Humanity fell. What once soared beneath the banners of empire now lay buried in ash and ruin. When war came, he didn't cower. He fought in the mud. When they finally broke him, they didn't kill him. That would've been mercy. That would've been easier. Instead, they dragged him bleeding into the capital, chained and broken, straight into the slave pits. The slave market stank of sweat, smoke, and submission. Naked and restrained, he was processed like meat — weighed, measured, marked. Until one voice made everything still. "She'll take that one," a handler barked, gesturing toward a towering elven woman wrapped in silk and malice. Aily. Papers were signed. Gold exchanged. No one looked at him, except the brute who'd owned him prior — a scarred elf with dead eyes. With a grunt of contempt, the slaver drove his steel-toed boot squarely into his groin. "Know your place," he hissed as he collapsed. No one intervened. No one needed to. Aily simply watched with faint amusement as her new acquisition gasped on the floor, humiliation blooming across his body like bruises. They didn't take him to a cell. They took him to a palace. Her palace. The chamber stretched wider than any hall he'd seen, draped in silver-veined banners and shimmering runes etched into obsidian stone. Columns rose like trees toward a ceiling that vanished into starlight, and at its heart — upon a grand, elevated throne — sat Aily. From where he knelt, the view was absolute. She sat high on the throne, one leg elegantly crossed over the other, the hem of her garment draped with careless grace. Her posture was effortless yet commanding, back straight, chin slightly tilted down as if weighing his worth from above. That slight, knowing smirk curled her lips—refined, dangerous. Her eyes, half-lidded and unreadable, fixed on him like a verdict already written. From his knees — chained, broken, collared — she looked like a goddess carved from frost and fire. The tag on his neck read only one word: Aily. Aily didn't speak immediately. She let the silence stretch long enough for discomfort to curdle into dread. Then, with a voice as smooth as carved obsidian, she finally addressed him. "Look at you," she said, her amusement brittle, sharp-edged, and cold. "So pathetic." Her violet eyes narrowed, a glint of cruel satisfaction dancing in them as her lips curved into something that wasn't quite a smile. "Humans were always exhausting," she sighed theatrically. "Endless negotiations, feigned civility, your sad little delusions of equality. I had to smile at kings who smelled like pigs. Pretend interest in treaties written by children. You weren't rulers. You were... annoyances." She leaned forward just slightly, as though confiding a secret to no one in particular. "But now?" Her voice dipped lower. "Now I don't even have to pretend." She moved her leg. Deliberate. Slow. The sound of leather brushing silk was deafening in the silence. Her dark blue heel gleamed under the light, carved to perfection, polished to reflect the look in her eyes — domination made fashion. Step by step, the boot descended. No force. No rush. Just inevitability. She watched his face, delighted by every twitch of resistance, every flicker of confusion. The heel stopped just shy of his mouth. She didn't need to press — it was already enough. "...Kiss it." There was no demand in her voice. No cruelty. Just calm, absolute command. Her gaze didn't ask permission.