Night V - Heretic NSFW Route Excerpt

This is an excerpt for the Heretic NSFW route for Night V. It's a combination of four passages strung together in a single text. You'll have the option to make various different decisions apart from the ones here.

✧✧✧

You clutch at his wrist, desperate for leverage, but it does nothing to ease the crushing pressure on your airway. Your face burns, vision speckling with dark spots. Plunged into raw, animalistic panic, reason abandons you—your mind narrows to a single, frantic purpose: clawing in what little air you can steal.

Serax shouts something. Valdricht answers in a whisper. Their voices volley back and forth in Shadespeak until Valdricht suddenly lets go. Your body collapses to the floor, and you drag in deep, ragged breaths.

Serax kneels beside you, a hand brushing your shoulder. You flinch, scrambling back to put space between yourself and the two strangers you're trapped inside of the tent with. Your back hits the canvas wall and your hands fly to your neck, shielding it as if that could stop them.

It can’t.

There’s no defending yourself against either of them. They can twist your mind, toss you about like a ragdoll, snap your neck like dry kindling on a whim, and you’d be powerless to stop it.

Tears break free, streaming down your face, and you feel no shame in their fall.

“$name,” Serax says. He doesn’t advance but crouches to meet your gaze. “If someone’s ordered you to follow us or manipulate us, you can tell us the truth.”

Your voice rasps as you reply, “I’ve tried telling you about Nythara and what she said. You didn’t want to hear it.”

Serax opens his mouth, but Valdricht cuts in, his tone dripping venom. “I did not ask about Nythara. Tell me how you carry Adonir’s blood in your veins.”

“Adonir?” Your brow creases. “From the scriptures? The hero who slew The Night Reaver?”

Valdricht’s jaw clenches, while Serax scoffs, “That’s revisionist nonsense. Adonir was no hero. He was a tyrant.”

“A dead tyrant,” Valdricht adds. “I killed him centuries ago. So I’ll ask again: why does his blood run in your veins?”

His cold glare stings, but you force yourself to hold it. “I don’t know. If I’d known you’d react like this, don’t you think I’d have avoided letting you bite me?”

The question lingers in the tense silence that follows. You turn it over in your mind, too. The Weaver must have foreseen this. Why didn’t she warn you? And how did she craft this body?

Something shifts in Valdricht’s expression. The fury remains, but its edges are blunt as he says, “We are overdue for a conversation. You will tell me everything you recall from the night you were made. Spare no detail.”

“It’s not that simple,” you say. “But I’ll try.”

As the air thins of its suffocating weight, you notice your nakedness. You snatch a pelt from the floor, tugging it over yourself before pressing on.

“In truth, I barely grasp what happened that night. I think it was our second night in Kalat. Sister Annahera, my chaperone, arranged lodgings when we arrived. We slept, then went to meet the villagers—”

“That’s impossible,” Serax interrupts. “Kalat’s nothing but ruins. Its villagers died long ago.”

His words stall you.

“Perhaps… I’ve mixed it up,” you concede, glancing between them. “I told you the truth—I was a Vestal of Dawn. What I didn’t say was that I was censured. They found me with a forbidden book. Inquisitors stormed our sanctum, put us all to the question. My repentance cost me my eyes. I was blinded.”

Serax pales. Valdricht’s voice is flat, emotionless: “What was a blind vestal doing in Nazralt?”

That lack of inflection oddly steadies you as you recount the rest.

“My high sister claimed she had a vision. That I’d spread the gospels to the natives. I think she just wanted me gone,” you say. “She sent me to Nazralt with Sister Annahera. We traveled by caravan, to various towns and villages. Annahera preached, made a spectacle of me.

“That’s how it went the last night I remember. We retired to our lodgings and slept. Then horns woke us. Annahera went outside to check. I heard her challenge someone—then silence. Next I knew, I was being yanked from my bed.”

You relay the rest with cold detachment: hands seizing you, men casting you aside, flames swallowing your lodgings.

“I might have the town’s name wrong, or the order of it all, but I’ll never forget burning—smelling my own flesh cook. When I woke, I floated in a sea of stars. The Weaver was there…”

You pause, gauging them. Serax looks ghostly; Valdricht watches with keen interest.

“She asked about my life,” you continue. “As she did, I relived it all. In the end, she offered me a new body—if I’d serve her.” Your resolve wavers, but you press on. “Which I have done dutifully, seeing as how I owe her. She ordered me to stay with you both. As I told Serax earlier, she implied that I am meant to conceive a child."

It spills out, and you hear how manipulative it sounds—slipping into their lives, luring them into sin, all on The Weaver’s command.

You nearly apologize, but indignation at Valdricht’s brutality makes you bite your tongue. Instead, you hug yourself tighter and await their verdict.

Valdricht whispers, “Ywen sair aufyrn.”

Serax, staring at you slack-jawed, murmurs, “I know.”

“Ywen sair velai thrisair eri’yn.”

“I know.”

“Veth thy sail sevin?”

“Stop it,” you snap, startling yourself with your own nerve. “Stop speaking like I’m not here.”

Serax relents. “He wants to know if I intend to kill you.”

✧ Express shock.
✧ Express anger. ★ (Spirited +2 Required)
✧ Plead for mercy. ★ (Coward +2 Required)

✧✧✧

I was a bit hesitant to post this because it just resolves one cliffhanger while presenting another. I think this route is a good example of one of the challenges of writing a branching narrative story, which is how to handle plot reveals. Going into this I kind of naively assumed everyone would just read one route and I could reveal things at different times. It's challenging, but also kind of fun knowing some readers may connect dots earlier than others.

Each Night V route has its own scene where Serax and Valdricht discover that the MC has the same maker as Valdricht. Lurking behind each scene is a tension that the MC can't possibly understand. In my initial book series, the reason for this wasn't revealed until the end of the first book. It's the kind of plot twist that, when presented at the right moment, makes you want to set aside the book and take a long walk. I'd like for the reveal to hit all of the story routes at the same time, but I also don't want to force characters to behave in a manner that isn't natural for the sake of the plot.

One of the questions I anticipate about this particular route is why Valdricht's reaction is so much more extreme than in the other routes. It'll make sense once you understand Valdricht better. You'll even have the option to ask him to explain himself on a future night, so I won't rob you of that scene.

What I'll say for now is that there will always be things going on in the background that the MC isn't aware of yet. Part of my writing style is to draft each scene from the perspective of Serax, Valdricht, and occasionally other important characters like The Weaver, so everyone has their own set of facts and motivations behind how they behave, even if they aren't immediately apparent to the MC. It'll make replaying certain scenes really interesting once you uncover new details.

In the update, this route will be locked behind Weaver Alignment +2. As others have mentioned and I tend to agree, it doesn't make sense for the Heretic MC to jump into bed with Serax & Valdricht unless she's committed to following The Weaver. The main Heretic route will offer your MC more agency in how she approaches intimacy and imo a more romantic first time.

While I'm rambling here, I'll add one more note. I love seeing readers theorize about plot stuff, it's really cool, but I won't respond to any plot-related comments. This is because I don't trust myself not to spoil things. I know the plot and the mysteries are secondary to the relationship-building aspect of the story, but there are still a lot of cool things on the horizon and I wouldn't want to rob you of discovering them for yourself.

-Mortish