Surrendered To The Lord Of Sin-Chapter 33: A deadly summon

A painful cry tore her throat as it writhed into her skin, clawing from her ankle, and found its way to her chest. Lucrezia’s body burned as beads of sweat clammed her forehead, and another behind, soaking her dress.

Air knocked out of her lungs, partly constricted by the thick layers of her clothing. The misery was so hot it blinded her vision, and she failed to notice that she was surrounded. They simply stood still in eerie silence, watching her torment thrive deeper and deeper.

"AH!" she yelped. The restraint burned and tightened with cruel intent, and Lucrezia’s scream tore from her throat before she could prevent it.

Pain had become everything, swallowing her whole. It swallowed sound, thought, time - until Lucrezia could no longer tell where her body ended as the agony continued. The tendrils tightened again with frost-fire biting into her wrists, her ankles, her ribs, and that power inside her gradually answered.

Her body arched violently, trembling as something pushed back against the force holding her. It didn’t come from fear. It came from her inner turmoil, anchored by anguish yet seemingly controlled by the creatures below. It was black and incandescent, so sudden and complete it stole the pain’s dominion.

She’d never felt this much pain in her life. Back then in Veximoor, it had been routine. Her stepmother and stepsisters had learned exactly how far to push her before her body gave out. They worked her until her muscles screamed and her limbs shook with exhaustion, until her strength bled away and left her hollow.

By day, she labored three times harder than any servant dared and by night, she endured four times as much. Her body was punished long after others were allowed rest, and so it had been constant then. Lucrezia learned to wake with it, move through it, and breathe despite it, and over time, it became a necessity for survival.

Yet this... pain... was different.

It was not rooted in her flesh alone but threaded through something deeper. The agony was not content to bruise or break, but somehow sought to claim.

Cold and heat existed at once like a paradox that scorched while it froze, biting into places that were never touched. It did not ebb with breath or will; it erased them, drowning her senses until pain was no longer something she felt, but something she was.

Before, suffering had hollowed her out but this filled her - overfilled her - until there was no room left for endurance, only eruption. It reached inward and drew something back from her depths, something that had never stirred under the cruelties of Veximoor where pain had taught her how to endure.

However this pain... this pain demanded transformation - or perhaps annihilation, she could hardly tell. And Lucrezia knew with terrifying clarity that if it continued, she would not simply survive it. She would become something else entirely.

A wave of sickness had her breathing hard and she swallowed back the misfortune of having vertigo along with the emotional upheaval of what she’d lived through. The foreignness of dark magic on her body made her skin crawl, and it rippled inside her chest.

Faintness existed in her outer vision, teasing her with the awfulness of what could happen - what was most likely bound to occur, and her breath caught as the misery doubled. The oxygen in her lungs turned into spikes and spurs, digging painfully into her sides.

Unknown to Lucrezia, the markings beneath her ignited, thrumming awake under the snow as veins of power threaded outward from the circle. At every painful cry, it kindled like light, and dimmed when she stopped, but never faded.

Her mind went totally blank, only alive with the despair rippling through her flesh and bones. The agony in her chest singed her heart, and she gasped, and gasped, until there was no air left.

Finally, movement stirred, and the ground trembled once. At first, it was a subtle low pulse beneath their feet, but then it surged again, fierce enough to topple the watching creatures, sending ripples of imbalance through them.

The forest responded next, thrumming with raw, electric energy, and the leaves quivered as if charged from within. Their branches arched like coiled springs, and the air itself hummed densely, vibrating alive with a power that was ancient, untamed, and impossibly aware.

And at that moment, Lucrezia’s eyes flew open. What stared into nothing were no longer blue.

They burned molten gold, rimmed with ink-dark veins that spidered outward from her face as her pulse thundered through her skull. The tendrils constricting her limbs cracked audibly, obvious that their frostbitten grip suddenly met a resistance far older and far more violent than they were prepared for.

"Stop her," Someone hissed below her. But Lucrezia was far gone to acknowledge anything other than the unexpected fury that surged inside.

On cue, the air collapsed inward toward her body, sucked into an invisible core at her sternum, compressing so violently her ribs screamed in protest, and her hair whipped upward as though gravity had lost its claim. Snow lifted from the forest floor in spiraling columns with leaves and ice and debris ripping free as the trees groaned in protest.

