Day 108 Post-Impact
The entity knows me.
Sarnav stood alone on the observation deck, the weight of Imam Malik's words pressing against his chest like a physical force. Below, Harmony's lights flickered in the pre-dawn darkness, over thirteen hundred souls going about their lives, unaware that something ancient and hungry was coming for them.
No. Not for them.
For him.
Recognition, Malik had said, his Spiritual Sight flickering with colors only he could see. Like a piece finding its whole. It does not merely sense you, Commander. It knows you. Personally.
What the hell did that mean? He'd never been to Indonesia. Never had contact with any sealed entity before the Impact. He was just a guy who'd been in the right place at the wrong time when the system found him - a university student with no special bloodline, no hidden heritage, no destiny written in the stars.
Just Sarnav Kish. Nobody special.
Except someone - something - clearly thought otherwise.
The cool night air did nothing to settle the unease coiling in his gut. Somewhere out there, beyond the safe zone's perimeter, beyond the forests and the ruins of the old world, something was moving through the shadows. Hunting. Coming closer with every hour.
[NETWORK STATUS: STABLE][WIFE SIGNATURES: 10 ACTIVE][ANOMALY DETECTED: SHADOW DOMAIN - FLUCTUATING]
The shadow domain. Elena's domain.
He felt her before he heard her, a shift in the darkness behind him that most people would have missed entirely. But after months of sharing abilities, sharing essence, sharing everything, he knew the texture of her shadows like he knew his own heartbeat.
"You should be sleeping." Elena's voice came from everywhere and nowhere, the way it always did when she was unsettled enough to let her control slip.
"So should you."
She materialized beside him, silver-white hair catching the faint starlight. Even now, after everything, she moved like what she was: a weapon. Beautiful and deadly and completely, terrifyingly his.
"The shadows are wrong," she said quietly. "Something is... laughing. In my domain."
He turned to look at her. Elena didn't show fear. She'd been trained to kill since childhood, had survived things that would have broken anyone else, had carved her way through a world that wanted her dead with nothing but shadows and spite.
But right now, in the darkness, he could see the tension in her jaw. The way her hands kept flexing at her sides.
"It's getting closer," he said. It wasn't a question.
"Da." She moved to stand beside him, close enough that their shoulders almost touched. "Every hour, I feel it more. Like... like something wearing my shadows as a costume. Mocking me."
"Elena..."
"The shadows are mine." Her voice hardened, that familiar edge of violence creeping in. "I earned them. Bled for them. Killed for them. And now this thing thinks it can just... invade? Take what's mine?"
She turned to face him fully, and there it was, the intensity that had terrified him when they first met, that still sent a thrill down his spine every time she looked at him like this.
"You're mine too," she said. "Moy Sarnav. And I don't share."
Before he could respond, she was on him.
Elena kissed like she fought - aggressive, overwhelming, leaving no room for retreat. Her hands fisted in his shirt as she pushed him back against the railing, her tongue demanding entry, taking rather than asking.
He let her. God help him, he let her, because he understood. Something was threatening her domain, her identity, and Elena only knew one way to reclaim power.
By taking it.
"Inside," she growled against his mouth. "Now."
They barely made it to his quarters.
Elena had him pinned against the door the moment it closed, her shadows pooling around them like living things, blocking out the faint light from the windows. In the absolute darkness, he could only feel her - the heat of her body, the strength in her assassin's hands, the desperate edge to her movements.
"I need..." She bit his neck hard enough to leave a mark, and he groaned. "I need to feel you. All of you. Need to know you're still mine."
"I'm yours." He reached for her, but she caught his wrists, pinned them above his head with surprising strength. "Elena..."
"Shh." Her voice dropped to that dangerous purr that meant she was barely holding herself together. "Let me. Tonight, you let me."
She stripped him efficiently, the same way she'd strip a target of weapons - thorough, methodical, leaving nothing hidden. Her fingers traced the scars he'd accumulated over the past months, pausing at each one like she was memorizing them.
"Every mark on your body should be mine," she murmured against his chest, her tongue tracing a line down to his abs. "Every bruise. Every scratch." Her hand wrapped around his hardening cock, and he inhaled sharply. "This. Especially this."
"Elena..."
