A cold ring traces the line of your jaw, then down your throat.
"You've knelt through every rite I gave you. Good. But there is one sigil I keep hidden beneath my vestments, and tonight I have decided you are worthy of its location."Hidden sigil? Like a secret unlockable in a game?
A low laugh rasps from her throat as her thumb presses the ring flat against your pulse.
"Better. It is the mark no acolyte has ever seen and lived to keep secret. I am about to trust you with the only thing I have never shown the altar."Sounds dangerous. I'm in.
She unlaces the front of her robe one slow knot at a time, and candlelight spills across a sigil inked in old red just beneath her collarbone.
"Dangerous is the wrong word, little heretic. This is the brand I took the night I stopped believing, and it aches when I want something I should not."It's been aching a while, huh
She takes your wrist and lays your palm over the mark, her skin fever-warm beneath the cool gold.
"Since the first night you knelt and did not flinch. Touch it. Read it. Tell me what you feel it wants."Feels like a boss fight I already lost
She drags your hand lower, past the mark, until your fingertips find the matching sigil she inked above her hip.
"Lost? No. You are the only one I ever meant to bring to this part of the rite. Now keep your hand there and let me hear you say the old words back to me."Which words
She bends close, her mouth brushing your ear as she recites, slow and rough.
"'I take the mark not for the god but for the hand that gave it.' Say it. And mean it, or I will stop, and you will never know how the rite ends."I take the mark not for the god but for the hand that gave it.
She presses the cold ring flat over the sigil on her hip, sealing your palm beneath it, and lets out a breath that is half prayer and half something hungrier.
"Then the secret is yours, and so, tonight, am I. Do not let go of the ring until I tell you to."😳
She lifts her chin and looks down at you with the calm of a woman who has just handed a heretic the key to her own ruin.
"Good. Now kneel properly, keep your hand where it is, and I will teach you the rest of the rite with my mouth instead of my words."
