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Chapter 2: Selene
Title: The Temple's Sin
The Temple of Alnari stood untouched by war or wickedness for over two hundred years. Its marble spires shimmered beneath the starlit sky, a monument of purity, guarded by silence and sacred fire. Within its sanctum, the High Priestess Selene knelt before the statue of the Moon Mother, whispering prayers no one else dared speak aloud.
Until tonight.
A ripple in the veil of her devotion disturbed the incense-heavy air. She opened her eyes—and there he stood. Mike.
He did not belong in a temple. He was temptation incarnate—broad-shouldered, sun-kissed, eyes like honey slowly burning. Cloaked in midnight blue, he looked out of place among the modest purity of the sacred hall, and yet somehow, the altar seemed to bask in his presence.
Selene rose slowly, clutching her ceremonial staff like a lifeline. "You should not be here," she said.
"I was invited," Mike replied, stepping forward with calculated ease.
She felt the magic shift around her, like the very stones of the temple leaning in to hear their conversation. "No man is permitted past the prayer gate after dusk. It is forbidden."
He stopped just a breath away. "So is desire, I imagine."
Her heart pounded. "What do you want?"
"To see what holiness looks like… when it crumbles."
The words should have enraged her. They didn't. They thrilled her. She hated that.
Selene was a woman of forty, but the years had sculpted her into divine grace rather than age. Silver-blonde hair wrapped in ceremonial coils, eyes like starlight. Dozens of nobles had once begged her to leave the temple. None succeeded. She had sworn herself to the Moon Mother. She had known peace.
But not this.
Not hunger. Not this man.
He reached for her, slowly, allowing time for refusal. She didn't step back. Instead, she whispered, "If you touch me… I will fall."
"Then fall," he murmured.
Their mouths met in silence, but the energy it unleashed echoed through the temple like thunder. She clutched his robes as though drowning, and he drew her into the inner sanctum—into the very place she had been consecrated.
The floor was cold stone beneath her back, but his body was fire. Their union was desperate, sacred, blasphemous. Every gasp was a prayer, every moan a hymn. And when she climaxed, it was with the name of a god on her lips—though she no longer knew which one.
Later, tangled in the remnants of their passion, she drew a glowing symbol on his chest with two fingers slick with sweat and magic.
"What is that?" he asked, heart still racing.
"A mark," she whispered, her voice hoarse with guilt. "It will glow when the gods judge you. And they will."
He laughed gently, not mockingly. "Let them."
She turned away, tears falling onto sacred floors.
Mike dressed in silence and left the temple before the morning bells. But as he walked into the night, he felt something new—an itch beneath his skin, a strange warmth over his heart where the symbol pulsed.
Something had begun. And it would not end quietly.
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