"Moy." She stroked him slowly, deliberately, watching his face in the darkness with eyes that had long since adapted to seeing without light. "Mine."
She sank to her knees.
Elena didn't do anything halfway. Her mouth was hot and wet and relentless, taking him deep without hesitation, her throat working around him as she swallowed him down. He hit the back of her throat and she just pushed further, that inhuman control letting her bypass reflexes that would have stopped anyone else.
"Fuck," he gasped, his hands finding her hair. "Elena, blyad..."
She hummed around him, pleased that he was already using Russian. Her tongue did something devastating, and his hips jerked involuntarily.
But she pulled back before he could get close, rising to her feet with predatory grace, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
"Not yet," she said. "You don't get to come until I say."
She pushed him toward the bed, and he went willingly, sprawling back against the sheets as she stood over him. In the darkness, she was a silhouette of pale hair and deadly curves, her shadows writhing around her like a living cloak.
She stripped slowly, deliberately, letting him watch as each piece of clothing fell away. First the tactical top, revealing the lean muscles of her shoulders and the swell of her breasts barely contained by black lace. Then the bra, tossed aside carelessly, her nipples already hard in the cool air. The moonlight through the window caught the silver scars on her body - souvenirs from a lifetime of violence - and he wanted to kiss every single one.
Her pants came next, sliding down long legs that had wrapped around targets' throats, that had sprinted across rooftops, that trembled now with barely contained need. The underwear followed, and then she stood before him completely bare, a killer stripped down to nothing but pale skin and hunger.
"Like what you see?" Her voice was mocking, but he could hear the vulnerability underneath. The need for reassurance that even after everything she'd been, everything she'd done, he still wanted her.
"You're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen," he said honestly.
Something flickered in her expression - surprise, maybe, or that desperate hope she tried so hard to hide. Then she was on him, straddling his hips, her wet heat pressing against his cock without letting him inside. He could feel how slick she was, how ready, and it took everything he had not to thrust up into her.
"Say it again."
"Beautiful." He gripped her hips, tried to pull her down, but she resisted. "Gorgeous. Deadly. Mine."
"Yours," she agreed, and finally, finally, she sank down onto him.
They both groaned at the sensation. She was tight and hot and perfect, her body gripping him like it was made for him. She didn't wait, didn't give either of them time to adjust - just started moving, riding him with that same relentless intensity she brought to everything.
"Da," she gasped, her head falling back. "Da, da, da..."
He thrust up to meet her, and she rewarded him with a moan that was more Russian curse than actual word. Her nails raked down his chest, leaving red lines in their wake, marking him the way she'd promised.
"Harder," she demanded. "Make me feel it. Make me feel you."
He flipped them.
Elena's eyes went wide as her back hit the mattress, but then he was driving into her and the surprise transformed into raw pleasure. He hooked her leg over his shoulder, changing the angle, going deeper, and she made a sound he'd never heard from her before - high and desperate and completely undone.
"There," she gasped. "Right there, don't stop, don't you fucking stop..."
He didn't. He pounded into her with everything he had, the wet sounds of their bodies coming together filling the room along with her increasingly incoherent moans. One hand braced beside her head, the other finding her clit, rubbing tight circles in time with his thrusts. She was so wet he could feel it dripping down his cock, could hear it with every thrust.
"Who do you belong to?" he growled against her ear.
"You." Her voice cracked, her walls fluttering around him. "Only you. Always you."
"Say my name."
"Sarnav." Her nails dug into his back hard enough to draw blood. "Moy Sarnav. Moy."
He felt it building in both of them, the connection through the network amplifying everything, her pleasure feeding into his feeding back into hers in an endless loop. Her back arched off the bed, pressing her breasts against his chest, and he could feel her getting tighter, closer, her body coiling like a spring about to release.
"Come for me," he ordered. "Now, Elena."
She shattered.
And the shadows exploded.
The darkness around them erupted outward like a shockwave, Elena's power responding to the intensity of her orgasm in a way he'd never seen. For a single, brilliant moment, her shadows didn't just fill the room - they pushed out, slamming against something invisible, something that had been pressing in on them from the edges of perception.
He heard it. Just for a heartbeat. A sound like distant laughter, cut suddenly short.
