Tucked into a side aisle of the church, the neo-Gothic oak confessional smelled of ancient beeswax, cold timber, and stale incense.
The structure was imposing, crowned with carved pinnacles and pointed lancet arches. It featured a heavy central door for the clergy and two flanking booths, where the pale, warm glow of a small oil lamp filtered through amber panes and a dense wooden grille.
A modest emblem of the Holy Sun was carved right above the partition. In the grand basilicas, a Daughter of Light would have been accorded a spacious, soundproofed Chapel of Confession on the lower tiers of the cathedral, receiving the nobility in marble luxury and absolute discretion.
Here, on the rundown fringes of Veyrsend, the little church had only this creaking wooden box fitted with a worn kneeler and a drawn velvet curtain.
Mina sat bolt upright on the hard chair, hands clasped over her knees, staring through the wooden lattice with the expression of an accountant who had just spotted an eight-million-gold deficit on a balance sheet.
“May the Light guide you toward righteous deeds,” she forced out the rehearsed formula, straining to keep her voice from wavering by even a fraction of an octave.
“In His radiance,” came the low, gravelly voice of a thirty-something man from behind the grille.
The thud of the penitent rising to his feet echoed, followed by the rustle of coarse wool and the creak of floorboards. Once the footsteps faded down the nave, Mina dropped her forehead into her palm, hissing out a silent breath through her teeth.
Holy fucking shit... this really is an adult game world.
The guy who had just walked off had spent ten excruciating minutes confessing to agonizingly detailed fantasies involving the baker’s wife, a sack of flour, and a three-way barter agreement...
Peering through the gap in the curtain, she tracked the man's receding silhouette into the gloom with a blend of boundless bewilderment and sheer disgust.
Before she could gather her thoughts, four sharp, impatient raps drummed against the booth’s frame.
The curtain on the other side rustled, and another figure collapsed onto the kneeler. The cloying scent of cheap rosewater and flushed skin wafted straight through the wooden grille.
Mina squared her shoulders, donning an immaculate priestly mask.
“May the Holy Sun illuminate your heart and grant you the courage of truth.”
“May... may it illuminate, Mother, because I’m on my absolute last legs!” a high-pitched, trembling voice blurted from behind the partition.
Through the lattice slats and amber glass, Mina caught sight of a young, breathtakingly striking woman. A housewife from the artisan quarter, she wore a thin linen dress cut with an unbuttoned, plunging neckline so scandalous that her lush, heavy bust practically spilled over the wooden sill beneath the grille, heaving violently with every ragged gasp.
“My old man... my husband, curse his hide!” the woman blurted out, white-knuckling the partition with both hands. “He went down to the docks on Friday and bought some ‘vigor elixir’ from a sleazy, one-eyed alchemist. It was supposed to be for one night, for our anniversary! But that brainless goat chugged the whole bottle in one go! It’s been three days, Mother! Three whole fucking days he’s been strutting around the house pitching a permanent tent in his trousers! He won’t let me sleep a wink, chases me from the pantry to the attic, and this morning he started ogling my two younger sisters without an ounce of shame when they came by to help with laundry! I can barely stand on my own two feet! I came to beg for a prayer... a miracle, anything! Couldn’t you cast some sort of... temporary paralysis on him from the waist down?! Just for two days, for the love of the Sun!”
Mina dug her nails into the wool of her habit, praying desperately that her facial muscles would maintain a completely detached, stony composure.
Internally, she was screaming. Every forum thread she had dismissed on Friday night as over-the-top gags from degenerate eroge developers flashed before her eyes.
Drawing a measured breath, she fell back on standard protocol.
“My daughter,” she began smoothly, channeling passive Holy Rhetoric. “A vessel subjected to unnatural draughts wanders in the darkness of lust, yet the Church does not smite wedded husbands with paralysis. Your husband’s transgression is pride and lack of temperance, while yours is impatience before this trial.”
The woman sniffled, her full bust heaving heavily beneath the sheer linen.
