Kivas trembled, her frame still resonating with heat and half-formed divinity.
The unstable light behind her eyes flickered with confusion as Samael pressed forward, deepening the kiss with deliberate, unrelenting intent.
"Mhm."
"Ahh?"
Their mouths remained locked, the shared breath pulsing with the tension of divine interference being restrained mid-flight.
Samael could feel the shift—a gentle fracture in Kivas' core, a softening of the spiritual tremor that had threatened to rupture her entire being. It was working. The soul-layer ripple had slowed. The madness was being starved.
She then proceeded to insert her tongue, heightening the act of intimacy as she explored Kivas' mouth like a hungry tendril, interlocking, sweeping and slowly slurping on the bodily liquid.
Noticing how her improvisation worked, Samael pushed and leaned forward, angled deeper, tilting Kivas back with calculated pressure until her spine bent into an arc, her arms shaking beneath the weight of her own emotional overload.
Resistance came in light twitches and unsettled breaths, but there was no power behind it. Kivas' divine equation had lost its coherence. The fragments of unstable godhood dissipated with every second of their merging contact.
"Mhmm!"
Samael pushed further, adjusting her grip to pin both of Kivas' wrists to the broken earth. Kivas blinked rapidly, lips parted beneath the relentless fervor, but any attempt to channel her power faded into nothingness. The storm had become still air. The divine command structure around her fractured into dormancy.
Between long, breathless moments, Samael pulled back slightly to study her. Kivas' cheeks were flushed with residual heat, her eyes unfocused and dazed. No words came, just shallow breathing and parted lips awaiting either retreat or continuation.
Kivas' consciousness had not returned.
So Samael returned the kiss again, holding it longer, pressing her presence into the hollow where the storm had lived.
Her hands remained steady on Kivas' wrists, a gesture of reassurance masked as restraint.
After a half hour had passed, the radiance in Kivas' skin had fully settled. The glow of her sigils dimmed into a faint shimmer. The fractures sealed with the slow grace of light yielding to the flesh. Her halo remained shattered. Her wings were absent. But she was whole again.
But the instability was still there.
Not feeling that it was enough, Samael pushed Kivas to the ground, pinning both of her arms to the soil. Samael's body was in between Kivas' legs, not giving any sense of privacy as Samael continued her exorcism to heal this wingless angel's soul.
After another while, Kivas's consciousness returned in the middle of the heated session. She found her wet lips interlocking with the former, scary, and dominant Voidling in front of her vision, close to the point of sharing breath, gazing back with such a casual fervor.
Noticing how Kivas were having a hard time breathing from the panic, Samael retracted her head and stringed their saliva.
Kivas gasped hard, cheeks red and gaze flustered. "What is happening!?"
"Don't move much, there's still instability," Samael said casually and emotionless before plunging down again, reentering the lovely entrance that she had wrapped and embraced for quite a while.
"Mmmm! Mhmmmh!" Kivas' mind went into a nuclear meltdown, but there was a guilty sensation of pleasure inseminating her mind.
This stabilizing ritual went on for about twenty minutes more.
When Samael finally withdrew, her breathing remained steady. Her body showed no signs of fatigue. As if it was nothing but a mundane thing that she needed to do regardless.
She sat beside the stunned Kivas, eyes half-lidded with calm appraisal as Kivas lay splayed across the ground, breathless and blinking at the open sky. Face still burning red, hands and legs shaking overwhelmed. Words tried to exit her throat but all of those words felt like they had already been sucked dry by Samael' intense gesture of intimacy.
"So?" Samael asked with casual curiosity, brushing a strand of her own hair from Kivas' cheek. "How do you feel now?"
Kivas lifted her arm, stared at her own trembling hand, and then at the forest canopy above. Her voice was quiet, still laced with disbelief. "Like I fell into heaven… and accidentally stole something I wasn't supposed to touch. Too absurd to implicate, too impossible to experience." Her eyes slowly turned toward Samael. "What happened!? What did you do!? Why has it progressed to this!?"
Samael leaned back slightly, her tone returning to its usual cadence—measured, factual, slightly amused. "You passed through a threshold. A Fated Apotheosis."
"Apotheosis…"
"A transitional state where a Fateling can ascend and become one of the living divinities of this world." Samael sighed. "All Fateling eventually reach this state, and it is also one of the reason why I vehemently hate them>"
"And you… stopped it?" Kivas blinked, her expression caught between awe and confusion.
