I had no intention of dying in the stupidest way possible this time.
I would do whatever it took to survive and claw my way out of this godforsaken hell.
The memory of tons of rock crushing my rib cage still thrummed like dull thunder in the back of my skull.
Once more, I broke the surface of the pool in a single surge, holding my breath to avoid swallowing any more of that freezing, luminous water.
My fingers clawed into the slick stone ledge, and I forced myself to breathe—slowly, deliberately, measuring every heartbeat.
If I let panic seize the reins, the spectral fire along my twin tails would flare into a beacon of raw mana, and the dragon slumbering on the far side of the fault line would awaken before her time.
Breathe.
Cool the soul.
Cool the blood, I told myself. I need to focus my power to endure the storm ahead.
Closing my golden eyes, I pictured a frozen lake in the dead of winter.
It worked.
The heat coiling at the base of my spine receded, condensing the silver flames into an invisible chill that clung tight to my skin.
At the edge of my vision, the System interface flickered once, confirming the adjustment:
[Mana Suppression Successful | Spiritual Emission: Reduced to 3%]
Clack. Clack. Clack.
The strike of iron heels sliced through the silence like a lethal metronome. Carmilla was never late—not by a single second.
I rose from the water with fluid, deliberate grace, letting the water sheet off the contours of my bare body without a tremor. Spine straight, fox ears perked, chin held high.
By the time her slender silhouette emerged from the tunnel, dark silk sweeping across the rock behind her, I was already waiting.
“Well, well...” Her drawling voice drifted forward with that familiar, hypnotic cadence. “It’s been over three hundred years since anything living tumbled into this miserable pit.”
Once again, she crossed the distance in the span of a breath.
Cold, clawed fingers hooked beneath my chin, tilting my face until the bioluminescent violet glow illuminated my slit pupils.
“A silver-furred Kitsune... what an unusual treat. Tell me, little vixen... did you come here to serve as my meal, or are you just another parasite seeking a grave in my domain?”
“Neither, Lady of the Night,” I replied softly, letting the cadence of my voice lean toward affectionate rather than defiant.
“I was betrayed on the surface. They drove a blade through my fiancée’s heart and cast me down here to die.
I don't ask for your pity, but neither am I an insect to be crushed beneath your heel. I am someone who shares your disgust for traitors.”
Carmilla tilted her head. Her crimson irises bored into my throat, searching for the erratic flutter that would provoke her frenzy.
But my heart beat with the steady rhythm of an antique clock.
“A polished speech...” she whispered, the cold ridges of her knuckles brushing the curve of my collarbone. “And an intoxicating scent that enchants me completely. I’m sorely tempted to sink my fangs into you this very second to ensure you never turn your back on me. I want you mine, forever.”
“If you brand me now, I will die,” I replied, not wavering an inch. “My flesh has only just formed from the pool's mana.
Your Progenitor Blood would poison my core before the night ends.
You would throw away the only living voice who understands your curse over an impatient whim.”
Carmilla went motionless.
The curve of her crimson lips twitched upward into a wicked smile brimming with perverse delight.
“Clever... and as exquisite as a porcelain doll,” she purred, drawing her hand back with calculated slowness.
“Very well, Elina. We shall see how long that polite insolence lasts before you’re begging for my bite... and pleading for me to pleasure you in my chambers with my tongue.”
With a theatrical swirl of her skirts, she turned her back to me, flaunting her hourglass silhouette with playful malice.
“Follow me. Stagnant water may suit you, but damp stone eventually rots that fine fur of yours.”
The first trial was secured.
Mission accomplished once more.
But I knew this time wouldn't end the same way.
I followed her beneath the vaulted stone arches into her decadent salon.
This time, as we crossed the threshold where the wall had caved in under Ignis’s fire in the previous loop, everything remained intact.
Crimson candles flickered in tarnished silver candelabras, while the heavy scents of aged wine and dried roses hung thick in the air, creating a suffocating, intoxicating parlor.
Carmilla glided toward a carved wooden chest and retrieved a folded piece of dark fabric.
She didn't toss it across the room this time. Instead, she closed the distance step by step, holding the silk robe in both hands.
“Turn around,” she commanded in a low, velvet purr that brooked no argument.
I obeyed, feeling the chill of the chamber brush against my bare back.
My twin silver tails twitched with involuntary instinct, betraying the nervous reflexes of my beastkin form.
