My Taboo Harem!

The doors of the punishment cave began to open with a roar deep enough to shake dust from the ceiling.

Two mountainous slabs of black stone dragged themselves apart, their hidden mechanisms grinding through the walls with the tortured complaint of something being forced open; the sound rolled through the cave and returned in heavier echoes until the entire hollow seemed to tremble beneath the Heavenchild estate.

Light spilled from the colossal underground hall beyond the doors, broad and golden, flooding across the cave floor in a widening path before the darkness that had ruled the chamber retreated back over the walls and gathering inside cracks too narrow for the brilliance to reach.

At the rear of the cave, where the shadows remained thickest, a figure slowly emerged.

Anahita raised one pale hand over her eyes.

For several breaths, she seemed less like a prisoner being revealed and more like something the darkness had reluctantly surrendered.

Silver-blonde hair hung in tangled strands around her face and shoulders, robbed of its usual celestial lustre by dust, dried blood, and days without care. Bruising darkened the delicate skin around her throat, ribs, wrists, and ankles, each mark carrying the unmistakable shape of restraints that had bitten into her flesh and remained there long after an ordinary body would have gone numb.

The plain white shift hanging from her body had torn along one shoulder and beneath the ribs:

It barely qualified as clothing, though that had always been the intention; every humiliation felt witnessed, and every fresh injury measured against the last.

Her bare feet rested against freezing stone stained with old blood.

Chains still bound her in overlapping patterns; some bound her wrists, ankles, waist, and throat, joining six iron rings sunk deep into the cave wall; unlike before, now frost covered every link, though the cave itself was not cold enough to create it. The chill seemed to come from the restraints, a deliberate cruelty designed to gnaw through flesh, essence, and soul at once. It never dulled. It never became familiar.

It merely continued, patient and intimate, teaching pain the shape of eternity.

Or maybe it was Lucienne’s illusion of what anyone entering would see and believe Anahita had been here the entire time.

Only the two women knew really.

At the front a man entered the cave adorning the white and gold uniform of a Heavenchild like he was some prison attendant. He was broad through the shoulders, his dark hair beginning to grey at the temples, and his face possessed the vacant discipline of someone who had opened many cells while carefully avoiding curiosity about what occurred inside them.

A silver emblem shaped like six folded wings rested over his chest.

He walked several paces into the cave before stopping.

"Ma’am, Anahita."

His voice travelled through the hollow and returned as a low distorted echo.

"The young lord has ordered your release."

Anahita slowly lowered her hand from her eyes.

Her pale gaze settled on him, luminous despite the wounds and exhaustion carved across her appearance. She offered no question and no visible relief, only the quiet attention expected from a servant awaiting the next instruction. The attendant turned toward a small crystal protruding from the wall beside the entrance. While dormant, it resembled a blue thorn trapped inside the stone, no longer than one of his fingers, though faint pulses of light moved beneath its translucent surface.

He pressed his palm against it.

The crystal awakened beneath his touch.

Blue glass spread outward from its base with a delicate chiming sound, branching across the wall in geometric veins. Those veins divided again and again, racing into the cave’s stonework, crawling over the floor, climbing the walls, and reaching the ceiling until the entire chamber became threaded with luminous blue.

Buried runes stirred beneath centuries of dust:

Ancient mechanisms groaned somewhere beneath the floor and the six iron rings behind Anahita vibrated as power travelled into them, and the chains wrapped around her answered with a succession of muted metallic clicks.

The first shackle opened around her left wrist:

Its jaws withdrew from her torn skin with a small scrape before the heavy chain fell against the floor.

The restraint on her right wrist followed, then those around her ankles released, pulling away from flesh rubbed raw beneath them before the collar around her throat loosened too but more reluctantly, its frozen edge dragging over her bruised skin before dropping from her neck and striking the stone with a clang that seemed far louder than it should have been.

The other restraints across her body let go all.

