Her bare toes pressed into tiles.
Doors opened.
And the throne she'd spent her life walking toward was waiting.
Except that something was off.
The air was too dry. The velvet banners too faded. The armour too dusty.
Something warped in her shadow watching from below—a mirror of her face, older, worn, and—
She didn't know the expression. But her tail shivered anyway.
Lorelai continued, catching up, feeling a pull to a man she wanted to stab in the back.
But of course, Tanner didn't look at her as they marched. He didn't smirk. Didn't breathe a joke against her skin. Just a stranger now—a man carved from someone else's shadow
He walked like a soldier. A slump in his stride.
"Where is he?" she asked, low.
Her father he—he would not let this happen; the kingdom of lust was not an ally, was not someone her people would let in.
Knights not her own lingered, fingers manhandling vases they did not own.
She growled at one. A scoff, a tidbit of laughter, defusing any power she had. This was her home, her tower, her birthright, looted by scum.
"What are you doing?" she demanded.
She stepped, one foot off her designated path, one step too far. And a rifle stock pumped her gut, a gun she didn't know Tanner welded.
"Shut it, you delusional brat." He snarled.
"Tanner?"
He pressed the rifle against her chest, a push aimed at her core.
"I'm not your friend. I have one job: get you to court." He lifted the barrel, the cold metal staining her chin. "Don't make this trial a murder."
Lorelai blinked, "What? I don't understand."
The man stabbed the end of his rifle into her throat, the sudden burn of the armed core, ready to split head from body. One hair trigger from a dead princess.
"Maybe forgetting saved you," he paused, leaning closer, "but it didn't save our kingdom. It didn't save your people."
Then, like a fork, hands snatched her by the arms, her feet kicking, her body pulled off.
"Tanner! What do you mean, forget?"
He didn't answer. He vanished behind his silence.
A mercenary of wrath, a mark painted on his rifle.
Her sole soldier in a court of lust.
She thrashed. "Let go! This is my court!"
None of it made sense. None of it clicked together.
Her absent knights, her faded kingdom, her missing memory.
A burn in her chest, voices whispering in her mind—distant, far.
It was like a fog that wrapped her.
And she was dragged into the hall.
Dropped instead of placed.
As the soot smothered her dress, hands, and face, she looked up.
Kings. Queens. A semicircle of judgment. A few seats were empty—lingering noble houses, pulled from their roots.
And then a woman she hadn't seen for the last hundred years. Her mother lounged beside the Lust King. Her chin raised. Her slutty crown burning.
First came the lips—dry, scratchy, like chalk scraped on stone.
"The gates to the Overworld were breached."
Lorelai spun.
"Breached?" she asked.
Lorelai's stare froze the scholar mid-word.
Those gates were her father's duty.
She needed to know, she had to know.
"Continue," said a rather plump Valkar.
The woman sat in the middle, on her father's seat, her mark of pride half gobbled by her underbelly.
Lorelai clenched her fangs. That! Did not belong to her.
Her mother, meanwhile, absently swished her tail, annoyed at this whole affair. Not even caring that her husband's seat had been claimed, or that her daughter was shivering on a platform.
A Thalin, ratman cleared his flem,
"The surface city has fallen."
That got her attention, not before—
"Someone must answer for Edric's failure."
The chubby Valkar spoke this time. Her wet lips butchering his name.
Lorelai rose—slowly. Every inch a challenge. She stood among kings, the seven monarchs of hell.
"Where is he?" Lorelai asked, but it came out too soft—like a child pleading for her parents. But hell had no pity for daughters.
"Where is my father?" she demanded.
No—she roared it to court. She stood tall: the princess of fury, daughter of wrath. This was her field. Royalty to royalty. She would not forget that.
"Tell me!" she spat. "Where is the king?"
Coraline Violette stepped forward, a taller, more decorated and more hag-like version of herself. A piece at lust's side. Not a queen. Just a whore draped in crowns, playing hearts like cards.
But the face she wore, tinged with something else, her heels moving closer.
Her mother was angry?
A slap punched her face, once, twice, a third time for luck.
Lorelai didn't fall—but her breath did.
"Enough," her mother snapped. "We told you already. He's dead."
The word slithered like an eel down her bones.
"Dead?" Lorelai asked.
Coraline grabbed Lorelai's horn, a twist that brought legs to break, a breath to halt, a pair of fingers that knew where it hurt.
The woman leaned in, a hiss in the breath, a whisper from mother to daughter only.
