The air between them thickened like congealing blood. Elara's fingers twitched at her sides, her nails biting crescents into her palms. Jack's gaze was a blade pressed to her throat—unflinching, unyielding.
Prove yourself.
The words echoed in her skull, mingling with the Starved Saint's restless hunger.
"What do I do?" Her voice came out raw, stripped bare.
Jack's smile was a wound. "Simple. Within a week, find someone who will obey you as completely as you obey me." His shadow stretched unnaturally long in the flickering candlelight, tendrils of darkness licking at the floorboards. "And when you do, you'll remake them. Not with my ritual—with one of your own design."
Elara recoiled. The memory of the Feast of Creation ritual surged—the scalpel carving into her flesh, the darkness pouring into her mouth, the sensation of being unmade and remade in Jack's image.
"Use mine, and you'll die screaming," Jack continued, stepping closer. The scent of old blood and damp earth clung to him. "I want to see what your mind births. What flavor of horror a half-human soul can conjure."
A challenge. A test.
Elara swallowed the protest rising in her throat. She had asked for this—begged to be more than a sheltered weapon in Jack's arsenal. Now he was giving her the knife and asking her to cut.
"I'll do it," she said.
Jack's eyes gleamed. "Good. But first—" He reached out, his fingers brushing the hollow of her throat where the Starved Saint's power coiled. "—let's fix your appetite."
---
Elara's room smelled of lavender and dried blood—the remnants of her failed attempts to meditate the Saint into submission. Jack closed the door behind them with a soft click that sounded too much like a bone snapping.
"Why here?" Elara asked, her back pressed to the bedpost.
Jack arched a brow. "Would you prefer my room? The streets? A butcher's shop?" He gestured to the floor. "Sit."
The wood was cold against her bare legs as she settled into a cross-legged position. Jack circled her like a vulture, his footsteps silent.
"Strip."
Elara's breath hitched. The first ritual had been clinical, detached—Jack's hands carving symbols into her flesh with the precision of a scribe etching parchment. This felt different. The air between them crackled with something dangerous.
Her fingers trembled as she unbuttoned her shirt. The fabric pooled around her waist, then slid to the floor. The chill raised gooseflesh along her arms, her skin pebbling under Jack's impassive gaze.
"All of it."
Teeth gritted, Elara obeyed. The last of her clothing fell away, leaving her bare but for the inverted cross pendant at her throat. The Starved Saint's power stirred in response, a ravenous thing coiling in her gut.
Jack produced a knife—the same one he'd used to skin the hollowed one. The blade caught the candlelight, its edge gleaming wetly.
"Your blood. A pentagram. Just like before."
Elara took the knife. The metal was colder than the air, its weight foreign in her grip. She pressed the tip to her wrist.
The cut burned.
Blood welled, thick and sluggish, as if reluctant to leave her veins. She painted the floorboards in crimson, each line of the pentagram a searing brand against the wood. The symbols shimmered, drinking her essence greedily.
When it was done, she lay back, her limbs aligning with the points of the star. The blood was tacky against her skin, already drying in the stifling air.
Jack knelt at the pentagram's edge, his hands hovering above her bare stomach. "Release Celestial Deception. Let the Saint's hunger free." His voice was a lash. "And when I begin, you will focus its entirety on my words. Not a single stray thought. Not a single flicker of fear."
Elara nodded.
"Do you understand what happens if you fail?"
Her throat worked. "You'll kill me."
Jack's smile was a promise. "I'll enjoy it."
---
The candle guttered.
Jack's voice, when it came, was not his own. It echoed from the walls, the floorboards, the very air itself—a chorus of whispers scraping against Elara's skull.
"You shall have no gods before Me, for I am a jealous Void—and My hunger knows no end."
Elara gasped.
The Starved Saint's power *surged*, a tidal wave of ravenous need crashing against the confines of her mind. She clenched her jaw, forcing it toward Jack's words, toward the commandment slithering through her thoughts.
The hunger bit back.
Agony lanced through her—not physical, but deeper, as if something were gnawing at the roots of her soul. The Saint's power writhed, resisting, fighting to keep its hold on her.
Focus.
She imagined the commandment as a hook, dragging the Saint's essence kicking and screaming into the light. The hunger shifted, turning inward, devouring itself in a frenzy of self-cannibalization.
Elara's vision swam.
The walls breathed.
---
"You shall not carve My likeness, lest your hands birth what should not be seen."
The Starved Saint screamed.
Elara's back arched off the floor, her muscles locking in a rictus of pain. The hunger twisted inside her, a living thing flailing against its chains. Her skin rippled, bulging in places as if something beneath were trying to claw free.
Focus.
She clung to Jack's voice like a lifeline, pouring every ounce of will into bending the Saint's power to his words. The hunger convulsed, thrashing like a netted beast—
—then split.
A new sensation bloomed in her gut: fullness. Satiety. The Saint's power recoiled from it, repulsed, as if the very concept were anathema.
Elara choked on a sob.
The ceiling above her was no longer wood.
It was flesh.
---
"You shall not speak My name, for to utter it is to invite Me in."
The Starved Saint's power fractured.
Elara's teeth shattered. Or maybe they didn't. It was hard to tell when her mouth was full of blood and shadows. The hunger raged, a cornered animal lashing out—
—but it was weakening.
She could *feel* it now, the Saint's essence unraveling, its edges fraying as Jack's commandments stitched it into her very being. The assimilation was happening too fast, too violently, her mind struggling to contain the flood of foreign power.
The room pulsed.
The bed blinked.
---
"You shall know Me, and in knowing, be unmade."
The Starved Saint died.
Not in truth—but the last of its resistance crumbled, its power dissolving into Elara's soul like sugar in tea. The hunger didn't vanish; it changed, becoming hers in a way it had never been before.
Elara screamed.
Her body was no longer her own. Her skin was parchment, her bones the pen, and Jack's voice the ink carving truths into her marrow. The world peeled away in layers, revealing the rot beneath—
—and then, silence.
---
Elara came back to herself in pieces.
Her fingers first, twitching against the sticky floorboards. Then her lungs, heaving like bellows. Finally, her vision, swimming into focus to find Jack crouched over her, his face inches from hers.
His thumb brushed her lower lip, coming away red. "You didn't die."
Elara's laugh was a broken thing. "Disappointed?"
Jack studied her for a long moment. Then, quietly: "No."
He stood, leaving her naked and trembling in the ruin of the pentagram. At the door, he paused.
"One week, Elara. Find your disciple. Craft your ritual." His shadow stretched toward her, caressing her ankle like a lover. "And when you do—"
The door clicked shut.
"—let me watch."
---