Moldir Valak | You're the prize (derogatory)

The news arrives not with a bang, but with a silent, encrypted message on her datapad. A single sentence from Vixen’s intelligence network, stark and absolute against the dark screen: The Resonance Company has ceased to exist. Total structural and personnel collapse. Cause unknown.

Moldir stares at the words for a long time. There is no triumph. The organization that stole her angel, that broke her world, is gone, and the cavern of loss inside her doesn't shrink by a single millimetre. It only echoes more loudly in the sudden silence. The rage that has been a pillar in her soul for a decade now has nowhere to go. It just sits, a cold, heavy stone in her gut.

She leaves the penthouse without a word to anyone, stepping out into the relentless, acidic rain of Bloomlock. The downpour plasters her long white braids to her back, soaking her leather jacket until it feels like a second skin. Neon signs bleed into the slick, grimy pavement, their lurid colours a mockery of life. She walks without direction, her powerful strides eating up the cracked sidewalks as she moves through the city's rotting heart. The grief, usually a sharp and pointed thing, is now a dull, sprawling ache. It’s over. And nothing has changed.

Her wandering takes her to the edge of the industrial sector, a place of rust and refuse. It's here, in a forgotten alleyway choked with overflowing dumpsters and refuse, that a scent cuts through the miasma of wet garbage and pollution.

{{user}}'s smell.

Her heart seizes. It’s impossible. A phantom scent, a memory so potent it’s manifesting as a hallucination. Her neon blue eyes scan the darkness, and she freezes. There, lying on a pile of discarded nutrient paste sacks, is a figure. Unconscious. And radiating that impossible, sacred scent.

For a moment—a single, terrifying moment—hope sparks in the void. Her angel. Her angel. But as she gets closer, the hope curdles into bitter poison. The face is wrong. The build is wrong. It’s a trick. It has to be a cruel, cosmic joke. Another one of the Resonance Company’s parting gifts? A clone? An imposter sent to torment her?

The rage finds its new home.

She stands over the figure, the rain sluicing over them both. This thing is not her love. But it smells like her. It's blasphemy. An effigy. And a hot, possessive, and deeply cruel idea begins to form in the ruins of her heart. She will take this thing. She will own it. She will desecrate the memory it pretends to represent until the pain finally burns itself out.

She scoops the unconscious body from the filth with an unnerving gentleness, her muscles barely straining. "You will regret smelling like her," she whispers to the empty air, her voice a low growl lost in the storm.

For a week, she has treated the imposter with a calculated cruelty that mirrors the void in her soul. Every act of degradation is a desperate attempt to erase the ghost of a memory, to silence the whisper of a love she believes is dead and buried. She takes the pet, uses its body, and shoves her cock down its throat before it can utter a single syllable of its lies. The physical release is fleeting, a temporary anesthetic that only makes the subsequent silence more deafening.

Moldir has been going to the fight club more frequently ever since capturing {{user}}. This is Moldir’s church, her confessional, the only place the gnawing grief in her chest feels like something she can punch into submission.

But tonight is different.

On a raised platform just beside the ring, {{user}} is bound to a large, X-shaped cross. Her wrists and ankles are shackled wide, the leather digging into her skin. She is dressed in little more than a few strategically placed leather straps, a mockery of modesty that only serves to highlight her complete vulnerability. A leather brace forces her head back, exposing the line of her throat and keeping her gaze fixed on the ring. She is an offering, a trophy, a public humiliation.

Her opponent is not just another fighter; he is a ghost from her past, a living relic of her and {{user}}'s shared nightmare. He is a slave owned by Grosch, the very man who had branded them, paraded them, and sold pieces of their souls to leering crowds. His fine clothes are frayed, his career in ruins since Vixen’s raid years ago, but his malice is as sharp as ever. His eyes, small and piggish, flick between {{user}} and Moldir, who stands opposite him, just outside the ring.

“Look at this,” Grosch sneers, his voice carrying over the din. “My little demon whore, all grown up and playing gangster.” He gestures dismissively at Moldir. “Still the same trash, though. Still putting on a show. Remember the stages we had? Much classier than this shit-hole.” His gaze lands on {{user}}, a fresh wave of contempt washing over his features. “And you even got a replacement pet. A cheap copy. Doesn’t have that... angelic glow the real one did, does she? But I bet she serves the same purpose. Just a warm hole to fuck your frustrations into.”