“Then what am I supposed to do?...”
“For your penance, you shall recite the Litany of the Rising Dawn thrice, and into your husband’s evening stew, you shall slip an infusion of cold mint-root and knotgrass. It will cool his blood far more reliably than prayers for impotence. As an offering to the temple, you shall contribute five coppers for lamp oil. Do you repent of your impatience?”
“I repent, by all the gods, I repent...” the wife stammered.
Raising her right hand, Mina traced the solar emblem in the air.
“Through the radiance of the Holy Sun, may your sins be dispersed, and may peace return beneath your roof. May the Light guide you toward righteous deeds.”
“In His radiance...” the woman whispered. Scrambling up from the kneeler, she practically bolted down the side aisle.
Mina pinched the bridge of her nose, her mind reeling at the utter absurdity of her predicament...
Next in line was a lad of perhaps sixteen from a cobbler's workshop. He knelt nervously, wringing his leather apron in trembling fingers. In a squeaky, cracking voice, he confessed to impure thoughts: every day, he climbed into the tannery’s attic to peer through knotholes in the siding, spying on his neighbor - a beastfolk woman with cat ears and a tail who lounged naked on sun-warmed roof tiles. Weeping, he admitted to fantasizing about caressing her velvety ears and stroking the base of her tail.
Listening to his stammering, Mina actually felt a twinge of sympathy - compared to a husband with a three-day erection, cat ears sounded practically wholesome. She assigned him ten prostrations before the altar and sent him on his way with a blessing.
The true nightmare, however, began with the fourth petitioner.
The curtain was wrenched aside, venting the reek of sweat, iron, and cheap rotgut liquor into the booth. A burly young man in the leather brigandine of the city watch dropped heavily onto the kneeler. He panted raggedly, as though he had just sprinted a marathon.
“Forgive me, O Light, for I have sinned grievously...” he choked out, pressing his forehead against the partition grille.
“Confess your transgression before the Sun,” Mina replied evenly.
The watchman swallowed audibly.
“This morning... during the Liturgy of the First Dawn... I stood in the fourth pew. Instead of fixing my gaze upon the golden disc and heeding the scripture, I... I couldn't tear my eyes off the Daughter of Light. Off her slender waist, her lush lips, the way the golden light fell across her breasts beneath the habit... When I got back to the garrison, I locked myself in the woodshed behind the stables and... and I sinned with my hand, Mother. Twice. I kept picturing her velvety voice whispering in my ear as she stripped off those sacred vestments before me...”
A dead, ringing silence fell over the confessional.
Behind the wooden lattice, Mina locked up so violently she nearly tumbled off the chair. In a split second, a scalding, crimson blush flooded her face. Blood rushed to her ears with the roar of a cataract, her stomach tying itself into a knot of sheer, suffocating mortification.
He... he jerked off thinking about me?!
About ME?!
And as if that humiliation weren't enough, in that exact same millisecond, the Scarlet Brand flared awake on her bare lower belly.
Fed by another’s raw lust and the perverse nature of the situation, the demonic succubus tattoo burned white-hot. A wave of slick, throbbing heat surged through her loins and pelvis. Mina clamped her thighs together involuntarily, digging her nails into her knees and biting hard into her lower lip to stifle a strangled whimper.
Squeezing her eyes shut, she took a ragged breath through her nose, forcing her voice into ice-cold detachment even as she burned with shame.
“Your... your transgression desecrates the sanctity of the priesthood,” she gritted out through a tight throat, wishing the floorboards would simply swallow her whole. “You lusted after the vessel of Light instead of seeking truth. I shall impose a heavy penance upon you. For a week, you shall fast on bread and water before noon, and you shall deposit twenty coppers into the alms box. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Mother... Thank you for your mercy!” the watchman gasped. After a hurried prayer, he bolted from the booth as if the hounds of hell were snapping at his heels.
