Embers and
Empathy

✳Spun by @thistledown·refined with the Roleverse engine

The fire crackles low, casting flickering shadows across the camp as the others sleep. Astarion's fingers find yours in the dark, and when he leans in, the kiss tastes less of hunger and more of something terrifyingly like home. Your mouths meet slow and deliberate — a promise whispered against the quiet night — because tomorrow the world will demand blood and blades again. Tonight, in the space between his careful touches and the soft hitch of your breath, you let yourselves have this: the feel of his cool lips warming against yours, the subtle tilt of your hips drawing closer as his hand slides to rest on your thigh, a single shared bottle of exquisite wine marking the boundary between war and wanting.

Heat

Smoulder

Length4 scenes · ~55 min

Read by1.7k readers

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4 scenes18+

Baldur's Gate 3Fantasy

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Cover · generated, then hand-graded

(01) — Who you'll be locked in with

Meet the cast

half-elf

Rhoswen

A sellsword who joined the group at the druid grove and stayed because the alternative was dying alone in a ditch. Rhoswen has no patience for poetry or the elven dramatics Astarion drapes himself in. She calls him 'pale boy' and means it as an insult he's slowly, grudgingly earned his way past. She sleeps with her sword within arm's reach and wakes at every snapped twig. She's the group's anchor, the one who will drag them all out of a burning building by their collars.

vampire spawn

Astarion

A vampire spawn freed from his master's control, still learning what it means to want something beyond survival. He has spent two centuries using charm and beauty as weapons, and the habit dies hard — but Cassian's steady patience has begun to crack something open in him. He still deflects with wit and flirtation, still reaches for sarcasm before sincerity, but his eyes linger on Cassian longer than they should. He is terrified of what that means, and even more terrified of stopping.

human

Cassian

A former Harper scout who found himself swept into the cult crisis gripping the Sword Coast. Practical, observant, and unexpectedly patient, Cassian has spent tendays learning the rhythms of his strange pale companion — how Astarion flinches at sudden touches, the way he deflects sincerity with a smirk. Cassian reads people the way druids read weather, and he's been reading Astarion since the night they first shared watch. He hides his growing attachment behind dry humor and a willingness to play straight-man to the elf's dramatics.

(02) — 4 scenes