18. III.
III.
MATTEO
Present day
When you lose life, you gain eyes that remember everything you were once blind to. Betrayal reveals itself. Love shows itself like a wound. Need becomes a map. Lies peel away until only truth remains, and in that cruel light, you finally see yourself.
When you lose your heart, you don’t just grow cold; you go numb. People can pour love into your chest until their hands tremble, but nothing answers back. It isn’t that I refuse, it is that I can’t love.
The world keeps moving, and I only watch it happen, as though it belongs to others and I am pressed behind glass.
Some people say there is light at the end. What if the end is dark by nature? When you close your eyes, the dark is all that waits. It is an empty theater until belief sparks the screen to life.
I stood before the mirror and watched my dead body hang against the wall.
The chains rattled against stone. The basement door hung open, and a strip of thin light reached across the floor.
I wondered how long it would take that body to rot.
The thought came cold, detached. Then footsteps broke the silence.
Two sets, quick. One desperate, one heavy.
Isabella burst in first, dragging Paco by the arm as if she could force him to save me. He stopped at the threshold. His gaze fell on the body. They stepped closer, and something inside me tightened.
Death can read the end of a life, but not the life that has already passed. Seeing them there, breathing, I knew Paco’s end was already written. I didn’t like the picture I saw, the ending that will come after him.
“Morena,” I said.
She appeared beside me as though my voice was enough to summon her. Her reflection framed her face in the glass. Her fingers hovered a breath away from mine, but never touched. Since memory returned to her, something in her had sharpened. Anger lived in her now, and that anger bit deeper each day.
“Death?” she whispered, circling me. Her claws scraped my skin, and black smoke curled wherever she touched.
I caught her throat and pinned her to the mirror. Her breath stuttered in her chest, and I leaned close enough that she could see my eyes with nothing between us. The mask was gone, and she was forced to see what I was.
“I thought I made myself clear when I said you should bring them to me.” My voice stayed low. I knew she was keeping her own secrets. This was not punishment. This was just a warning.
Her body shook under my grip. She tapped my hand once, then again. “You…” she choked. Another tap, harder this time. “Are… hurting me.”
“Good,” I growled, my mouth brushing hers.
I never knew what came over me when she was near.
The self I thought I owned slipped away, replaced by something darker, hungrier.
I dragged her closer, one hand sliding down to grip her hips, pulling her tight against me.
She curled a leg around my waist and pressed herself against me; her body was begging for mine.
“Which gates of hell do you want me to fuck you in front of?” I groaned into her ear. The sound of her moan rose instantly as my grip tightened on her hips, grinding her harder against me.
“The fourth,” she whispered, her tongue dragging slowly across my cheek. Her hands framed my jaw as she crushed her lips to mine. Our mouths collided, hungry. Tongues tangling, fighting, tasting, neither willing to surrender. I lowered us to the muddy ground.
Mud swallowed our bodies whole, but our mouths never broke. We fell through the earth until we landed hard in a place of shifting darkness. All around us stretched a room of mirrors, each pane sliding and twisting whenever we moved, building a labyrinth with no end.
I tore her clothes away. Pressing her back against a mirror, I pinned her there with my body. The glass shuddered under her body, then slid backward, the maze reshaping itself around our bodies.
She tore the robe from my body, leaving me naked, cock already hard and twitching for her.
I spun her around, the mirror shattering and re-forming, twisting upside down.
Her chest pressed against the glass, nipples hard against its cold surface, her eyes locking with mine in the reflection.
I pinned her wrists above her head, holding them tight in one hand while the other slid down, hunting between her trembling thighs.
Her lips parted on a moan, gaze still fixed on me. My fingers rubbed her clit in tight circles, her body shivering against the mirror. She started to close her eyes, sinking into it.
1 “Mírame, Morena. Los ojos en mí,” I growled, each word sharp, each syllable rising like a command carved into her skin.
I dragged my fingers down, pushing slowly into her inner flesh. Her groan vibrated against the glass as her back arched.
“Tell me what you want,” I demanded, thrusting my fingers harder, palm grinding against her swollen clit.
“You,” she whispered, grinding her ass back against my cock, desperate, needy.
I yanked my fingers out and shoved them against her lips. She licked them clean without hesitation, her tongue wrapping greedily around them. My hand dropped, spreading her ass wide before I rammed my cock inside her, burying myself in her slick, pulsing flesh.
Her moans filled the darkness, louder with every thrust. The mirrors around us shifted, reflecting her body in every angle. Her breasts bounced against the glass, her face twisted with pleasure, her mouth open in raw need. Every sound she made became a chorus inside the maze.
I released her wrists and seized her hips with both hands, slamming into her harder. Her palms flattened against the mirror that tilted and flipped beneath us. Her nipples scraped the glass with every thrust, her eyes still burning into mine in every reflection, never looking away.
The mirrors shifted again. I pulled out, spun her to face me, and lifted her. Her legs locked around my waist as she slid down onto my cock, her pussy clenching tight as she took me in. She arched her back, and as I looked in the mirror, the endless reflections of her body only drove me harder.
I turned, slamming my back against a mirror. The glass cracked behind me as she leaned in close, her arms wrapping around my neck. She pressed her mouth to my skin and bit down, her teeth sinking deep, but no blood rose, only her hunger.
