The camera began recording.
For a moment it showed only the rough stone floor, tiled in old, worn blocks. Time had rounded their edges. Feet had passed over them for years. Slimes had worn them smoother still. In the distance, the floor gave way to the cave itself, worked stone ending in a smoother, natural wall. At the center stood a simple barn door, almost suspiciously new, its polished surface catching the light.
In front of the door stood a small altar. At its center was a drawn circle marked with what looked like occult symbols. The paint was red, though dark enough to suggest blood without quite being it.
The scene was lit by two rows of floating light orbs positioned at the edges of the frame.
"I still think I should've made the light orbs greener," came a man's voice from behind the camera. The voice was light, a little too quick, words running together at the edges. "You know. For atmosphere."
A snort came from somewhere left of frame, followed by the voice of a different man. Deeper. Slower. "Not with a camera this cheap. Last time we tried mood lighting, our skin looked so sickly we resembled drowned corpses. There may be a market for that, but I would prefer not to star in it."
"Well, if you say so," the first voice replied.
A soft rustle of fabric came from just behind the camera, followed by a man in black robes stepping into frame and walking toward the altar. The fabric was thin enough to turn translucent where the floating lights struck it, showing flashes of bare skin beneath as it swayed with his steps. His footfalls were light, almost lost under the soft movement of the robes. He carried a dark-painted staff. Its upper portion was rubber, penis-shaped, and painted a flat gray meant to imitate stone.
"Remember, the lights mark the frame," he continued as he neared the altar. "Don't start talking until you've entered it, and we need to keep the fight scene inside it."
The robed man paused, his head tilting slightly beneath the hood toward something beyond the lights. A beat. Then he tapped the butt of his staff against the stone floor. Twice. "Justin, Tribulations of Virtue. Final scene, take one."
Another snort from beyond the lights. "We're making porn, not a blockbuster."
"Still," the other voice continued, "are you quite sure we should film here? In front of that thing. It makes no sense, and it gives me the creeps."
"Of course it makes no sense," the robed man replied, his voice rising slightly. "It is a barn door in a cave. That is why it is a local curiosity. We have already built the plot around the legend, so it is rather late to change our minds."
"As if plot matters in porn," the other voice muttered.
The robed man struck the staff against the stone floor again. Twice. "As I have said: Justin, Tribulations of Virtue. Final scene, take two. Let us not require a third. Film is not free."
Footsteps sounded from beyond the lights. Loud. Hard-soled boots striking stone.
A man entered the frame.
He was tall and well-muscled, though not in the heavy or sculpted way of a bodybuilder. His build was leaner than that, harder, shaped more by work than display. He wore practical boots and simple cheap trousers of dark blue denim. Visible lines of stitching crossed them in several places, too deliberate to be ordinary wear and tear. The blue-white shorts beneath showed the same careful reworking at the edges visible above the waistband. His hair was russet red, messy, and a little too long, enough to brush his neck and ears, but too short to be tied back neatly.
He carried a sword in one hand, and a slingshot hung from his belt.
The sword was well-kept, its blade polished, its fittings oiled, its edge catching the floating light. The slingshot was metal rather than wood, with the faint purple sheen characteristic of mystic iridium.
The floating lights caught his face clearly when he entered: broad brow, straight nose, strong jaw, and a mouth that looked better suited to dry remarks than heroic speeches. The structure of it was bluntly masculine, made sharper by the rough fall of russet hair around it.
"Justin," the man in flowing robes said, his voice now deeper, slower, more theatrical. "Have you come to witness my glory?"
"I have come to put a stop to your madness, Zerdox," the swordsman replied, sweeping the sword up in a neat flourish before settling the point on the robed man.
The robed man let out a dry chuckle and tossed back his hood, revealing his face.
The floating lights caught it cleanly. Where the swordsman's features were broad and stark, these were finer: a narrower jaw, a smoother mouth, dark lashes, and long black hair falling loose around his face.
His sky-blue eyes looked directly into the camera as he replied, "Madness is what limited minds call genius." He gestured with the staff toward the door set in the wall. "There are many conflicting legends about what lies behind this door. Some speak of treasure and knowledge beyond measure. Some say those who pass through it are transformed into something greater. But all were speculation, for no one knew how to open it. No one, until me."
"Some doors are not meant to be opened," the swordsman replied.
"Another thing that limited minds would say," the robed man answered, the beautiful line of his mouth twisting into an ugly sneer.
The swordsman moved fast.
"What about the innocents you've hurt?" he demanded, lunging across the stone with a speed that made the floating lights shiver faintly in the polished length of his blade.
The robed man caught the strike on his staff. Wood and steel met with a sharp crack. The swordsman turned with the impact, pivoting smoothly into a second cut. This one bit through cloth instead of flesh. A length of black fabric came free from the robe and drifted to the floor.
