🕯 Chapter XXXII: The Oracle Devours the Moonlight Within
Onyx’s jet-dark gaze flared wide—panic, desperation, sothing uncharacteristically human fracturing her otherwise cold-blooded deanor. "My love... my radiant, irredeemable Irvine," she whispered, voice tight with a fear too ancient to be lodrama. "I beg of you—forget what I just said. Forget it in the way a corpse forgets breath. Psionic foresight is a dagger made of possibility, and it cuts the wielder as surely as the world. There’s a reason even Crystal, with all her terrible grace, refrains from wielding it."
She turned away, as if looking at too long might shift the shape of fate itself. "If I told you what I ant when I said the future might shift—drastically, horrifically, or beautifully—you wouldn’t be the sa after hearing it. And the truth? Neither would I. I won’t know if it’s true until the mont it happens... or doesn’t."
I nodded slowly. Her logic was sound. Sound in the way a haunted bell is sound—resonant, but never reassuring.
"But Onyx," I said, a wry smile twisting my mouth, "you’ve told other things about the future. Didn’t you say, during our first encounter just a few weeks ago, that I’d be inserting a, and I quote, ’large fleshy rod’ into you during a climactic battle?"
I tilted my head with mock curiosity. "Why is that acceptable prophecy, but today’s vision isn’t?"
Her obsidian eyes ignited with a flaring pulse of light, sowhere between a star collapsing and a blush made of shadow. "Ah. Yes. That." She giggled, and it was not a sound ant for the living.
"You see, my mate—that particular revelation was not a probability. It was a fixed causality. A narrative anchor, if you will. No tiline I’ve gazed into, no matter how divergent, avoids the collision of your... rod... with my interior ecosystems. The event is inevitable. Immutable. It will happen."
The chains binding her limbs groaned as if straining to contain the boiling edge of her voice. Passion had carved itself into every syllable, a possessiveness so thick it tasted tallic in the air. "That mont between us is not a ’maybe’—it is the gravitational center of every path forward. You will be inside . That is prophecy turned certainty."
I should have left it there. But of course, I didn’t.
"One more thing," I said, unable to look away from the way her voice had cracked. "When we t, you didn’t seem to have much... emotion. You stood out even among the other Hive mbers—calculating, removed, more tool than person. But now you’re..." I gestured vaguely at the torrent of raw longing she had just erupted into. "...not that. What changed?"
The chains fell slack. Her voice lted into silk, all the steel gone from it.
"I was a Stalker," she said. "My task was singular: consu. Devour planets alone, sniff out weakness, vanish into shadow and erge full-bellied. My foresight was a butcher’s knife—cold, effective, practical. But then you arrived. You gave a na, Irvine. And nas... nas change the soul."
She moved closer, almost reverent. "I’ve seen a thousand futures since then. Lived every one in echoes. In each of them, I am yours. Sotis violently. Sotis tenderly. But always yours. And when I return to the present, when I pull myself back from the flood of who we beco... it takes everything not to act like her. Not to be her. Because you’re not ready yet."
She paused, visibly trembling.
"Just know this: every action I take is toward the dream of your perfect future. Even if I have to shatter myself to give it to you."
I took a long breath, letting her words simr beneath my ribs.
"Would you do one final favor, then?" I asked.
She tilted her head, as though already tasting the request on her tongue. "What is it you desire, Irvine?"
"I feel the bond," I said softly. "I feel your love. It’s as powerful as what I feel from Kimchi and Crystal, but it’s like... you’re holding it back. Caging sothing monstrous and radiant. Can you drop the mask? Just for a mont. Show the true face of my cloak and shield."
Her smile sliced through like a crescent moonlit dagger. Then she giggled—an alien thing, too high, too delighted.
"Hehe... OF COURSE, MY LOVE. But you’ll regret it when you wake up~"
"When I wa—"
That’s as far as I got.
The next mont, I was slamd flat in my own skull, pinned like an insect beneath a god’s fingertip. Onyx exploded in a psychic convulsion of pure emotion, and it manifested. Like a storm made of obsession. A torrent of feeling so thick and feral it devoured rational thought.
