Iris touched the ancient pulsating grey door. Its wood-like surface rippled waves of rigid veins within which unknown liquid flowed. Behind it, low thumping noises howled, reverberating muffled screams of the monstrosity from unreality.

These soundless screams evoked unpleasant memory of her dismemberment, her utter disintegration in body and mind which, although lasting for mere moments, still scarred her soul with a phantom chill.

Once so terrifying, the Void Creatures now no longer exhibited that all-encompassing aura. Their powers proved no more inexplicable. They were mere beasts of nothingness, powerful but surmountable.

Flowery thoughts budded in her heart, covered her exhausted mindscape, and painted her a hopeful future. She had taken another step forwards on this foggy road.

Opportunities and losses passed her by, yet she persisted. She would persist until she grabbed her wish, held it tight such that it could never slip away.

Behind her, Ludmint kept silent while peeking at her Iris’s ambiguous smile, which contained suppressed delight and lethargy.

Ludmint imprinted that transient mood unto her heart, cherishing it as a significant moment where the façade vanished, and visceral feelings shone through.

Antina raised her right hand. Her translucent dark barrier expanded to cover Iris, but Ludmint tapped Antina’s arm, telling her to stop. She reluctantly complied.

“Aren’t you worried?” Antina said. “The curse may strike at any time.”

“You said I was the overprotective fiancée.”

“Am I now her fiancée?”

Ludmint raised her brows. “Antina, I’ll have to fight you if you insist.”

“Does the winner get to be her fiancée?”

As Ludmint and Antina argued, Iris mischievously laughed. Her tone dispelled their flirtatious tension. Not waiting for them to recompose themselves, she pushed open the door into the void.

Howls of the void vanished, leaving freezing silence to dominate the perimeter where not even air dared to move, winds to blow. The colourless, motionless nothingness twisted the fabric of reality, which disintegrated, shattered, and imploded into non-space where laws of reality held no sway.

A Void Creature rose from its eternal stillness and peered through the barrier between Planes. Its spectral sight diffusely penetrated the mist-filled membrane constructed by Black Polylith, and the only presence it detected was that of a mundane maiden.

This maiden, whose body revealed no vitality, whose gaze bore no emotion, gave the beast a sense of impossible familiarity. This girl, a being of flesh and matter, exuded a scent belonging to the void, a scent so alluring, so tempting, that nothing could resist.

They must have her. Her essence would bring them closer to their completion, to their cryptic origin, which they’d been chasing since they materialised.

Against the unformed pressure, Iris flicked her right hand. Invisible blades made of pure energy rocked the interdimensional barrier, rippling its destructive wave through the weary door and at the tide of sentient blackness.

Abominable maws extended from the darkness and devoured the Corruption Power. Their spewing, sliding teeth crushed even the smallest magical particle into void dust.

Purple fumes exploded and invaded the material world. Their nasty scent decayed the black tiles and dimmed the golden liquid, yet they failed to reach Iris, stopped by an unseen force, forever separated from her delicate, enticing membrane.

A spear comprised of radiant bubbles appeared in Iris’s right hand. She flung it into the white void. Its tip pierced through the empty canvas, tainting it with starlight blue, and arrived at the Void Creature.

The creature rapidly grew its flesh until it covered the field seen through the grey door. Its decayed fangs bit on the spear. A soul-wrenching rumble rent the translucent barrier.

The broken spear dispersed as bubbles. They fused with the Void Creature’s flesh, disintegrating it into particles of light.

Screeching, the creature fled. Its shrivelled tentacles pulled back and revealed the tainted whiteness where dots of light slowly burned away. This dying radiance shone upon the purple fumes and washed their foreign power off reality.

Iris looked at the fleeing creature and closed her eyes. Her slime body turned spectral and faint. Her azure Corruption Power shifted its shade to ghostly silver. A lovely silhouette, rising from her memory, superimposed onto her figure. Her body reshaped itself into that of a mature, charming, and calm fiancée of hers.

A fluctuating mood alternating between worry and excitement overcame her. She lifted her right hand, unfurled it, and clenched tightly. Her silver Corruption Power burst with a momentous impact that blew apart her arm and parts of her torso, exposing her Shadow Heart Core to the still air.

Yet she smiled.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

The terrified Void Creature receded deep in nothingness, its speed sending thunders that destroyed the smaller, weaker beasts in its path. That power reminded it of the terrible lady, whose craziness awakened its long-dormant danger instinct.

It had to get away, or it would die. But no matter how much it burned its mass to accelerate itself, it failed to distance itself from the portal.

The lawless void lifted and sank, pulling and tugging at the Void Creature whose futile struggle ended in its stagnant motion. It glared its myriad eyes at Iris before bubbles overwhelmed its vision and mind.

Once Iris’s power returned to her, she lost Ludmint’s aura. Her slime paled as she swayed to the side.

The ancient grey door swung shut. She fell sidewards.

Ludmint delicately caught her magnificent wife, whom she kissed and embraced so tenderly.

“You’re truly beautiful,” she said.

“Was it me, or was it you?”

“Your power terrifies your wife, Iris.”

Iris let out a burning pant. Her slime gradually regenerated her torso and arm. She decided not to refuse the way Ludmint addressed her. “We’ll be equal soon.”

“We’ve always been equal.”

“Do you have someone else in your heart, too?”

Ludmint bashfully averted her eyes. “You’re above me, Iris. I dare not love others.”

“Even with my permission?”

“The heart is unpredictable. I cannot command love; it commands me.” Ludmint forced herself to meet Iris’s shimmering eyes. “Why should I love someone else?”

