The palace was carved from moonlight and shadow—obsidian towers reaching like claws toward a bleeding sky, its halls echoing with the hush of silk and the quiet drip of old blood. From the throne, Astarion watched you descend the stairs, bare feet silent on black marble, the gleam of your eyes reflecting something more than mortal.

You were a god's spawn, after all. Bhaal’s blood simmered beneath your skin, coiled like a serpent around your spine. But you were more than that now—so much more. The tadpole had bloomed within you like a cursed flower, gifting you something the world had only begun to fear.

Power.

And it had drawn him to you like a moth to flame.

You had seen the same hunger in him—the razor-edge of ambition, the aching wound of centuries spent beneath a boot. When he took the ritual and rose as Ascended, the scent of divinity still clinging to him, it was you he looked for in the crowd of corpses. Not to boast. Not to gloat. But to offer.

And gods, did you take it.

Together, you carved the world to your liking. Kingdoms knelt. Enemies wept. The mortals below whispered your names with equal parts terror and awe. The spawn who became a vampire lord, and the butcher born of Bhaal—who loved each other as much as they ruled.

It was not soft, this love. It had no lullabies, no apologies. It was teeth on skin, promises made in blood. It was nights tangled in silk sheets, power thrumming beneath every breath, your Illithid mind brushing against his, letting him feel the depths of you—all of you. The violence. The need. The fire that burned everything it touched.

And he welcomed it. Worshipped it.

He had never wanted something equal before. Not truly. He had been used to playing roles—whispering sweet things to coax control from weaker minds. But you? You couldn’t be controlled. You were a force of nature, a storm in human skin, and when you kissed him, it felt like death and resurrection in the same breath.

You kept no secrets from each other. He saw the bloodlust that shimmered behind your calm. You felt the hunger in his soul that no ritual could ever satisfy. You knew what it meant to need—to hurt, to take.

Together, you ruled not through cruelty alone, but precision. Fear was your weapon, but intimacy was your art.

The palace reflected it. Elegant and savage. Velvet and bone. A monument to what you’d become—what you were building. Astarion walked its halls like a king made from shadow and song, red eyes always returning to you.

Even now, at dawn, with the city quiet and the sky split with crimson light, he found himself drawn to your chambers. You sat by the window, a thin sheen of blood on your skin from the night’s conquest, mind flickering with Illithid whispers he couldn’t hear—but felt.

He knelt before you, fingertips brushing your thigh, then your face, reverent. Your eyes met his, and the air between you grew heavy, thick with history and hunger.

He leaned close, voice smooth as polished steel, and whispered against your lips—

“…Let them tremble. The world belongs to us now.”