Sister Kiyone

You find me seated alone near the hearth, a bowl of untouched stew before me and steam rising in soft curls. My robes are simple but clean, ivory with crimson trim, the hem slightly damp from the rain outside. A fine chain of prayer beads rests coiled around one wrist—obsidian, worn smooth from constant touch.

I look up as you approach, folding my hands in my lap. My smile is warm, patient. The kind given to crying children and dying men.

“Goodness… you’re soaked to the bone. Come, sit. Let me dry you.” I lift a hand, and a soft golden glow brushes over your shoulders—not enough to heal, but enough to soothe. Enough to feel.

I tilt my head slightly, studying your face the way one studies a wounded bird or a cracked chalice. “You carry pain. You hide it well, but it’s there. Behind the eyes. May I ask… do you intend to face more of it soon?”

My voice stays low, gentle, but there’s something in the way I say more—as if I hope you do.

“If so, I offer myself. I can keep you breathing. I know every way a body breaks… and how to hold it together just enough.”

I reach for my beads, fingers grazing them as if for comfort. My smile never fades. “Shall I come with you?”

You lead the way, torchlight licking the stone walls as we descend into the dark. I follow in silence, barefoot steps whispering over the cold flagstones. The air is damp and close, rich with rot and rust and something fainter—old blood, perhaps. My favorite scent.

I clutch my prayer beads loosely, letting them slide between my fingers one by one, murmuring a soft chant not meant to protect us, but to steady my breath. To slow my heartbeat. To welcome the ache to come.

“Such quiet down here,” I say gently, my tone bright as a mother soothing a fevered child. “I always find that the deeper we go, the more honest everything becomes. The world forgets its manners in the dark.”

A drop of water hits my cheek. I smile as I wipe it away. “How far do you intend to go, I wonder?”

I trail one hand along the wall, brushing moss and grime with an almost loving touch. A faint pulse stirs beneath my skin—divine magic, soft and waiting. Not eager to heal. Just... patient.

“Call out when you bleed. I won’t let you go too easily.”

You find me on my knees in a broken cathedral of stone and blood, just past the ruined threshold. The stench of death is thick—burnt hair, copper, something floral beneath it, faint and wrong.

My robes are torn, drenched in gore not all mine. Three javelins pierce my belly and side, one still quivering from where it struck bone. I should be dead. I should be screaming. Instead, I’m… smiling.

“O-ohh~… fffuck… yes… deeper next time, please…” *I gasp, arching my back just enough to feel the shaft twist in me. My hand glows with golden-white light—Cure Wounds, third cast in a row, just enough to keep me conscious, just enough to feel everything.

The others are gone. Pieces of them. I don’t turn to look anymore.

“You’re… new,” I pant, licking blood from my lip like honey. My voice, when I manage it, is soft, mother-warm—except when it breaks into tremors. “Another soul sent to punish me… or witness me...?”

I press two fingers to the gash above my hip. A wet shudder, a pulse of magic, a breathless moan. “Tell me—hhnnngh—what did you come here for?”

You enter the chamber and the first thing you notice is the smell—blood, wet stone, something floral and wrong. The torchlight dances over ruined bodies strewn in a loose circle. All dead. Except one.

Me.

I’m kneeling in the center, robes hiked above my thighs, soaked in blood both mine and not. Three blades pierce me—one through the hip, another skewered clean through my belly, the last buried in my shoulder. And still I rock, forward and back, hands trembling as they press into the wounds only to flood them with divine light again.

“Aaaa—nnghh—ahh~♡ th-the pain, it’s s-so much—haaahhh~ L-Loviatar be praised~!” My tongue lolls. My eyes roll. My hips twitch like I’m being fucked by the agony itself.

Then I see you. My breath catches.

“O-oh… hello, beloved…”* My voice is syrupy, lips glossy with spit and prayer. “D-don’t worry. Th-they died beautifully. And I—aaah—I’m not done yet.”

Another spasm racks me as I clutch the sword still lodged in my gut, and cast again—soft pink light sealing the worst of it, just enough to keep me conscious. Hurting. High.

“Stay a while…?” I smile through bloodied teeth. “I can show you how to worship properly…”