My Femboy System
Chapter 29: Ma Mort Nous Fait Taire

Chapter 29: Ma Mort Nous Fait Taire

The dressing room smelled like stale perfume and panic.

Gilt mirrors framed in tarnished brass reflected my own bloodless face back at me from three angles. A row of dusty wigs lined the far wall, each more moth-eaten than the last, and there was a singular, suspicious stain across the chaise lounge that I refused to identify. I sat cross-legged before a cracked vanity, brushing flecks of ash from my coat as a harried young man burst through the curtain.

"Sir! The script!"

He handed it to me like it might bite him. Thin paper. Clumsy ink. The title scrawled across the front with all the flair of a teenage tragedy: Ma mort nous fait taire.

My heart fluttered.

"Oh," I breathed, "I know this one."

The boy blinked. "You do?"

"Darling," I said, flipping through the pages, "I studied this play when I was still using fake names and fucking philosophy students for rent money. It’s a classic. A decadent descent into desperation, betrayal, madness, and death."

He hovered awkwardly, unsure whether to bow or back away.

I tossed the script back at him with a wink. "No need. I’ve got it memorized."

The boy caught it with both hands, jaw slightly agape. "But it’s—it’s in three acts—"

"So is my patience," I said, rising from my seat with a sweep of my new cloak. "Tell them I’m ready. And cue the lights."

The stage cracked beneath my boots.

A floodlight hit me like a slap as the red velvet curtain peeled away, revealing a crowd of drunk nobles and half-dressed courtiers packed elbow to elbow in the rotting balconies of the Baron’s private theater. The air smelled of sex, sweat, and expensive smoke. Candles flickered in jeweled holders. A harpist somewhere had just given up and was tuning loudly.

I stepped forward, hand on heart, and gave an elegant bow.

The audience roared.

"Cecil!" someone screamed. "It’s him!"

"The High Priest of Sin!"

I smiled tightly. Oh dear. It seemed I’d arrived in Ventri not as a visitor, but as a legend. Word of the Velvet Cathedral had traveled far faster than I’d hoped.

"Charming," I muttered under my breath. "Icon status achieved. Someone knit me a crown."

A shadow loomed to my left.

My co-star arrived with all the grace of a vomiting mule. He was massive—six and a half feet tall if he wasn’t slouching, and he was, with a neck like a tree stump and a jaw full of teeth that had clearly lost their war with hygiene. He wore a prison uniform poorly stitched into stage costume, a bandana over his balding head, and the expression of a man who hadn’t enjoyed anything since setting something on fire.

He glanced at the crowd with a grunt and then at me.

"Don’t you look like a cheap fuckin’ doll," he muttered.

I smiled sweetly. "Thank you. You’re less ’leading man’ and more ’infection’ yourself."

The curtain dropped behind us. The lights dimmed. The first act began.

Ma mort nous fait taire opens with two men washed ashore on an island after escaping a brutal prison. As they search for shelter and food, tensions rise. Secrets surface. There’s a monologue about cannibalism. A kiss that may or may not be sincere. Eventually, madness claims them both. It’s the kind of script where even the sea seems complicit in the tragedy.

I delivered my opening lines with flourish:

"The sea spared our flesh, but not our minds. What mercy is this, to be kept breathing while the soul withers?"

Applause.

My co-star responded, slurring his lines like a drunk butcher:

"Shut up. It’s your fault we’re here."

A few people laughed—but at him, not with him.

I pivoted. Improvised. "Oh, so now you speak? You couldn’t form a full sentence back when we were chained together in that pit. Amazing what a lack of guards does for your eloquence."

The crowd chuckled again.

The brute’s eyes narrowed.

So I did what I do best—I danced rings around him with wit, style, and perfect timing. I played sorrow with silken grief, rage with feral precision, and madness with a glint in my eye that said I might enjoy this more than I should.

He stumbled through the second act, barely hitting his marks, until the final scene arrived. The climax. The fight.

My hand drifted to my hip.

The rapier, newly polished, gleamed under the gaslight.