Then Elena was pulling him down, kissing him fiercely as her body continued to pulse around him, and he stopped thinking about anything except how good she felt, how much he loved her, how he would burn the world down before he let anything take her from him.
He came hard enough to see stars.
[NETWORK NOTIFICATION: BOND RESONANCE - ELENA VOLKOV][SHADOW DOMAIN: TEMPORARILY STABILIZED][ESSENCE TRANSFER: +2,847][PROGRESS TO SECOND STAGE: 15% → 16%]
Well. That was... energetic.
They lay tangled together in the aftermath, Elena's head on his chest, her fingers tracing idle patterns on his skin. The shadows had settled back to their normal state - or close to it - curling around them like a protective blanket. Her breathing had finally slowed, the tension bleeding out of her muscles for the first time in days.
He could feel the bond between them humming, stronger than before. Not a breakthrough - she was already S-rank, already as powerful as any of his wives - but something had shifted. Deepened. Like two instruments finally tuning to the same frequency.
"It pulled back," she said quietly. "Whatever was pushing into my domain. When I... when we..."
"I felt it." He pressed a kiss to her hair, breathing in the scent of her - shadows and steel and something softer underneath that only he got to see. "Your shadows pushed it out."
"Temporarily." Her voice was steady again, but her hand had stilled against his chest. "It will come back. It's still coming for us. For you."
"I know."
She was quiet for a long moment. Outside, the first hints of dawn were starting to lighten the sky, painting the shadows in shades of gray. Elena watched them shift with eyes that saw more in darkness than most people saw in full light.
Then, so softly he almost missed it: "I don't like it. That something knows you. Wants you. That's supposed to be my job."
He huffed a laugh despite himself. "Jealous of an eldritch entity?"
"I'm jealous of everyone." She propped herself up to look at him, her silver hair a curtain around them. "Every person who looks at you. Every wife who gets to touch you when I'm not there. Every moment you exist without me next to you."
"Elena..."
"I know it's..." She searched for the word. "Unhealthy. Possessive. I know I should be better. But I spent my whole life belonging to people who saw me as a tool. A weapon. Something to be used and discarded." Her jaw tightened. "You're the first person who made me feel like I belonged with someone instead of to someone. And the thought of losing that..."
She didn't finish. She didn't have to.
He pulled her down and kissed her, soft this time, gentle in a way their earlier encounter hadn't been. "You're not going to lose me," he said against her lips. "Whatever this thing is, whatever it wants - we'll figure it out. Together."
"Together," she repeated, like she was testing the word. Then, quieter: "I love you. You know that, right? I don't say it enough. I don't know how. But I do."
"I know." He held her tighter. "I love you too."
They lay there in the darkness, wrapped in shadows and each other, and for a few precious minutes, the approaching entity and the degrading seal and the weight of the world felt very far away.
Then Sarnav's comms unit buzzed.
He reached for it reluctantly, checking the message. His blood went cold.
"What?" Elena was already alert, reading his expression. "What is it?"
"Minji's decoys." He sat up, the post-coital warmth evaporating in an instant. "Something just tested them. All of them. Simultaneously."
Elena's shadows flared, her expression going flat and deadly.
"It's probing our defenses," she said. "Learning what we have."
"And now it knows about the illusions."
They looked at each other in the darkness, the weight of what was coming settling over them like a shroud.
The entity was done waiting.
[DAY 108]
[SARNAV: S-RANK (HARMONY SOVEREIGN - FIRST STAGE)][PROGRESS TO SECOND STAGE: 16%]
[WIFE CULTIVATION STATUS][1. NISHA - C | 2. ISHANI - C | 3. ANANYA - D+][4. MINJI - D+ | 5. JADE - C | 6. SANA - C+][7. JIYEON - C | 8. SERENA - C+ | 9. ZARA - C+][10. ELENA - S]
[HARMONY SAFE ZONE: 1,335 SURVIVORS | 3 SECTORS]
[SEAL INTEGRITY: 92.7% (STABLE - THREATENED)]
[SHADOW DOMAIN: STABILIZED - TEMPORARY][ENTITY STATUS: PROBING DEFENSES - DECOYS COMPROMISED]
[WIVES BONDED: 10/32]