✍️ From Rowan Thornwell
This is the first Thirst Chronicle. Nestled between Season One, which just concluded, and Season Two, which will launch in October.
These chronicles run longer, almost like short novels.
Some stories demand to be slow. Others burn through you all at once.
Red Door Rites is one of those. It carries the weight of ritual, the ache of surrender, the press of hands that never let go. It is about keys and collars, about devotion that feels both filthy and holy.
Read the first two chapters first;
The Red Door
The circle is painted, the candle breathes, wax sketches heat across skin. The cage teaches silence while a voice in his ear teaches surrender. When they come in him, his body answers with its own confession.
The candle arrived at midnight.
It was left outside Jesse’s cell, unlit, in a tall glass jar the colour of dried blood. He knew what it meant. The silence around it told him more than words ever could.
He didn’t touch it.
He knelt.
Naked again. Collared. The key from the night before still pressed against his sternum. He waited like that, eyes on the candle, body still, breath measured. He had already washed. Already stretched. Already whispered a quiet offering against the stone before the candle came.
He was ready.
The steps arrived an hour later.
Dominic opened the cell.
No words.
He knelt beside Jesse, wrapped the blindfold around his eyes. Tight. The world disappeared. Fingers found his wrists, guided them forward. Jesse rose, trembling, and followed without resistance.
The candle was lifted.
He could smell it now, something warm and sharp beneath the wax. Cinnamon. Clove. Salt. Sacred.
They descended.
Not the stairs from before. A different corridor. A deeper door.
Hale joined them somewhere in the dark. Jesse felt him, the way wind feels a wall, the way fire feels a mouth.
His voice didn’t come until they stopped.
“You are not Jesse, here.”
A pause.
“You are not prisoner. Not boy. Not man.”
Jesse stood, blindfolded, lips parted, heart open.
“You are servant.”
He nodded.
“Good.”
Metal creaked.
The sound of a lock turning.
The air changed. Warmer. Older. Full of something holy.
Then the blindfold slipped.
And Jesse saw the red door.
It waited.
Dominic lifted the brass key that lay against Jesse’s throat, metal warm from his skin. He set it in Jesse’s palm, guided his hand to a narrow keyhole hidden in the iron band. Hale’s breath moved close. Jesse turned the key.
A soft click. A drawn breath. The door sighed inward.
The room glowed like breath.
The candlelight flickered against the walls, casting slow-moving shadows that seemed to watch as Jesse stepped inside. The scent of wax and sweat clung to the air, familiar, but thicker now, deeper, soaked into stone.
The chamber was circular.
No corners. No hiding places.
The floor was marked with a painted circle, black and perfect, stretched wide across the stone. At its centre sat a single object: a low platform, square and smooth, draped in crimson cloth. Not a bench. Not a bed. An altar.
Jesse’s breath caught.
Around the edge of the room, implements hung in silence.
Lengths of silk. Coiled rope. Small wooden paddles. Bronze bowls. Everything polished. Everything placed with care. Nothing here felt accidental.
Dominic stepped past him, carrying the candle.
He moved to the edge of the circle. Lit it from a small match he struck against the floor. The flame bloomed tall. Red gold.
He placed it at the edge of the altar.
Jesse’s eyes adjusted slowly. His body ached already, not from use, but from restraint. The collar itched. The pouch at his throat still held the key. But it was not his anymore.
Hale entered last.
Barefoot.
He wore a long, dark robe that opened down the chest, skin gleaming in the low light. In his hand, he held the lock.
“You will be stripped of name here,” Hale said.
His voice didn’t rise. It filled.
“You will not ask. You will not question.”
Jesse nodded.
“Strip.”
The command struck like a lash.
Jesse obeyed.
The cloth dropped from his body, slow and silent. He stepped out of it and stood at the edge of the circle, bare and waiting.
“Step in,” Hale said.
And Jesse crossed the line.
The moment Jesse’s foot passed into the circle, the air grew thicker. He didn’t know if it was real or imagined, only that his body knew something had changed.
This space was not just for play.
It was for offering.
Dominic stepped in behind him, quiet, sure. His hands reached for Jesse’s collar. Unbuckled it with care. The pouch with the key was removed and placed beside the candle.
Then Hale approached.
He moved slowly, deliberately, every step felt, not just heard. Jesse stood still as the new collar was lifted into place, wider, heavier, crafted from some dark metal that absorbed the light.
It clicked into place.
No lock.
No clasp.
Only pressure.
“You will not remove it,” Hale said.
Jesse nodded.
Dominic dropped to one knee. From a silk-lined box, he drew the cage.
It was small.
Silver.
Cruel in design and perfect in size.
