The symphony of lewd and erotic moans filled the dimly lit corridor, rising and falling like waves against a shore that had long since eroded. Only the wooden doors held them at bay—thin, cheap, rattling on their hinges with each thrust, each gasp, each cry of pleasure that might have been pain or might have been nothing at all.
The thick, pungent smell of body fluids stenched the air, clinging to the walls, the floor, the very fabric of the building. Flesh pounded against flesh in a rhythm that never stopped, never rested, never acknowledged that the sun had set and risen and set again.
In the midst of it all, a lone teenage girl sat on the ground, her face buried in her knees, her body folded into the smallest shape she could manage.
I hate it.
Her nails dug deeper into her rough, out-of-tune tunic, scraping against the threadbare fabric, finding nothing to hold onto. The sounds seeped through the walls, through her skin, through the spaces between her bones. There was no escape from them. There never had been.
The door beside her creaked open. A man stumbled out—lazy, drunk, his tunic hanging loose, his eyes still hazy with pleasure. He noticed her crouched against the wall and paused, his gaze dragging over her like something sticky and slow.
"Hehe." A dark chuckle, amused and ugly. "I'm waiting for you to grow up."
Her scalp tingled. Fear and disgust twisted together in her stomach, hot and sour.
I fucking hate it.
The man vanished into the dim light, still chuckling to himself, already forgotten by everyone but her.
"Damara, come inside."
Her mother's voice—low, faint, tired—called from beyond the door.
Damara stood. Wiped her teary brown eyes with the back of her hand. Stepped inside.
I hate the smell. I hate everything about it.
She clenched her nose, but it didn't help. The stench was already inside her.
Her mother lay on a worn-out cushion bed, her clothes barely covering her body. The same clothes Damara had seen a hundred times, a thousand times, in positions that had stopped shocking her years ago. Her mother's complexion was pale, her breathing ragged, her chest rising and falling in uneven bursts.
"Damara, don't be stubborn." A cough rattled through her. She pushed herself up, her eyes finding her daughter's. "You have to learn the ways to pleasure men. Or else—"
"NO!" Damara's voice cracked. "I won't!"
Her eyes were dry of tears now. There was nothing left to cry. Her expression spoke of utter disgust, of a reluctance so deep it had calcified into something harder than fear.
"I won't trade my body for the pleasure of unknown men."
The moans from the neighboring rooms continued in the background, indifferent, eternal.
Cough. Cough.
"Enough with your stubbornness." Her mother's voice rose, sharp and cutting. "Who do you think you are? You are the child of a whore. It's your destiny to be used as an object of pleasure." Her hand slammed against the cushion. "I can barely sustain our lives with my payment!"
The words came out like venom, each one finding its mark.
Damara's lips twitched. Her hands clenched. "Then… then…" She looked down for a moment, gathering something inside herself. "Then you shouldn't have given birth to me, you whore mother!" The words tore out of her. "I fucking hate you! I hate everything about this sex thing!"
She shot one last look at the woman on the bed—the woman who was supposed to protect her, who was supposed to be more than this—and ran.
"You brat!"
Cough. Cough.
Behind her, her mother's body convulsed. A thick, wet thing spewed from her mouth. Red stained her weak, calloused hand. The coughing didn't stop.
Damara didn't see it. She was already gone.
I hate it. I don't want to be traded as an object.
She ran, head low, through the corridor of moans, past the doors that rattled and shook, past the men who looked at her with eyes that promised what was coming. The sounds followed her, chasing her down the stairs, through the entrance, into the night.
She didn't stop.
The night was still young. She ran further, into the dark alleys, past the bodies of the drunk and the dead, past the lights of the taverns and the gambling dens, past everything she had ever known.
And then—nothing.
The next thing she knew, she was waking up in a strange cave. Cold stone beneath her. Darkness pressing in. And a face that was her own staring back.
"Do you accept your sins?"
The voice was flat. Monotonous. The face held no judgment, only expectation.
She thought of the brothel. The smell. The hands. The eyes. The mother who had called it destiny.
It might be better than living in that shithole and trading my body.
"I accept them."
There were trials after that. Training that broke her and rebuilt her. A war in a pocket dimension that forced her to do things she had never imagined in her twelve years of life.
Sometimes, in the dark, she wondered if trading her body might have been the easier choice.
But she kept walking. She kept fighting. She kept surviving.
The woman's voice was alluring, smooth as honey poured over glass. "You don't have to trade your body. You control the lust."
Damara sat across from her in the dimly lit chamber of the House of Lust, her hands clenched in her lap, her nails biting into her palms.
In the end, she thought, I'm doing what I hated. Just in a different form.
But she didn't run.
She never ran anymore.