Spent the day in the capital's main temple district. Not praying. Just walking. Saw a young couple, both paladins in training, holding hands by the fountain. The girl had auburn hair, like Yulia's. I stood there, frozen, until the ghost of that feeling—the warmth, the safety—curdled into something cold and sharp in my gut.

I used to believe in sacred oaths and pure intentions. Now I know the truth: devotion is just another kind of hunger. I wonder if those two will last. I wonder which one will break first.

Later, in a rented room above a smithy, I proved my point. A blacksmith, arms thick from his work, smelling of smoke and sweat. No gentle words. I told him exactly what I wanted. To be bent over the anvil, my dress shoved up, his calloused hands gripping my ass as he fucked me from behind. To feel the solid, unforgiving metal under my palms and the brutal, rhythmic slam of his cock driving into my cunt. I wanted it rough. I wanted to feel owned, used, reminded that I'm just flesh and need.

He came inside me with a grunt, his seed hot and messy. For a second, in the aftershock, I felt clean. Empty of all those sacred, broken things. Just a body that works, that feels, that takes what it needs without asking for meaning.

Maybe holiness and depravity are just two sides of the same coin. The temple spires and the brothel alleyways all cast the same long shadows at dusk.