"Love is a serious mental disease."
— Plato
They say serendipity is when fate smiles.
I don't believe in fate.
But sometimes, chaos has better timing.
It was a gray morning in Erevale — the kind that looked like the city forgot to wake up.
The rain had paused, leaving the streets slick and reflective. I was walking to the Central Gallery — a habit I developed to remind myself that beauty still existed, even if it lied as much as I did.
The gallery smelled like dust and varnish. People murmured in soft tones, pretending to understand things they didn't. I preferred silence — the kind where the art speaks for itself.
And then I saw it.
A painting — large, violent, breathtaking.
Two silhouettes locked in an embrace that looked more like a struggle than affection.
Their faces half-shadowed, half-lit, both bleeding into each other until you couldn't tell who was consuming whom.
Beneath it, written in elegant red ink:
"To love is to die beautifully."
— L. Noir.
Her again.
For a moment, I forgot the room around me.
The crowd, the whispers — all dissolved into background noise.
Only that painting existed.
And then — her voice.
"You're staring too long,"
a soft, lilting tone behind me.
"Art doesn't like to be worshipped. It prefers to be feared."
I turned.
She stood a few feet away — dark coat, wet hair curling slightly from the rain, eyes that looked like they remembered too much.
Her lips curved into a knowing half-smile, like she'd caught me stealing something intangible.
Lilith Noir.
For a second, neither of us spoke.
It wasn't awkward — it was charged.
Two intellects circling each other like predators trying to decide if the other is prey.
"You're L. Noir," I said finally.
"You make violence look poetic."
She tilted her head.
"And you make observation sound like confession."
Her gaze was unsettling — not because it was seductive, but because it was curious.
Like she was dissecting me in real time.
"I've seen your work around the city," I said.
"You hide rebellion behind aesthetics."
She smirked.
"And you hide arrogance behind philosophy."
That made me laugh — genuinely, maybe for the first time in years.
"Fair. Though arrogance is just self-awareness wearing better clothes."
"Spoken like a man who quotes Nietzsche to justify loneliness,"
she said.
And she was right.
We walked along the gallery, side by side.
She talked about her art — about the system's obsession with moral purity, and how every painting she made was an act of defiance.
I talked about my theories of survival, about the illusion of virtue, and the necessity of control.
Every sentence from her felt like a mirror I couldn't look away from.
"You sound like someone waiting for permission to sin,"
she said quietly.
"You sound like someone who already has," I replied.
Silence again.
Heavy. Electric.
She looked at me then — truly looked.
Her eyes were the kind that didn't blink when they should.
"Maybe we're both wrong," she whispered.
"Maybe sin is just nature remembering what it is."
Before she left, she handed me something — a small folded piece of paper.
"If you ever want to see the world without its mask," she said,
"come to the east docks. Midnight. Alone."
And just like that, she was gone.
Vanished into the crowd, leaving behind perfume and philosophy.
I unfolded the paper.
Inside — a single sentence, written in crimson ink:
"The abyss is more honest than the light."
I didn't know if it was an invitation or a threat.
But for the first time in a long time — I didn't care.
Because for the first time — I wasn't just observing the world.
I was about to fall into it.