Blessed By A Yandere Goddess

Ronan’s throat seized the moment the words left his mouth. He dropped to his knees, hands flying to his neck as his lungs compressed like someone had wrapped iron bands around them and was slowly pulling tight.

His first thought was an attack. Had the flesh golem had some kind of death curse? A remote ability that triggered after the body died?

But then the realization hit him like a blade between the ribs.

The words. His words. Him telling an inanimate object that he loved it.

And then he compared that to everything Sarael had done. The whispering. The possessiveness. The way she’d looked at him in the shrine like he was the only thing in existence worth looking at.

He wasn’t dense. He knew exactly what this was.

Jealousy.

Pure, undiluted, brutal jealousy was currently choking the life out of him.

"S-Sarael... I-I can explain—!"

The words barely made it past his lips before he started coughing. Black ichor, thick and viscous, bubbled up from his throat and splattered across the rubble. His heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic, trapped rhythm that matched the suffocating pressure around his neck and lungs.

It felt like dying. Like someone had reached inside his chest, wrapped their fingers around his organs, and was squeezing just hard enough to make him feel every nerve scream.

But Ronan knew one thing with absolute certainty.

Sarael wouldn’t kill him.

Not yet. Maybe not ever.

She loved him. That much he understood about her existence, about the bond, about the way she’d looked at him with centuries of loneliness burning behind her eyes.

"P-Please... s-stop this..."

But she didn’t stop.

The pressure held for three more agonizing seconds, Ronan’s vision swimming, black spots blooming at the edges like ink dropped in water. His fingers clawed at his own throat, trying to pry away something that wasn’t physically there.

Then, as suddenly as it started, the pressure vanished.

Ronan collapsed forward, catching himself on his hands before his face hit the rubble.

He gasped, dragging in lungfuls of air that tasted like copper and the flowers. The black ichor still clung to his lips, dripping in thick strands onto the broken stone beneath him.

"F-Fuck..."

His whole body was trembling. Not just his hands now, but his shoulders, his legs, his chest. Every muscle screamed with the phantom memory of being crushed from the inside out.

And then he heard it.

Crying.

Soft, broken sobs that echoed from everywhere and nowhere at once. The shadows around him flickered, pulsing with a violet light that matched the rhythm of someone weeping.

Sarael materialized in front of him.

She sat on the ground, knees drawn tight to her chest, arms wrapped around her legs as if she were holding herself together. Her hair fell in a dark curtain over her face, hiding her expression, but Ronan didn’t need to see it.

He could hear it in the way her breath hitched, in the way her shoulders shook with each sob.

"I’m sorry," she choked out. "I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry—"

"Sarael..."

"I didn’t mean to. I didn’t want to. You said it and I just—" Her voice cracked down the middle. "It hurt. It hurt so much. You don’t understand how much it hurt."

Ronan pushed himself upright, his arms still shaking. The black ichor was drying on his chin, sticky and cold.

"Then explain it to me."

Sarael’s head snapped up. Her violet eyes were rimmed with red, tears streaking down her pale cheeks in silver lines. She looked ruined, not like a goddess, not like a divine being.

She looked like a woman who had just realized she’d hurt the only person she’d ever loved.

"You said you loved it." Her voice was barely a whisper. "You said it so easily, like it was nothing. Like those words didn’t mean anything."

"They didn’t—"

"But they did. To me, they did."

She pressed a hand to her own chest, fingers digging into the skin above her heart.

"I’ve waited centuries. Centuries in the dark, in the silence, with no one. No prayers. No offerings. No one who remembered my name. And then you came. You, the last one. The last believer. The last voice I would ever hear."

Her hand dropped from her chest and reached toward him, trembling.

"The word ’love’ should be reserved for me alone... not for a weapon, not for a thing, not for anything else, only me..."

Ronan’s throat tightened. Not from divine punishment this time, but from something that felt suspiciously like guilt.

"Sarael, I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just a phrase. People say it all the time. ’I love this food. I love this song. I love this bow.’ It doesn’t mean—"

"It means something to me."

She crawled towards him on her hands and knees across the rubble until she was close enough that he could feel her breath on his face. Her tears dripped onto his hands, warm against his cold skin.

"Everything you say means something to me. Every word, every breath, every heartbeat."

Her hand found his chest again, pressing flat against his sternum.

"You are the only thing I have. The only thing I will ever have. So when you say ’love’ to something else, even as a joke, even as a phrase..."

She looked up at him, and her eyes were drowning.

"It feels like you’re leaving me. Like you’re choosing something else over me. And I can’t—" Her voice broke. "I can’t lose you. I can’t. I won’t survive it a second time."

Ronan stared at her.

The insane, possessive, terrifying goddess who had just nearly choked him to death over a figure of speech. She was crying. She was apologizing. She was looking at him like he was the only thing keeping her tethered to existence.

And against all logic, all self-preservation, all common sense...

He felt as if he understood her, drawn to her with a sudden, inexplicable affection even he couldn’t fully explain.

"Come here."

He opened his arms.

Sarael froze. "What?"

"Come here. Before I change my mind."

She stared at him for half a heartbeat.

Then she collapsed against his chest, her arms wrapping around his torso so tight he felt his ribs creak. Her face buried itself in the crook of his neck, and he felt her tears soaking into his collar.

"I’m sorry," she whispered again, her voice muffled against his skin. "I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—"