He woke with a start.
His body felt heavy, sluggish, as if the weight of a thousand years pressed down on him. His eyes fluttered open to the dim light of his room—a small, cramped space where shadows seemed to stretch unnaturally, reaching toward him. The flicker of a distant lightbulb in the hall cast erratic glows through the cracks in the door, like a heartbeat in the darkness.
His breath was shallow, quick. His hands—his right hand, the one that had once held the dagger—lay limp at his side. There was no strength in it. He tried to move it, but it didn't obey. Panic began to rise in his chest as he struggled to make sense of the fog in his mind.
Was it a dream? A nightmare?
His eyes darted around, scanning the corners of the room, but the shadows remained silent, still. The air tasted faintly of iron, as if the walls themselves had absorbed something darker, something foul.
For a moment, he thought he saw movement—a flicker of something in the corner of his vision—but when he turned, nothing was there.
He blinked again, and the darkness seemed to press closer. Was it always this suffocating? Was the room always this small?
His heart thudded painfully in his chest. His eyes adjusted, and he thought he saw a shape—no, it was a shadow, shifting on the wall, stretching unnaturally as if it had a life of its own. His breath caught. He couldn't quite look away.
And then, he heard it—the softest sound, just a whisper at first. But it was enough.
"Still not enough…"
The words weren't loud. They didn't have to be. They were inside him, like a ghost that knew the very corners of his mind. He winced, his body trembling as something deep inside him flared with recognition.
That voice—he knew that voice.
Before he could react, his vision blurred. He was falling, slipping into something worse than sleep. His chest tightened as his pulse quickened, and the voice… it grew louder.
"Such foolishness… you think you're free?"
The air turned colder. The shadows in the room seemed to gather at the edges, growing thicker, darker. The temperature dropped, and he shivered uncontrollably.
The voice was unmistakable now—her voice. But it wasn't just in his ears. It was inside his head, in his thoughts, tangled in his very breath.
"You gave so much, yet you have nothing left. You thought you were making a deal? A simple sacrifice?" Her voice came from everywhere, from nowhere, a mocking lullaby that wrapped around his mind. "But you gave your future, your bloodline. And now I own it."
He struggled to move, to escape, but the paralysis gripped him tighter. The room twisted as if the very walls were closing in, and the whisper continued, crawling under his skin.
"Your legacy is mine now. Your children, your children's children… they will belong to me, just as you belong to me."
His body convulsed, but he couldn't cry out. He couldn't even speak.
"Are you awake now? Or is this just another of my gifts?" the voice teased, its tone cruel and amused.
The world blurred again, the shadows twisting and stretching, as if they had come to life. He gasped for air, but it felt like the room was choking him, pressing in from all sides. The sound of her voice, that mocking tone, suffocated everything else.
Suddenly, the room grew unbearably still. The shadows receded, as if a momentary lull had taken hold. The air was thick with an electric charge, crackling with something dark. His breath came in ragged gasps, his body aching as though it had been through hell and back.
Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw it.
A figure—just a glimpse at first, a dark silhouette moving from the far corner of the room. The shadows seemed to part around her like the sea before a great storm. He couldn't see her clearly at first, but he felt her.
Her presence was suffocating, powerful. The very air around him seemed to bend in her wake.
"Ah," she purred, and the voice was no longer just in his mind—it filled the room, wrapped around him like silk. "You're finally awake."
He could see her now, standing just beyond the threshold of his awareness, bathed in a pale, unnatural light. Her shape was shifting, an ethereal form that defied clarity, her features flickering like the flame of a dying candle. Her eyes—dark, infinite, impossibly deep—locked with his, and his body froze under their gaze.
Her smile was cruel, almost playful.
"You thought you had escaped, didn't you?" she whispered, her voice a mixture of amusement and contempt. "You think this is over? That you're free?"
He tried to speak, but his mouth felt dry, his tongue thick, as if something in his throat had been sealed shut.
"You have no idea what you've done," she continued, taking a step closer. Her presence was overwhelming, every breath he took filled with her essence. "No idea of what it costs to make a deal like that. But you'll learn soon enough."
The shadows closed in around her, and she was suddenly right there—too close, too real.
Her form flickered once more, and in that flicker, he saw it—the shape of her, the true form beneath the illusions.
A succubus. Her beauty was terrible, her power intoxicating, her presence suffocating.
He tried to move, to flee, but his body refused to obey. The air grew heavier, and her laugh echoed in his ears.
"Now, now," she said, stepping even closer. "You'll see. You'll understand the price of your foolishness. And when you do, there will be no turning back."
As she moved closer, her face became clearer—no longer a shifting, ghostly form, but a distinct and terrifying entity. Her lips curled into a smile, and he could see the glint of her eyes, cold and unfeeling.
His heart hammered in his chest, but he couldn't move. He was trapped, caught in the web of her presence. His manhood stood tall and his descendants leaving his body.
And as the world seemed to close around him, his mind screamed, but his voice remained silent.
The End.