"Stop dragging my name through the filth. You want to drown? Do it alone. You want to take me down with you?"
Coraline louder now, "You always were a disappointment."
Lorelai looked up. Her eyes blurry. Her knees aching.
"Mother?"
Coraline—her mother—spat at her feet.
"A waste of genes," she muttered, then turned to the council.
"Continue! We've waited long enough."
The rat scholar raised a scroll, his claws clicking against the parchment as he spoke in a warbled, nasal croak.
"By the fifth statute under the third crown accordances of... ah... mm—the Hereditary Code of Collective Dominion, Subsection Seven Sins Subrogation 12.B... transfer of monarchical rights may proceed... pending quorum alignment and barrister acknowledgement."
Lorelai blinked.
"...What?"
"Said 'brrath' must stand trial—ah, no, that's... stand submissive—for consensus to activate." The man glanced up, twitching his whiskers. "Or... they do the stabby bit. Which... has precedent."
The Monarchs murmured. The witch speak, bouncing between scribes and rulers. It was too far from what her studies had taught her, laws, codes, and shushed numbers.
Then the Queen of Gluttony rose, bone-thin like a twig in a dress.
"Shall we start the vote?"
She looked at Lorelai, her tusks whispering in a snarl.
"I raise my vote."
Lorelai blinked. Vote? A vote for what?
The King of Lust stood next—a mountain of a man who didn't spare her a single glance.
"As do I," he said, his voice. Deep. Low.
Lorelai seethed. She didn't know him personally, but her fingers ached to plunge his core straight out of his chest. And the way her mother's tail wagged—that filthy grin on her face—made Lorelai want to vomit.
"Aren't you all eager to rush things?" sighed another woman.
The Queen of Greed rose next, reluctantly.
"It's bad business to rush these things," she said, giving Lorelai a cold frown.
"You do not have my vote."
Next came Sloth, polishing his glasses to a mirrored edge.
"We're wasting time," the king muttered. "I do not wish to participate."
He remained seated, too busy sketching something in his lap.
The scholar stepped forward, fumbling over his scroll.
"The King of Envy is currently… engaged in a local war. He retracts his vote."
Then came the puddle in the center of the room. The Queen of Pride.
A mountain of flab and jewels, every ripple of her body quivering with smugness.
"Two for dismissal. Two not cast. One against," she said, lips curling into a syrup-slow smile.
"Forgive me, but according to council protocol—and with my final addition—"
She paused. Letting her voice simmer in its own smugness.
The look she gave Lorelai wasn't political. It was personal. A checkmate she'd been dying to play.
"Lorelai Violette, Queen of Wrath, you are hereby stripped of your title as Monarch. Effective immediately."
Her voice dripped.
"All possessions, peoples, and holdings of the Wrath Kingdom are now property of the Council, to be reassigned at our discretion."
Lorelai didn't hear the next part, she didn't want to. She never wanted to.
She—she.
Lorelai was the queen. Queen of Wrath.
But that meant—
She shook her horns, an old chatter vibrating her jaw. She didn't want to process it, she didn't want to look.
Forget, Forget—
She curled her arms, slowly sinking to her knees.
Don't take him from her, too.
Her voice broke, her throne room painted with her whimper.
"Father… don't leave me."
The kings left. Queens escorted. Scholars and scribes packed up.
And then she was alone.
Alone, in a hall.
Alone, in a home that she did not own.
Alone, in her skin.
Coraline's heels seemed to clink away from her. And even she left. Lorelai's fingers shaking, wishing—just for a moment.
That she had a mother, too.
Then the sound of wood-bound stone.
"Five hundred shards to start."
Lorelai hitched.
Shards? What shards? Why are they looking at her—
"Rare one, right from the ex-wrath's bloodline."
A merchant hung over her throne like a greasy king. Sharp teeth, smile like a gutting knife.
"Lady Violette." The man yelled, "You never told me you had a daughter, a pretty one at that."
Lorelai growled something feral, legs finding stone. "Get off that Throne!"
Her nails flared, her feet moving her before she could think.
That was her father's, now—
It was hers.
She would take it.
"GET OFF!"
Her core clicked, her fangs oozing steam, her wrath burning.
"I SAID—"
Coraline swung. Not a slap, not a punch, but a needle.
Something chrome. Something that moved inside glass. Something alive.
Lorelai roared, fingers attacking throat, fangs ready to kill.
She had no mother. She remembered now.
