Damask's fingers clenched around the Testament's worn spine, the leather groaning under his grip like strained latex, a sound that echoed the taut, bound tension of their desperate flight. The distant howl sliced through the Ashen Grove's fog-shrouded dawn—less a beast's cry and more a vulgar catcall from the void, a promise of a brutal, carnal claiming. It was a Bitch's howl, a jagged blade of mana laced with the hunters' relentless hunger, and it vibrated in Damask's chest not as a warning, but as the raw, primal threat of being cornered and forcibly taken.
Five days of evasion had worn them to bleeding edges. The world had bled away, leaving only the raw, aching truth of their new existence: a crippled Sovereign and his devoted vessel, two heartbeats against a wilderness that wanted them silenced.
The mana gleaned from their desperate hunt was already wearing thin, a precious fuel burning too quickly just to maintain their magical veil and the slow, grinding work of mending their golem's fractured carapace. Damask's own failure gnawed at him deepest. Those frantic, desperate couplings with Petunia were no longer about advancement, but a grim battle against attrition. Each session was a forge too slow, too weak—a pathetic mockery for an heir who had once commanded the peak of the solid tier. The hammering of his Sprout-Stage cock produced just enough Gristle Seed to replace what the day's survival had cost them. Nothing more.
The psychic probes brushed his mind again, crude, invading tendrils from the trackers who'd shaken off his nectar diversion. They were being pushed to their absolute limit, every nerve frayed raw.
Fear twisted in Damask's gut, a cold serpent coiling with frustration that birthed a defiant arrogance. Fuck the rites, he thought, the words a venomous hiss in his skull. Power isn't forged in perfection. It's seized in the crucible of necessity.
He flung the book aside, its pages fluttering like dying wings, and fixed his gaze on Petunia. The Fem froze mid-scan of the shadows, his lithe, androgynous body tensing under that imperious stare. His small cock twitched faintly, his pert breasts heaving with anxious breaths.
"On your knees," Damask rasped, his voice a gravelly command that brooked no hesitation. "Present. We're invoking the Pillar Training rite."
Petunia's luminous eyes widened, a storm of terror and devotion swirling in their depths. He knew the Testament's warnings: a rite meant for a Shaft-Stage, demanding endurance Damask's nascent tool couldn't possibly provide. Yet obedience was etched into his Fem-soul, a biological imperative as unyielding as mana itself.
He sank to the damp earth, knees sinking into moss that reeked of decay and faint aphrodisiac spores. With trembling fingers, he braced his hands against a lichen-crusted boulder and spread his pale, flawless cheeks. The tight, puckered ring of his ass was a perfect, quivering invitation glistening with anticipatory sweat.
The air thickened with mana-musk, a heady blend of Damask's frustrated arousal and Petunia's instinctive submission. Damask positioned himself, his barely rigid Dom cock pressing against that yielding heat.
He thrust in with grinding purpose, not passion. Each shallow plunge was a blacksmith's hammer on unyielding ore, and Petunia's walls—a C-Apt 5 masterpiece designed for exquisite friction—gripped him loosely, turning the masterpiece into a mocking void. No resistance, no searing clamp, just warm, enveloping softness that amplified his futility. Sweat beaded on Damask's brow, tasting salty on his lips as he grunted, the wet slaps of their flesh echoing too faintly, too pathetically.
A flicker of hardness built in his shaft, a weak pulse of Gristle Seed mana stirring like embers in his balls.
Then, catastrophe.
A glacial flood surged through his core, his seed recoiling inward. The sensation was a deep, sexual abyss opening within him, colder than the grove's mist. The erection dissolved into limp, useless flesh. Buried in Petunia's perfect heat, he felt nothing.
He was a hollow thing. A lie.
Rage erupted, a plasma-hot torrent that scorched his veins. His cock slipped free with a slick, obscene pop, dangling shriveled and defeated. The failure was absolute. For a Dom, whose very identity was forged in the power of his cock, this impotence was a death of the soul. In that moment, the Sovereign he had been shattered, the broken pieces of his ego screaming for a target.
"Useless slut!" he bellowed, the word a thunderclap that seemed to shake the very trees. His palm cracked against Petunia's ass. The impact sent ripples through the Fem's soft flesh, leaving a blooming red welt. The sound was sharp, visceral, a wet smack followed by Petunia's choked gasp. "Your hole's a dead fucking cavern! No grip, no fire, just cold, worthless ash for a C-Apt 5 forge!"
