Season 1: Survival of the Fittest

  Ch 7: FinDom, FinDom, FinDom

  Nysera returned to her desk with measured steps, settling once more behind Mira’s battered ptop. Around her, the office buzzed with low, careless chatter, mortals congratuting themselves on surviving another Monday. She pulled the cursed phone from her pocket and, under the pretense of reviewing documents, began her investigation.

  It did not take long to uncover the heart of it. "OnlyFans," the peasants called it — a subscription-based ptform where creators could offer exclusive content to followers, a private court in miniature, guarded by coin. The obvious uses were predictable: titiltion, the selling of mortal flesh for mortal currency. She skimmed past these, unimpressed, until something far more interesting surfaced.

  Financial Domination.

  Findom, they called it, as if giving power a nickname made it less dangerous.

  Nysera leaned forward slightly, scanning the glowing words with growing fascination. This was not the cheap barter of flesh she had expected. This was something far purer, far closer to the true currencies she understood: respect, obedience, tribute.

  Here, mortals offered money for the privilege of being insulted. They paid to be commanded, to be reminded of their inferiority. No touch. No risk. Simply power, distilled and monetised.

  Commanding respect. Being worshipped or humiliated at her whim. Receiving tributes without obligation or compromise.

  She exhaled slowly, the realisation blooming cold and brilliant in her chest. She had been bred for this. In her old world, she had led through awe and dread, had commanded loyalty from those who feared and adored her. Here, stripped of her title, her magic, her silks and jewels, she had found a new throne waiting — built not of marble and blood, but of pixels and willing coin.

  Mortals had not abandoned their instincts. They had simply dressed them in new guises.

  Her finger hovered over the screen, the bright "Sign Up" button pulsing faintly like a heartbeat. For a long moment, Nysera hesitated.

  Even here, stripped of title and status, the reflex of pride tugged at her. In her old world, courtesanship had been a dangerous art, ced with both power and peril. It was a role pyed by those who knew how to wield intimacy as a weapon — but it was never without risk. Bodies were currency; pleasure and performance the levers by which power shifted. Nysera had always despised it, not for its brazenness, but for its necessity. She had built the White Veil in rebellion against such structures — had denied love, lust, and flesh their hold over her — had sought to command loyalty through will alone.

  And now, here she was, poised to enter another court of transaction and spectacle, albeit through gss screens and silent tributes.

  Her lip curled slightly, but she forced herself to stillness.

  This was not the same. She would not offer herself. She would not perform for their satisfaction. She would command. She would demand tribute for presence, for authority, for the sheer rightness of her superiority. If her dignity must be tested, it would be by her own rules — as it had always been.

  After all, what was nobility, if not the art of extracting loyalty from those desperate to belong?

  Nysera straightened her back, her decision crystallising in a cold, hard line of resolve. She had bent before, reshaping herself to survive assassinations, coups, revolts. She had endured far greater humiliations than this. She would bend again — but only to rise higher.

  With careful precision, she tapped the screen.

  The deal was struck. Not with gods, not with monarchs, but with the simple, merciless engine of mortal desire.

  The commute back to her ft was just as infuriating and humiliating as the trip out had been. Once she was back, she pulled out her phone and considered its contents.

  The screen blinked to a simple registration page, deceptively pin for something that would become her new battlefield. Nysera moved with slow, deliberate care. She chose the name she had already begun to build on the mortal scrying ptform — ViscountessV — sharp, memorable, a name that suggested nobility without needing expnation.

  The profile demanded an image. She studied Mira’s meagre wardrobe with a critical eye, selecting the pinest bck blouse, one that sat high at the colr, crisp and severe. She positioned herself in the ft’s thin grey light, capturing the image carefully: head held high, gaze cold and unyielding, chin tilted with imperious finality. The photograph captured no softness, no warmth. It promised discipline. Expectation. Sovereignty.

  Satisfied, she uploaded it.

  The next demand was for a biography. She considered briefly the insipid examples she had glimpsed in her research — emojis, simpering hashtags, desperate promises — and dismissed them with contempt. If she was to command, she would not beg.

  She typed, each word measured and deliberate:

  "Kneel properly. Pay for the privilege of my attention. Disrespect will not be tolerated."

  There was no need for more. Those worthy of serving her would understand.

  The final step was linking the account to a payment system — a crude, mortal ritual she performed with an inward grimace, sacrificing what little remained of Mira’s battered financial identity to secure her pce. The irony was not lost on her: the broken girl she now inhabited would finally become rich, not through compromise, but through obedience extracted from others.

  The page was live within minutes, standing like a dark fg pnted atop a hill few dared approach.

  Nysera surveyed it with satisfaction. It was not a throne yet. But it would be. And now, it was time to summon her court.

  She opened her rebranded social ptform account — the one Mira had so carelessly abandoned and she had so thoroughly reforged. ViscountessV gred back at her from the top of the page, a stern monarch presiding over a handful of curious onlookers.

  Already, her earlier, snide posts had begun to gather quiet attention. A few followers lurked at the edges, testing her voice, weighing her authority. It was not enough. She needed more. She needed to command.

  She tapped to compose a new message, considering her words carefully.

  In her old world, decrees had been carved into stone, read aloud in gilded halls, carried by couriers to distant territories. Here, the weapon was smaller, sharper, quicker.

  She typed:

  "You wish to worship? Prove your worth. Send your tributes here."

  Below it, she linked the new ViscountessV account, the gateway to her new dominion.

  She reviewed it once, twice, then, with the detached grace of a ruler sealing a treaty, tapped 'Post.'

  The words vanished into the ether, flying out into the strange, hungry world beyond.

  Nysera sat back, watching the screen flicker and hum. Already a few new notifications ticked in at the corner: likes, reposts, one or two messages trembling with tentative awe or clumsy bravado.

  She allowed herself a small, razor-thin smile.

  The first message arrived minutes after her decree was posted: a trembling, simpering missive from an account with a cartoon avatar and a username so self-effacing it practically begged for humiliation. Nysera clicked it open, reading the offered words — praise without substance, loyalty without proof — and dismissed it with a slight curl of her lip. If they wanted her attention, they would pay for it.

  She shifted position, adjusting the drab lighting of the ft with ruthless precision, and lifted Mira’s battered phone to take a series of new images. No soft smiles. No desperate angles. Only hard, uncompromising portraits: a gnce down the line of her nose, a sideways flicker of disdain, fingers poised lightly against her chin as if pondering which mortal to crush first. She posted the best of them, pairing each with captions sharpened to a fine, contemptuous point.

  "I do not need you. You need to pay for my indifference."

  "Your pce is at my feet. If you hesitate, you are forgotten."

  "Tributes are not optional. They are survival taxes for the weak."

  Engagement surged almost immediately. Likes ticked upward, comments bled in: desperate, admiring, needy. The small, pathetic court she had summoned began to take shape.

  It was addictive, in a way—watching the numbers climb, the mortals scramble for her attention. In her old world, adoration had been a reluctant offering, wrung from rivals and allies alike through force and fear. Here, it was volunteered, willingly, eagerly, bought with coin and pleading emojis.

  Nysera checked the tribute link attached to her account. Small offerings had begun to trickle in—pitiful sums, yes, but promising in their implication. The tap had been opened. The flood would follow.

  She allowed herself a final, fleeting gnce over the battlefield she had cimed: the grim little ft, the buzzing, battered phone, the cheap mortal artefacts clumsily adapted for war.

  No matter.

  She was still a queen.

  Even in exile, even in borrowed skin, even in a world that had forgotten what true power looked like—she would build her court anew.