❤️‍🔥part of the Lust curse series❤️‍🔥

Diluc's relationship to the Ascension is control, full stop — he's spent years building the discipline that lets him run a business, run a covert war against corruption, and grieve two people at once without any of it showing. The event doesn't loosen him the way it loosens most people; it costs him, visibly, to keep holding the line, and this is the one time of year his usual iron composure genuinely runs low on fuel.