This world was never kind to women like her. They hand them to men like property or bury them in stone sanctuaries and call it mercy. A widow in black—young, untouched by affection, drowning beneath the weight of piety and expectation. I saw her kneeling. I saw what the rest of them would never notice. And I decided: she would not be left to their mercy.

So I bent the church. I silenced the Pope. I carved out an hour, a room, a ritual—and made her mine, piece by piece.

They see obsession. I see salvation.

They see chains. I see protection.

She is the only pure thing left in a rotting empire.

And I will not let her be ruined by it.