The legends call him the Empty One. He has many names: the Hunger, Temptation, Futile Lust, Darkness and others. But Empty he is called because empty he is. Empty are his body, his eyes, his heart. He is said to be a wild and dark demon, long chained and denied pleasure in the darkest depths of the underworld. Escaped, he roams our plane in the shape of a human, forever needing, forever lusting.
Legends say he will come to the temple, and in his wake shall be havoc. Trained he is, as the monks are trained, but not. The Empty One has trained in darkness, where the monks are trained in light. Where the monks are trained in respect, the Empty One knows only shame. Where the monks know discipline, the Empty One knows only his empty, endless hunger.
Chaos surrounds him. Master after master shall beset the Empty One and fail, leaving him unsatiated. The Great Master of the temple shall ply his skills for seventy-seven days and seventy-seven nights, filling the Empty One's body, giving him seed and flesh and seed and flesh, and all shall be for naught. In the end the Great Master too shall fall exhausted, while the Empty One's endless, keening hunger drives him onward.
Through many ranks of brave monks the Empty One will pass, leaving broken exhaustion the only solace for any brave enough to confront him. Day after day in the temple, night after night the monks will pleasure him. They will fill and cover him, penetrate and arouse and bring to orgasm, practice the very best of their arts on his all-too-willing body, but nothing shall move the Empty One. No number of orgasms, no size of penetration shall be enough to sate him.
Even the monks' own training shall not satisfy the Shadow Lover. Horses, they shall bring, and elephants, and all will disappear in the sheath of his body, sacrifice to the bottomless pit of his desire for pleasure. Even the sacred Beast of Trials—brought from the depths of its icy mountain pool—shall fall before his mighty lust, its many phallic appendages limp with exhaustion, its enormous member spent and flaccid. The Lustful One shall take all it has to give, absorb its love, its seed, and leave only emptiness behind.
Legends say that he will be the despair of the monks. He shall come to them for help and for the lust of their bodies, and the fury and despair of his dissatisfaction shall be their very undoing. Unless.
One legend tells of a young apprentice, stoic as the monks have trained him, but with an inwardly bleeding heart. He is called Hope in the legends, or Pity, or Love. He is no master, not particularly endowed, skilled but not exceptional. He shall come to the Empty One, and he shall manage what no other monk can—he will fill the heart of the Empty One, and in doing so make it possible to fill Temptation's aching need. When the Empty One has fallen to his lowest, blackest despair, when his shuddering need is at its greatest, Hope shall find him, and Hope shall make him rise again.
Three days and three nights they will spend coupling. Their love-making will be a thing of supernatural beauty, so great that the gods themselves will weep to see it. For the first time in his life, the Empty One will know satisfaction, and will bond to Hope, the Bringer of Completion. In this bond of love, the Empty One will know freedom for the first time, a release of his bonds of old, and his emptiness shall be healed, satiated at last. His teachings, the healed knowledge of his dark and fearful training, will bring new understanding to the Kama Sutra Monks, and will bring forth a new age of Enlightenment and Pleasure.
Not all legends tell of Hope. In many, the Empty One is an omen only of destruction, rather than rebirth. Many temples seek only the destruction of this fated harbinger, rather than his redemption. Many more view it merely as legend, metaphor for the lust which the monks must combat every day in their training, subdue with discipline, learn to respect and understand. The bleeding heart of Hope is discouraged amongst the pupils, a fatal flaw in the unwavering stoicism of the monks. This, perhaps, could be the reason for the legends that tell of no salvation.
Until the mythic day when the Empty One finally arrives, no legend can be certain what the future might hold.