There are museums that whisper history, others that scream culture.
This one moaned.
And not the polite kind of moan, either—the kind you hear in libraries when someone's chair squeaks just a little too suggestively. No. The Tower of Sin's first floor—the so-called Gallery of Lust—moaned like it wanted you to take your shoes off, lie back, and call it daddy.
The moment the elevator sighed shut behind us and the floor hummed beneath our feet, I knew something was wrong.
The air was simply...too clean.
The space before us unfolded in stark, uncanny whiteness. Marble floors gleamed beneath footfalls that barely echoed. Pillars stretched upward, reaching toward a spotless, impossibly tall sealing. It wasn't a room. It was a void made to feel like a museum. A museum of nudity, to be precise. Nude paintings. Nude sculptures. Nude frescos. Nude reliefs. Nude mosaics. Nude...everything.
"Chilly," Miko muttered, hugging his silk shirt tighter.
Leo blinked rapidly, ears twitching. "Are we…still in the Tower?"
I hesitated.
The question hung in the air like incense—sweet, heavy, just slightly off.
"I think so," I said finally, taking a cautious step forward. My boots clicked against the floor—too polished, too perfect. "I mean, the walls are here. The laws of physics are mostly still in attendance. But…"
I glanced around. The space felt real, but the kind of real that came with fine print. The kind of real that changed shape when you weren't looking directly at it.
"…honestly?" I murmured. "I'm not entirely convinced we didn't just walk into someone's fever dream and started paying rent."
Willow beamed. "Gods, it's like someone made an art gallery just for me."
I tried to keep my composure, yet underneath it all—beneath the gallery's sterile elegance—was that humming wrongness again. Like standing in a hotel hallway that stretches just a bit too long. Or stepping into a department store five minutes after close and hearing footsteps anyway.
This place didn't want to be seen.
It wanted to see you.
We walked in silence for a while. A long while. The halls twisted in ways that made no architectural sense. Corridors folded into each other. White staircases appeared, only to vanish once ascended. The gallery pulsed, somehow—walls breathing, paintings shifting ever so slightly.
I noticed it first when we passed the same painting twice—what I thought was a Grecian-style fresco of two lovers intertwined beneath a pear tree. First time? Artistic. Subtle. Mere flashes of nudity. Second time?
The pear tree was gone.
The lovers were completely naked.
And one of them had definitely noticed us.
"Don't look at the art too long," I murmured.
Leo shivered. "Why?"
"Because it's starting to look back."
More turns. More hallways. The sculptures grew bolder. Less Venus, more...Venereal. Skin gleamed with sweat. Eyes hinted at secrets. I swear one painting winked at Miko, who blushed so hard his ears turned the color of his wine-soaked shirt.
It was around that point we saw the man.
He was curled against the base of a statue—an alabaster nymph bent double with her mouth open in what may or may not have been a scream. The man was drenched in sweat. Clothes torn. Eyes wide and glassy. He was sobbing.
"Water," he rasped. "Please. Food. Anything."
We stopped. Leo knelt beside him, pulling out his waterskin. "What happened to you?"
The man guzzled greedily, choking, before collapsing back. "I…I stayed too long. They kept touching me. Kept whispering. I just wanted to feel loved."
"Why not leave?" I asked, voice low.
He looked at me like I'd suggested he grow wings and fly. "Leave? But I'm so close. I almost had her. Just one more turn. One more touch. She said she'd make me whole again…"
His voice cracked. His gaze unfocused.
"I'm going to be good this time," he whispered. "She said I'd be worthy."
I felt it then—a deep, cold truth. The man wasn't starving for food.
He was starving for validation.
His body trembled with lust, but it wasn't carnal—it was emotional. Need wrapped in fantasy. He'd been broken by something that looked like love.
I stood slowly. "He's gone," I said.
Willow frowned. "Gone?"
"Gone in the way lust can ruin you. Consumed by want until you forget what you're even wanting for."
Leo stepped back, pale.
Miko wiped his mouth. "Creepy," he muttered. "Can we go now?"
"Yes," I said. "But carefully. This place knows us."
The gallery bent around us again. The air grew thick—not with heat, but with presence. The art didn't hang anymore. It hovered. Paintings shimmered, brush strokes breathing. Sculptures leaned slightly toward us. Mosaics shimmered with freshly moist lips.
And then they came.
The first painting shattered like a fragile bubble, the surface rippling and breaking away to reveal a figure stepping forth—a sensuous, gliding apparition of impossible beauty, cloaked in flowing robes woven from shadow and desire itself. Her eyes shimmered with a hypnotic gleam as she moved, every step dripping with silent promise.
She approached Leo.
He froze, breath hitching as if caught between past and present.
"Sweet boy," she whispered, her fingers gliding softly over his cheek like a lover's touch. "You've grown so strong."
His eyes welled with tears, voice barely more than a breath. "Mother?"
She said nothing.
She didn't need to.
Another painting unfurled like a living curtain. A man emerged—golden-skinned, with a smile both warm and haunting. "You were always enough," he said gently, taking Miko's hand in his own.
Miko—the jaded, smirking, wine-drunk Miko—trembled, his facade cracking.
"Ren…" he breathed, reverence and pain mingling in his voice.
Willow? She was met by a harem. Three towering, faceless figures—muscular, perfect, statuesque—draped in shadows. The moment she stepped near, they sank to their knees, devotion pouring from their posture.
"Goddess," they chanted in low unison. "Command us."
Willow moaned, a mix of amusement and surrender slipping through her lips. "This place really gets me."
