Clack—clack—clack—
The sharp clack of her heels echoed through the marble hall, each step louder than the last, as if trying to chase away the unwanted sounds that involuntarily reached her ears.
Seraphine cast a discreet glance at the two nuns entangled in the shadows of a pillar.
She let out a quiet huff of frustration and continued onward. This was one of the few inconveniences she faced within the church's walls.
Normally, she wouldn't have batted an eye at such displays, but that was before she chose Lust as her path.
She had been naive to think that advancing in step would end with merely granting her two skills and be done with it.
The path skills were a large part of a pathwalker's desire to strive forward, but they were never the only part.
First of all, her body began assimilating the concept of Lust. It wasn't painful, but it was… intimate. As if her flesh and soul were quietly being rewritten to mirror the essence of the sin she'd chosen.
Her skin took on a faint, natural gloss, warm to the touch and smooth enough to catch luminescence. Her hair gained a livelier sheen, each strand falling with a fluid, almost deliberate grace.
Even her eyes, once light blue, deepened with vibrancy, like something inside them had awakened.
Her voice grew softer, fuller, the kind that naturally lingered in the air even after she stopped speaking. And her scent, though unchanged at first, gradually became faintly sweet, in an oddly captivating way.
But most noticeable was how her body moved.
Her muscles became more supple, responsive, and finely tuned.
Movements that once felt ordinary now flowed with extreme precision, as if her body finally understood how to conserve effort and express balance.
She didn't gain raw strength, but endurance; her steps carried further, her breathing steadied faster, and fatigue became a distant companion instead of a constant one.
The change wasn't drastic, but it was unmistakable.
Seraphine was sure that this transformation wasn't her imagination or the influence of the enerleaf pills, since the related books she'd read in the library stated otherwise.
This phenomenon didn't only happen to her, but to every individual who advanced at every step. And the intensity of the change would be more or less depending on the step and the Sin.
A person on a higher step would always undergo a stronger, more drastic transformation, while those on lower steps would experience only minimal changes.
A Wrath pathwalker grows in brute strength, not the lithe vigor Lust favors. Their form shifts toward menace, radiating intimidation rather than allure; seduction is Lust's territory, not theirs.
Seraphine also checked in with her teacher, and the explanations were mostly the same, aside from an extra fact: Compatibility also factored in the degree of transformation.
But all this only required a bit of getting used to, and Seraphine was perfectly fine afterwards. The real thing that bothered her was her growing lust.
It turned out that each step one took deepened their connection with their sin, and in turn made them feel it stronger each time.
And perhaps that was the true danger of Lust. Each step exponentially increased the chance of losing control if one lost the battle of winning against their own sin.
Seraphine, of course, felt no lust toward the women around her.
Desire wasn't something that could be forced into existence; if it wasn't there to begin with, no amount of amplification would change that. Multiply zero by any number, and it still stays zero. The same went for her feelings.
But the sound of moaning and dirty talk still made the heat accumulate in her, a slow warmth that pooled low in her belly and refused to dissipate.
Her imagination turned traitor, conjuring vivid sense memories of Ashen. His hands on her skin, His breath against her neck, His touch that always unraveled her with maddening precision.
She remembered the texture of his calloused fingers, tracing patterns along her spine that made her shiver. The heat of his mouth. The low rasp of his voice murmuring her name.
Every detail burned bright and cruel in her mind, stoking a fire she couldn't allow herself to quench.
Normally, she would have surrendered to such imagination long ago, sought relief in the privacy of her room where fantasy could substitute for absence.
But the thing was that… she couldn't. And that was the true source of her frustration.
As to why she couldn't, the reason was tied to her Ecstatic Bond.
Every physical sensation could feed back to him through their shared bond, especially carnal pleasure, since that was the skill's main function.
Seraphine would never want to be the cause of him getting hurt or worse, his death, simply because she failed to hold herself back and distracted him with foreign sensations.
This was why she also always avoided getting unnecessarily hurt or anything that could affect him. His constant struggle was more than enough as it was, after all. No need to add more on top of it.
She tried everything to manage the growing hunger: cold baths that left her shivering, meditation exercises that provided only fleeting relief, exhausting herself with training until her body had no energy left for desire.
But it was prayer that helped most. Kneeling in the chapel, reciting the familiar verses, grounding herself in devotion to something beyond her own burning need.
