Chapter 31 · Prisoner of the Void

"Do you still think you're the one in control, Selena?"

Cane’s voice wasn't a shout. It was a low, vibrating hum that seemed to rattle the very air in the Void’s suffocating silence. He didn't just stand near her; he loomed, his shadow swallowing her whole as he pressed her back against the jagged obsidian wall.

Selena gasped, the cold stone biting into her shoulder blades. She tried to push him away, but her palms met a chest that felt like forged iron. "Let me go, Cane. This... this madness, this place—it isn't you. You were kind. You were—"

"I was a sacrifice," he interrupted, his face inches from hers. He didn't blink. His eyes, once soft and full of a pathetic kind of devotion, were now swirling vortexes of ink and violet flame. "I was the boy who believed your lies about 'purification.' Tell me, does the Holy Maiden still feel pure while she's shaking in my grip?"

Selena flinched, her breath hitching. The smell of ozone and old blood clung to him, a sharp contrast to the sterile incense of the Luminis temple.