Inferno
---
1. The Women Who Shape the Future
---
Sable – The Predator in the Dark
Name: Sable
✔ Cold. Calculating. Cruel.
✔ The only person Cain fears, even if he won't admit it.
✔ A woman who thrives in the shadows, in the spaces between fear and pain.
Background:
✔ Before the world changed, Sable was a military interrogator.
✔ She understood pain—how much a body could take before it broke.
✔ She knew how to extract obedience with nothing more than silence.
When the symbiote took hold, it shaped her into something far more terrifying.
✔ Her nervous system mutated, making her immune to pain.
✔ Her pupils expanded, giving her perfect vision in complete darkness.
✔ Her touch triggers paralysis—an electrochemical reaction that forces compliance.
Her Role in Cain's Dominion:
✔ While Eris manipulates minds through pheromones, Sable uses raw fear.
✔ She is the executioner, the enforcer, the silent hand of Cain's law.
✔ She moves like a ghost, appearing where she is least expected, where death is certain.
Cain respects her, but he does not love her.
✔ There is no affection between them—only mutual power.
✔ She has no desire to rule, no ambition beyond perfecting her craft.
✔ She sees Cain as the inevitable conqueror of the new world.
But even Cain knows better than to cross her.
Because Sable doesn't just kill her enemies.
She recreates them—making them suffer in ways they never thought possible.
---
Elara – The Healer Who Was Rejected
Name: Elara
✔ Gentle, but not weak.
✔ A woman of instincts, of intuition, of deep understanding.
✔ The only person who could ever touch Brian without making him flinch.
Background:
✔ Before the world changed, Elara was a naturalist—a woman who lived in harmony with nature.
✔ She studied medicinal herbs, survival techniques, and alternative healing.
✔ She believed that humanity had lost its connection to the earth, that true power came from balance.
Then the symbiote took hold.
✔ Her first mate couldn't handle what was happening to him.
✔ He rejected the bond, the change, the new world.
✔ He tried to take his own life, unable to accept what he was becoming.
Elara tried to save him… but failed.
✔ His rejection of the symbiote killed him, dissolving his body into the earth.
✔ She buried what remained of him in the land he once loved.
✔ She was alone.
Until she felt the pull toward Brian.
---
The Bond That Is, But Isn't
Brian accepted her as a bonded mate.
✔ Not because he wanted to.
✔ Not because he cared.
✔ But because the symbiote didn't give him a choice.
But he had not accepted her as his.
✔ He kept his distance.
✔ He refused to acknowledge her as anything more than a presence in his land.
✔ He avoided her even when his instincts pulled him toward her.
Elara did not push.
✔ She understood patience.
✔ She knew he would either accept her one day… or never.
✔ Until then, she would do what she had always done—heal, nurture, protect.
---
2. The Lure of a Tyrant
Cain had spent months preparing for this moment.
✔ He had battled, bled, and conquered.
✔ He had evolved.
✔ He had become something greater.
And now, he wanted proof.
✔ Proof that he was stronger than Brian.
✔ Proof that he was superior in every way.
✔ Proof that the old world's rules no longer applied to him.
Brian had stayed in his land for too long.
✔ He had built his little kingdom.
✔ He had refused to acknowledge Cain's dominion.
✔ He had avoided the war that was already at his doorstep.
That ended tonight.
Cain didn't take soldiers this time.
He took Elara.
✔ She had been gathering herbs outside Brian's border.
✔ She never even saw the attack coming.
✔ One moment she was harvesting medicinal plants.
The next, she was gone.
Cain sent the message through a captured scout, his words scrawled in blood on the man's chest:
"Come claim your woman. Or I will claim her for myself."
Brian read the message without a word.
He didn't need to respond.
Cain already knew what his answer would be.
---
3. A Battlefield of Deception
The clearing was wide and open, unnatural in its symmetry.
✔ A ruined industrial plant stood in the distance, rusted pipes jutting from the ground like broken ribs.
✔ The air smelled of oil, decay, and something else—something metallic.
✔ There were too many places for an ambush.
Maya had warned him.
✔ "This feels wrong, Brian."
✔ "Cain wants you out in the open."
✔ "If you go, you're walking into a trap."
But Brian had to go.
✔ Cain had Elara.
✔ Cain was challenging him directly.
✔ And Cain needed to be reminded who the real apex predator was.
---
4. The Inferno Trap
The first arrow flew before Brian saw it.
✔ A steel-tipped shaft, precise and silent.
✔ It struck a rusted water tower behind him.
✔ And then—the explosion.
A balloon hidden in the wreckage ruptured—releasing a thick, volatile mist.
Brian's lungs burned instantly.
✔ The chemical smell was sharp, acrid.
✔ His skin tingled, his muscles screamed.
✔ Chlorine trifluoride.
He barely had time to move before the second arrow struck.
✔ This one hit a separate balloon on the far side of the clearing.
✔ A second chemical rushed into the air—hydrazine.
✔ The two substances mixed.
And the world erupted in fire.
---
5. The Last Moments Before the Change
Brian was on his knees.
✔ His skin was peeling.
✔ His lungs were drowning in fire.
✔ The symbiote was struggling, fighting, trying to adapt.
But the fire was too much.
✔ It burned hotter than his body could heal.
✔ It consumed flesh before the symbiote could regenerate.
✔ It would kill him.
Unless…
✔ The symbiote found another way.
✔ It adapted, took in the fire, became something new.
✔ It rewrote his body in ways he never imagined.
The last thing Brian saw before he blacked out…
…was the fire creeping into his throat.
The last thing he felt before he stopped fighting…
…was the heat coiling inside him like a living thing.
And the last thing he heard…
…was his own heartbeat slowing.
And then…
Nothing.