"I preserved you," Samael corrected. "Your soul was unraveling into something the world wanted you to become, not what you chose to be. So I anchored you. Pulled you back into the shape of yourself."
"But isn't… ascension supposed to be good?" Kivas whispered. "Becoming a god sounds... awesome."
"Incredible, yes," Samael replied, her eyes narrowing. "Beneficial? Never." She turned to face Kivas fully, her expression sharpening. "Fatlines are not a divine creature by birth, nor was it completely devoid of divinity.
"By nature, Fatelings are foreign conduits—phenomena caught in the stream of reality's rewriting process. Fathomi doesn't fully understand you, so it reacted and took a personal measure. This world always tries to simplify things it doesn't comprehend.
"Because of that, it pushes Fatelings into one box or another. Most often, the divine."
Kivas processed that slowly, her gaze lowered. "So I really… almost became a goddess because Fathomi is too impatient…"
Samael's nod came with a trace of something unreadable. "Yes. And had you succeeded, Fathomi would have claimed you. Your essence would have been bent into a form the world considers 'appropriate.'
"That could mean a floating, bubbling mass of divine instinct. Or a scattered network of totemic projections stretched across the surface of the realm. Perhaps even something less elegant.
"But never anything human. Never anything that thinks like a sane entity, or even anything remotely human."
"That's—" Kivas swallowed hard. "That's terrifying."
"If apotheosis were desirable," Samael added, "don't you think I would've done it by now?"
Silence lingered between them until Kivas looked away, her face flaring again with embarrassment. "Then… why did you do it that way?" Her voice dropped an octave. "That… that method. You know… uhm, the thing we did…"
Samael said without hesitation, "You're lonely."
Kivas visibly flinched, her ears turning red as the words sank in. She lifted a hand to cover part of her face. "What."
"I more than noticed," Samael said, her voice lower, rich with certainty. "I felt it. You're heavy with it. That kind of loneliness doesn't just hurt—it seeps and taints. Using Soul Entanglement, I connected with your soul, and I realized it was the weight that Fathomi used to put your divinity out of balance."
Kivas wryly chuckled. "You know, I kinda enjoyed that." Kivas forcefully cleared her throat. "I shouldn't have, but I did. You saw my face. Because of that, I apologize. So please, I hope that there will be no awkwardness between the two of us—"
"Good. Because I enjoyed it too." Samael's lips curled into a feline smile.
Kivas whipped her head toward her with wide, stunned eyes.
"You—what?!"
Samael leaned in, resting her cheek on her palm as she gazed at Kivas with a smirk that radiated dangerous charm. "What, did you think I was suffering through it out of duty?"
Kivas shot to her feet in flustered panic, stumbling a few paces back with her face burning red. She couldn't believe what she saw, what she heard, what was implied.
"Who are you, and what have you done with Samael?!"
Samael stood with deliberate grace and began walking toward her, each step slow and measured.
"I hated you, utterly despised you to the core," Samael said, her tone tightening. "I was irritated when you appeared. Some random Fateling crashing into my existence, dragging me into a binding I never asked for, tearing away everything I was…"
Kivas stepped back again, lips parted in alarm. "I-I'm sorry, okay? Can you stop now, you're being weird and creepy…"
"But now—" Samael stopped just in front of her. "Now I find myself curious. Intrigued. Ensnared."
"W-what are you even talking about!!?" Kivas stammered, edging slightly away. "I thought that you're a cold cat, since when did you become a vixen!?"
"Don't make me pin you to the ground again."
Kivas almost raised her hand.
"... With what had just happened, I don't think that is a good threat."
Hearing the absurd and usual comical retorts coming out of Kivas' mouth once again, Samael's gaze softened, and for a moment, there was no smirk. No sarcasm. Only quiet, reverent intensity.
"You and I… we're two lonely beings carved out of different eternities," Samael said. "I've forgotten how to feel the ache of solitude because I've worn it for so long. But in you, I felt it again. The pain, the realization that I had such a pain…
"But now, I can choose to expel that pain away completely without much compromise."
Kivas stared in disbelief as Samael knelt before her.
Samael then took her hand gently, lifted it to her lips, and pressed a soft kiss to the back of her knuckles.
"You claimed me because you saw worth, and there's no hesitation perceived when you utter those adorable words to me," Samael said, looking up with firelight in her eyes. "And I refuse to be slower than a Fateling—"
Her smile turned radiant and unwavering.
"You're mine now, Kivas Chariot."