"You did get something from your father after all," Coraline mused. "But—"
She smiled, and liquid pressed into Lorelai's neck.
"My sweet little Lorelai, so pure, so full of power." Coraline continued.
Lorelai's body sagged mid-punch, her limp arm uselessly thudding her mother's chest, her fingers unable to strangle that throat.
She screamed, but no voice came out; she attacked, but no arm would listen. Like a doll, she panicked, rolling in Coraline's sickened warmth. Her body numb, her fangs drooling down her mother's dress.
"Maybe I was too harsh," Coraline patted Lorelai's hair, playing with strands like she used to, like she was a mother again. "I underestimated your value." The woman said.
Coraline moved Lorelai's chin, the sight of eyes, a sea of too many eyes, not after a bargain but something worse.
Lorelai tightened her legs, wrapping them shut with her tail.
"It turns out that good flesh is hard to come by in Amorica. The king often only leaves slop for the masses." Coraline whispered, her voice like a lullaby, soft with a hint of the old days. Soothing, like she cared.
But that stopped when Coraline grabbed Lorelai's dress. Fingers, like molesting slime, pressed too profoundly, a lick of her lips too hungry to be maternal.
"You're going to make me a wealthy woman." The devil said.
Then, like wax to her bits—
Coraline stripped her bare.
Numbers climbed, bidding raised, and her throat screamed.
Nothing came out, of course.
Nothing.
The knights of red and crimson littered the stage, the kingdom of lust's men shouted, screamed, slurred, all scrabbling shards, houses, favour, all ready to devour her. Pry open her tail.
Lorelai's mind went blank, and so did her vision, hearing, and soul. She was looking for the off button, the thread that shut it all off—a second, a moment just to grieve.
Coraline laughed, her tail wagging, her fingers counting each bid like a child spotting candy.
"1000 shards isn't that too low?" she pulled Lorelai up, "this is a succubus, right from my womb, think of it as an investment, she might turn out hot like me"
More bids, more laughter, more eyes that watched her, inspected her skin, saw what she showed, none.
Lorelai thrashed, each breath, lust, grunt and gaze, marking her, slicing her. The hound of wolves regarded her as if she were meat. The belts were loose; their hands reached out.
She screamed, her lips slurring, her hate searing.
"Stop looking at me!"
She chewed her lip raw, blood oozing off her chin. Her fangs sparked howling, burning. Her skin flared, her horns cracked, and so did the walls.
A flicker, a warp, a twisted reflection, a Lorelai too old to be her.
Voidium swirled around her, fingers callous, broken, stained in filth.
"Ego." She said.
Suddenly, she knew, she remembered; she remembered too much—the feeling of fury, the explosion, the birth of her. Fragments are born of fracture. Of screams that won't end. The truth that breaks the skin.
"Sold," shouted the merchant.
Every hand like broken mirrors flared out, the men duplicated, quadruplicated, sextuplicated. A lifetime, a nightmare, a blur.
The horde of hands emerged from the mist and held her wrists, ankles, her head, her chest, and pelvis—a scar that lasted years, a fragment that cracked again, again and again.
The smiling, faceless men, grabbing, abusing, and touching. They were not wolves; they were beasts, foul, skinnable animals.
"Happy birthday", her mother said. "You're about to become a woman now."
Then the footsteps began, a pounding rhythm that stirred her core. They were around her now. Above. Close. Ready.
"Fuck off!" she screeched. "Not again. Stop!"
Each howl she emitted, kick she hammered, they thrusted, every moment boiling, charcoaling her skin, sending her fangs alight. Sweat, grunts, screams.
It was her birthday. It was the day she lost it all. The day she'd rather blow her own brains out than live another moment. The day they fucked her and didn't stop.
"Kill them all," her fangs commanded. "Kill every demon, burn every kingdom, melt down their flesh."
Ego screamed as a flare of her soul cracked, and the fragment's fingers moved with hers. Her burn melted steel; her fury, her unhinged wrath, poured out. Then she laughed—cackled like only someone mad could.
"There's nothing more you can take from me. Fine—take my body, my womb, if you want. I'll destroy it first."
She forcibly contorted and broke her arms, snapping bones, howling, roaring like a Daemon tearing out her chest.
Fuck it. Fuck it. Fuck the world. Fuck her Throne. Fuck her father.
Leave nothing remaining.
"Do you hear me, Daemons?" She snarled at the crack forming around her. "I'm coming for you."
And then the world, just like her body—
Cracked.