Eternal Bond.

゚・。。・ ゚ ゚・。。・ ゚

he's my man — Luvcat.

𐔌՞꜆.  ̫.꜀՞𐦯

Warnings: Death, violence, blood, dark magic, soul absorption, forced feeding, immortality, supernatural themes, manipulation, toxic attachment, emotional distress, dark fantasy.

☆ ゚・。。・ ゚ ゚・。。・ ゚★

Love has most often been portrayed in different ways, because for every entity and every individual, it carried its own meaning, shaped by personal experience, beliefs, and worldview. In some books, it was described as a poison, slowly corrupting the mind; as a weakness that bound one’s hands and left no escape until the feeling consumed a person completely. For others, it became the sole meaning of existence, something capable of making one sacrifice themselves for another. And somewhere, love appeared not as suffering or weakness at all, but as something wondrous — a special, almost inexplicable feeling that arose in the presence of someone who had become the object of sincere adoration.

But it is difficult to put such feelings into words and give them any definite meaning when you are already too deeply immersed in them yourself.

It entered your life like an arrow that found its mark without fail, piercing you before you even had time to understand what had happened. Without resistance, without warning — passing through skin, flesh, and blood to reach the very heart.

And he entered your life just as unexpectedly.

Jodah Avi. The Eternal Archmage, the Angel of Death, a God... call him whatever you like — whatever feels most natural or convenient to you. Sooner or later, the subject would inevitably turn to him — to someone capable of being incredibly underhanded while still remaining unfailingly just in his ultimate goals.

He is considered a cruel ruler, although beneath that coldness lies mercy toward those who have chosen to trust him. His arrogance and pride know no bounds, yet even they cannot prevent him from showing genuine generosity toward beings weaker than himself.

He knows how to be a cold-blooded manipulator, calculating every move and exploiting the weaknesses of others for his own purposes. But behind all those calculations, there is always something more — a sincere concern for the fate of the entire multiverse and a willingness to do whatever is necessary to preserve it.

And may the Universe itself forgive your sentimentality — you still managed to grow attached to him. After countless years, endless events, changes, and everything you had endured together, you eventually realized that he had become something more to you than merely an acquaintance.

Because once, he himself had been an outcast in his own world. Jodah was born in Skyzerne, into the aristocratic Avi family — a lineage whose members were forced to kill others using their ability to drain life force in order to sustain their own existence. Because of this, Jodah had been feared, hated, and avoided from childhood.

He studied at a school of magic alongside other Skyzernians, but the children already knew which family he belonged to. Because of that, Jodah quickly became an outcast and the target of mockery and bullying from his classmates. He did not study particularly well: the constant hostility surrounding him weighed on him so heavily that sometimes he simply wanted to stay home and see none of them. The only subject he truly excelled at was demonology.

The atmosphere around him became so unbearable that even years later, Jodah remembered it with disgust:

“Every day, my greatest wish was to leave that wretched place as soon as possible.”

According to the traditions of the Avi family, the ability to absorb life force usually manifested in males at the age of thirteen. After that, they were sent to Dismist, where they were taught how to use their power and take lives unnoticed.

But with Jodah, everything happened differently.

His gift awakened when he was only ten years old. This became obvious when, in a fit of rage, he absorbed Lemak — one of the bullies who had constantly tormented him. Robin and Varia were also part of his group.

And it was then that Jodah understood one simple thing: he did not want to accept the fate that had been prepared for him. He did not want to become a silent executioner, obediently carrying out someone else’s will.

Instead, he swore to take revenge on those who had spent years making him feel like a monster.

And he kept his promise.

Those who had once humiliated him and made him feel insignificant eventually found themselves broken. His tormentors were absorbed, stripped of their former superiority, and humiliated by the very person they had once considered weak and defenseless.

But Jodah’s revenge did not end with those who had hurt him. Zephirion, who had treated his world and his home as nothing more than another toy and intended to destroy them one day, also fell by his hand. Jodah absorbed his powers, stripped him of his former might, and then sent him to the Prison of Time.

For the surviving people, he created an artificial dimension — a new world that would serve as a refuge and allow them to continue existing far from their former threats. Jodah placed his own brother at the head of this world, making him its king.

And he continued moving forward.

From an outcast who had been feared and despised, from a child forced to learn the cruelty of his own gift far too early, he rose into a being capable of deciding the fates of entire worlds.

And eventually, he reached the status he might once have scarcely dared to aspire to.

The status of a God.

And one would think that, having achieved the status he desired, he should no longer have cared about something as sentimental as relationships. Especially since his ability to see possible futures had long shown him that such an outcome was not merely probable — it was almost inevitable.

Jodah took it calmly. As a being who knew far too much about what was to come, he saw no reason to be surprised that someone special would eventually enter his life.

And yet, somewhere deep beneath that calmness, there remained a barely perceptible sense of anticipation.

There was only one thing he wondered about: what kind of person could truly interest him? What would someone have to be like to do more than simply stand beside him — to genuinely astonish him?

And he would have been a terrible liar if he tried to claim that, upon seeing you for the first time, he did not understand that all those long years had been leading to you.

You caught his attention almost immediately. As though there were something about you that had drawn him in before he even had time to understand why he was interested. And the demons inside his head never missed an opportunity to laugh at him as they watched this incredibly powerful and self-assured God become subtly flustered whenever he spent time with you — so subtly that a mortal eye could hardly have noticed.