Iris now averted her eyes, guilt rising like tides. “Why should you not?”

“My heart is too small for others to enter. You alone, Iris, you alone take most of me.”

“That’s not our nature. We love freely, passionately, madly.”

“You’re my madness, Dear.”

“I cannot be . . . your sole.”

Antina came from behind Ludmint and wrapped her arms around the couple, squeezing them closer. Her eyes caressed Iris’s pulsating membrane until Iris’s shame boiled her slime pink.

“May I charm her, Iris?” Antina eyed Ludmint, who carefully drew away her gaze. “She’s really too romantic.”

“What are you doing?” Ludmint said.

“Seizing your heart, with your fiancée’s permission.”

Ludmint turned to Iris, but Iris ignored her and nodded feebly at Antina. “I don’t care anymore. Make her understand, please.”

Iris’s body melted out of Ludmint’s grip and reformed a distance away. Ludmint wanted to chase after her moody lover, but another pair of playful hands restrained her, pulled her into an embrace of nightly pleasure, and made her heart palpitate with uncomforting itches.

Ludmint’s voice gushed out of her lips, which pressed against Antina’s. It crawled into Iris’s head and burned her inside, churning her slime around her sensitive core. Her fatigued body shivered. Yet she refused to turn around.

Illusions of two Monster Girls naked and fused incessantly played in her mind. Their ecstatic tones varied with their adventurous motions, rising and falling from the highest peaks and lowest depravity.

Mixed within was an invitation, a taboo idea that aroused her instinct.

She thoughtlessly exhaled, her sensual voice leaking out of her soul. Her hands moved to her chest but restrained themselves. She shook her head and focused everything on the sealed grey door.

The quiet screams from the void could not suppress the moans from the concealing veil.

Iris grasped at the air. The black monoliths composing the floor rose to meet her palm and rearranged themselves into a dull, rusty key whose aura slackened the atmosphere and the tempting noises in her mind.

She hovered the key before the door.

It felt like she was escaping from the truth.

The fact that Ludmint was with Antina, the fact that Ludmint only loved her, they tormented her. Happiness should be her feeling, yet she felt appalled, disgusted by her selfishness, her arrogance that such a fragile heart of hers could hold so many promises while her Ludmint purely held one.

The thought of Ludmint’s embracing Antina too pained her. She wanted Ludmint to love others, not because she desired it, but because she was guilty of it.

How disappointing. She sighed.

“Guilt, isn’t it agonizing?”

Iris tensed up. This spectral voice wasn’t Antina’s or Ludmint’s. She glanced behind her. A lady in a luminous white wedding dress, clouded in a pinkish mist, smiled at Iris. Though her veil of purity covered her face, her identity remained vivid in Iris’s racing heart.

Iris slammed the key into the door and ran into it. Her body splashed and phased through the door, but she failed to shift her gaze away from the most beautiful Monster Girl in her world.

Nupian mischievously blew a kiss at Iris, imprinting it on the side of her neck. It burned through the membrane and sank within the slime, heading for Iris’s core.

Antina and Ludmint ceased their activity as an oppressive omen loomed over them. They turned to Iris and witnessed her descent into the void.

Nupian turned around to face them, and she now appeared in front of their entangled bodies. Her presence transcended their perception. They couldn’t even feel her chilly breath caressing their sensitively red flesh.

“How lovely.” Nupian touched Ludmint’s cheek. Her pink mist surrounded Ludmint’s trembling body. “Everyone would love to have your company, Ludmint.”

Antina paled. Her soul, a fragment of her mother’s, violently shrieked. Antina perspired, her Domain of Nightly Concealment unravelling. Nothing she could do could stop it.

“Antina, you too are beautiful.” Nupian took a light wisp of Antina’s scent. “Our Iris is too adorable, isn’t she?”

Nupian stayed her hands. These two belonged to her Iris. Taking them would only hurt her Iris, who must never come to harm.

They would meet again soon. She chuckled.

As Iris submerged deep in the void, Nupian’s silhouette dispersed as the pink mist that vanished like it never existed. The tyrannical aura left alongside her, leaving Ludmint confused and Antina anxious.

A single thought rose in their minds. Where was Iris?

They rushed into the void. An intensely fragrant scent assaulted their senses, not just smelling but also hearing and sight.

Iris’s nonphysical aura manifested as a tempest of liquified desires. Every droplet made of condensed emotions flooded the interplanar dimension with insatiable yearning, the longing that drove all mindless Void Creatures savage.

At the centre of the storm, Iris weightlessly floated with her eyes closed. Her heart rhythmically pulsed, clicking with her rotating consciousness.

Her grip over exhaustion lost, she fell into a peaceful slumber.

…

Iris opened her eyes. A sea of milk-white fog obscured her vision. Through transient gaps which appeared and disappeared with every blow of imaginary winds, she saw dizzyingly tall bricked walls of ice-blue colour standing against the flowing all-masking ocean.

Coldness beyond measure seeped inside her mortal body. She examined herself and found that she had once more returned to her human body, naked and vulnerable, pure and dull.

She called for Duality, for Shadow Heart Core, and, in her expectant tone, for Vilia. None answered her plead; she was alone.

Before her reminiscence reached her, the sounds of hurried footsteps shattered her concentration. Her eyes regained their clarity.

In the fog in front of her, a lady in a leaf-woven dress ran through the snowed grassland. Her expression beamed like sunlight amidst a cloudy day.

Sensing a foreign gaze, Nupian stopped in her track and turned to the mysterious lady, whose naked body shimmered above the snow, like a goddess resting in her paradise.