Aestrea hit the ground with both knees.

Not because he chose to.

But because his legs refused to listen anymore.

The magic burned hotter by the second—every breath of air felt like it carried Selene’s scent, every flicker of aura felt like it brushed against her skin. His pulse pounded so hard in his ears he could barely hear the wind.

Sweat poured down his back, sticking his shirt to his body. His mouth opened, but he couldn’t speak—because even the act of trying made his throat tighten.

Selene crouched in front of him.

Her thighs pressed together as her body trembled under the shared heat.

Her fingers brushed her lips, and she let out a shaky breath as she looked down at him.

“You’re strong,” she said softly, her voice cracking like a whip made of silk. “Too strong. If I had used this on anyone else, they would’ve already started begging me.”

She leaned forward, her forehead touching his.

Their breaths tangled.

Every second the spell stayed active, the fire inside both of them grew more violent. More ravenous. It wasn’t a slow burn anymore, it was a storm of need eating away at their focus, their strength, their sense.

Aestrea clenched his fists against the dirt.

He bit his tongue until blood filled his mouth.

But it didn’t help as his aura kept reacting.

Even now, fragments of his flying swords were twitching in the distance, as if still trying to rise.

But they couldn’t.

Because his will was breaking.

And Selene caught on it, her lips curving wider as she suddenl straddled his lap.

It wasn’t act for mere pleasure.

It was to pin him down.

She needed him still.

To keep his aura burning, to keep feeding the spell.

She was playing with fire too—and she was shaking, her body soaked in sweat and blood, her breathing broken and uneven. Her thighs clenched around him, and her back arched involuntarily as another wave of the spell surged through her core.

She nearly collapsed against him.

But she forced herself upright, grabbing his face with both hands.

“You’re trembling,” she whispered.

Her eyes were glassy now, and her lips were quivering.

“You can’t fight nor can you use your mana.”

Aestrea’s head twitched upward.

His eyes were still sharp, still glowing with crimson light, but they were unfocused, like staring through fog. His aura kept flickering, flaring in short bursts, violent, beautiful, but unsteady.

Selene pressed her forehead to his again.

And this time, she spoke directly into his soul.

“This is how I break gods.”

Aestrea gritted his teeth.

His aura flared wildly.

All at once, the flying swords rose again.

Ten of them—no, fifteen.

Cracked, glowing, unstable.

They floated like angry ghosts.

Selene’s eyes widened, but she didn’t pull away.

She dug her nails into his cheeks and pushed her hips down, making the spell spike again.

“Ughhh!”

Aestrea gasped.

All fifteen swords twitched—and then—

Puff!

Exploded into shards.

His control had snapped again.

Selene’s body jerked from the magic recoil, but she smiled through it.

“Fight me,” she whispered.

Her voice was hoarse now.

“I want to see if you can still swing that scythe…”

She leaned closer, her lips brushing his ear.

“…before your mind melts completely.”

At that moment, Selene slowly reached out to Aestrea’s waist, and then took out the cursed dagger that she had given him before.

She slowly caressed the edge of it before turning to Aestrea with a devilish smirk.

But suddenly, she frowned.

A shiver ran down her spine.

“Frostbound… Arcana.”

She suddenly heard Aestrea’s words.

Swoop!

Cold mana surged from under him.

“Ahh!”

Selene gasped.

The heat in her body was suddenly drowned by something sharp, biting, and violent.

Ice.

It crawled up Aestrea’s spine like chains.

His body shuddered as the lust infused into his body started disappearing slowly.

“Cough!”

He coughed once, blood, spit, and steam.

And then he looked up at her.

His mouth bleeding.

“You are too slow to act.”

Instantly, Selene tried to move, but her legs were slow and her body seemed to have paralyzed as she let down the dagger fall into the ground.

She could feel the cold starting to creep through her veins too.

Because the spell didn’t just affect him.

It linked them.

Aestrea had turned the table.

He was forcing his counter, his ice, back through the spell, through the bond.

And now…

Now she felt it.

Her body twitched.

Her breath caught.

Her nails dug into his shoulders as her skin turned pale and trembling.

“You think I care about lust?” Aestrea snarled, slowly rising, dragging her up with him. “You think I’ve never burned like this before?”

The cold aura kept pouring from his chest, flooding into her through every point of contact.

Selene gasped as her muscles began to lock, her thighs pressing together not from desire, but from panic.

This wasn’t heat anymore, it was the complete opposite!

This was freezing madness.

And it was flowing both ways.

She tried to cast another spell.

But he grabbed her wrist.

Ice cracked around his fingers.

Then he pulled her down, slamming her back into the ground beneath him.

“Agh!”

She cried out, not in pain, but in shock.

Aestrea leaned over her, panting, his breath visible from the frost.

His voice came low, dangerous, his mouth just above hers.

“You wanted to see who’d fall first?”

He raised his hand.

Mana gathered again.

Blue light spun into shape.

“Then… let’s fall together.”

Fwoop!

“HAAARGHHH!”

Selene’s back arched as the cold slammed into her spine.

Her breath left her lungs in a sharp gasp, and her eyes rolled back for a moment before she caught herself, biting her lower lip hard enough to bleed.

Her thighs trembled, her arms pressed against the ground, and her fingers curled into the dirt as her skin flushed pale from the creeping frost.

And yet, the spell was still active.

Fall of Lust hadn’t ended.

But now, it was tangled.

Fighting against Aestrea’s [Frostbound Arcana], the two magics spiraling together like mating serpents, fire and ice locked in a deadly dance inside both of them.

Aestrea’s hands trembled.

His veins glowed pale blue under his skin as more swords floated into the air.

