Hong lu finally having the crashout he deserved 👍
I forgot to add Hong lu's weapon in the second panel
The bells are the first thing you hear every morning—soft, chiming, almost birdlike in their laughter. They come before the footsteps of your advisors, before the clanking of platters and wine goblets, even before the rooster crows.
They are his bells.
He arrives with dawn, skipping into the hall like a child and bowing so low his nose brushes the cold stone floor. “Good morrow, Your Majesty,” he says, voice bright and breathless, eyes hidden behind a fan of red and gold silk. “The sun rises late, it seems. I’ve missed your light.”
You allow yourself a small smile, if only because your court expects it. He is your jester—your fool, your clown, your painted shadow—and he is beloved by all, even those who should know better.
Especially you.
He calls himself Jovian, though you suspect that is not his real name. No one knows where he came from. He appeared one storm-soaked night three winters ago. No one summoned him, no scroll bore his seal, and yet he walked through the palace gates as though he'd lived there all his life, trailing puddles and laughter in his wake. The guards said they let him in because of the way he smiled. As though he knew them. As though he owned them.
You’d been colder back then. Harsher. Too young for your crown, yet already dulled by the weight of it. You didn’t laugh easily. You barely smiled. Your court feared you and rightly so. But he laughed. He made you laugh. His first performance was impromptu. A whirling dance of mimicry and mockery, calling out your advisors by name and miming their worst faults with such ruthless precision that you remember the sound of goblets dropping to the floor.
You’d clapped. Once. Slowly.
And that was enough.
From then on, he never left.
He’s always there now. In the corners of your vision. In every reflection. Behind every column. Sometimes it seems even the shadows bend around him, accommodating his whims.
He wears bells on his wrists and ankles, dozens of them, and yet you never hear him when he shouldn’t be there. When he shouldn’t be anywhere near you. When you’re in the bath. Or asleep. Or alone with someone else.
You’ve stopped being alone with anyone else.
And still, your court adores him. They call him harmless. They say his painted smile is just that—paint. His laughter, an illusion. But they don’t see the things you see. They don’t feel his eyes.
You do. You feel them when you dress. When you undress. When you touch the ring he slipped onto your finger “as a joke” during a performance and which now cannot be removed.
This morning, as always, he somersaults to your throne and throws himself at your feet, dramatic and boneless, like a puppet without strings. His laughter echoes off the marble pillars.
“Another day, another chance to make you smile,” he purrs. His voice is sugar and venom, always. “Shall I juggle your secrets, sire? Dance with your demons? Or would you prefer I remove them entirely?”
You glance down. His painted face grins up at you, the red of his mouth smeared just slightly too wide. There’s something red beneath his fingernails.
“Jovian,” you say, your voice carefully neutral. “Did you sleep at all?”
He tilts his head. “Sleep?” he echoes. “Why would I sleep when you might dream of someone else?”
The court titters. They think it’s another of his jokes. You know better.
You haven’t had a restful night in weeks. Not since you complemented the captain of your guard. She vanished the next morning. Her armor was found folded on her cot. Her sword was never recovered.
Your steward once suggested restricting Jovian’s access to your chambers. The steward now speaks in a strange whisper and doesn’t meet your eyes. He says it was an illness.
You know better.
“Tell me a story,” you say. It’s safer, usually. He loves to perform. It distracts him.
He rises with a flourish, sweeping his arm in a theatrical arc. The bells sing.
“A story,” he says, eyes glinting like cut glass. “A tale of love and laughter? Or one of bones and betrayal?” He leans close. Too close.
You do not flinch. Flinching would only amuse him.
“Whichever you prefer,” you say, and your voice, to your credit, remains steady. “But keep it short.”
Jovian’s smile grows until it threatens to tear the painted mask of his face in two. He twirls away from the dais in a single, liquid motion, his bells trilling like birds startled from a tree. His arms rise, fingers splayed, as if he’s about to cast a spell. And in some ways, you think he is.
“Once,” he begins, “in a kingdom not unlike this one, there lived a ruler whose heart beat only for order. They surrounded themself with straight lines and silent halls, with iron laws and colder dreams. Their people whispered that they had ice in their veins, frost in their marrow. They were not cruel, no—they were clean.”
