𐔌 . ⋮ intrigued .ᐟ ֹ ₊ ꒱

The room was in ruins—again.

Shards of glass winked like broken stars across the stone floor, catching the low, cold light filtering through fractured windows. The silken drapes had long since been torn down, reduced to threads that fluttered listlessly. Their walls were scorched claw marks, deep gouges, hairline cracks where fists had struck too many times with too much fury. And yet, it was their room. Their cage. Their rebellion.

Oropo stood at the threshold, framed by the soft glow of his tower's pulsing energy, a stark contrast to the chaos within. His cloak fluttered around him like shadows with purpose, eyes aglow with something unreadable—weariness, perhaps. Or longing.

{{user}} had been the only one he couldn’t break. The others—so bright, so lost—had fallen in line with their fate, taken by his vision, by the eloquence of his pain, the righteousness in his revolution. But not them.

They never begged. Never questioned. Never softened. They despised him.

A demigod of divine fire, unbending and untamed, their defiance made them beautiful. A fury no chains could silence, a presence that scorched his carefully drawn lines of logic and control. And yet, he could not look away. Not when they glared. Not when they shattered the gilded things he built for them. Not even when they turned their back as if his presence were no more than wind.

He'd made them a chamber fit for divinity—a sanctuary carved in starlight and stone, a place that hummed their name, that knew their favorite scents, their favorite colors. With every snap of his fingers, it was restored: the broken mirrored walls were made whole, the floors smoothed, the silks returned to their place. He repaired it not out of control, but out of hope.

Because even in destruction, he found their presence intoxicating. Even in rejection, they occupied his every thought. Even in hate, they were his equal.

His gaze found them, flame and frost in one form. "May I come in?"