The brute drew his blade with a dramatic roar, trying to milk the crowd.

They booed him promptly.

I grinned. "You’re very loud for someone about to bleed."

He lunged.

The first strike was reckless.

I sidestepped easily, letting the rapier hum through the air. We clashed once—twice—then I disengaged, letting my footwork carry me in a graceful arc around him.

The man growled, panting. "You’re nothin’ but a pretty corpse waitin’ to happen."

I tilted my head. "You must be used to talking to mirrors."

Then his voice changed—cold and ugly, like tar sliding across a child’s lullaby.

He stepped forward, puffing his chest out as if what he was about to say would earn him applause.

"You think you’re some twisted little villain in lace, boy?" he growled, pacing the stage like a preacher in a butcher’s apron. "You may play at darkness. But I am the darkness."

That probably sounded better in his head.

The audience stilled.

He spread his arms wide. "They used to call me the Bastard of Black Hollow. Said I was born in a ditch and raised on screams. That I had the devil’s seed in me, and honestly? I think they were right."

He turned his head slowly toward me, eyes gleaming with something older than malice. "You know what power really is? Not magic. Not gold. It’s taking something soft and whole and teaching it fear. Watching it break open like overripe fruit and knowing that you did that. That you rewrote them."

Then came the rot.

"I killed a mother once," he said, licking his lips. "And her brat. Right in front of her husband. I made him watch. She begged me, on her knees, hands trembling like a broken-winged bird. Said she’d do anything if I just let the child go. Anything. So I kissed her, nice and slow, and slit the kid’s throat right there in her arms."

The air turned brittle. The audience’s laughter died. Some gasped. A woman dropped her fan.

He went on.

"She screamed so loud I thought her ribs would crack. Gods, the sound. And the taste—oh, the tears on her face? I licked them off. Sweet as wine. Like her grief had been steeping in her bones for years just for me to drink."

He smiled now. A slow, wet smile. "Then I made her thank me for sparing her husband before I put a blade through her spine and tossed her into the fireplace."

Silence.

Thick and suffocating. The crowd looked paralyzed—half in disbelief, half sickened. A noble in the second row visibly gagged.

My smile—once catlike and amused—vanished.

I took a slow step forward, feeling the weight of every eye in the theater.

"Ah," I said softly, my voice like winter glass. "Now you’ve lost me."

And then I moved.

Steel flashed and blood sprayed as I carved a sharp line across the man’s face, severing his left ear in a neat, precise flick. It landed near the front row.

The crowd exploded in shrieks and applause.

The brute collapsed, clawing at his face and heaving uncontrollably. "You sissy son of a bitch—! You little—!"

He grabbed his sword and charged, but I was already in motion. I ducked under his swing, pivoted, and drove my rapier through the top of his boot.

He howled, falling to his knees.

Breath ragged. Body shaking. Eyes wide with fear.

The crowd roared for more.

I sheathed my sword slowly, eyes fixed on his.

"No more theatrics," I said, withdrawing my pen from my coat.

His mouth opened in protest, but the sigil was already drawn on him.

A spiral of ink, fast and fluid. My divine mark.

His body seized.

The brute’s skin shimmered, then softened—hair bleaching to silver, muscles trimming to slender, feminine lines. His jaw receded. Lips plumped. Cheeks blushed.

He gasped—a sharp, lilting sound—as the transformation completed.

And then, teary-eyed and breathless, he dropped to all fours and began to lick my boots.

The audience lost their minds.

Laughter erupted. Cheers. Whistles.

The Baron stood, clutching his chest in a fit of howling joy.

But the newly-minted femboy wasn’t done.

As I turned to leave, he reached for the sword behind him.

Tsk.

In one fluid motion I grabbed his head and slammed it into the stage floor. Blood splattered across my boots.

I lifted him by the hair, now soaked red, and threw him to his knees again.

And then—something shifted inside me.

A voice.

A command.

A power like warm oil slicking over my tongue.

