While Alex was sound asleep, others were not. Everyone, even in their sleep, began to feel restless.
The ghostly breeze slid under the crack of Alex's bedroom door. It moved with a life of its own, creeping down the dark, quiet hallway of the house like a heavy, invisible fog.
It reached Elena's room first.
Usually a light sleeper due to her combat training, Elena didn't wake up immediately.
But the moment the pheromones filled her room, her body reacted as she let out a soft, breathy whine, her thin blanket was already kicked half off, exposing her sweat-slicked skin.
The scent plunged her mind directly into vivid, heated dreams.
She was back in Alex's room, her hands gripping his newly pale skin. In her sleep, her lips parted, panting heavily as the phantom taste of him flooded her senses.
Her thighs squeezed tightly together, grinding against the mattress as wetness soaked her underwear.
Without even waking, her calloused hand slipped beneath her sheets, driven purely by the biological hunger the Enchantress's scent commanded.
Down the hall, Marcus groaned loudly. The large, brawny youth kicked his heavy quilt entirely off his bed.
His broad chest heaved, slick with a sudden, feverish sweat.
A large, painful tent pitched in his sleep pants.
He didn't know why, and his sleeping mind couldn't make sense of the overwhelming surge of raw lust, but his hips bucked involuntarily against the mattress, chasing an invisible, alluring warmth that he couldn't quite catch.
Even Uncle John, exhausted from a full day of hammering iron at the forge, let out a ragged, guttural grunt in his sleep.
But the Empress's ghostly wind didn't stop at the walls of the Alex's home.
It leaked out through the gaps in the window frames, spilling into the cool, damp night air of Sector 4.
The invisible mist drifted down into the quiet streets, winding its way through the narrow, garbage-lined alleyways.
The effect was instantaneous. Stray cats that had been sleeping on top of trash cans suddenly stood up, their spines arching as they began to yowl in a deep, guttural sound of sudden, intense mating season.
A mutated dog chained in a nearby yard whimpered, pacing frantically and sniffing the air, completely overwhelmed by the scent.
Unable to break free from its restraints, helpless it found a nearby tree hole and started to relieve itself, you know what I mean right…
As the breeze slipped through the open windows of the cramped neighboring apartments, the entire block seemed to hold its breath.
Married couples, those that hadn't touched each other in months, suddenly rolled toward the center of their beds.
Driven by the primal spike in the air, their hands found each other in the dark, eyes glassy and pupils blown wide as they began tearing at each other's clothes with urgent, animalistic need.
Back in the small bedroom, the Empress stood by the window, looking out over the quiet, dark streets of Iron Creek City.
She could feel it.
The collective spike of lust, confusion, and raw arousal radiating from the people and beasts around them.
It was a feast of Empathetic Energy, she turned her eyes back to Alex.
Watching his delicate, helpless display, the Empress's smile widened into a look of absolute, terrifying devotion.
Slowly, the heavy atmosphere in the room began to shift.
From the air around the room, faint, wisps of invisible energy began to gather towards Alex and were soon absorbed by him.
The intense lust generated by the people outside, although not too much, didn't just disappear into the night; the ancient bloodline acted like a giant magnet, drawing the raw emotion straight back to its source.
Alex shifted in his sleep, a soft, high-pitched whimper escaping his parted lips.
The influx of raw Empathetic Energy hit his body like a wave of physical heat.
Under the loose cotton of his sweatpants, his hips twitched involuntarily.
The massive surge of Yin energy was feeding the Naagin bloodline directly, forcing his body to slowly shed his skin and impurities inside his body.
The lingering patches of dead skin that weren't completely removed from his second shedding phase began to loosen.
He curled his legs up slightly, rubbing his highly sensitive thighs together in a subconscious search for relief, completely unaware of the increase in Source Power his body was currently drinking in.
"Grow quickly, my vessel, we have a lot of pending work to finish ahead in the future…" The Empress sighed softly, her silver hair catching the moonlight as her phantom body began to fade back into the ether.
Time passed by, and the morning sun sliced through the gap in the thin curtains, hitting Alex right in the eyes.
He groaned, trying to roll over to bury his face in the pillow, but his body refused to move smoothly.
His muscles felt incredibly heavy, yet strangely limber, as he shifted, the dark grey bedsheets were completely plastered to his skin, sticky with a mixture of dried sweat and slick, clear fluids.
Worse, the entire bed was covered in a small pile of translucent, white flakes.
"Damnn it's not this again..." Alex cursed. He pushed himself up into a sitting position, the movement causing large, dead sheets of his old skin to simply slide off his arms and shoulders, falling onto the mattress.
Suddenly, a bright blue screen popped up in his vision, flashing with a dozen new alerts.
[ Ding! ]
[ Passive Energy Absorption Complete. ]
[ Empathetic Energy harvested from 41 nearby targets. ]
[ Source Power Gained: +38.4 Points ]
[ Current Source Power: 111 Points ]
[ Feminization Progress: Phase 1/9 (Ecdysis) - 86% Complete! ]
"Forty-one targets?" Alex whispered, his voice trembling as he stared at the glowing blue text floating in the air.
He rubbed his eyes, thinking he was still caught in a dream, but the numbers didn't change.
His brain struggled to process the information. How did he harvest energy from over forty people while he was unconscious?
"Did you sleep well, my greedy little vessel?" the Empress's voice sounded in his mind.
She sounded incredibly satisfied, like a cat that had just swallowed a whole bowl of cream.
"What did you do?" Alex gasped, looking around the small, messy room. The heavy, intoxicating scent was so thick in the air it was almost hard to breathe.
"I simply helped you," she laughed softly, her voice wrapping around his panicked thoughts.
"Your body was practically overflowing with desire. It would have been a waste to keep all that potent scent locked in this tiny room."
"So,I just let the neighborhood share in your.... And in return, they fed you with their empathetic energy released from their lust."
Alex felt the blood drain from his face. "The entire neighborhood?"
He remembered the heavy groans from Uncle John and Marcus he sometimes heard through the walls, but this meant the pheromones had leaked out into the street.
"Fuck..Fuck.!!!"
"Doesn't that mean, I single-handedly triggered a street-wide wave of uncontrolled lust." Alex hissed, throwing the ruined blanket off his legs. "You're insane! If the Association or the City Guards trace this back to me, I'm dead!"