaned his thanks.

He busied his fingers with unlacing the bindings of her lace-bound blouse, eager to feel the rest of her skin against his own once more—a blessing he did not deserve, but she deemed fit to bestow on him nonetheless. ‘It matters not what we deserve, Solas,’ she had said, time and time again. ‘It is a gift, one given freely, without the expectation of anything in return.’ He would not leave her wanting. He would give her everything.

In turn, her hands found his waistband and pulled his tunic free of it, pushing it up until he had to part from her—a tragedy he would not readily repeat—to wrench it free. The last turn of her blouse's string was pulled loose and he wasted little time pushing it off of her shoulders to be discarded somewhere behind her. She panted into his mouth as he palmed her breasts, heavy and pliable in his hands, and he drank in every breath, for if perhaps he took in enough of her air, she would be bound to him forever. 

He felt the strings of his slacks loosen and come apart before dropping away. Her fingers tugged impatiently on the laces of his small-clothes and brushed against his hardened bulge as she fumbled. He sucked in a sharp breath and she giggled against his lips. He did not believe in a Maker, but for her, he might begin. 

When at last, nothing separated them, he held her against him and buried his nose in the crook of her shoulder, relishing in the way her arms looped around his neck and pulled him closer with no hesitation. “Vhenan,” he mumbled against her skin. She tightened her hold.

“My sweet love,” she murmured, shivering gloriously when he raked his fingernails gently down her spine. Slowly, he pulled back, gazing down into her blue eyes with an ache so deep that he nearly felt whole again. She smiled up at him, her eyes full of light and trust, and in that moment, he needed her to see it too. 

He turned her by the hips until she faced the mirror before them. She looked away. Solas frowned. Did she not take pleasure in her own image? Was she still incapable of seeing herself the way he saw her? Tenderly, he cupped the point of her chin and turned her gaze back to herself. “Ma vhenan, ma dirth-na ina'lan'ehn? Do you see not your own beauty?” 

Raven smiled shyly at him from the mirror. “I see yours.” 

“Then you see your own,” he insisted. “For I am only beautiful because of you. Satha,” he implored, fingers digging into her hips. “Allow me to show you.” Her eyes spoke of long-learned hesitancy, but she nodded, blessing him once more with her trust, and he lifted the underside of her knee into one of his palms, pulling her apart for him. She gasped at the new sensation and hooked an arm up and back around his neck to steady herself. Her folds were parted, revealing her swollen nub to him once more, and he sought it out determinedly, his thumb moving to circle it as he plunged his fingers back into her heat. 

She cried out at the sudden intrusion and her head fell back against his shoulder. Her hips bucked as his fingers made small circles within her walls. “Vhenan,” he hummed against her skin, and she raised her head, her eyes locking on the mirror as his digits stretched her wider. “Sa’ath? Ma venas.” 

“Solas,” she moaned, grasping the nape of his neck like a lifeline. “Please, I need you. I need—ungh.” Her words tapered into needy whines, but he understood nonetheless, relinquishing his hold on her only to turn her to face him and lift her into his arms. She yelped, then laughed, littering kisses across his face as he pressed her back to the mirror. He grinned into the attention, accepting her love with all the sanity of a madman, and canted his hips, letting his length drag along her slit as he adjusted his hold on her. 

She choked on a sigh, letting her forehead drop against his. His gaze met her own, adoration in full relief on his face; gratefully, hers mirrored it with a yearning that stole his breath. As he aligned himself with her entrance, her lips parted, and he took them like an invitation, leading a dance with his tongue that she followed as though they had been practicing for centuries. The feeling of her walls welcoming him nearly sent him reeling—a molten heat that he was not certain he would ever get to feel again. 

He bit down on her plush bottom lip to steady himself as he lowered her inch by inch. They groaned into each other's mouths once she was seated to the hilt, a blooming need settling over them both—a need they had not indulged in too long. She nuzzled his nose with her own and a breathy laugh escaped him. “Ma vhenan, ma ane garas iluvan.” 

She giggled and pressed closer, her amusement blending with a throaty hum when the movement adjusted his length inside of her. “I still don't know elven,” she whispered, a blinding grin on her lips. 

“I will teach you,” he groaned, nipping those teasing lips. 

“Perhaps not right now,” she chuckled. 

“No, perhaps not.” 

Raven kissed him, then; soft and tender, enough to bring a tear to his eye as he lifted her up, only to let her sink back down onto him. Pleasure exploded behind his eyes and he grunted, moving to bite her shoulder. “Yes, Solas,” she panted, her fingernails raking down his back as he found a rhythm. “So good.” 

They moved together as one, clinging to one another as though what they shared was the last lifeline remaining of this world—and was it not? She arched into him, mewling as he snapped his hips up to meet hers time and again, her moans doing little to drown out the slap of skin against skin and the wetness squelching between them. 

He was lost to her, vision darkening, pride dampened—silenced, if only for tonight, in favor of her song; their song. The crumbling world outside the Lighthouse mattered little to him now, the machinations of Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain seeming small by comparison. He would regain his sense come morning, he was certain. But as she shuddered in his arms and found her peak on his cock, sending him spiraling into his own love-drunk release, he saw no reason to concern himself with anything else. Let them rule. Raven belonged to him.

~