I wasn’t even thinking anymore—I was drowning in Onyx. In a version of her that had long since abandoned sanity for devotion. The sheer pressure of her affection—her hunger, her possessive joy—made my mind crack like glass under a hydraulic press.
And then I passed out.
Within the space of a thought, the avatar of myself inside my mind shattered. Onyx blinked, emotionless once again, her outburst burned out like a supernova collapsing into a dead star.
"Foolish love," she muttered, brushing imaginary dust from the edge of her ntal projection. "I did warn you. You’re not yet fit to bear the weight of what we will beco. Sigh. If only I could just... eat you. Assimilate every part of you into forever."
The thought wasn’t even said with malice. It was just... her truth.
Shaking the idea away, she resud her exploration of my inner world.
"Now, if I rember correctly..."
She moved with strange familiarity, navigating the architecture of my ntal landscape like soone tracing the floorplan of a half-rembered childhood ho.
And then she found it.
"Ah. Yes. Here."
Before her stood the Psionic Origin—my Psionic Origin. It resembled a prismatic orb, shifting between iridescent colors too complex to na, pulsing with slow, ancient breath. To the outside world, it might’ve looked no larger than a clenched human fist—but that was illusion. Inside the paradox of mindspace, it was infinite.
"You look almost... cute, like this," she whispered to the orb.
"I know you hate interference," she added, reaching for it. "But if you don’t let do what I’m about to do, you’ll be miserable for at least a year. And I won’t allow that."
Her fingers touched it.
And my mind began to change.
---
"Arrggh."
I groaned myself awake, feeling like I’d been chewed on by a philosophical bear. My whole body was stiff with... regret.
"Ugh. I don’t even rember what knocked out," I mumbled aloud. "I asked Onyx to show her emotions, and then... blank."
I blinked around. My thoughts were molasses.
To my right, Crystal propped herself up on one arm, gazing down at with patient, imperious amusent. "Ah, darling. Awake at last. Your Mindspace convulsed rather spectacularly during your nap. But I am relieved to see the at is still moving."
I grunted and leaned up just enough to kiss her, which she received with a pleased hum. We lingered like that for a mont before parting.
"I’m surprised you still find sexy after the whole Orchid backstab incident," she said, glaring at Kimchi, who was currently curled up in a dreamless doze beside us.
That earned her a light spanking.
"Easy," I said. "She stopped things before they went too far. I just gave her a little well-deserved attention. Besides—" I grabbed her throat and pulled her close, my grin predatory. "—I’ve got plans for you later."
The gesture wrecked her composure. This was the queen of queens, the master of a billion bioforms... and yet the simple act of submission short-circuited her. Her faceplate eye slits, which usually emitted serene psionic violet, flushed hot pink with lust.
That surge of color sparked sothing painful in my skull. A mory half-buried and clawing to surface.
"But not now," I muttered, releasing her and collapsing back into the mattress. "Still feel like hamred shit."
My fall jolted Kimchi awake. She bolted upright, blinking. "AH! Irvine awakens! Orchid was watching! For two whole days, Orchid has remained vigilant—though she may have... drifted. Into torpor. Disgusting biological failure state."
I groaned and rubbed my temples. "Two days? Damn. That’s probably how long it takes when a whole-ass entity sets up shop in your head."
Crystal’s non-eyebrows furrowed. "The Stalker inhabits you now? Through the bond?" She tilted her head. "Strange. My love, may I witness your Mindspace for a mont?"
She could’ve done it without asking—I knew that, she knew that—but the fact she asked?
It ant everything.
I dropped my barriers. She didn’t hesitate. Her consciousness slipped into mine like a gentle whisper down the back of my neck.
A mont later, she was done.
She looked... pleased.
"What?" I asked.
Her smile was that of a conspirator hiding a surprise murder.
"I am rely delighted with what Onyx is doing in your mind. But—I request you do not enter your Mindspace again until we return ho. Do you trust ?"
I frowned. I hated not knowing what was going on in my own skull. But she rarely asked for anything.
"Fine," I sighed. "My brain’s a black box now, apparently. But I trust you."
I stretched and yawned.
"Let’s go get sothing to eat. I’m starving. I could ride a horse. Wait—"
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