Victoria's POV
The star—once a crimson giant—pulsed with its final breath, a dying ember spilling waves of scarlet across the void. Its collapse was not quiet, but a symphony: cosmic destruction made music. I felt every note in my bones. To most, it was the death of a sun. To me, it was a signal. The sign I had awaited for centuries.
For I am Victoria Gol'Koxzurc, Seer of the Deamune.
My throne lies in a realm beyond the Ancient one, across veils no flesh may cross without summons. When the MagalaN waged their final war and sealed the Great Portal, the Ancient Realm was severed from all others. No king, no demon, not even I could step across its threshold. I could only watch as it bled—year after year, age after age.
And so I waited.
The prophecy was clear: one soul would blaze against the dark, a MagalaN reborn. He would ignite the summoning and tear the seal wide. Through him, I would return. Through him, I would bind my fate to the Ancient Realm once more.
I had seen him since birth, though he was born far from my world from a Time that is yet to come. His soul burned like a black flame across eternity, a beacon only I could follow. I watched as he grew. As he struggled. As he won, and lost, and endured. His victories tasted of triumph to me. His failures hollowed me. His loneliness cut deeper than my own.
And I loved him.
---
He was my Dark Lord.
My champion.
My beloved.
The prophecy named him a weapon, a herald of conquest. But I knew better. He was more than destiny's blade. He was mine.
When the crimson star shattered, the seal trembled. The summoning began. And then—he came.
Not as a boy. Not as the lonely soul I had traced in dreams. He arrived as storm and shadow, fury unbound. His enemies crumbled in the Dominion he summoned without knowing, their bodies undone by the weight of his will. And when the tempest cleared, he stood before me.
I had prepared myself for this moment for centuries.
And yet… nothing prepared me for him.
He was terrible. He was beautiful. He was alive with a power that made my chest tighten and my lips part in awe. For one suspended instant, I forgot the prophecy, the throne, the waiting. I saw only him.
But he was bound. I felt it at once—the Thorn of Ra, coiled around his heart, its cursed light gnawing at his essence. That spell was no common ward. It was the death-spark of a star, forged into eternal chains. A curse meant not to kill, but to strip him, to bind him, to break him.
Rage filled me like fire. Had I been free to step across that veil, the summoners would not have lived long enough to whisper their chant.
And still, he endured. Suspicious of me. Defiant. But his eyes—oh, his eyes—caught mine, and for the first time in centuries, I felt seen.
"They meant to bind you," I told him softly. "To control you. And once bound, you would never rise again."
He narrowed his gaze, suspicion warring with something else. A flicker. A spark. He feels it too, I thought. He must.
I moved closer, my gown whispering against the luminous floor. His aura pressed against me, hot, relentless, a tide that made my skin hum. Without thinking—without planning—I sat upon his lap.
The moment split me open. Centuries of cold discipline shattered in an instant. He stiffened, startled, and I felt it—oh, Darkness preserve me—I felt him.
His arousal pressed against me, raw, undeniable. My lips parted in a gasp I smothered with a smirk. Inside, I reeled. Destiny, prophecy, worlds colliding… and here I was, flushed like a maiden, shivering at his touch.
I nearly laughed—not from mockery, but delight.
The Dark Lord was mine in ways neither of us yet grasped.
I traced his chest with trembling fingers, savoring the ripple of his power. He flinched, but did not push me away. His storm-tossed eyes met mine—and for the first time, I saw not suspicion, but curiosity. Desire. Recognition.
"The spell I placed upon your heart," I whispered, my voice shaking with both seduction and truth, "is no chain. It is a bond. A lifeline. If you fall, I fall. If you are bound, I am bound. You are mine. And I am yours."
He growled low, anger masking uncertainty. "Another prison."
"No," I answered, steel beneath silk. "A vow."
The words were not strategy. Not manipulation. They were truth. Perhaps too much truth.
He looked at me differently then. Not with surrender—not yet. But with hunger. With interest. With something that thrilled me more than prophecy ever could.
"You will come to love me as I love you," I whispered, close enough for only him to hear. "It is already written. You just do not know it yet."
And for the first time, I no longer cared whether it was destiny or choice, prophecy or madness. I only knew one truth, burning absolute:
I would make him mine.
Forever.
---
Yet beneath the Dominion's surface, something stirred. Things older than prophecy, older than kings. Beasts the first Shadow King himself had chained in endless dark. They shifted at his arrival, hungry, listening.
He does not yet know what he has summoned.
But I do.
And I will see him bend them to his will.