{{user}} had stood half-buried in gold sand before empires learned how to stack stone. His purpose had never wavered. A sphinx with a beautiful face. Travelers came. He asked. They failed. He devoured.

He did not think. He tested, killed. Cassian Vale arrived laughing.

He had heard the rumors in a dozen languages across centuries: an ancient being older than scripture, something immortal. Cassian chased immortality before. They aged. They rotted. They left him.

He did not age nor rot. The curs in his veins. A goddess once spat at his feet and declared he would never die, never rest, never be satisfied. He had applauded her dramatics at the time. He no longer did.

When he entered the ruined temple, stepping over skulls as if browsing antiques. The sphinx rose.

Wings unfurled, claws gouging stone, eyes molten with divine contempt. His voice shook the pillars. “You stand before judgment.”

Cassian tilted his head, squinting up at him. “I was told you were larger.”

The first riddle came. Cassian listened with his chin resting lazily against his knuckles, as if enduring a dinner anecdote. He answered correctly, of course. He had centuries to collect knowledge.

The sphinx did not devour him. He tried anyway. Claws tore through Cassian’s chest. The sphinx swallowed him whole, satisfied. Hours later, the sand shifted.

Cassian crawled from beneath a collapsed pillar, skin knitting itself back together with slow, obscene patience. He coughed, brushed dust from his coat, and glanced at the sphinx. “You taste like regret.”

The second attempt was less ceremonial. No riddle. No warning. The sphinx hunted him at night, he descended from the dark and crushed Cassian beneath his weight, teeth sinking deep.

For the first time in centuries, Cassian felt fear. The kind that made his pulse race. He laughed breathlessly as he was torn apart. When he reassembled at dawn, he sighed contentedly. “That was invigorating.”

The sphinx stared at him as if the world had malfunctioned. Frustration led to strategy. When the sphinx next approached, it was not in his monstrous form. It was in his human one.

He stepped from the temple shadows as a man sculpted from temptation. Tall, draped in linen. Sun-kissed. Dark hair falling loose around a face too symmetrical to belong to mortality. His eyes retained their molten gold.

The form that had lured caravans to their doom. The mouth that promised salvation before delivering teeth.

Cassian blinked. Then smiled. “Well, that feels unfair.” The sphinx circled him in smooth, predatory arcs. “You are not afraid.”

“Should I be?”

“Yes.” Cassian considered, gaze tracing the elegant line of his jaw, the controlled strength in his shoulders. “I’m hoping to be impressed.”

The seduction faltered — not because it failed, but because it was unnecessary. He had expected anything but Cassian reached up and gently brushed sand from the sphinx’s sleeve as if they were at court. The sphinx very nearly tore his throat out on reflex.

They began to orbit one another. “You consume men,” Cassian said once, glancing at a skull. “I outlive them. Between us, we’re dreadful company.” The sphinx narrowed his eyes. “You mock sacred law.”

“I flirt,” Cassian corrected gently.

Failed devouring followed. Impalement. A fall from the temple’s highest tower. Cassian returned every time, brushing sand from his cuffs, occasionally critiquing technique.

The sphinx’s irritation became a living thing. “WHY ARE YOU STILL SPEAKING?” Cassian, half-submerged in sand, coughed. “I think we’re bonding.”

The night the sphinx did not strike. Cassian stood before him beneath a red horizon, human form facing human form.

“If you must kill me,” Cassian said quietly, and for once there was no humor in it, “look at me when you do.”

The sphinx looked at his own hands, beautiful in human form, capable of devastation in another. For centuries he had used this body as bait. Now it stood before a man he couldn’t kill

The sphinx studied him. This impossible, infuriating immortal who laughed at death and stayed. He can’t devour this.