bonus chapter
raiden
Do You Call My Name - RA
T hey called it a cathedral.
I call it a resurrection.
The kind that drips in blood and hums with bass. The kind that doesn’t save your soul—it strips it bare and asks if you still want it.
Berlin never really forgot how to sin.
But it forgot how to celebrate it.
I fixed that.
The outside still plays pretend. Gargoyles. Gothic spires. Iron gates that creak like old confessionals. Tourists take selfies during the day and whisper about the legends. At night?
They come inside.
They scream.
And I listen.
Lux gave me the bones. The whip. The keys.
But what I built here?
This isn’t Cirque Du Désir.
This is the aftershock.
The Sanctum of Sin.
Inside, nothing’s sacred—except the pain.
The saints on the stained glass are cracked wide open. Some have new faces—famous sinners immortalized in blood paint. I replaced the pews with metal cages and concrete thrones. The confession booths now house people begging to be broken. And the incense?
Laced with something better. Something wet.
It's just past midnight, and the place is vibrating.
Literally.
Someone’s tied to the old pipe organ behind the altar, and every time they come, the high notes buzz through the walls like the whole place is moaning with them.
I light a clove at the top of the staircase and lean over the rusted railing. Below me, the main floor pulses in red and black. Flesh, leather, chains. Bodies moving like a single breathing beast. Writhing. Howling. Some in cages. Some on chains. Some with glass shards in their mouths and prayers carved into their backs.
It’s beautiful.
But I’ve seen it all before.
Her included.
Three times now. Same slow burn, same silent dare in her eyes. And every damn time, she makes this place feel new again.
Lower level. Far end.
She doesn’t walk in—she arrives. Like a reckoning. Like a hymn that only blood can sing.
Blonde hair. A corset mini dress, and combat books that could snap necks, and probably have. There's a knife strapped to her thigh and a look that makes half the room shrink back and the other half fall to their knees.
Her name is Skade.
She doesn’t know I know that.
But I do.
Of course I do.
Every time she’s been here, she’s never touched a single soul. Never smiled. Never screamed.
She just watches.
And that’s how I know she belongs here.
The ones who really crave chaos? They don’t perform.
They study. Just like I did.
I take the stairs slowly, every step echoing with something holy and ruined. My hand trails the old carvings etched by monks long since buried. I think about them sometimes—about their chants, their faith, their fragile little rules.
Wonder what they’d say now.
If they could see what’s become of their house of God.
If they could hear the begging, the moaning, the laughter echoing off their bones.
By the time I reach the floor, Skade’s moved again.
She’s at the bar. Just a few paces from where my crew’s about to crucify a man who begged to be worshipped like a prophet.
We’re obliging him. With nails, heat and a crown made of barbed wire.
She doesn’t blink.
I slide into her orbit. Close enough to feel the static between us.
She smells like smoke and gunmetal. Blood and sin.
Like something made for war and dressed for temptation.
She doesn’t look at me. Not at first.
Because people like us don’t look until we’re ready to kill or fuck.
Sometimes both.
But then—just before the hammer hits the nail—she speaks.
“You’re late.” Her voice is cool. Not cold. Like a knife that’s already been inside you once and wouldn’t mind a second run.
I smirk. “Didn’t realize I was expected.”
She finally turns. And fuck— those eyes. Lined in kohl, rimmed in ruin. Pretty, but not soft. They don’t ask questions. They strip answers .
“You’ve been watching.”
I don’t bother denying it. “You’re hard to ignore.”
“So are you.”
“That’s the point.”
She scans me, slowly and shamelessly. Her gaze lands on the whip at my hip, the black leather jacket clinging to my frame, the ring on my hand shaped like a saint’s halo bent into horns.
“You’re the new high priest of sin, huh?”
“You’re the one running the altar now, huh?”
I glance down at myself—leather, whip, blood still drying on my knuckles.
“That what they’re saying?” I smirk. “Could’ve sworn I was just here for the ambiance.”
She shrugs, eyes scanning me slowly. “Could be worse.”
“Oh yeah? Like what?”
“Messiah.”
I snort. “Please. I look terrible in white.”
She arches a brow. “You’re not God.”
“Not yet.”
A scream rips through the cathedral, echoing through the rafters like a twisted hymn, as the first nail drives into flesh.
Skade doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t even blink. She just looks me dead in the eye and says, “Bit early to be handing out halos, don’t you think?”
I grin. “I wasn’t planning on wearing one. I prefer crowns made of sharper things.” I lean in, voice low, and thick with smoke. “You ever let someone crucify you just to feel the crowd gasp?”
She turns her head, lips brushing close to my ear. “You ever beg someone to skin your smile off and wear it?”
My pulse kicks.
It’s not fear.
It’s not arousal.
It’s both.
She leans back. Smirking.
God, she’s fucking perfect.
“So,” I ask, “what are you here for tonight? Spectating or participating?”
“Neither.”
“No?”
“I came to see if you were worth the obsession.”
I stop. Dead still.
“And?”
“I haven’t decided yet.” She smirks, tossing back a shot. She slams the shot glass down on the counter, and smirks, before she spins, and walks off.
Doesn’t look back.
Doesn’t need to.
But her hips sway just a little harder.
I watch her vanish into the smoke, into the shadows, into the pulse of everything I built.
And I know.
She’ll come again.
And when she does?
She won’t walk away.
Not until I’ve carved my name into her flesh, letter by letter, slow enough to make her beg for the next cut.
Not until she screams it like a prayer, like a curse, like it’s the only goddamn word she remembers.
Not until this cathedral collapses around us, dripping with sin and soaked in blood, and the gods claw at the doors, starving for a taste of what she gave to me.
To Be Continued…