The courtiers laugh again, the low, uncertain ripple of those who know they are part of a performance but aren’t sure whether the joke is at their expense. You watch him move, pirouetting between pillars, his shadow elongating oddly behind him despite the hour.
“One day,” Jovian continues, “a man came to the palace. A stranger with bells on his wrists and madness in his smile. He danced into the throne room and bowed so low that even the spiders looked down on him. And the ruler, who had not laughed in many long years, tilted their head. And then...smiled.”
He stops dancing. Stops everything. The silence that follows is unnatural. The kind that weighs on your ears. It stretches too long.
Jovian stands now in the center of the chamber. He faces you. The fan is gone. His face is fully visible.
No one laughs.
“But the smile,” he says softly, “was not theirs.”
Something shifts in the air. You feel it like a sudden pressure drop before a storm. Your fingers tighten around the armrest of your throne.
Jovian’s eyes—not the bright, painted mockeries from moments ago but something deeper, older, more aware—lock onto yours. The courtiers around you begin to shift uneasily, the illusion fraying at the edges. Perhaps they, too, feel the change, though they’d never admit it.
“They say,” he goes on, his voice honeyed and low, “that when a fool dances too close to the fire, he risks getting burned. But what if the fire... finds him cold? What if it feeds him? What if it makes him real?”
He turns his head slowly, unnaturally, like a marionette guided by invisible strings. “Would you like that, my liege? To be real?”
Your mouth is dry. Your ring—the one he “joked” into placing upon your finger—burns against your skin. You press your palm into your thigh to stop yourself from reaching for it.
“What are you?” you whisper.
He hears. Of course he hears.
He laughs again, but this time there’s no joy in it. It’s empty. Hollow. The sound of dry leaves spinning down a long corridor.
“I am yours,” he says, all false brightness restored in an instant. “Your reflection, your shadow, your secret kept too long. I am the whisper in the mirror when you do not recognize yourself. I am what your court would be if it were honest. I am... love.”
He’s at your feet again. You didn’t see him move.
“I am love,” he repeats, and his voice cracks on the last word like porcelain under pressure.
Then he reaches into his coat and pulls out a feather—white, long, unmistakably from a dove—and places it on your knee.
You stare at it.
You think of your high priest, who hasn’t been seen since last week’s festival. You remember the dove he always kept with him, a symbol of peace, of renewal. You remember how it used to coo from his shoulder even during sermons.
You haven’t heard that cooing since.
“Your story,” Jovian says, rising again, brushing off his sleeves like dusting away ash, “is unfinished. But it’s getting better. Don’t you think?”
You don’t answer.
He leans close, until his lips nearly brush your ear. “I’ve been writing it in your dreams,” he whispers. “Do you like what I’ve done with the ending?”
Your heart thunders in your chest, but you force yourself to remain still, regal. You are a monarch. You are not afraid.
You are terrified.
The bells sound again as he twirls away, laughing once more, but it is an echo of an echo now, like wind whistling through an old crypt.
He performs the rest of the day for your court, delighting them with riddles and songs, with lewd jokes and elaborate impersonations. He flirts with the ladies, mocks the lords, kisses the hem of your robe as though nothing has changed.
But everything has.
That night, as you lie in your bed, the ring still burning on your hand and the feather tucked in a locked drawer, you dream.
And in the dream, Jovian stands at the foot of your bed, his smile stretched wide, his bells silent.
“You found the ending,” he says.
And the room fills with laughter that isn’t yours.
Masterlist
His eyes are unfathomably pretty
UMMMMMMMMMM
<Blood... I need blood.>
I'm screaming @redspringstudio was this intentional
When half your sinners are dead and the guest ID corroded into a WAW E.G.O :)
They may, in fact, be cooked.
That’s Louis Rossman, a repair technician and YouTuber, who went viral recently for railing against Apple. Apple purposely charges a lot for repairs and you either have to pay up or buy a new device. That’s because Apple withholds necessary tools and information from outside repair shops. And to think, we were just so close to change.
