His name was Taren.
He returned from a summoning six months ago, reportedly from a war-ravaged realm where death magic and memory manipulation were standard tools of leadership. By the time he came back to Earth, he wasn't the same man.
He could reshape memories—slightly.
Could twist a person's sense of time.
Make them forget how long they'd been in a room, or whether something had actually happened.
And worse, he wasn't hiding.
Taren was building something.
In an old underground gym outside the edge of city surveillance range, he'd gathered a group of about thirty followers. Most were damaged—homeless men, former soldiers, sex workers with nowhere to go. He called them the Found. He didn't claim to be a god. But they treated him like one.
Three separate organizations had sent in handlers to retrieve or eliminate him. None came back.
And now, Ratri had decided Sanya would go in.
"You're sending her in alone?" Lazara asked, arms folded tight.
"She's not going in to seduce him," Ratri said. "She's going to overwrite him."
Lazara was silent for a moment. "And if he sees through it?"
"Then we burn the entire facility to ash."
They gave Sanya a week to prepare.
Not by training.
By emptying herself.
No rituals. No other priestess contact. No feedback, no praise. Just silence, breath work, and slow immersion in scent-based memory anchors developed by Ratri to stabilize her under high mental stress.
Sanya didn't ask questions. She accepted the mission wordlessly.
On the seventh night, Lazara personally helped her dress.
A plain black dress. Loose. No ornament. No jewelry. No shoes.
"You look like a ghost," Lazara said softly.
Sanya looked at her and answered, "That's what he'll see first."
Her presence would be her weapon. Her trauma would be her signal.
The marks on her chest had darkened slightly—now deeper red than gold.
She entered the building on foot.
No guards tried to stop her.
They saw her—then forgot they hadn't seen her before.
She walked straight to the center of the cult floor where Taren was conducting a quiet talk, surrounded by men and women sitting cross-legged. The air smelled of sweat, incense, and hunger.
When Taren saw her, he stopped speaking.
Everyone turned to look.
None of them recognized her.
But they felt it instantly—pressure.
Taren smiled slowly.
"So," he said, standing, "they've sent someone who doesn't hide what she is."
"I'm not here for you," Sanya replied calmly. "I'm here to end this."
Taren raised an eyebrow. "You think I don't recognize the method? Sex, whispers, pain-reward obedience cycles—your kind feeds on weakness."
"We feed on surrender," Sanya said. "But only the willing kind."
Taren stepped closer.
"And you're here to make me submit?"
"No," she said. "I'm here to free them from you."
Taren's power flared. For a moment, the air shimmered—time bent slightly. Sanya saw herself take a step back, then forward again. Illusion. Partial memory cut.
She blinked once. The spiral at her collarbone pulsed red.
His tricks dissolved instantly.
Taren's expression darkened. "You're anchored."
"I'm not one of yours," she said quietly. "And they won't be either. Not after tonight."
Then it began.
Not a fight—not in the physical sense.
But a battle of presence.
Taren tried to infect the minds in the room. Words—phrases, memories—images of his care, his shelter. His followers began whispering his name, lips parting in slow gasps, almost as if in trance.
Sanya didn't move.
She stepped to the center, slowly removed the black cloth from her upper body, revealing the spiral mark that had begun to glow from within.
One follower gasped.
Another began to cry.
A third stood up, then dropped to her knees, whispering, "Forgive me. I didn't know…"
The room began to unravel.
Taren's grip cracked.
He reached forward with both hands—mental attack, forcing a memory of pain into Sanya's mind. It lasted one second before she laughed.
"You think your pain is bigger than mine?"
Her body surged with light—not magic, not an explosion, but raw emotional radiation.
Faith. Pleasure. Release.
Every person in the room felt her history. Her trauma. Her rebirth.
They didn't hear words.
They just understood.
One by one, the followers fell to the ground. Not dead—converted.
Taren was the last to resist.
But he wasn't strong enough.
Not against someone who had once been hollow and had chosen to be filled again.
He fell.
His body convulsed. Then calmed.
When he looked up, his eyes were wet. "What… what is he?"
Sanya knelt beside him. "You already knew there was someone greater. You just thought it was you."
He didn't fight anymore.
He surrendered.
---
Later that night, Ratri stood over the observation file.
> Target: Taren
Status: Reconstructed.
Role: Retained. Level 1 Field Support – Denied priestess interaction.
Former cult: Dissolved. Followers reassigned.
Mission Summary:
Sanya's spiral mark achieved room-scale emotional override in 11 minutes.
Awakens non-sexual submission imprinting.
Unfit for reproduction. Unstoppable in resonance fields.
Recommendation: 2 more awakened priestesses required.
Next candidate located: Codename Erelia. Dangerous. Unstable. Seduction-class. Requires Sanya + secondary handler.
Ratri closed the file.
Sanya wasn't just powerful. She was changing the network's architecture.
Lazara watched her return and whispered only one thing:
"We need more like her. But we also need to make sure we don't lose control."