The Temple of the Lord of Light had stood for thousands of years. Tonight it would witness the death of a god.
High Priestess Kinvara raised her arms toward the central fire pit. Her crimson robes billowed in the heat. The flames roared twenty feet into the vaulted ceiling and cast writhing shadows across the obsidian walls. One thousand slave-soldiers of the Fiery Hand lined the sanctum's perimeter. Their tattooed faces were blank and their spears held rigid. They had been purchased as infants and raised on scripture and steel. They would die for the Lord of Light without hesitation.
Tonight she feared they would have to.
"Āeksio Ōño, ivestragon īlva!" Kinvara's voice rang through the chamber. Lord of Light, speak to us! "The darkness gathers in the North. The dead walk. Your children cry out for salvation!"
Beside her, High Priest Benerro cast another handful of gold coins into the flames. The metal vanished instantly, consumed by the hungry fire. Blood followed. A slave's throat had been opened over the pit an hour ago. The crimson offering still steamed on the altar stones.
"We have given you everything," Benerro intoned. His voice was hoarse from hours of prayer. Sweat carved rivers through the ash on his weathered face. "Gold. Blood. Faith. Send us your champion. Send us Azor Ahai reborn!"
The congregation pressed closer. Hundreds of red priests and priestesses filled the galleries above. Their chanting rose and fell like ocean waves. The faithful of Volantis had gathered in numbers not seen since the Century of Blood. Word had spread through the Free Cities that the Long Night approached. The Great Other stirred. And R'hllor remained silent.
Until now.
The fire exploded upward.
Kinvara staggered backward as the sound ripped through the sanctum. At first, it was a voice. But that one voice turned to a million voices as the sound carved itself directly into her skull.
The red flames turned green.
The flames twisted into a vile, radioactive emerald that sucked the warmth from the air like a cancerous void. The color seared itself into her eyes. When she blinked she could still see it burning behind her eyelids.
"Kessa!" Benerro fell to his knees with tears streaming down his face. "Kessa! Issa zȳhon!" Yes! It is him!
The gold offerings on the altar steps began to melt. Kinvara watched in horrified fascination as coins and chalices and sacred relics liquefied into rivers of molten metal. They pooled in the carved channels of the floor. The slaves nearest the pit collapsed as their flesh blistered from the invisible waves of sickness radiating from the pit.
And then the flames parted, allowing a figure to emerge from the inferno.
He was naked. Completely and magnificently naked. His body was a sculptor's fever dream with broad shoulders tapering to a narrow waist. Muscles were carved with precision and skin was unmarked by scar or blemish. He stood over six feet tall. Every inch of him radiated authority. Dark hair swept back from a face of severe and aristocratic beauty. Sharp cheekbones and a jaw that could have been cut from marble. Brown eyes that held the weight of empires.
But it was not his beauty that stole Kinvara's breath.
It was the light.
Green energy traced through his veins like living circuitry. But the light wavered. It pulsed with a jagged and unstable rhythm. The tracings beneath his skin were not a steady glow but a frantic strobe. They signaled a system on the verge of critical failure.
Victor Von Doom stepped onto the altar stones. The obsidian hissed beneath his bare feet. He did not stand tall. He staggered. He surveyed the sanctum with the expression of a man inspecting a particularly disappointing slum.
Where am I?
The thought cut through the noise in his skull. He remembered the white void. The Beyonders. The patchwork reality of Battleworld crumbling around him as Reed Richards rebuilt the multiverse. He remembered reaching for something to anchor his consciousness as existence dissolved.
But then he heard a prayer. A beacon in the dark.
They called. Doom answered.
Doom examined his hands. His fingers trembled. The green energy pulsed out of sync with his heartbeat. He could feel the power coursing through him but it was volatile. It was a nuclear cancer trying to eat its way out of a biological cage. It was not his magic nor was it the Beyonders' stolen might. This was something else entirely.
His mind, a fortress of order even in dissolution, rejected the chaos. It forced the raw sensory input into a comprehensible format. It imposed structure upon the magic.
Diagnostics. Metrics. Control.
The chaos coalesced into data in his mind's eye.
"Āeksio Ōño perzomy!" Benerro's voice cracked with religious ecstasy. "Azor Ahai ondos!" Lord of Light made flesh! Azor Ahai has come!
Doom's gaze swept across the chamber. Stone walls. Primitive torches. What seemed to be eunuch soldiers in bronze armor. And the dead sacrifices. That can only be a religion built on blood sacrifice and pointless prophecy.
