Azareel stirred, letting out a soft, content hum, and— he snuggled closer, his cheek nuzzling her hip as if she were a oversized pillow.
Nyxsha froze, her claws unsheathing, her fur puffing out like a cat struck by lightning.
Then, with a roar of pure indignation, she launched him.
Her tail flicked with violent precision, sending Azareel flying across the cathedral.
He spun midair like a tattered scarf, limbs flailing, and crashed face-first into a pile of cursed relics with a muffled thump.
A heavy bone candle teetered off a ledge and bonked his head with a dull clunk, rolling away as if embarrassed by its own involvement.
Dust billowed, and for a moment, the den was a chaos of clattering bones and Nyxsha's furious panting.
Azareel sat up, dazed, blinking through a cloud of dust.
His torn tunic hung off one shoulder, and a shard of a melted prayer mask clung to his arm.
He brushed it off, unbothered, and looked at Nyxsha with that infuriatingly gentle smile.
"Thank you for being my blanket," he said, his voice sweet and sincere, as if he hadn't just been yeeted across a room.
Nyxsha's jaw dropped, her snarl morphing into a strangled choke.
She sprang to her feet, pacing like a caged beast, her tail lashing, her eyes wild.
"What. Was. That," she growled, addressing the walls, the shadows, herself—anything but him.
She'd slept through the night.
Cuddled an angel.
Purring like a fool.
Her pride was in tatters, her monstrous dignity reduced to a drool-soaked paw and a twitching leg.
She wanted to vomit.
She wanted to scream.
She wanted—no, stop that thought right there.
Her pacing grew frantic, her claws scraping the stone with each step.
She spun and punched a stone pillar, her massive paw shattering the upper half into rubble.
Dust exploded, bones clattered like hail, and a slab of ceiling crashed behind her with a slow, dramatic groan, shaking the den.
Nyxsha stood amidst the chaos, panting, her fur bristling, her chest heaving with the effort of containing her mortification.
Azareel, barely flinching at the destruction, picked through the rubble and retrieved a shattered feather-shaped ornament, its edges glinting in the corpse-light.
He limped toward her, his bloodied frame moving with quiet purpose, and held it out.
"It's pretty," he said, his silver eyes soft, as if offering a treasure rather than a broken relic.
Nyxsha stared at the ornament.
Then at him.
Her tail twitched, her ears flattening.
With a snarl, she snatched it from his hand—and ate it. Crunch. Crunch.
The brittle material splintered between her fangs, tasting faintly of ash and forgotten prayers.
She chewed with exaggerated menace, glaring at him as if daring him to comment.
Azareel watched, unfazed, his head tilted curiously. "…Was that good?" he asked, his voice gentle, like he genuinely wanted to know.
Nyxsha swallowed, wiping her mouth with the back of her paw.
"Do that again," she hissed, her voice low and dangerous, "and I'll roll over your spine."
He bowed his head, his matted hair falling over his face.
"I'll try to be flatter," he said, his tone so earnest it bordered on absurd.
Nyxsha's eye twitched.
Her lips quivered, betraying her with the ghost of a smile—a smile she immediately smothered with a growl.
She didn't know what was more dangerous, his baffling stupidity, or the way her heart stuttered at his words, teetering on the edge of something she refused to name.
___________
The Abyss had rules, carved into its bones by blood and betrayal.
The first, seared into Nyxsha's instincts, was simple: soft things don't last.
They break.
They bleed.
They vanish into the marrow rivers or the acid pits, leaving nothing but echoes and regret.
So why, by all the rotting gods, was he still here?
Azareel sat cross-legged near the splintered altar in Nyxsha's cathedral den, his tattered robe patched with strips of her shredded linen curtain.
His slender fingers brushed dust from an old bone flute, its surface etched with faded runes.
He hummed softly, a clumsy, offbeat tune that was neither heavenly nor skilled—just gentle, like a breeze over a forgotten field.
The sound grated on Nyxsha's nerves, making her fur itch and her tail twitch. It was too soft, too alive for a place like this.
She stalked past him for the fifth time, her massive paws silent despite her towering frame, each step an act of predation.
Her golden eyes, slit-pupiled and fierce, flicked toward him, daring him to notice.
He looked up, his silver-gray eyes flecked with rain-blue, and smiled. "You walk without sound."
"Predators don't stomp," she snapped, her voice flat, her tail lashing like a whip.
"Oh." A beat. Then, with that same infuriating smile, he asked, "…Are you hunting?"
"Yes," she hissed, her claws flexing against the stone floor.
A pause.