"All great works demand sacrifice," the robed man replied.
He swept the staff outward. The air struck the swordsman a moment later, hard enough to force him back a step. Cloth tore with it. His shirt split along its altered seams and peeled away in sections, exposing skin beneath before the loose pieces fell to the stone.
The swordsman recovered quickly and drove forward again. His sword flashed once more, low and fast this time, catching the robe at the hip and opening another dark strip of fabric. "Who are you to decide that?"
For a moment it seemed the point had found its mark. Then the robed man was gone.
The robe collapsed empty. The staff struck the stone and rolled once before coming to rest. At the same instant, a naked man appeared behind the swordsman, revealed in the same bright light that had made the black robe seem half-transparent before. He had shed not only the costume, but every layer beneath it in the same movement.
"One with vision," the black-haired man, now naked, replied.
He raised one hand, palm outward. Narrow bands of light formed beside it and crossed the distance between them in a pale rush. They wrapped Justin's wrists first, then his upper arms, before a broader strip crossed his chest and drew tight. The binding caught him before he could turn fully, pulling his arms back and leaving him held upright, open to the camera. His sword struck the stone a moment later and skidded out of frame.
The black-haired man stepped closer. A faint smile touched his mouth. "And now the great work begins in truth."
The red-haired man's gaze dropped to the black-haired man's exposed groin, briefly and pointedly, before rising to his face again. "If this is your great work, it seems rather less impressive up close."
The smile did not leave the black-haired man's mouth. "Defiance becomes you."
He paused for a moment, looking only at the man held in the light. Then he reached for the belt at his waist and drew it free with a slow pull that made the buckle catch the floating orbs.
He folded the belt once in his hand. When it fell, it did not fall wildly. Each stroke was placed. The red-haired man's body tightened against the binding, the lines of his shoulders and stomach drawing sharp beneath the light. Cloth gave way along the altered seams with each measured impact. Dark denim split first. Then the lighter fabric beneath. Torn pieces fell one by one to the stone around his boots.
"This was always where it would end," the black-haired man said quietly. "You brought yourself to the threshold."
"You would dress it up as destiny," the red-haired man said, his breath less even now.
"As revelation," the black-haired man replied.
After that, the red-haired man's answers grew shorter. Still defiant, but less polished.
He stepped in close enough that the belt hung idle at his side. One hand lifted instead, moving slowly through the air between them. Light gathered again, not in bands this time, but in a pale shifting glow that climbed over the red-haired man's body and lingered there, brightening every place the torn clothes had exposed. The camera caught the change in posture before anything else: the pull in his bound arms, the lift of his chest, the way resistance and display had become difficult to separate.
"When you yield your seed, the door will open," the black-haired man said, more quietly now, "the door will open."
The red-haired man laughed once, though the sound broke at the edge. "You always did think too highly of yourself."
The black-haired man closed the last of the distance between them. With a whispered word, his hard member was coated in a gleaming sheen. From there, the angle obscured more than it revealed: the line of one body against the other, the flex of the bound man's hands against the light, the dark head bent near his throat as if speaking there rather than to the room.
What remained visible was rhythm: the pull of the bound man's arms, the lift and fall of his chest, the black-haired man's body pushing harder with each measured movement. Once, the red-haired man turned his face aside as if to deny him the sight of it, only to tilt back a moment later into the next whispered line. By then, whatever sharpness had remained in the exchange was giving way to something warmer and less controlled.
The pace changed after that. The black-haired man's movements grew shorter and closer, less like the measured gestures he had used at the start of the scene and more like something he no longer needed to present for the camera. The red-haired man's body drew tighter against the light with each of them, his shoulders straining, his chest lifting higher, then falling again in uneven rhythm. The pale bands around his wrists and arms held firm, though they trembled faintly whenever he pulled against them.
What remained of their dialogue came apart as well. Whatever lines still passed between them no longer carried to the camera in full. A few words rose clear enough to be heard, then were lost again into breath, into the shift of bodies, into the faint sound of the binding as it tightened and settled. The black-haired man's head stayed bent close, near the other man's throat or ear, as if the words were meant for him alone now rather than for the scene.
The red-haired man turned his face aside once more, then back again. His hands opened and closed against the light. One knee bent slightly, boot scraping against stone, and held there. Strips of black robe, split denim, and pale torn scraps of the lighter cloth lay scattered across the stone around their feet. The few words that still carried were not enough to keep the old distance intact.
Then, white liquid splashed across the altar.
The camera flickered.
The two halves of the barn door began to swing open. Beyond them the frame caught only a wash of white, as if whatever lay there had overexposed the image.
The picture broke into interference, flickered twice, and went dead.