Let The Dark Take Me

150 A.D.

The temple stood in silence above, its ancient stones nestled among towering woodland trees whose roots drank from deep, secret springs. Moss clung to its outer walls, and ivy curled along columns like protective green spells. But beneath the forest floor, buried under centuries of growth, the Sanctum pulsed with life.

Below marble columns carved with lovers locked in eternal, writhing embrace, the air was thick with breath and sweat and the glow of a thousand tiny fires. The scent of burning myrrh clung to the skin like memory, rich with oil and desire. Untouched by sun or rain, the chamber shimmered, as if held in the belly of something living.

Candles lined the edges, their light golden and low, flickering in rhythm with breath and the shifting of limbs. Wax wept from their bases, slow and molten, trailing down black-stoned sconces to the gleaming floor. The stone had been worn smooth by centuries of bare feet and knees. No dust lingered. No chill remained. Only heat, layered over generations, warming every crevice of the temple’s sacred interior.

Among the bodies gathering at the chamber’s edge, Tarin hesitated.

He had thought himself ready. In the months since Lian had spoken of the Sanctum in murmured fragments — always after dark, always with a strange reverence — Tarin had prepared. He had traced the old symbols into his thighs until the skin remembered their shapes. He had learned the prayers by silence. He had touched himself in mimicry, whispering names not his own. But the Sanctum was not story. It breathed.

His feet, slick with the oil they’d been anointed with at the threshold, gripped the warm stone. He had never seen this many people moving with such intent, such reverence. He had never felt this much heat without fire.

Beside him, Lian was already watching the basin at the Sanctum’s heart. The candlelight kissed the curve of his cheek, and his expression was unreadable. Part awe, part memory. He reached for Tarin’s hand without looking, and their fingers curled together like a reflex.

It was Lian who had brought him here. It was Lian who had knelt in the old garden and said, “If the Mirror ever opens for you, do not speak.” Tarin had laughed at the time. He was not laughing now.

“It’s always this warm?” Tarin whispered.

Lian nodded once. “Warmer, when it begins.”

Above them, archways loomed, every surface engraved with reliefs of erotic sacrifice — of men and women and those between, giving themselves over to pleasure as if it were the only language worth speaking. Some depictions showed figures with tongues pressed to stone, mouths open in silent adoration. Others bore the marks of binding: wrists looped in silk, chests arched in surrender, thighs parted as offerings. No one spoke of what happened to those who could not hold what was given. They were remembered only in the jagged curves of the murals, and the faint scars in the marble beneath them.

The Sanctum’s very shape seemed designed to echo moans. Stone curves guided sound inwards and upwards, carrying even the quietest breath to the central chamber. The air was always damp, always perfumed, always faintly trembling with the sound of want. Voices rose in loose harmony — never quite melody, but connected in some sacred rhythm. No word spoken here was ever wasted. Every sound became part of the offering.

Tonight, the chamber was full.

Bodies moved in slow waves, a tide of glistening skin and reverent hunger. Silk sashes hung from hips and shoulders; their colours muted beneath sweat and shadow. Some worshippers remained clothed, only half-undone, while others had shed everything but the marks left by others’ hands. They kissed with eyes closed, as though drunk on something older than wine. They moved with practiced ease, seeking not climax but communion. This was not the frenzy of the brothel nor the hunger of the street. It was something slower, deeper, a kind of worship that ached.

And worship was the word for it. Every movement in the Sanctum belonged to a shared devotion. No one came here simply to take. They came to be emptied. To be unmade. To be shown the limits of their own will, and then gently coaxed past them. Some prayed aloud, their voices quivering with effort. Others prayed in silence, with their thighs spread and eyes rolled back, lips parted as if receiving a breath from something divine.

Tarin could not look away. The ache was inside him now, low and humming, threaded with fear. He did not know what would be asked of him. Only that Lian had once returned from this chamber with bruises he would not explain… and a stillness in his body that Tarin had never been able to name. A quietness that clung to his breath for days.

The centre of the room was marked by a depression in the floor, a shallow basin ringed in symbols too old for spoken language. Within it, the first bodies had already begun to coil, wrapping arms around strangers, foreheads pressed to the stone. Oil slicked their backs, their chests, their bellies. It was said the oil was brewed in accordance with the original rites, that it tasted of salt and ash, that it made the skin more sensitive to sacred touch, that it quickened the blood and opened the soul.