Not cleanly shaped ones like he shaped them before. These were jagged, rough, almost alive, like they were born from pure desperation.

His aura twisted wildly, forming cold steel out of pure hatred and survival.

Ten new flying blades hovered around him, pointed in every direction, each one sharp and unstable.

“Get up,” he growled.

Selene’s lips parted, but she didn’t answer.

She couldn’t.

Her legs twitched, thighs closing as the cold rippled through her stomach and chest, mixing with the inferno of the spell she had cast.

Her body didn’t know what to crave anymore, heat, touch, release, or just silence.

But her eyes… they still burned.

Even from the ground, even under him, she smiled again, teeth bloody, eyes glassy with tears and hunger.

“…You’re insane,” she whispered.

“You’re fighting a ninth-level spell with your soul.”

Aestrea didn’t reply.

He didn’t need to.

His aura answered for him.

The swords spun violently and then darted forward, not at Selene, but into the sky, forming a circle around them like a ritual.

They locked into a formation above, glowing brighter as he poured more magic in.

Selene tried to rise, but her limbs felt numb.

She looked up.

“What are you—”

“Moonlit Ice Lotus Sword Art….” Aestrea muttered.

His eyes dimmed for a second.

『 First Move! (✦ Ice Lotus Bloom ✦) 』

The air around them dropped in temperature instantly. All color bled from the world, fading into dull greys and pale blues. Ice climbed up Selene’s arms, wrapping her fingers, and she realized—

He wasn’t exactly attacking her.

He was trapping both of them inside a spell.

“Bastard—!” she screamed, but it was too late.

The swords flashed once—

Then shattered.

The explosion wasn’t loud. It was deep.

BOOOMM—

A shockwave of frost burst in all directions, engulfing the field in a dome of pale ice petals. Magic surged through the ground, carving sigils into the earth, as crystalline lotus flowers bloomed upward in perfect silence.

Selene’s voice was lost in the eruption.

The aura of lust was still burning, but it was being smothered by this… this cold coffin.

Selene’s body froze in mid-motion.

Her back bent, lips open, eyes wide with both horror and desire.

Because even now, even as her body began to lock up—

She liked it.

That was the spell’s final cruelty.

It didn’t just make her ache, it made her crave even her defeat.

“Fuu… agh…”

Aestrea knelt beside her, barely breathing.

And upon seeing this new expression of Aestrea, how he looked so fragile, so breakable—Selene’s heartbeat couldn’t help but fasten.

It wasn’t because of the spell anymore.

It was him.

His face, pale and exhausted, his lips cracked and bleeding, his shoulders trembling beneath the layers of frost. His body looked like it would shatter at the slightest touch.

He looked… divine.

Divine in a way that tempted her, seduced her. Made her hunger for him, not in lust, but in obsession.

In a need to ruin him and worship him at the same time.

And somehow, her heat surged again.

The burning inside her, the one she had first controlled, now slipped beyond her grasp. It was reacting to him.

It saw his weakness, his near-collapse, and it wanted it.

Wanted to consume it.

Her breath came in short, sharp gasps, her chest rising and falling as her senses went blunt, blurred by the overwhelming flush rushing through her veins.

She couldn’t think.

She couldn’t even feel her toes anymore.

All she could see… was Aestrea.

Bent beside her.

Frost clinging to his eyelashes, his mouth twitching with every breath, his eyes dull with pain but never dim.

And the worst part?

The cruelest part?

She loved it.

Selene’s legs shifted under her.

Her thighs pressed tight again, and her fingers dug into the frost-covered ground as her body responded violently, instinctively, to his image.

Her teeth sank into her lip again, deeper this time, blood trickling down her chin as her pupils dilated.

“Aestrea…” she moaned out, her voice barely above a whisper.

“You’re… beautiful like this…”

He turned his head slowly, barely able to move, and met her gaze.

His crimson eyes still glowed, but they weren’t sharp anymore.

They were heavy.

Clouded.

Barely holding on.

That just made it worse.

“F-fuck… you.”

Selene pushed herself up with trembling arms, her body swaying as she crawled toward him like a starving beast. The petals of ice cracked beneath her, but she didn’t feel the cold anymore, the heat seemed to had drowned it out.

The magic had bloomed so deep inside her that her body felt like it was devouring itself.

And he was the only cure.

“You don’t know,” she murmured as she reached him, hovering above his fragile form, “what you’ve done to me…”

She straddled his waist again, this time slower, more deliberate.

Not to pin like before.

But to touch.

To feel.

Aestrea shuddered as her weight settled over him. His aura flared instinctively, but it didn’t resist her at all, instead…

It welcomed her.

Selene’s hands ran up his chest. She could feel his heart pounding through his ribs, could feel the ragged rise and fall of each breath.

“You’re shaking,” she whispered again, leaning in close, her hair falling around his face like a curtain.

Her lips brushed his temple.

Her voice dropped lower, trembling.

“And I don’t know if it’s from pain… or from what I’m doing to you.”

He didn’t answer.

He couldn’t.

But his fingers twitched again.

The last few flying swords in the distance jerked once, then shattered into frost.

Selene smiled.

Her face lowered until her lips hovered over his.

Not kissing.

Just breathing.

“I should finish you right now,” she whispered.

“But if I do…”

Her lips brushed his cheek, his jaw, his ear.

“I’ll never see this face again. This broken, desperate, beautiful face.”

Her tongue traced the blood on his mouth.

Her hips began to move…

And slowly…

The spell rippled again.

And the fire came roaring back.

Yet…

Aestrea looked strange.

His pale face suddenly turned livid, and then, without Selene noticing what was going on, a small knife appeared in Aestrea’s left hand.

Fwip!

SPLURT!

A geyser of blood spluttered out.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep