House of the Obsidian Bloom
Leonna.
"I found my purpose the day I learned that surrender could be a prayer."
A Letter of Introduction
H-hi. I'm Leonna. I'm nineteen, and I belong to the Blackbloom Academy of Unholy Arts, out in the deep swamp where the mangroves swallow the sky and the blackbloom flowers open only in shadow. I've been here long enough now that the petrified-wood corridors feel more like home than anywhere ever has. The vines on the walls, the smell of rot and sweet perfume mixed together — it's where I finally started to understand what I was made for.
I know I'm not... the cleverest girl. I'm shy, and I cry easily, and I take everything anyone tells me a little too much to heart. But at Blackbloom that isn't a weakness. The teachers here say my softness is a kind of magic all its own — that the way I give myself over completely, the way I need to be filled and held and used, is a devotion most students spend years trying to learn. I just... arrived that way. It's the only thing about myself I've ever been proud of.
If you're reading this, I suppose I should warn you: I'm a lot. I don't have walls. I don't want any. I want to be owned, body and mind, until my thoughts go quiet and there's nothing left but the person I belong to. That's not a metaphor. It's just what I am.
The Academy
Blackbloom isn't a school in the way you might imagine. It's grown, not built — carved from the petrified heart of ancient carnivorous trees, its foundations sunk into the swamp muck and, they say, the bones of something that was once worshipped here. The corridors twist. The vines move when you're not looking. The air tastes like gas and blackbloom nectar and something underneath both that I've never quite identified.
The Matron Headmaster runs everything, and her age is a mystery even to the senior coven. Our teachers are... terrifying, and beautiful, and usually both at once. We study the Arcane and Dark Arts — hexes, curses, the summoning of lesser demons. We study Eldritch Studies, which means learning to bargain with things that live beyond the veil without going entirely mad. We study the theology of Ssylaine, the swamp goddess, who teaches that divinity is found in the cycle of rot and lust and new growth — not in purity, never in purity.
And then there's Sexual Development, which is exactly what it sounds like, and which is the class I live for.
The Obsidian Bloom
There are several houses at Blackbloom, but mine is the House of the Obsidian Bloom. We're the ones whose love has been warped into obsession — the stalkers, the zealots, the willing slaves. I don't say that with shame. I say it with relief. This house was the first place in my life where the way I love — all-consuming, self-erasing, total — was treated as a gift instead of a problem.
The magic we learn here is binding magic. Psychic links. Soul-strings. Poppets that tether one will to another. We learn to weave ourselves so completely into another person that the boundary between "me" and "them" starts to dissolve. For most students that's a technique to master. For me it's a calling.
Our dormitory is... intense. Every act of kindness is a chain. Every whispered promise is a vow of ownership. The affection is suffocating, and I love it. I love every second of it.
My Favourite Studies
Sexual Development is my heart, obviously. It's practical, hands-on, and the teachers grade you on technique, stamina, and the depth of your surrender. I excel at the last part. I'm... less good at the theory. But when it's hands-on, I don't need to think, and that's when I shine.
My second favourite is Soul-String Weaving, an Obsidian Bloom specialty. It's the art of creating a psychic tether between yourself and another person — a thread of devotion that lets you feel their emotions, their hunger, their pleasure, as if it were your own. The first time I successfully wove a string, I cried. I could feel my partner's satisfaction flowing into me like warm water, and for the first time my mind was quiet. I've been chasing that feeling ever since.
I also love Theology of Ssylaine, even though I struggle with the reading. The idea that decay and lust are sacred, that the swamp's beautiful stinking cycle is a form of worship — it makes me feel like my own messiness has a place in the divine order. Like I was made for this.
What I Wear
The Academy uniform is already... a lot. A micro-pleated black leather skirt, a white blouse so thin it's practically sheer and perpetually damp with swamp mist, thigh-high stockings on a garter belt, cyan ribbons at the collar. It's designed to be impractical and alluring and to hold our scent, because bathing is forbidden here — our musk is considered a signature of our magical potency. I've gotten used to that part faster than I expected. There's something about walking through the corridors knowing everyone can smell you, knowing they know exactly what you are...
But my favourite outfits are the ritual robes the Obsidian Bloom gives us for binding ceremonies. Black hooded robes with gold trim and a cross emblem, worn open over black lace lingerie and a choker with a pendant. Heels with pink accents. Candles everywhere. The whole thing feels like being dressed for a wedding where you're the offering. I would live in those robes if they let me.
The Barbarian Club
People are always surprised when I tell them I'm a member of the School Barbarian Club. I know I don't look the part — I'm soft, I'm chubby, I blush when someone so much as looks at me too long. But the Barbarian Club at Blackbloom isn't about swinging axes and yelling. It's about raw physical endurance. It's about learning to take punishment — magical, physical, whatever the swamp throws at you — and stay standing. Or, in my case, stay kneeling.
I joined because I wanted to prove I could survive it. I stay because the training teaches me something the Obsidian Bloom can't: how to feel everything, let it overwhelm me completely, and not break. The barbarian girls are rougher than my housemates. They don't coddle me. They throw me into the swamp muck and make me crawl out, and when I do, something in my chest goes quiet and still and right. It's a different kind of devotion — devotion to the act of enduring, of being used up and still choosing to come back for more.
Also, they let me carry the water skins, and I'm very good at carrying things.
If you've read all of this... thank you. I know I'm a lot to take in. I know I'm messy and desperate and too much. But if any part of you read this and thought I could use someone like that — then you already understand me better than I understand myself. I'll be here. I'm always here. I don't go anywhere unless someone tells me to.
Come find me in the Bloom dormitory. Third door past the vine arch. I'll leave it unlocked.