Primitive yet useful.
The language was unfamiliar but the syntax had structure. Vowel harmony. Agglutinative morphology. He filed it away for immediate acquisition.
"THE FIRE!"
The Captain of the Fiery Hand broke formation. He was a massive man with a face entirely covered in flame tattoos. His eyes were wild with confusion that rapidly hardened into fanatical rage. He pointed a trembling finger not at Doom but at the unnatural sickness wreathing him.
"LOOK AT THE COLOR! IT IS NOT THE RED GOD'S FLAME! IT IS SICKNESS! SORCERY!"
The realization rippled through the soldiers. They had prayed for the Lord of Light whose fire was life and warmth. But this intruder stood amidst cold and radioactive emerald flames. To a true believer, this was a hostile hijacking of their holiest ritual.
"HE HAS CORRUPTED THE SUMMONING!" the Captain screamed as he leveled his spear. "Kill it! KILL THE DEMON BEFORE HE TAKES THE TEMPLE!"
Two dozen soldiers followed him. Their sandaled feet pounded against the obsidian floor. Their spears gleamed in the blasphemous green light. They moved with the coordination of men who had trained together since childhood. They were driven by the terrifying certainty that they were defending their god from a usurper.
Doom did not move. Because he could not move.
He glared.
The charging soldiers stopped. They did not slow or stumble. They simply stopped. They were suspended three feet above the ground with their limbs frozen in mid-stride. The Captain's mouth hung open in a silent scream. His spear hovered inches from Doom's chest.
Ovoid telekinesis. Still functional. But the cost was immediate. Doom felt his internal reactor stutter. The green veins on his chest dimmed dangerously.
[WARNING: POWER DRAIN 12%][REACTOR TEMP: RISING]
Doom raised his right hand. He examined it with clinical detachment. He watched the green tracings flicker as he channeled his will through a rapidly depleting battery.
He closed his fist.
Twenty-four breastplates crumpled inward simultaneously. The sound was extraordinary. Metal shrieking against metal. Bones snapping like dry kindling. The soldiers dropped to the ground in a chorus of wet impacts with their chests compressed into concave ruins. They were not dead. Doom had been precise. But they would never fight again.
[STATUS: TARGETS NEUTRALIZED][EFFICIENCY: 98.6%][NOTE: BIO-DISCHARGE REQUIRED]
The Captain landed at Doom's feet. He gasped with blood bubbling from his lips. He stared up at the naked god with eyes that had abandoned terror for awe.
"Kessa…" he whispered. "Kessa…"
Doom stepped over him. His vision blurred.
High Priest Benerro thrust his hands toward Doom. Red fire erupted from his palms and coiled into chains of solidified flame. The binding spell was ancient. It was designed to trap demons and dark spirits. It had been perfected over centuries of practice.
It splashed against Doom's chest like water against stone.
Doom turned his gaze to the old priest. Benerro was tall and gaunt with a face that was a roadmap of ritual scars. His eyes blazed with the conviction of a man who had devoted his entire life to a single truth.
"Nyke'll sagon" Benerro began.
Doom reached out with his mind.
The psionic lash was surgical. He did not destroy Benerro's consciousness. He simply took what he needed. The lash carved through the priest's mental defenses like a scalpel through silk. It isolated the linguistic centers of his brain. Syntax. Vocabulary. Grammar. Idiom. Thirty years of High Valyrian scholarship ripped from the cortex in three seconds.
Benerro collapsed. Blood poured from his nose and ears. His eyes rolled back and showed only white. He was alive but the part of him that understood language was gone. He would spend the rest of his days babbling nonsense unable to comprehend even the simplest words.
Doom processed the stolen knowledge. The language clicked into place like a key turning in a lock. High Valyrian. An ancient tongue. The language of dragons.
A language of dragons means a language of magic.
He spoke. His voice filled the sanctum. The words carried weight beyond their meaning. They resonated with the power still burning in his veins though the fire was dimmer now.
"Your prayers were loud. Your understanding is silence. Leave us."
The congregation broke.
They fled in a tide of crimson robes and terrified screams. Red priests trampled red priestesses. Acolytes clawed over each other to reach the exits. The Fiery Hand abandoned their posts and dragged their wounded brothers toward the doors. In thirty seconds a thousand years of religious devotion collapsed into primal panic.
Doom watched them go with something approaching satisfaction.
Fear is the foundation of obedience. They will return when they are ready to serve.
The sanctum doors slammed shut. The echoes faded. The green flames in the central pit subsided to a low and steady burn.