I swallowed hard.
Behind me, heels clicked—soft, deliberate, and perfectly timed. Each step fell like punctuation on a sentence I hadn't written yet. Measured, rhythmic. The sound echoed down the corridor like a secret being rehearsed.
I didn't need to turn to know.
But I did.
And there she was.
Me.
But not this version—this fractured, guarded, half-invented shape I wore. No, she was complete.
Her skin shimmered like molten pearl, soft and unbroken by scars or doubt. Her posture—regal without effort, sensual without apology. Long lashes framed eyes that glowed with the weight of knowing everything I'd ever hidden from myself. Her lips parted, not in seduction, but in recognition.
She smiled.
And it was mine—my smile, perfected. The kind I only wore when alone, when dreaming, when imagining the version of me that didn't flinch at hardship.
"Darling," she purred, voice sultry and low, like velvet sliding over bare skin. "I've always wanted someone who understood me. Who craved me the way I crave myself."
I stared, frozen. "You're an illusion—born from lustful energy."
She licked her lips, slow and deliberate. "I'm everything you pretend you're not."
The worst part?
I felt it.
I tried to resist.
But gods help me—I wanted her.
Not just to touch her, but to be her.
To wear that confidence like skin. To walk like she walked, like the universe bent politely out of her way. To be the object of my own worship, for once. To be adored without condition. To be whole.
My knees buckled. My balance faltered. My pulse throbbed like a second heartbeat behind my eyes.
She didn't gloat. She didn't move. She just waited.
Like she knew.
"No," I breathed, forcing the word out. "Not yet."
A flicker of something passed across her face—not anger, not even disappointment.
Pity.
"You'll come around," she whispered, voice thick with promise, almost tender. "Everyone does."
We moved on quickly, almost running now.
The gallery blurred. The stark whiteness faded. Flesh tone gold replaced it alongside dashes of lavish red. Sofas, chairs, clocks, candles, and other objects filled the empty space.
Art became pornography and it was everywhere, piling atop one another and filling the rooms. Then, not even that—just desire, splayed in every brushstroke. There was nowhere safe to look. Every corner writhed with lust.
The illusions followed.
Not walking. Floating. Whispering.
You deserve to be loved.
You're perfect.
You're mine.
I clutched my dagger like a talisman.
Then we reached a threshold—a wide, arched gateway carved with intricate roses, their petals curling like frozen whispers, and lined with thick silk ropes that swayed gently as if breathing. Beyond it, light pulsed in soft waves of red and gold, warm and hypnotic, spilling over the edges like a tide of intoxication.
A grand pit of pleasure sprawled before us.
It was an orgy.
Not some whispered rumor or shadowy fantasy—but a literal, hedonistic, opulent orgy. Nobles adorned in shimmering silks, commoners with dirt-smudged skin, and Tower-worn survivors whose eyes glinted with desperate hunger. All of them lost in blissful abandon—moaning, crying, screaming, some laughing with reckless abandon, others locked in embraces so desperate and tight they left no room for pretense.
Above them, a massive chandelier spun lazily, dripping candlelight like molten gold into the haze.
I stumbled forward, caught in the dizzying spectacle.
"Why are they here?" I called out, voice cutting through the moans. "Why hasn't anyone moved on?"
A hand touched my shoulder—light, deliberate.
I spun around.
A man stood there, draped in a dark red bathrobe that whispered of quiet luxury. He held a delicate china teacup between slender fingers. His hair was blonde, catching the glow like spinning rays of sunlight. His eyes were lazy, sunk deep with endless satisfaction, the kind that settled into bones after years of indulgence. He looked…unmoved, untouched by the frenzy behind us.
"Because," he said softly, voice a calm ripple in the chaos, "there are things worse than lust at its surface level. And they wait just beyond that door."
He gestured toward the far end of the pit.
There stood a tall door, blackened and cracked, like a wound in the world.
"Everyone here has seen what lies beyond," the man said. "Some tried to go through. Broke themselves on what they found. Others turned back, broken but alive. Me? I learned to enjoy what I have."
"You're not stuck here then?" I asked.
He took a slow sip of tea, serene. "Oh, I could leave. If I wanted to." His eyes twinkled with amused defiance. "But why risk yourself when you can stay here—desired, loved."
I stared.
First at him.
Then at the swirling orgy—a sea of flesh, fire, and need.
Then behind us—the illusions trailing like silk shadows, silent and patient.
And finally, at my friends.
Leo was shaking off the phantom haze, blinking hard to clear his eyes.
Miko clutched a charm, hidden in his sleeve, fingers tight and pale.
Willow?
She was halfway into a lap dance before I snapped my fingers sharply.
"Willow!"
She pouted, dragging the word out. "Ugh. Fiiiine."
I turned back to the man.
"I saw someone lost in the halls," I said. "Starving. Dying. He said 'she' would make him whole."
The man chuckled. "She always says that. But no one walks out whole."
I stepped forward. "Then I'll walk out in pieces if I must."
I turned to my party. "We go through. Now. Before we forget why we're here."
Leo nodded, jaw clenched.
Miko sighed, adjusting his cuffs. "Let's ruin the ambiance."
Willow—finally, mercifully clothed-ish—slid in beside me. "Do we get a souvenir?"
"Maybe just trauma," I said.
The man in the bathrobe smiled. "Good luck."
We stepped toward the door.
The orgy pulsed behind us.
The illusions dissolved.
The hallway stretched.
And the Tower held its breath once more.