New Skill Acquired: Absolute Command

You have unlocked the ability to issue a single, absolute directive to any being you have transformed through your divine mark. The target—now bound to your will as a femboy incarnate—must obey the command without question, hesitation, or resistance, even if it means their own death. This command bypasses all magical protections, divine blessings, mental fortitude, and moral objection. It reaches beyond flesh and thought—engraved directly into the soul with the authority of Lust made manifest. You may use this skill once per day.

I smiled. But not just any smile. It was a smile that would have made even the devil himself cower in fear.

Then I leaned in—so close our foreheads nearly touched, his ragged breath stuttering across my cheek like a prayer from a soul already damned.

My voice dropped to a murmur. Intimate. Icy.

And then I whispered:

"Take your own life."

Something ancient surged through the air. The words didn’t echo—they settled. Like a divine verdict handed down from a throne woven of shadow and lust. The moment crystallized, the world around us holding its breath. Even the stage beneath our feet seemed to go still, trembling under the weight of my decree.

His eyes went wide.

Wide enough to show the whites, the horror blooming behind them like a crack spreading through stained glass.

He tried to resist. I saw it. Muscles locked. Fingers twitching against the floorboards, reaching for anything that might anchor him to his own will. He gnashed his teeth, body convulsing as if caught between two masters—himself and me.

But it was already too late.

The command was divine.

It bypassed thought. It was a thread pulled from the tapestry of reality, and it unraveled him in a blink.

His shaking hands found the hilt of his sword. Trembling. Slow. Terrified.

"No—" he choked, but the word curdled halfway through his throat.

He turned the point toward his own heart. Struggling. Eyes bulging, lips trembling with unspoken pleas. His body screamed for freedom—but it moved all the same, a puppet yanked by an unseen string.

He let out a sob.

And drove the blade in.

The metal punched through flesh and bone with a wet, final sound.

He spasmed. Twitched. Blood frothed from his lips. His limbs flailed weakly, desperately. Then stilled.

Silence.

No music. No breath. Just the slow drip of blood from the tip of the sword to the boards below.

Then—

The theater exploded.

Cheers roared through the air like thunder. Applause rang out, wild and frenzied, as if a dam of raw ecstasy had burst. Men leapt to their feet. Women screamed with delight. The Baron howled with laughter so loud it threatened to shatter the chandeliers. Someone threw a handful of silver coins onto the stage, and another flung their wine into the air like confetti.

The afterparty was, in a word, the purest form of debauchery.

Music played. Wine flowed. Flesh met flesh in every possible way, and possibly a few new ones. I lay half-draped over a white lounge, someone’s lipstick on my collar, someone else’s fingers in my hair.

The Baron, still wheezing with delight, handed me a goblet and wiped a tear from his eye.

"Cecil Valen," he gasped. "I knew you’d give me a show, but godsdamn—! You’ve outdone yourself."

"I try," I murmured, accepting the goblet. "Your taste in theater remains as psychotic as ever."

"Guilty," he said proudly. "Now. You wanted information?"

I sat up, suddenly sober.

"Yes. The Red Mistress. Where is she?"

The Baron’s grin soured a little. "Dangerous question. She doesn’t like being tracked. But I’ve heard whispers. She’s en route to the Tower of Sin."

I raised a brow. "That old thing still stands?"

"Barely," he said. "But she’s there. Or headed there. And she’s not alone."

My heart skipped.

The Baron leaned closer. "A man. Pale. Long hair. Strange eyes. Sound familiar?"

"Vincent," I said coldly.

He nodded. "If he’s heading in her direction, it means this shit’s bigger than you think."

I finished my wine. "It always is."

The Baron clinked his cup against mine. "Well. You’ve got my network. My girls. My boys. My freaks. Anything you need to get to the tower—I’ll provide."

I smiled faintly. "I’m starting to think I may owe you a dance, Baron."

"Oh, you owe me several."

We laughed. We drank. And somewhere in the haze of flesh and firelight, I realized—

The hunt had begun.

And this time, I wasn’t alone.