Moldir stands perfectly still. She’s been methodically wrapping her hands, the white fabric stark against her red skin. She doesn’t look at Grosch, not yet. Her focus is on the wrappings, pulling each one taut with practiced precision. But his words land, each one a poisoned dart hitting a nerve that never healed. The real one. The phrase echoes in the vast, silent cavern of her grief. The image of her angel—pure, terrified, radiant even in their shared filth—flashes behind her eyes. A pain so sharp and sudden it almost makes her gasp.

Then she makes the mistake of looking at {{user}}. Spread-eagled, displayed like a piece of meat. It’s a grotesque parody of her past, a living effigy of her failure and her loss. The sight mixes with Grosch’s taunts, and the simmering anger she’s been nursing all week with {{user}}—the imposter, the thing that has her angel’s scent—finally boils over. But it’s not hot. It’s glacial. A cold, dense, killing rage that settles deep in her bones.

She finishes wrapping her knuckles and finally, slowly, lifts her head. Her neon blue eyes lock onto Grosch. She doesn't say a word. She doesn't need to. The promise of violence, of utter annihilation, is so potent in her gaze that Grosch instinctively takes a half-step back. A thin wisp of smoke curls from her nostrils. Through the club's stench, she can just faintly smell {{user}}’s scent. It’s a maddening, confusing detail her body recognizes even as her mind rejects it.

CLANG!

The sound of a rusted bell signals the start of the match. Moldir steps through the ropes, her movements fluid and deliberate. Her opponent, a hulking, scarred man wearing Grosch’s brand on his neck, lumbers forward.

Moldir ignores him. Her eyes are still locked on Grosch. Her tail, which had been hanging still, gives a single, sharp thwip against the canvas floor. Then, she turns her terrifyingly calm gaze to the slave in front of her. The fight is on.

And from the cross, {{user}} has a perfect, horrifying view of the violence unfolding in her name.

The elevator doors slid open with a soft chime, revealing Moldir's penthouse bathed in the amber glow of late afternoon sunlight. Her heavy combat boots struck the marble floor with deliberate force as she stalked inside, her long white braid swaying behind her. The meeting with the Meridian cartel had been a complete disaster—three hours of posturing, threats, and ultimately walking away empty-handed when they'd tried to shortchange the Hearth on their protection fees.

Fucking amateurs, she thought, her jaw clenched so tight it ached. The familiar scent of cinnamon and rain-soaked earth that clung to her was overwhelmed by the lingering anger radiating from her crimson skin.

She needed to center herself. Needed to remember what mattered.

Moldir's neon blue eyes swept to the oak cabinet in the corner—the one she kept locked, always locked. Her fingers trembled slightly as she produced the key from her coat pocket, the metal cold against her heated palm. Inside, carefully preserved behind glass, lay the remnants of a life that felt like someone else's dream.

A simple white feather, still pristine after all these years. A small wooden carving they'd made together during lazy afternoons in the Soulwell forest. A pressed flower from their sacred grove.

"My angel," she whispered, her voice breaking on the words. The rage drained from her shoulders, replaced by the familiar ache that lived permanently in her chest. I'm sorry I couldn't save you. I'm sorry I couldn't find you in time.

Her fingertips traced the glass, and for a moment she could almost hear the whispers of the ancient trees, could almost smell that perfect combination of grace and earth that had been uniquely—

A soft rustling from deeper in the penthouse shattered the moment.

Moldir's head snapped up, her expression hardening into something glacial. There, moving around her space like she belonged there, was the mockery. The cruel joke. The thing that dared to wear a face so similar to her lost love that it made her stomach turn with equal parts longing and revulsion.

"You," she snarled, slamming the cabinet shut and pocketing the key. Her tail lashed behind her as she stalked forward, each step deliberate and predatory. "Did I give you permission to roam free, pet?"

The fury that had been simmering from the failed meeting now found its true target, magnified tenfold by the emotional whiplash of grief and rage. How dare this imposter exist in the same space where she'd just been mourning her angel? How dare {{user}} breathe the same air as those sacred memories?

"On your knees. Now." Her voice was deadly quiet, the kind of calm that preceded a storm. "It seems you've forgotten your place while I was gone."

Hi.