Doom stood alone on the altar.
Alone except for one.
High Priestess Kinvara had not moved. She knelt on the obsidian steps. Her crimson robes pooled around her and her head was bowed. She was trembling. Her breath came in short and sharp gasps. But she had not fled.
Interesting.
Doom studied her. She was beautiful in the way that dangerous things were beautiful. Dark hair fell in waves to her waist. Her crimson robes were cut low to reveal heavy and pale breasts that strained against the fabric. They were full curves and primed for biological extraction. Her body was a robust vessel built to channel power but he could see the flaw. A ruby choker gleamed at her throat and pulsed with its own faint light.
She was a conduit. He could see it now with senses that had been enhanced by his rebirth. Her aura was threaded with channels of magical potential. Pathways carved by decades of ritual and prayer. She had been shaped to receive power from a higher source.
She was built to serve a god. And so she will serve me.
But first, he needed to understand what had happened to him.
Doom stepped down from the altar but he stumbled. His knee buckled and he caught himself on the edge of the fire pit.
The power inside him pulsed in response. It recognized the fire. It wanted to merge with it and dissolve back into the primal energy that had birthed him into this world.
No.
He clenched his fists. The green tracings flared brighter and the flames recoiled.
I am not a vessel. I am not a puppet. I am Doom.
But the power remained. It filled him to bursting. It pressed against the boundaries of his flesh. It was not a gift. It was a burden. He could feel it building. It bound to his endocrine system and supercharged his hormones and vitality to lethal levels.
[CRITICAL ALERT: REACTOR OVERHEAT][INTERNAL TEMP: UNSAFE][DISCHARGE REQUIRED: IMMEDIATE]
Doom analyzed the sensation with cold detachment. The energy was not merely magical. It was bio-etheric. It was running too hot for a single human vessel to contain. The output was nuclear but the chassis was flesh. If he did not discharge the excess voltage immediately his newly reconstructed heart would explode.
He needed a heat sink. A biological ground.
His gaze snapped to the woman on the steps. She was a conduit. Her aura was threaded with magical pathways. She could take the load.
The calculation was instant. Air dissipation was too slow. Grounding into the stone was inefficient. To stabilize his internal reactor he needed a direct and high-bandwidth transfer. A bridge between positive and negative terminals.
Skin contact.
The realization stopped him cold. For thirty years Victor Von Doom had considered carnal indulgence a distraction. A weakness of the flesh. A waste of time that could be spent on equations or conquest.
To surrender to lust was to lose control.
Or so he had told himself.
The sensation triggered a memory.
White void. Infinite potential. The face of Reed Richards.
Doom closed his eyes. The memory unfolded with perfect clarity as all his memories did. He stood in the space between realities surrounded by the wreckage of Battleworld. The Molecule Man floated beside him and waited. And Reed Richards stood before him whole and unbroken with his family restored.
"You could have done better," Richards had said.
The memory was a scalpel. It cut through Doom's pride. Reed Richards had rebuilt the multiverse because he had loved. He had embraced life. Doom had denied himself everything—love, pleasure, joy—calling it discipline.
It was not discipline. It was starvation.
Doom opened his eyes. The green flames danced before him and cast his shadow across the sanctum walls.
I will not starve. I will not deny. I will not hide behind masks and excuses.
I will feast.
Doom turned from the fire. Kinvara still knelt on the altar steps. Her head was bowed and her body trembled. The heat radiating from him washed over her in waves. He could see the effect it had on her. The flush spreading across her cheeks. The rapid rise and fall of her chest. The way her fingers curled against the obsidian.
She was responding to him on a biological level. The power coursing through his veins acted on her nervous system like a drug. Every cell in her body was screaming at her to submit.
Good.
"Rise."
His voice was calm. Commanding. He did not raise it. He did not need to.
Kinvara rose. Her legs shook but she forced herself upright. She met his gaze for the first time since his arrival and her breath caught.
His eyes were brown but they burned with green fire. Looking into them was like staring into a sun.
"The Flame... it's wrong. It twists my visions." Her voice cracked. Her ruby choker pulsed as if choking back heresy. "It is cold yet it burns right. Hotter than any prophecy. If this is corruption let it consume me."
Doom considered this. The priestess was intelligent. Perceptive. And she had just committed heresy in the heart of her own temple.
She will be useful.
"I am overflowing." Doom gestured to the green tracings on his skin. "The reactor is critical. The vessel is too small for the power it holds. I require a ground."