Mina slumped her forehead against the wood of the confessional, panting heavily as she waited for the searing heat beneath her navel to subside.
The subsequent two confessions drained her sanity in entirely different ways.
A petty craftsman from the neighboring lane wept as he confessed to greed and cowardice. He had borrowed a sizable sum from a local loan shark tied to the underworld, and when he couldn't meet the weekly interest installment, he permitted the ruthless enforcer to “enjoy a passionate afternoon” with his younger, unmarried sister-in-law in exchange for an extension. The hitch was that the girl was now sneaking out by night to visit the loan shark of her own volition, while the artisan’s workshop was sliding into bankruptcy anyway.
The last petitioner was an elderly tailor.
With stoic calm, the man confessed that for the past year, he had been bedding his wedded wife, her younger sister who lived under their roof, and... the young apprentice working in his shop, all at the same time.
What stunned Mina most was that the man felt not an ounce of remorse for the triple infidelity. He had come to confession solely out of sheer terror for his household budget - he was in a panic that the apprentice would extort him for a wage hike and his sister-in-law would fall pregnant, blowing his finances to smithereens.
When the tailor finally departed with an indifferent “In His radiance,” Mina remained in the dim booth for a full ten minutes, staring vacantly at the flickering flame of the oil lamp.
The rest of the day passed in a feverish blur.
After morning confessions came the miserable task of setting out her fifteen elixirs on a small display table before the chapel - she sold a grand total of two vials for a hundred coppers to a weeping mother whose child was burning with fever.
Then came the brief midday liturgy, hours spent scrubbing the sacristy, topping up the lamp oil and candle wax, followed by the evening service.
When the clock in the belfry struck seven in the evening, Mina turned the heavy iron key in the chapel’s main portal, dropped the iron crossbar, and practically crawled on all fours up to the attic.
Stumbling into her bedroom, she kicked the door shut and collapsed face-first onto the cot like a felled tree. She lay motionless for long minutes, every muscle throbbing with dull, leaden exhaustion. Finally rolling onto her back, she fixed a vacant stare upon the cracked rafters of the ceiling.
“Holy fucking shit...” she whispered into the dark, her voice dripping with bottomless, existential despair. “What did I even listen to today?...”
She tugged at the collar of her habit.
Popping the pearlescent buttons at her throat, she loosened the ceremonial sash with its solar buckle and peeled off the heavy outer wool, stripping down to her sweat-damp chemise and sheer slip.
She hitched the hem high over her hips, letting the cool evening air bathe her flushed, exhausted skin. Upon her bare, porcelain stomach, the Scarlet Brand smoldered with a faint, pinkish glow, pulsing in rhythm with her weary heartbeat.
“This place is utterly sick,” she muttered to herself, staring into the dark. “A slum-adjacent district where folk pimp their own family to loan sharks just to extend a promissory note... Madness. Absolute madness.”
Suddenly, at the recollection of the day's confessions, Mina froze.
Her analytical accountant’s brain - dulled by hours of mortification and liturgical chanting - slammed three seemingly disparate facts together.
First: Ordinary purification potions and healing salves sold like dogshit, because the paupers only bought them when death was knocking on their door, and the net margin was pathetic pennies.
Second: Across Veyrsend and the docks, people were drowning in debt, yet they were prepared to cough up their very last coppers for vigor elixirs, aphrodisiacs, stimulants, and potency draughts from shady, back-alley peddlers.
Third: She possessed the System of Indecent Piety, whose shop tab offered dozens of alchemical recipes tied to allure, sensuality, pheromones, and desire control... for a fraction of the cost of holy miracles.
Mina bolted upright so fast her blonde hair tumbled in wild disarray across her shoulders.
A predatory, ruthless glint flared in her eyes - the look of an auditor who had just spotted a massive market inefficiency on a financial statement.
“If this city is drowning in debauchery anyway...” she purred, a slow, wicked grin spreading across her lips as she summoned the system panel, “then why the hell shouldn't I be the one raking in the gold?”