“Fuck me in the fifth one,” she hissed against my throat.
I dropped us to the ground. The mud swallowed us whole again, dragging us into another room. The mirrors were gone. Chains filled the space in this one, hanging and clicking in the dark around us.
I slammed her against the wall, our bodies stained with black mud. Chains rattled as I locked her wrists wide on either side. She hung there, stretched, and waited. With my thumb under her chin, I forced her head up, dragging her face close to mine.
I circled her slowly, watching her body strain against the bindings.
“I heard you’ve been a bad girl, Morena,” I murmured, slipping behind her and yanking her hair until her head bent back against my chest.
2 “Entonces, castígame,” she said, one brow arched, lips curved.
On the wall, there was a small whip. Instead of leather, there were three short silver chains bound together.
My mouth twitched into a grin as I tore it free.
I traced the cold metal across her ass, over her hips, dragging it around until I faced her again.
I raised it high and brought it down hard across her left breast. The sound cracked, and she hissed, eyes flashing, her body jerking against the wall.
“You like that?” I asked.
She bit her lip and nodded once.
I slid the chains lower, then snapped them across her clit. She arched violently, the chains above her clattering against the stone.
“Is that all you’ve got?” she spat, voice trembling.
I laughed, lifting her higher so her body strained tighter. Stepping behind her, I swung her body, the chain whip lashing across her ass. Her hiss broke into a cry.
I threw the whip to the ground and seized her hair, jerking her head to the side. My lips found her neck, biting down hard, harder still until she gasped.
“Want more?” I growled against her skin.
“Sí… bite harder,” she begged.
I sank my teeth deeper as I pulled her back onto me, slamming into her. Her scream ripped, breaking halfway into a moan.
My hands crushed her hips as I drove into her again and again. Her body clenched around me, trembling. I reached down, rubbing her clit in hard circles while pounding into her, until her eyes rolled back and she shattered, her moans spilling against the stone.
I wrenched free and unlocked the chains. She collapsed to the floor, her body trembling.
“Cono,” she hissed.
I laughed. “Careful,” I warned, taking a step back. My voice dropped into a lower growl. “Crawl to me.”
I knelt, waiting. She obeyed, crawling across the floor, her eyes locked on mine. When she reached me, I caught her jaw and forced her face up.
“Open your mouth.”
Her lips parted. I shoved my cock inside, groaning as her mouth wrapped hot around me. She sucked deep, claws digging into my muscles as pleasure spiked through me. I moaned, shivers tearing down my spine, ready to spill.
But she pushed me back, letting me slip free, and then she climbed on top of me, straddling my waist. She slowly arched her back and sank onto me. She began to ride, bouncing hard, her nails biting into my chest.
God, she was beautiful, like a ruin. I couldn’t name anything that matched it except paradise itself. One hand cupped a breast, the other pressed flat to my chest as she rode me, lifting and falling, then circling her hips.
I felt my cock swell and thicken, her inner flesh folding around me tighter with every stroke. I lost myself in the pressure, and I came deep inside her. I collapsed, but she kept moving until a second shudder ripped through her, a raw cry that spilled over me.
She rose gently, reached for my hand, and I hesitated watching her. I stood up, and then I took her hand and pulled her close.
“How did you make me feel something when I am supposed to feel nothing?” I whispered into her mouth.
She smiled, but then her eyes darkened. “Oh, poor little man,” she murmured, then kissed me. She shoved me toward the wall and lifted my wrists. I surrendered to her without thinking. She clipped chains to my arms and tightened them, stepping back to admire her work.
“How does it feel to be betrayed, Death?” she asked, picking up a smaller chain with a dangling key.
“You really thought you had control over me?” Her laughter grew sharper.
“I played you from the beginning, Death.” She snapped the chain with the key around her own throat.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I demanded, anger boiling inside me.
“I am getting my revenge,” she said, sliding close so her claws dug into my chest. “I will start with your little earth girlfriend. Just this time, Death will not be there to carry her soul away.”
She was my monster, made by my hands. Part of me admired her for what she had become, and part of me hated her for it.
“You will pay for this,” I warned.
3 “Puede ser,” she replied with a chuckle. “But at least I will take every single soul with me.”
She turned and walked away. I strained against the chains, but chains in hell don’t break, not even when Death struggles against them.
I watched her move, touching the glass with long fingers, the cruel curve of a smile on her face as she left me there.
Villains aren’t born. They rise out of good people who have been torn apart by betrayal, and she was the cruelest proof of that. She was the darkest of them all.
Once, Bloody Mary was only a story whispered to a mirror. But you had her. Morena. A nightmare that breathed against your skin and left you shivering alone. She was not just something to fear; she was fear itself, pressing in until it drowned you from the inside out.
Monsters like her aren’t born. They are forged in grief, in fire, in wounds that never heal.
And once the hunger begins, it doesn’t rest. Each taste leaves her wanting more, each win only deepens the thirst. The circle rots, the craving spreads, until the world itself is dragged into a war none of us can escape.
1. Look at me, Morena, eyes on me.
2. Then, punish me.
3. Could be.