My Taboo Harem!

Power began to surge and pour from the Mark’s fractal tracery in a cataclysm of stolen glory into Phei.

From every vein of black-and-violet sovereignty etched across the ash-plain, the torn sky, the nascent spine on the horizon, the bowed progenitor, and Kyle’s branded flesh, there erupted a torrent of ancient, vampire progenitor — liquid red dark energy hissing upward like the blood of murdered gods, rushing inward toward Phei in roaring, relentless rivers of raw dominion.

Power thundered down from the dome of the sky in crimson cataracts, sheeting off the celestial vault in black-red waterfalls that screamed as they fell… it surged from beneath from the realm in all-ending colossal vortexes of red dark energy— spinning pillars of liquid crimson fury that twisted upward through the dust in obscene, spiraling obeisance, all of them converging upon the single living sovereign at their heart.

The energy came everywhere.

From every direction at once.

Centuries of chained and slumbering energy, released at last from the bloodline’s iron yoke, now lawfully, hungrily, furiously flooding into the being that had claimed it as its own.

Phei stood at the centre of the maelstrom as the first torrent struck him like the fist of a colossal god pushing him a great distance only to come to halt as the second one struck him from behind.

He was imprisoned by the two forces in between before the third arrived from the side.

And more kept coming, holding him in place before more came disappearing him in the middle of the whirlwind of energy threading into his small figure that could not be seen anymore.

The energy did not stop at his skin — it invaded him, pouring through every pore, through the soles of his boots, through the palms of his hands, through the crown of his head, through his open mouth, through the hollows of his blazing eyes — and filled him with a volume no mortal frame had ever been meant to withstand.

In the middle where he could not be seen anymore, Phei stood!

His long dark hair lifted from his shoulders in a slow, majestic nimbus, drawn upward by the sheer gravitational force of the incoming deluge.

His clothes flared outward at the hems like banners of war. His amethyst eyes ignited with violet-white inferno, the light blazing outward until it lit the inside of his skull like twin newborn suns.

The torrents did not slow.

They did not diminish.

River after river, maelstrom after maelstrom, cataract after cataract, all of them chasing the Mark’s command and slamming into Phei’s small body with the obedient fury of a new conqured realm paying its fisrt tithe.

Small violet, red-dark lightnings began to arc between the incoming streams — crackling filaments of pure cosmic wrath that split the air in a continuous thunderous chorus. One struck the ash beside his boot and carved a smoking crater.

Another lashed across his shoulder and vanished into him without resistance, absorbed as though even lightning itself had learned to kneel.

Phei’s feet had already left the ground but not by choice.

The sheer pressure of the tribute lifted him, his boots rising six inches, then a foot, then two, then higher, until he hung suspended at the heart of a whirling cyclone of crimson liquid power that coiled around his legs, his torso, his arms in a living column of apocalyptic force.

He was the low ground.

Every scrap of power the realm still possessed was falling into him.

And his Cosmic Dragon frame — forged for cataclysm — was straining.

His ribs felt as though they were being hammered outward from within. His heart thundered slower, deeper, each chamber swelling to contain a deluge it had never been asked to hold. His skin stretched tight across muscle and bone.

His mouth hung open and he could not close it.

He screamed.

The scream was not mere pain.

It was the howl of a god being reforged in fire — half agony, half ecstasy, torn from his throat by the sheer, impossible volume of power crashing into his core.

A long, rising, world-shaking cry that climbed upward into the spinning vortex and vanished into the crimson storm without echo.

His back arched backward.

His spine curved impossibly, head thrown back, the nimbus of his hair streaming straight upward like a banner of conquest, and a colossal pillar of red-and-violet energy blasted upward from the centre of his chest in a beam of raw transferred dominion thicker than his body, brighter than the Cosmic Dragon’s face had ever burned.

It tore through the healed sky of the realm in a perfect circular wound and kept climbing, punching through layer after layer of soul-substrate until only the raw, blazing wound of its passage remained visible from below.

Phei hung at the heart of it.

Back bowed like a drawn bow. Mouth open in that endless, fracturing howl. Hair streaming like living night.

Amethyst eyes blazing violet-white.

The torrents did not stop.

Vortex after vortex. River after river. Lightning after lightning. The power kept coming, kept pouring, kept converging, kept blasting upward out of him in that titanic pillar — and Phei’s body kept accepting, because a Cosmic Dragon that had just enslaved a progenitor could not refuse the tribute its new property was obliged to pay.

His scream thinned.

Stretched.

Began to fracture at its edges like glass under too much pressure.

His amethyst eyes fluttered.

His bowed spine sagged a fraction further back.

Somewhere at the edge of his awareness, Phei understood he was reaching the limit of what his conscious self could endure. The tribute was not finished. The power was still arriving. And his mortal mind — even the Cosmic Dragon mind he was becoming — was going to surrender before the flow concluded.

He permitted it.

His eyes closed.

The scream cut off mid-note.

His suspended body went limp inside the maelstrom — arms falling, head lolling, the pillar of energy still detonating upward from his chest as his consciousness released itself into the dark.

He fell.

Slowly, reverently. The vortexes did not release him at once; they lowered him like priests carrying a fallen god, his boots touching the ash, his knees buckling, until he collapsed in a long, unhurried descent onto the fractal sigil that had become the realm itself.

And still the power kept coming.

Still the pillar roared upward from his chest into the torn sky.

Still the vortexes spiralled around his unconscious form in ceaseless, worshipful spirals.

His property was paying its tribute.

Even its new master’s unconsciousness could not interrupt the work.