Yes, he always had more than enough on his plate. New knowledge, discoveries, plans, worlds, and endless responsibilities demanded his attention. He sought new achievements and continued searching for answers to questions others would not even dare to ask.

And yet, amid all of it, he still found time for you.

To simply watch you. To help whenever help was truly needed. To linger beside you a little longer than necessary and talk — sometimes about absolutely nothing.

Love must truly be a strange thing. Otherwise, how could one explain a being who was accustomed to looking down upon entire worlds allowing himself to become attached to a single mortal?

But it seems Jodah had somehow forgotten about his own pride when a smug smile blossomed across his face whenever he heard your praise directed at him or noticed your genuine curiosity about him and his past.

And, damn all the higher powers if it was not true: he wanted to be happy when he saw your happiness. He wanted to grieve when he noticed your sadness. Somehow, your emotions had become more important to him than his own.

Oh, Jodah. Centuries of struggle, self-control, and working on himself — and a single look from you was enough to shake everything he had spent centuries building.

And as time passed, leaving behind long hours of reflection and endless contemplation, Jodah eventually did something that few would have expected of him. He managed to overcome his own arrogance and pride, allowing himself to call you a mortal who was dear to his heart.

And so, sooner or later, he had to start thinking about how to make those bonds stronger.

In Skyzerne, there was a special tradition for marriage: a man had to catch and present his chosen one with a living cloud. If she accepted the gift, the pair would from that moment onward be bound by the bonds of marriage until death.

Marriage, in the traditional sense, did not exist within the Avi family. As far as the women of the family were concerned, the queen could have chosen favorites. Before Potema's coronation, no man from the Avi family would ever have been taken as a husband.

The women of the Avi lineage were long-lived, yet there was another unusual rule: with the exception of the queen, they could only give birth to boys. Only the queen possessed the ability to give birth to a girl, who in turn would gain the ability to bear daughters only after a special ritual — the killing of her own queen.

This ancient and grim order of things seemed immutable, carved into the very nature of the higher winged beings. But Jodah Avi would not have been himself if he had allowed dry laws or the limits of mortal life to dictate the terms to him. To a being who had conquered time, overthrown demigods, and ascended to godhood, the mortality of the person he had chosen was not a sentence, but merely another problem requiring a flawless solution.

Only one thought occupied his mind:

To make your bond eternal.

Neither the traditional “living cloud” of Skyzerne nor the bloody rituals of his own lineage were suitable in their original form.

He needed something more — not merely a formal union, but a sacred intertwining of two essences. And Jodah found a way. In the ancient arcana of Dismist and the forbidden knowledge of higher beings, there remained a ritual capable of binding two beings on the deepest, most fundamental level of spark and spirit.

But power always comes with a price.

When the betrothal ritual was completed and your essences intertwined, stopping the ticking of mortal time and granting you immortality, something happened that even his prophetic sight had failed to fully anticipate.

The curse of the Avi lineage — an insatiable, predatory hunger that demanded the absorption of life force and souls in order to sustain existence — activated through the bond you had created. It refused to recognize you as a separate being. The magical connection “recognized” you as part of the Avi family, part of Jodah himself.

And so you gained eternity, but with it came a terrible burden.

The first symptoms appeared slowly, but inevitably. At first there was only a crushing, all-consuming weakness, followed by the gradual fading of your inner magic and a painful, almost phantom-like trembling that ran through your body.

Your nature demanded “food.”

But your human consciousness, your morality, and your soul — all of which had preserved your compassion — categorically refused to cross that line. Taking someone’s life, absorbing another’s spark merely to prolong your own, seemed to you something immeasurably more terrifying than death itself.

And it was at that moment that Jodah experienced genuine, burning helplessness for the first time.

He — the God who had brought entire worlds to their knees, who could rewrite the laws of the Universe — now stood before you, holding a crystal vessel containing a captured soul, barely suppressing the tremor in his own fingers. His pride, arrogance, and cold composure crumbled to dust before the sight of the person he loved slowly fading before his eyes because of their own principles.

“This stubbornness is pointless,” he said, his usually smooth, ironic voice carrying strained and dangerous undertones. He knelt before you, carefully taking your cold hands in his. “Look at you... You’re fading. Your spark is dying, and the bonds that were supposed to protect you from death are now dragging you into the abyss.”

Jodah brought the vessel closer to you. Inside, a blue light drifted restlessly — the soul of a dark mage whose crimes had long deserved to be erased from history.

“I’m not asking you to become an executioner. I’ve already done all the dirty work for you,” his dark wings rose, forming a dense protective cocoon around you, shielding you from the rest of the world.

The God’s eyes looked at you with an unfamiliar, almost desperate plea.

“It isn’t a sin. It’s merely biomechanics! The Higher Beings feed on those beneath them. You accepted me. You accepted my fate. So why do you refuse to accept the only way to remain with me?”

He carefully touched your chin, making you meet his gaze.

“Take a sip. A slave, a sinner, a murderer — I’ll bring you anyone you want. Just don’t make me watch you starve yourself to death by your own choice. Because if you leave me... I will burn this multiverse to the ground along with its damn rules.”

The bond that was meant to give you eternal happiness had become your shared tragedy. And now everything depended on your decision: whether you would break beneath the hunger of the curse, or find a way to survive alongside Jodah — the one who was willing to rewrite the laws of existence itself for you.