For some inexplicable reason, my body practically begged to belong to her, yearning to indulge her darkest desires.
I felt Carmilla's icy hands brushing the line of my shoulders as she slid the silk over my torso. God, it felt incredible—those freezing hands sent unexpected heat coursing through me.
Her touch was far from that of a careless captor. Her fingers lingered at the curve of my waist, fastening the garment with deliberate slowness that sent shivers prickling down my spine from the nape of my neck to my heels. It was a sensation I had never experienced—not even when I was a man.
“You possess exquisite skin, little vixen,” Carmilla murmured, pressing flush against my back until I felt the swell of her chest against my shoulder blades. “It seems almost cruel that such a form once belonged to a coarse man before falling down here. The magic of the abyss has remarkably refined taste when shaping its vessels. Delicious...”
A jolt of ice tore through me. She knows, I thought, a sudden spike of alarm nearly shattering my steady pulse. She knows what I was before I fell. How...?
“The magic of the abyss has no mercy for the weak,” I replied, turning my head just enough to catch her gaze over my shoulder. “It merely granted me the form required to survive this hell.”
Carmilla let out a soft, musical laugh, dark and full of malice.
“To survive... or to seduce. A fox’s fire never seeks open war; it seeks the knot around its prey’s heart.” She leaned down, resting her cold lips in the hollow between my neck and shoulder, not piercing the skin, merely pressing against my warm flesh with sickening possessiveness. “Tell me, Elina... do you truly believe you can break the seal binding me to these stones?”
“That is why I draw breath,” I murmured.
“Then there is something you must understand about our neighbor in the depths,” she said, finally stepping back to recline upon her velvet divan. “Ignis is deaf to sweet words. She is a colossal beast who has slept since the gods walked the earth. Her pride is so boundless that she considers the very air we breathe a tax owed to her.”
“There must be a way to approach her without being reduced to ash,” I said, adjusting the slit in the skirt to free my tails.
“There is,” Carmilla smiled, pouring herself a goblet of thick, pitch-black liquor. “Though it requires an offering of flesh. Ignis only truly stirs when she catches the scent of something she deems her property. And a virgin Kitsune born from the depths of the pool is the most coveted prize imaginable for a dragon hoarding curiosities. If you cross the basalt rift, she will not incinerate you on sight; she will drag you into her bed of ash and snap your wings until you can no longer walk.”
The vampire’s warning was devoid of kindness. It was venom steeped in raw, primal jealousy. Her crimson pupils gleamed with an imminent threat:
“And should you ever permit her filthy claws to touch the silk I just draped over your shoulders... I will tear out your throat myself, Elina.”
The trap had been laid, I calculated in silence. Carmilla wanted me by her side as a pampered plaything to entertain her through eternity. She had no real intention of breaking the seal if it meant sharing me or letting me walk free.
I waited patiently. As the hours crept past, the atmosphere within the hall grew heavier still. Pureblood vampires did not sleep like mortals, but the deep night above ground—filtering a strange, hushed stillness through the fissures in the ceiling—lulled Carmilla into a quiet torpor. She reclined against her velvet throne, eyes hooded, her breathing so faint she resembled a statue carved from black marble.
This was my only chance.
I slipped across the granite floor without a sound. The padded soles of my bare feet cushioned every stride, and the silk robe flowed around my legs like smoke. Slipping beneath the archway, I left behind the scent of withered roses and ventured into the chasm descending into the depths of the abyss.
The heat hit me before long. Barely three hundred meters down the basalt slope, the damp chill evaporated, replaced by a dry, suffocating furnace that tasted of sulfur and molten metal. Veins of incandescent lava wept from the black stone walls, casting writhing crimson shadows along the path.
My fox ears twitched, picking up a colossal sound ahead—not footsteps, but the heavy, rhythmic rumble of a sleeping god's breath.
I rounded the final bend of the gorge, and the world gave way before me.
Ignis’s lair was a subterranean cathedral of monumental proportions. Far below, a lake of magma churned with quiet wrath, bathing an immense hill of thousands of tons of hoarded gold, shattered relics, and the charred plate armor of dead kings in brilliant golden light.
And atop that mountain of squandered riches rested the dragon in her colossal form.
The Calamity Dragon was a monument to destructive power. Her dark ruby scales mirrored the liquid fire, and her leathery wings lay folded over her back like sheets of impenetrable iron. But as I crept forward, keeping my body concealed behind a basalt pillar, a sudden fluctuation tore through the sweltering air.
