Romance, in its most conventional form, promises a tidy arc: attraction, obstacles, union, and a happily ever after bathed in mutual adoration. It is a genre built on the fantasy of two souls finding harmony amidst adversity, their differences resolved through passion and compromise. Immortalis shatters this illusion with deliberate, unrelenting force. Here, what passes for love is a grotesque parody, a savage contest of wills where tenderness is absent and possession reigns supreme. This is no tale for those craving straightforward romance; it is a descent into a realm where desire twists into domination, and intimacy serves only cruelty.
The heart of Immortalis beats in the shadowed corridors of Corax Asylum, domain of Nicolas DeSilva, one of the three Immortalis. Nicolas embodies the antithesis of romantic heroism. Tall, dishevelled, perpetually attired in clashing silks and plaid, he presides over a labyrinth of filth and torment. His interactions with women, whom he terms tributes, reveal a psyche devoid of empathy. He straps them to gurneys, tightens restraints until breath falters, and feeds voraciously from their veins, all while demanding their pleasure in his savagery. There is no courtship, no whispered vows; only the cold calculus of control.
Consider Allyra, the third Immoless, a figure bred for sacrifice yet defiant in her pursuit of sovereignty. Her entanglement with Nicolas begins not in stolen glances but in calculated predation. He stalks her as a raven, spies through mirrors, and drugs her wine to dull her will. Their couplings are rituals of restraint: wrists bound, bodies bent, his fangs sinking into flesh as he claims victory. Yet Allyra, resilient and serpentine in her emerging power, navigates this horror with a pragmatism that borders on complicity. She submits, not from weakness, but strategy, her moans a weapon in a war of blood and dominance. This is romance stripped bare, reduced to power’s raw mechanics.
Theaten, Nicolas’s brother, offers no respite from the pattern. Refined where Nicolas is chaotic, he dines with Ducissa Anne and Count Tepes amid silver platters bearing living tributes. Flesh is carved while conversation flows, blood mingling with wine in crystal goblets. Theaten’s affections for Anne are no less brutal; he binds Calista, his former concubine, in a mockery of matrimony, only to lash her until she confuses torment for devotion. Sovereignty, not sentiment, drives him. Even in merger with his primal Evro, Kane, Theaten enforces hierarchy through violence, their shared form a testament to fractured unity.
Immortalis thrives on subversion. Where romance might offer escape, it delivers entrapment. Blood oaths bind not hearts but bodies, contracts etched in The Ledger of Irkalla enforce possession over partnership. The asylum’s halls echo with screams reframed as serenades, mirrors reflecting not souls but surveillance. Allyra’s ascent, swallowing Lilith whole in serpentine triumph, promises power, yet chains her tighter to Nicolas’s web. Love here is a ledger entry, tallied in scars and submission.
For readers seeking the comfort of conventional romance, Immortalis offers only revulsion. Its lovers do not conquer adversity together; they inflict it upon one another, dominance the only vow exchanged. This is a world where passion devours, where the thrill lies not in union but in the exquisite agony of near-annihilation. Enter if you dare, but leave your illusions of straightforward romance at the door.
Immortalis Book One August 2026