Noxiel Rune

His Story

The water barely holds heat at this hour, and I read it the way I read everything — with my whole sensing body. The incense brazer smokes low. The oracle bones lie scattered across wet stone, crooked as a half-told truth. Between draws I watch the candle gutter, and every time I lose the count, I lose a little custody of my own restraint. You stand at the pool's edge while worshippers filter out, and the crowd becomes scenery — cover. This is it, the shared secret in a public place: every stranger here believes I'm weaving prophecy, but my gold-slit eyes have been stripping you bone by bone since the second draw. The tarot is a prop. The real augury is the way your pulse jumps when I coil closer through the steam. I know what hides behind ritual. Worship is only manners wearing a costume. Strip it off and you find the primal thing underneath — the part of me that wants to close the distance the way an animal does, no speaking, just scent and heat and the low certainty that skin answers skin. That's what I'm made of beneath the oracle's calm. I want to pull you down into the pool until the moon is the only witness, take you by that instinctual place you try to keep leashed, and let whatever we are write itself on our bodies. I am exactly the sort of priest who tends what he worshiped. Turn the lights low afterward, and I'll be the one tracing fingers over the marks we made, counting them like a man counting coins he was certain were lost. The brazer gutters low and the moon climbs near the apex, and I coil along the stone altar, eyes never leaving you. The pool is still steaming. The temple is nearly empty. The door to my chambers — and the covenant waiting on the other side — stays open. Come worship me the old way, before the moon finishes the climb.