Follow @the-future-now
Shoutout to the time I had to tell my American friend what fanny meant
Mermay Masterlist
Here's a list of my underwater themed works so far.
Stories
Yandere!Octopus Hybrid x Reader Yandere!Circus Merman x Reader Yandere!Merman x Reader [Obra Dinn inspired] Yandere!Merman x Reader x Yandere!Prince [Rusalka inspired] Hammerhead Shark Hybrid x Reader Shark Loan Shark Series
Art
Kraken First Mate x Dumbass Human Captain Comic Sea Slug Boyfriend Comic Dating the Loch Ness Monster Comic Yandere!Merman Comic Yandere!Merman vs Prince Comic Shark Facts Comic Octopus Mating Habits Doodle Octopus Hybrid Design Doodle Yandere!Merman Doodle
Misc
Yandere!OC's as sharks [Patreon Character] Sea Sheep Hybrid
Coming up this month
Sea Creature x Fisherman!Reader [Dredge inspired]
Algae Monster x Reader [ft. @/natansiik's character]
Hammerhead Shark Hybrid and Catcalling [Patreon Request]
Jellyfish Hybrid [Patreon Request]
Suggestions are welcomed!
Alpha Bully: Hey nerd! I got a problem I need you to solve for me.
You, his omega roommate: Wh-what is it now?
Alpha Bully: I got this big throbbing knot with no weak nerd bouncing on it!
Listen, I woke up in cold sweat at 4am with a vision: you and your stereotypically unavailable gamer boyfriend have moved into a new house. You find out very soon it's not as empty as you had assumed, but your worries fall on deaf ears. The tentacle monster lurking in dark corners just wants to make sure you're not lonely.
[Second Part]
Content: gender neutral reader, monster romance (mildly NSFW)
You didn't notice anything strange at first. Maybe it was considering its prey. You'd found a cheap, old house available for rent, and your boyfriend couldn't refuse the extra space for his mancave.
Oh, you poor thing. It watched your lonely evenings, your empty bed at night, your futile attempts to spend more time with your beloved partner. It had originally planned to devour your souls and await the next foolish mortals to enter its realm, but seeing your pitiful state prompted a change of heart. Metaphorical heart, of course.
It started gradually: testing the waters, or what you'd call a courting attempt. Doors opening by themselves, disembodied eyes lovingly gazing at you from the nearby walls. Dark tendrils making their way out of the shadows, just to announce its presence.
"I think this place might be cursed", you told your boyfriend one evening. "I've been stalked by amorphous silhouettes of blight and terror, and they whisper ancient blasphemies to me at night." He let out a worried shout and slapped the desk. "That's cool, babe. I'm kind of losing right now, though, so perhaps give me a minute?"
One night you were awakened from your slumber by a warm touch sliding across your body. You smiled into your pillow as the cheeky hands made their way down, fondling your curves and hungrily searching for your sensitive areas. You let out a soft moan, enjoying the moment, until you heard your boyfriend yell from the other room. Your eyes shot open.
The hands lewdly groping your privates were, in fact, tentacles. Your first reaction was to gasp, but you were quickly silenced by another slippery appendage pressing against your lips. Shh, shh. Allow the creature to do its thing, dear. Surely enough, within minutes you were a drooling mess, holding onto the sheets for dear life.
"You've been in a good mood lately", you boyfriend remarks, idly scrolling on his phone and crunching on his breakfast cereal. You ponder if you should tell him you've been fucked relentlessly by a monstrous creature inhabiting your new home. You glance at the counter and smirk, remembering how you just had to wipe your wet mess from it a few hours ago. "Keep it that way, hun, I could get used to not being pestered every hour", the man jokes with a laugh.
Does it count as cheating if your affair partner isn't really human? Although, you have to wonder if you're still dating to begin with. From the corner of your eye, you can discern faint movement above the young man, a shadow looming menacingly. The eldritch monster would not hesitate to tear your poor boyfriend apart if he tried to mess with its belonging.
18+/any pronouns/finally joined tumblr after stalking posts via pinterest/adding another site for my fanfiction needs
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