When the final restraint opened, Anahita’s body sagged behind beneath her own weight. Her shoulders trembled once, an instinctive response and for a moment she leaned back against the wall as though her body had forgotten how to stand without the chains holding it upright.

The attendant watched her with the restrained satisfaction of a man who believed he had witnessed punishment properly delivered.

Anahita drew in a deep breath:

She made it unsteady enough to sound convincing.

Her chest rose beneath the torn white fabric, and her knees softened slightly, offering the impression of a prisoner nearly overwhelmed by the sudden absence of pain.

It was a flawless performance, one written in the language of exhaustion, submission, and gratitude before gratitude had even been requested.

The whole world seem to have answered her breath:

Gold-dark essence surged toward her from every direction.

It poured from the air, seeped from the stone, and rushed through hidden currents beneath the Heavenchild estate in vast spiralling torrents. White-gold brilliance twisted together with resplendent darkness, the two powers circling Anahita before plunging into her body through her skin, her lungs, her damaged wings, and the deeper foundation of her existence.

The attendant took an involuntary step backwards.

His hand moved toward the sword at his waist before discipline stopped the gesture halfway.

The torrents of essence thickened and spun around Anahita in a widening halo.

Her silver-blonde hair rose in the rushing power, every strand brightening until the dust and dullness vanished from it; torn roots of her muscles knitted themselves together, blood disappeared from the white wing, while the black one regained its full midnight splendour, the wounds around her wrists closed so quickly that the attendant barely saw them heal, bruisings vanished from her throat and ribs and the torn flesh drew together without leaving scars.

The dried blood beneath her nose dissolved, and even the red imprint Marcus had left across her cheek earlier disappeared as though her skin had simply rejected the insult.

Her breathing steadied.

Her shoulders straightened.

The weakness vanished from her stance as her powers were released and returned to her.

Within several heartbeats, the ruined prisoner had ceased to exist. Anahita stood where she had stood before, restored to the flawless beauty of a being who had never been shaped according to mortal limitations.

Lucienne had made sure the traces of Anahita’s powers after she released her would not be there when she brought her back right before the man released her.

The whole thing was perfect and flawless theater.

The attendant stared despite himself.

He had seen powerful cultivators regrow severed body parts and close wounds while their blood still shone in the air but this was different.

Anahita had not appeared to heal. Her body had merely refused to preserve any evidence that it had ever been harmed.

Her regeneration truly belonged to an entirely different level.

The torrents of essence gradually thinned, leaving dark-gold motes drifting around her shoulders and wings before they too sank into her body. She unfurled both wings behind her, she checked the two beauties before folding them on her back, the white-gold one settled beside the wing of brilliant darkness in a magnificent contrast of heaven and the Fall.

She finally lowered her gaze to the man she clearly towered over despite his good height:

"May I leave?"

The attendant recovered enough to straighten his posture.

"The young lord is waiting outside."

Anahita stepped away from the wall and walked toward the opening. Her bare feet passed through the bed of discarded chains without touching a single link, her movements smooth and quiet despite the punishment she had supposedly endured.

The attendant followed several paces behind her.

He could not identify what unsettled him.

Perhaps it was the speed of her recovery. Perhaps it was the way no gratitude had appeared in her eyes after her release...

...or was it simply the old instinctive discomfort of standing near a being formed too closely from the world’s deeper Laws?

Anahita crossed the threshold into the colossal hall beneath the Heavenchild estate.

Behind her, the two stone doors began grinding shut, slowly sealing the punishment cave away until the darkness inside was reduced to a narrowing line and then nothing at all.

The hall remained much as it had been built, vast enough to make the figures inside it appear insignificant beneath the false night of its rune-lit ceiling, black stone stretched in every direction and ancient reliefs covered the walls, while the great circular altar stood at the centre of the chamber beneath suspended sigils and revolving seals.

Yet the hall was no longer untouched.

Anahita felt the disturbance before her eyes reached the altar.

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