The chamber was dimly lit, the flickering candlelight casting jagged shadows across ancient, rune-etched stone walls. Silence clung to the air like dust in a crypt. At the center stood Kael, unmoving, his crimson eyes narrowed upon the tome before him.
Bound in blackened demon-hide and etched with glowing abyssal runes, the book exuded a presence that defied time. Older than empires, older than gods, it pulsed like a living heart, resonating with forbidden knowledge. The pages whispered. They didn't rustle—they breathed.
Kael's lips parted.
"Skael'th vanor... Ish'ra belnoth…"
The words flowed from him like venom, ancient syllables that slithered across the room. As he chanted, the temperature plummeted. Candles flickered violently, their flames shrinking back as though in fear. The walls vibrated faintly, as though resisting the truth now being spoken aloud.
Then it began.
The world fell away.
No sensation of movement. No warning. One breath, he was present. The next, he was elsewhere—inside the echo of a memory that was not just remembered, but relived.
A battlefield.
Ash fell from a charred sky like gray snow.
The stench of blood, smoke, and burnt flesh choked the air. Torn banners fluttered weakly on shattered poles. Corpses—human, demon, beast—lay in a tapestry of carnage across a blood-soaked plain. And at the center...
A single spear stood impaled into the ground. Divine silver gleamed beneath layers of dried blood. Upon its tip—his own head.
Kael did not move.
He was Belial again, if only for a moment.
Not Kael, the cold emperor of manipulation, but the demon prince—the sacrificed heir. The boy who had stood alone against fate, only to be cut down in the name of "justice."
Then came the scream.
Raw. Uncontained. It tore through the silence like a sword through silk.
Lilith.
She emerged from shadow like an eclipse swallowing the sun. Her body pulsed with restrained power, her black hair wild and untamed, her red eyes burning like twin infernos.
Her walk was slow, weighted with dread. Each step she took twisted the air, forcing the remaining demons to bow in terror and grief. Even the heavens above, silent observers of countless tragedies, seemed to recoil.
Her gaze fell upon the severed head.
Her hands, shaking yet determined, reached for it. Her fingers, so often draped in elegance and cruelty, now trembled with maternal fragility.
She cradled it.
And then, she dropped to her knees.
The scream that followed shattered the air.
It was not rage.
It was loss—raw and infinite. The kind of grief that could shatter stars. She clutched Belial's head to her chest, her nails digging into her own flesh. Her body shook. Shadows spiraled around her, uncontrolled and vast.
The earth cracked. Lightning forked through the sky. The sea of corpses began to tremble as though reality itself could not bear her pain.
Kael—Belial—watched.
He did not cry. He did not scream.
He simply existed, caught between past and present, life and death, mother and memory.
He returned.
Gasping, Kael staggered back from the tome, his hands braced against the altar. Sweat dripped from his jawline, his breath shallow and ragged.
The chamber was unchanged.
But everything inside him was not.
He felt the echo of her scream still vibrating in his bones. Not a sound now—but a resonance. A scar, unseen and eternal.
"How much longer will you haunt me…?" His voice was low, strained, filled with a whisper of something he rarely allowed—vulnerability.
Silence.
The abyss did not answer.
But it didn't need to.
He already knew. The past was not a chain. It was a blade. It could cut him… or he could learn to wield it.
He exhaled.
And the calm returned.
He wiped the sweat from his brow, closed the tome carefully, and extinguished the last candle with a flick of his fingers.
A knock echoed at the far end of the chamber.
"Enter," Kael said, already composed.
The door creaked open. A young attendant bowed deeply. "Master Kael. The Empress requests your presence. She says… it is urgent."
Kael's gaze didn't shift from the tome.
"Tell her I will come when I choose to," he replied coldly.
The attendant paled and nodded quickly before vanishing down the hall.
Kael's fingers lingered on the tome for a moment longer, his mind still swirling with the vision. Not just of death—but of Lilith. Of her agony. Her fury. Her humanity.
He had thought her incapable of love.
But what he had seen?
Was not power.
It was grief. And love so fierce it had broken the world.
"…You never forgot me, did you, Mother?" he murmured.
And someday, she would know.
Not just that he lived.
But that he remembered her scream.
And when that moment came, the abyss would open once more.
But not to mourn.
To conquer.
To be continued....