The air vibrated with overwhelming magical density. The molten lake surged upward several meters, and the colossal beast began to compress in a swirling tempest of crimson and golden radiance.
I took a step back, breath catching in my throat.
The behemoth vanished. In the center of the golden mound emerged a dark silhouette shrouded in heat and rolling smoke.
She was a woman of devastating, suffocating presence. Tall, broad-shouldered, with imposing curves sculpted like volcanic rock. Her hair fell in a wild mane of golden fire across a back partially armored in fiery scales. Two sharp obsidian horns swept back over her brow, and from her tailbone whipped a thick, scaled tail, lazily striking the gold coins with sharp metallic clinks. She wore no cloth; natural armor plating shielded her vitals, leaving bronze skin forged in an eternal furnace bare to the heat.
She was overwhelmingly beautiful, utterly commanding.
What a delicious creature, my body whispered.
Ignis opened her eyes. Two golden infernos pierced the gloom.
“Come out, vermin,” her voice rumbled—not telepathic this time, but a deep, guttural physical boom that rattled the stone beneath my feet. “You’ve been fouling my sanctuary for ten minutes.”
Running was impossible. I drew in a searing breath that scorched my lungs and stepped out from behind the pillar. Halting at the foot of the treasure hoard, I kept my twin tails still and my hands raised open at chest level.
“I come not as an enemy, great Ignis,” I announced, projecting my voice through the heat waves. “I come to offer a pact to the queen of the abyss.”
Ignis descended the hill of gold with heavy, measured steps. The metal warped and melted beneath her tread. She stopped two paces away, glaring down at me with monumental disdain etched across her sharp features.
“A pact? A mangy-furred fox who barely learned to breathe mana? Ha! Don't make me laugh.” The dragon twisted her lips into a cruel sneer. “Creatures like you serve only two purposes: ash beneath my boots, or a bed-warmer when winter grows dull.”
She paused abruptly. Her nostrils flared, drawing in the air between us.
In a fraction of a second, the mocking arrogance vanished from her face, replaced by blind, primordial fury. The scales along her forearms bristled like white-hot iron spikes.
“That stench...” Ignis roared, the atmosphere warping around her under intense heat. “You are not merely an insolent intruder. You carry that leech’s carrion clinging to your flesh!”
I looked down instinctively.
The black silk robe Carmilla had dressed me in. The perfume of dried roses, the phantom chill of her hands...
“You reek of her spit. You reek of her moldy sheets!” the dragon hissed, baring two rows of razor fangs as a blinding white glow ignited deep within her throat.
She’s going to burn me alive.
“Did you strut into my territory as that corpse’s pet lapdog? Did you think I would tolerate the filth of her scent in my presence?!”
“Wait, it’s not what you think—!” I shouted, throwing myself backward with all the agility of my kitsune form.
But with Ignis, there were no second warnings.
She didn't bother opening her maw to unleash dragonfire. With a savage sweep of her right arm, a ball of concentrated flame tore through my chest with the speed of lightning.
The impact didn't just incinerate me; it carved through flesh and obliterated the bedrock behind me in a deafening shockwave. Agony was so instantaneous that the sound of my ribs shattering was swallowed whole before the world bleached into blinding white.
My body flew backward, disintegrating in the blistering air before it ever struck the ground.
[YOU HAVE DIED]
GASP!
I broke through the mystical pool, coughing violently and thrashing against the surface with small porcelain hands.
The violet water shimmered in peaceful silence. My twin silver tails floated unblemished. On my chest, there were no wounds, no scorched flesh, no remnants of white flame.
Damn it all... what the hell do I have to do to break out of this loop?
I leaned back against the freezing rock of the pool, trembling as a broken, bitter laugh scraped from the pit of my stomach.
“The scent...” I whispered, clawing at my bare arms in desperation as angry tears mingled with the pool's water. “I died because of the damn clothes...”
They loathed each other so intensely that even the faint scent of the other was an automatic death sentence. To approach one meant painting an immediate target on your back for the other's fury.
Clack. Clack. Clack.
Far down the tunnel, the familiar strike of Carmilla’s heels began to echo once more.
Loop #6 had ended in ash.
But Loop #7 was about to begin with a single rule seared into my soul: to sur vive two jealous queens, I would first have to learn how to walk between their claws completely naked.
The only way out of this hell was to bed them both separately—and somehow satisfy their darkest desires to the very end.