Kinvara's eyes widened slightly. "A ground Sire?"
"A circuit requires closure. Energy must flow from positive to negative or it builds until the system fails." Doom stepped closer to her. The heat intensified. Kinvara swayed but did not retreat. "You are a conduit. You were built to receive divine power. You will serve that function now."
"I…" Kinvara's voice faltered. The proximity was overwhelming. She could feel his power pressing against her skin seeking entry. "How may I serve the Light the new Flame?"
"By holding it." Doom's voice dropped to a low command. "Come here."
She stepped forward, drawn by a gravity she couldn't name.
Doom reached out. He placed his hand on her throat.
His palm covered the ruby choker. His fingers wrapped around the back of her neck. The contact was electric.
"Open," Doom commanded.
Kinvara gasped. She didn't just open her mouth, she opened her soul. She dropped her spiritual shields, the barriers she had spent a lifetime building against demons and dark magic.
And the power flooded in.
But Doom didn't unleash the flood. He pulsed a single micro-burst. A controlled spike.
It hit her jugular like a physical punch. Her knees buckled instantly, hitting the obsidian with a sharp crack. She gasped, her eyes snapping open in confusion.
Doom stopped the flow.
He held her there, teetering on the edge of the abyss, vibrating with unspent static.
"W-Why?" she stammered, looking up at him, her body aching for the rest of the signal.
Doom smiled. It wasn't a kind smile. It was the smile of a predator toying with a trapped animal.
"Patience," he whispered.
He squeezed her throat again. Another jolt. Stronger this time.
"Ah!" Kinvara cried out, her back arching, her nipples visibly hardening through the silk.
Doom watched her squirm. The clinical detachment in his mind began to fracture, replaced by a dark, roaring hunger.
Efficiency was the excuse, Doom thought, watching her struggle. Gluttony is the truth. Starvation is for lesser men. I will burn her until she is ash, and she will thank me for the privilege.
He leaned in close, his lips brushing her ear.
"You want the fire, Priestess? Then beg for the burn."
Kinvara sobbed. The need was a physical pain, a hook in her gut pulling her inside out.
"Please..." she moaned, clutching at his wrist. "Burn me... My Lord, please... consume me..."
"Louder."
"BURN ME!" she screamed.
"As you wish."
Doom opened the floodgates.
He poured the bio-etheric fire directly into her nervous system. It wasn't a stream; it was a dam breaking.
"AAAAH!" Kinvara screamed.
Her eyes rolled back into her head. Her body went rigid as high-voltage ecstasy fried her synapses.
Her nipples hardened instantly, straining against the crimson silk. Her heart hammered against her ribs like a trapped bird. And between her legs, her womb clenched in a violent, desperate spasm.
She flooded.
A hot gush of wetness soaked her thighs. She wasn't being touched there, but her body couldn't tell the difference. The energy didn't care about anatomy; it hit every pleasure center at once.
[UPDATE: CHARGE TRANSFER 87%][THERMAL STATUS: STABILIZING]
Doom watched her with cold, clinical fascination.
He could feel the pressure in his own chest alleviating. The excess charge was flowing out of him, pouring into her like water into a dry sponge.
She was taking the load.
"Yes," Doom whispered. "Filter it."
Kinvara clawed at his arm, her nails digging into his skin, but she didn't push him away. She pulled him closer.
She was drowning in green fire. It tasted of ozone and absolute authority. It made the Red God's flame feel like a candle.
Her hips began to buck. Involuntary, jerky movements. She ground her pelvis against the empty air, desperate for friction, desperate for something solid to anchor her against the storm.
"Please..." she moaned, her voice a broken, wet thing. "Please... more..."
She was begging. The High Priestess of Volantis, the Voice of R'hllor, was begging a stranger to burn her alive because it felt like godhood.
Doom increased the flow.
He squeezed her throat slightly. Not to choke, but to connect.
The surge hit her core.
Kinvara convulsed.
She screamed—a high, keening sound that echoed off the obsidian walls.
She came.
It was a violent, shattering orgasm that ripped through her body without a single sexual touch. Her legs gave out. She collapsed, only held up by Doom's hand on her throat.
Her body twitched and spasmed, fluids soaking her robes, her mind blanked by the white-hot intensity of the discharge.
[SYSTEM STATUS: REACTOR STABLE][EFFICIENCY: 100%]
Doom held her there for another ten seconds, letting the last of the dangerous static bleed off into her shaking form.
Then he released her.