Lucrezia cried out - not in pain, but in release, letting the sound pierce into the cold. Power tore through her veins like wildfire as the earth answered and the forest erupted.

Roots burst from the ground in jagged spirals, splintering ancient trees as they lunged upward like skeletal hands. The sigils beneath her flared fully now with their geometry twisting, rearranging, and bleeding into one another as if correcting a long-forgotten spell.

The chaos deepened, and with it, the air shifted from merely wrong to something far more sinister, judging from how the creatures reacted instantly.

The brown-haired man snarled, throwing his arms wide as dark energy lashed outward from his body. He no longer looked like the man who led her into the forest. His face had changed into a monstrous living with veins writhing inside his sickly pale-green skin, and eyes completely enclosed in demonic black.

The others followed, shadows snapping from their forms like whips, colliding with Lucrezia midair. The impact was brutal and bone-rattling, forcing a scream from her throat as pain ripped back through her nervous system.

They were trying to cage her.

Agony flooded back, sharper this time, layered atop the chaos inside her. Her heart spasmed in her chest as its rhythm stuttered under the strain. Blood trickled from her nose, warm against the frozen air, and her vision flickered violently. But the power didn’t stop.

It felt way beyond her control.

Lucrezia’s body arched as raw magic poured out of her in uncontrolled waves - concussive blasts that shattered the air, folding trees in half, and obliterating shadows on impact. One of the figures below screamed as the ground split open beneath it, swallowing the sound whole. Another was torn apart as frost and flame collided within her wake, while another was thrown violently into the trees. Its form shattered against the trunk before dissolving into shadow. Yet the others pressed her, unstoppable against her power.

Dark lances struck her sides, her back, her chest - each hit stealing more breath, more strength. Her muscles trembled violently, spasming under the strain of channeling something her body had never been meant to contain alone and gradually, her heart slowed.

Each beat came heavier than the last, dragging like it might not rise again. Lucrezia felt the edge where fury burned itself out and left only exhaustion behind. The power roared through her still, but her body lagged, failing and fracturing under its weight.

N-No... The world dimmed at her edges and every sound dulled as if submerged underwater.

She couldn’t hold it.

She couldn’t-

The magic faltered, and the creatures seized the opening to their advantage. Tendrils slammed into her chest, crushing the air from her lungs as her body was forced downward. The last remaining figures closed in a suffocating manner.

Lucrezia’s vision blurred completely as she tried to move but her strength slipped through her fingers like melting snow. She gasped weakly, her head falling forward as exhaustion crashed over her like a wave.

It’s over, the thought came quietly. Give up.

A lone tear slipped past an eye as they fluttered when the darkness rushed in. It was right.

No, she thought in conclusion, but her vulnerability was against that stubbornness. She’d lost, just like her dreams. There was no escape from them, or the things after her as much as she tried not to admit her weakness.

And just as she thought she would give in, when her eyes hurt so much from hot unshed tears, something rippled in the air, and the cold disappeared, leaving a trail of still, recoiling dust behind it.

That presence...

Shakes. They attacked her hard and fast the second he appeared.

Hope attacked her second.

Unbelievable hope hijacked her limbs turning her into shivering jelly until she was sure the atmosphere changed. Did she actually stand a chance at making it to freedom? Could she make it to the boundary and escape their clutches? Did he... Did he actually come for her?

Only after the breeze returned its gravity and the trees finally shook did Lucrezia dare breathe, and the force that once held her caged, let loose. Her body succumbed to gravity, plummeting downward. Just as she braced for impact, a strong pair of arms caught her, steadying her before she could hit the ground.

Lucrezia’s eyes barely opened, and through blurred vision, the first thing she caught was those pair of hazel eyes. His presence anchored something inside her, steadying the chaos long enough for her heart to lurch forward again.

H-He came...

The pain came in again, and she gasped. "Little wolf," he called with a voice almost unrecognizable. It was raw and furious, just like those strange orbs. "Look at me,"

If not for the ache crisscrossing her entire body, Lucrezia would’ve been terrified of the creature that held her.

Her stomach threatened to evict the emptiness inside. She was hungry, dehydrated, and cracked out on adrenaline. But beneath it all, her soul ached with growing pains.

"I’ve got you," he said, and she let that reassurance find its way to the ache in her chest. And for the first time since the forest had swallowed her whole, Lucrezia believed she might survive.

With one final look, she granted the solace her body craved for in the arms of a creature that furnished hell rather than salvation.