The Eternal might not answer her pleas directly, but the ritual itself became a lifeline, a way to transform frustration into something resembling peace.
Still, the nights remained difficult. But she endured. For him, she would endure anything.
As for how she knew about his struggle… How could she not know, when she felt everything about the physical part of that struggle fed back to her every day?
The first weeks were almost peaceful, aside from the constant lingering aches of overused muscles and the phantom pains of slashes and hits that occasionally came and went.
Seraphine wasn't overly worried, since she was pretty sure most of this pain came from training, even if the training felt a tad too harsh from the sensations alone.
Seraphine heaved a sigh of relief, since it also meant that Ashen was temporarily in a safe environment if he was training.
But she soon discovered that she had judged too early. It started after two weeks of her first day.
She was in the chapel when it happened.
The morning prayer had just concluded, the last echoes of hymns fading into the vaulted ceiling. Seraphine was walking toward the exit alongside a handful of other nuns, discussing the day's lesson on mana circulation, when the world suddenly shattered.
Pain, white-hot and all-consuming, erupted through her limbs.
Her legs buckled. Her vision blurred. She felt her flesh tearing, felt the phantom sensation of teeth sinking into muscle and grinding against bone, felt something savage and hungry ripping at her as if she were prey caught in the jaws of wild dogs.
The scream tore from her throat before she could stop it; a raw, primal sound that bordered on a screech, echoing through the sacred halls like a desecration.
She hit the marble floor hard, hands clutching at limbs that were perfectly whole and untouched. She was physically fine, but her mind couldn't reconcile that truth with the agony flooding her senses.
"Seraphine!"
Voices erupted around her. Footsteps thundered across stone. Hands reached for her, gentle but urgent, pulling her upright even as she thrashed against phantom jaws.
"What happened? What's wrong?"
"Get a healer—now!"
"Sera, can you hear me? Look at me!"
Faces swam in and out of focus; the Bishopess, her teacher, sisters she barely knew, all crowding around her with expressions of genuine fear.
Someone was checking her pulse. Someone else was examining her limbs for injury. A third was already chanting a healing incantation, soft green light spilling from her palms.
But there was nothing to heal. Nothing visible, anyway.
Seraphine's breath came in ragged gasps, her body trembling violently as the pain began to ebb, fading as suddenly as it had come. The phantom teeth released her. The tearing sensation dulled to a distant throb.
She was left shaking on the floor, surrounded by worried faces, unable to explain what had just happened.
Because how could she tell them the truth? That somewhere far away, the man she loved was being torn apart, and she felt every second of it?
⛧
And that was only the beginning. From stabs that made her scream her throat out to deep slashes that made her feel as if her guts were about to spill, she felt it all.
At times, the sharp pain made her faint, but even that didn't last long as the pangs didn't take long to wake her up to torture her anew.
The worst of the sensations was the eyes. She felt as if her eyes were set on fire, like two torches lighting up her eye sockets.
On those days, she couldn't even leave her room as she cried silently while enduring the pain.
Throughout all this, the thought of severing the bond never crossed her mind.
For her, the bond was the last thing tying her to her loved one when he was away, and she would never sever it, no matter how much pain it would bring her.
The foolish decision made what would have been a peaceful stay in her new home a hellish experience.
⛧
Seraphine's state didn't go unnoticed by her faction, of course. And their reaction truly warmed her heart and made her feel grateful to be part of such a benevolent group.
The amount of healers, healing tonics, and care they rained upon her was almost suffocating to be honest, and despite it, they didn't force her to disclose her condition, respecting her privacy even though they worried about her.
The pampering only ceased when Seraphine explained countless times that her state was temporary and that the only cure was time and everything else was pointless.
And indeed it was, since she was never harmed physically.
Seraphine made good on her promise, and not two months in, she returned to her usual cheerful and optimistic self. It wasn't that the pain suddenly went away…
No, she just got used to it, learned to live with it, and now, the only indicator of it was the subtle tremble in her body that occurred instinctively whenever a pang came.
There was even a hidden blessing, among the constant agony, aside from her drastically increased pain tolerance, it was the fast growth of the Ecstatic Bond path skill.
And finally, after two and a half months, her life, at least outwardly, had gone back on track, and the worried looks of the sisters abated…
When she was alone at night, though, the tears still came, this time not from pain, but for the quiet torment of the man she had grown to love.
❖⛧❖