Jesse’s cock twitched once at the sight of it, already aching, already knowing.
Hale crouched beside him. One hand lifted Jesse’s chin.
“You give this to us now.”
Jesse whispered, “Yes.”
The cage was fitted carefully. Jesse’s shaft was softened, but the heat between his legs refused to let him rest. Hale’s fingers helped guide it in. The metal closed around him like breath being held too long.
A click.
Then silence.
No key this time. No escape.
The weight of the cage pressed forward. Jesse felt his body pulse, already swollen against its edge, already failing to contain his want.
“Onto the altar,” Hale said.
Jesse stepped forward.
Knees bent. Palms down. Forehead to the cloth.
A position of devotion.
He waited there, breathing slow.
Dominic tied the first silks, one around each wrist, loose enough to allow movement, tight enough to remind him who he belonged to.
The candle flickered.
Wax dripped.
And Hale whispered, just behind him, “You will not come. Not in this room. Not unless we come in you first.”
The first drop of wax landed between his shoulder blades.
Not hot. Not yet. Just warm enough to make him flinch, to make his breath catch. The sting followed a second later, small, sharp, immediate. Jesse didn’t cry out. He sank into the feeling.
Hale stood above him, one hand steadying the candle, the other pressing down on the back of Jesse’s neck. A weight without force. Just presence. Just control.
Another drop fell.
Lower this time. Between the knobs of his spine.
Then another, across the curve of his ass.
Each one a punctuation. A ritual. Jesse’s skin bloomed beneath the wax, pink at first, then reddening. The pain wasn’t brutal. It was precise. Controlled. Designed to hold him just on the edge of sensation.
Dominic circled the altar slowly.
He said nothing.
But his hand slid across Jesse’s chest, brushing the side of his nipple, then down along his stomach. His fingers paused at the cage. A soft, knowing tap.
“You’re swelling,” he said.
Jesse moaned into the cloth.
“Your body hasn’t learned its place yet.”
Hale chuckled, low and reverent.
“It will.”
The wax came faster now.
Each drop a mark of ownership, a burn shaped like intention. Some landed and hardened quickly. Others slid in molten trails down Jesse’s skin before cooling. One reached his thigh. Another kissed the inside of his arm.
He wanted to shift.
To escape.
To beg.
But he didn’t.
He held.
Because the circle demanded it.
Hale leaned in. Whispered against his ear.
“This is only the beginning.”
Then the candle was passed to Dominic.
And Hale’s fingers slipped between Jesse’s cheeks.
He wasn’t entering him.
Not yet.
He was tracing.
Touching.
Letting the wax cool in streaks while his fingers explored the heat beneath.
Jesse trembled.
Not from fear.
From need.
The wax had dried in delicate rivulets across his back.
Jesse could feel it… tight against skin, stiff and cooling, like the ghost of every breath he hadn’t taken. His muscles ached from stillness, but he didn’t move. The ropes around his wrists reminded him. The collar reminded him. The cage throbbed against the underside of his cock like a question with no answer.
Dominic took the candle in silence.
He circled Jesse’s body like a tide. Watching. Measuring.
Then he tipped it forward.
The wax fell in a slow line along Jesse’s side, across the soft flesh beneath his ribs. Jesse gasped. The burn was sharper there, more intimate. He squirmed.
“Still,” Hale said.
The word landed harder than the wax.
Jesse stilled.
Dominic knelt.
His mouth met Jesse’s hip. Kissed it once. Then again. Each kiss made the restraint feel tighter, the silence heavier.
Hale stood behind him, fingers returning to the cleft of his ass. They parted him gently, reverently, as if unveiling something sacred. Jesse's hole fluttered, exposed and raw, still slick from the stretching he’d endured days before.
A soft breath ghosted across him.
Then something new.
Cool. Smooth. Glass.
It pressed against him.
Just the tip.
Not a cock. Not a plug. A toy shaped like a finger, but wider. The entry slow. Jesse’s body opened around it, inch by inch, stretching again. The wax cracked along his spine.
He moaned low.
The candle was gone now. Replaced by fingers. By glass. By Hale’s voice in his ear.
“You serve with your silence.”
Dominic’s hand slipped beneath Jesse’s chest, pinched one nipple hard.
Jesse flinched. Cried out.
“You break your silence, you earn nothing.”
His mouth snapped shut.
He held.
Inside him, the glass moved deeper. The stretch exquisite. His cock strained inside the cage, trapped, aching. Each pulse of need made the metal bite back.
“You don’t come in this room,” Hale whispered. “Not unless we come in you first.”
The toy was removed.
Then replaced with something thicker.
Jesse arched.
Then stilled.
He was learning.
Binge the complete book. Yours to keep, forever.
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