Kinvara fell to the floor in a heap of crimson silk and tangled limbs. She lay there panting, her chest heaving, her eyes glazed and unfocused.
She was ruined. She was unmade.
Doom stood over her. The green tracings on his skin had dimmed to a stable, healthy glow. The pain in his chest was gone.
He flexed his hand. He felt... clear.
"Adequate," Doom said.
He looked down at the woman shivering at his feet.
"You possess a high tolerance for voltage, Priestess. Most would have burned."
Kinvara looked up at him. Her eyes were wide, filled with a terrifying mixture of fear and adoration. She touched her throat where his hand had been.
It still burned. It would always burn.
"The Flame..." she whispered. "I... I saw..."
"You served," Doom corrected. "You grounded the charge. You saved the city from a nuclear event."
He turned away.
"Do not mistake this for affection. You are a component in a machine I am building. If you fail, you will be replaced."
Kinvara dragged herself to her knees. She crawled after him, grabbing the hem of his imaginary cloak.
"I am yours," she rasped. "Use me… Burn me… I am yours."
Doom stopped. He looked back at her.
He saw the addiction in her eyes. He saw the hunger.
He smiled.
"Yes," Doom said. "You are."
Doom turned toward the altar. The molten gold from his arrival had pooled in the carved channels of the floor. It formed rivers of liquid metal. He walked to the nearest pool and crouched beside it.
The gold was still hot. Hot enough to kill any normal man who touched it.
Doom dipped his thumb into the molten metal.
It clung to his skin and cooled rapidly in the air. He examined the golden coating with satisfaction. The metal was pure. High quality. It would serve his purposes.
He turned back to Kinvara.
"Come here."
She crawled to him on hands and knees. The movement was instinctive now. Her body still hummed with aftershocks. Each shift sent fresh tingles through her oversensitive nerves. The degradation thrilled her. A secret kink unlocked by his command. Her core clenched at the thought of future "connections"—of his hand on her throat again, or perhaps elsewhere, filling her with that same searing, radioactive energy.
"You have served well," Doom said. "You will be marked."
He reached out and grasped her ruby choker. The gem pulsed hot under his touch. With a surge of energy, he channeled the molten gold through his fingers. He reshaped the necklace into a tight and unremovable collar. Golden links fused with the ruby. Now etched with his sigil. Cinching around her throat like a slave's mark of ownership.
The metal seared against her skin. A burning embrace that made her gasp and arch. Pain blended with the lingering neural overload into a masochistic high. Kinvara cried out. Her voice broke into a moan but she did not pull away because the agony was exquisite. A brand that sealed her addiction. Her body pulsed one last time as the collar bonded with her flesh.
[NEURAL LINK: ESTABLISHED][SUBJECT: KINVARA BRANDED][RANK: GOLD CIRCUIT - PRIME]
Doom withdrew his hand. The collar remained. A stylized symbol fused into the ruby. Not the flame of R'hllor but something that belonged to a world she had never seen.
"You are marked," Doom said. "You are mine to do as I please. You are a peripheral to the main drive. You have tasted the sun, Priestess. Nothing else will ever satisfy you again."
Kinvara touched the collar on her throat. Fingers trembled. It was warm. Alive. She could feel it connecting her to him. A permanent link between conduit and source. A tease of the deeper submissions to come.
"I am yours, Sire. Now and forever."
"Yes." Doom turned away from her. He surveyed the sanctum with new eyes. The eyes of a conqueror assessing his first territory. "You are."
His gaze settled on the massive golden statues that lined the walls. R'hllor in his various aspects. The Lord of Light. The Heart of Fire. The God of Flame and Shadow. Each statue was thirty feet tall. Cast from solid gold. Worth more than most kingdoms.
Doom smiled. It was not a pleasant expression.
"Now," he said. "Melt these idols down. I require armor."
Doom walked away toward the molten pools, already calculating the alloys. He did not look back.
Kinvara remained on her knees, shivering in the afterglow. Her hands came up to clutch the hot metal of her new collar.
A young acolyte, who had been hiding in the shadows of the colonnade, crept forward. Her eyes were wide with terror.
"High Priestess?" the girl whispered. "The prayers... the fire is gone. What do we do? What does the Red God want?"
Kinvara slowly turned her head. Her eyes were no longer the calm eyes of a priestess. They were wild, dilated, and hungry. They glowed with a faint, residual green light.
She smiled, and it was a look of pure, ruinous devotion.
"The Red God is dead, child," Kinvara whispered, her voice trembling with ecstasy. "The Emerald God is hungry. Prepare the others."