He struck again, harder, the abuse a frenzied projection of his shattered pride. Petunia sobbed, tears streaking his cheeks, his small cock twitching involuntarily with the pain-humiliation spike—a Fem's wired response, his brain firing in twisted ecstasy. Damask's tirade poured out like venom. "You're nothing but a broken tool! I should dust you here, drain your pathetic nectar and leave you as fertilizer for this cursed grove!" Each word lashed deeper, exploiting the cockbound psychology etched into Petunia's genes, where submission was sacrament and degradation was devotion's fuel.
Exhaustion claimed him at last. The rage burned out, leaving a hollow shell. Damask crumpled to his knees, face buried in shaking hands, dry sobs wracking his frame.
Petunia didn't break. Schooled in the Hothouse Clan's brutal rituals, he endured as a Fem must: not as victim, but as vessel. He saw the tyrant's fracture, the god-king's mortality exposed, and his purpose ignited. He needed to mend this. He needed to reignite the forge.
Crawling forward, his ass still throbbing with heat from the slaps, he reached Damask with gentle insistence. His fingers, soft and manicured, cupped the limp cock, feeling its defeated weight, slick with their mingled fluids.
"Let me serve, my Lord," Petunia murmured, his voice a silken whisper laced with unwavering faith, his breath warm against Damask's thigh. The scent of his own arousal mingled with Damask's mana-musk, a sweet nectar from his minor testes that teased the air. He leaned in, lips parting to envelop the shriveled shaft, his tongue tracing its contours with patient reverence. The taste was bitter-salty: raw Gristle Seed pre-cum mixed with the tang of failure's tears. Petunia suckled gently, his mouth a warm, velvet crucible, his cheeks hollowing with rhythmic pulls that mirrored a heartbeat's build.
Damask shuddered, humiliation warring with a flickering spark. The Fem's devotion bypassed his shame, his own brain igniting with reluctant dominance. Petunia's hands joined the worship, one cradling Damask's balls, massaging the cold retreat of seed, the other stroking the base with feather-light twists. Soft, wet slurps and muffled hums of encouragement filled the space.
A twitch. Then a pulse, weak at first, blood surging back like mana through clogged channels. Petunia intensified, tongue swirling the crown, tasting the first gritty beads of revival. He didn't offer his ass; that void was too fresh a wound. Instead, he finished with mouth and hands, a tender absolution that built to a gritty crescendo.
Damask's orgasm shattered him. It was a sobbing, spasmodic release, Gristle Seeds erupting in weak, sandy spurts across Petunia's chest, marking the Fem's pert breasts like a tyrant's brand. The afterglow was no golden haze but a stark, vacuum clarity. His temporal cortex echoed the profound shift. In this nadir of vulnerability, an epiphany struck like plasma.
He took the lashes. Swallowed the venom. Coaxed life from my dead root. The Testament preaches self-forged power, a brute's delusion. True tyranny lies not in the strength of my cock, but in the pridemates' blind devotion. Break them utterly, then offer the illusion of mercy, of purpose in my image. Their loyalty isn't love; it's a chain I will forge by shattering and remaking them. I won't claw for strength in my flesh alone. I'll manipulate their souls, twist their devotion into my empire's unyielding foundation.
The rage evaporated, replaced by a tyrant's cold calculus. Petunia, ever dutiful, gently scraped the gritty seed from his chest with his fingers, bringing the precious mana to his mouth. He licked his fingers clean, swallowing the essence of his Dom with unshakeable adoration in his gleaming eyes.
Seeing the femslut so utterly devoted in the face of his own monstrous failure, Damask hauled him into a fierce embrace. It was not tender, but possessive, his fingers digging into soft flesh like a craftsman claiming his tool.
"Pet," he whispered, the diminutive a calculated hook in the Fem's heart. "Thank you."
It was no lover's warmth, but a tyrant's acknowledgment: recognition of a weapon's infinite utility. In those luminous eyes, Damask saw not just loyalty, but the raw material for manipulation. He saw a blind devotion he would exploit, test to its breaking point, and wield as the bedrock of his ascendant reign. The howls grew nearer, but now they fueled his resolve.
A new weight settled in his balls, a dense and satisfying presence. The intense, alchemical exchange had been a crucible. From the Half-Stage of Raw Solid mana, his power had swelled, waxing to a Gibbous-Stage, the fourth tier now his. His was a tyrant's path, and its foundation was now set in stone.