Lilith moved through the shadows of the Isolated Vale, Elara's dark cloak wrapping around her. The weight on her shoulders was not that of her backpack, but of the massacre: five lives, extinguished by a force that nested beneath the skin of her arm.
Thoughts flooded her mind, but no tears came. Sadness was a frozen layer—a protective numbness. She had killed the only person who had ever loved her, yet the water in her tear ducts felt frozen solid.
Her golden eyes, now faintly tinged with red, searched the darkness of the forest. It was there, years ago, that she lost the only other being who saw her as more than a mystical anchor.
The memory came like a shard of cold glass:
Argos. He was no ordinary dog. Elara, in his Luminary arrogance, had rescued the creature—a Shadow Wolf with pure black fur and amber eyes—from a containment plane. The wolf was silent, large, and the only creature in the Vale that did not treat her with fearful reverence. He followed her like a gentle shadow, sharing her fear and silence. They were accomplices in confinement.
She was only twelve when danger finally found the Vale. It wasn't a demon, but a Shadow Infiltrator—a human assassin corrupted, wearing the gray, dust-stained robes of the city cults, sent to confirm the location of the "Corruption." He came out of nowhere, silent as a nightmare.
The attack wasn't meant to kill her, but to mark and expose her. The Infiltrator's blade wasn't steel, but obsidian infused with demonic venom. When the masked man lunged, Lilith felt the numbness of fear. But Argos didn't. The Shadow Wolf roared—a sound that tore through the peace of the Vale—and leapt forward, intercepting the strike aimed at Lilith's neck.
She remembered the scent of pine mingled with the metallic tang of Argos's blood, and her own fever rising uncontrollably. The Corruption pulsed beneath her skin that day, trying to awaken the Shadow, but failed. Lilith only cried. Elara arrived, too late, and had to sacrifice the Shadow Wolf to prevent the demonic venom from turning him into an abomination.
That pain—the true pain of loss and helplessness—had been replaced by cold fury. Elara's enemies had taken her wolf; she had taken the priest, with the demon inside her. It was a vicious cycle.
Why? For whom? For how long? The questions Elara never answered—the ones he had forbidden—now echoed deafeningly in her mind. And a new one arose, boiling with poison: Why did you never tell me what I was, Elara? Why did you condemn me in the name of the "Light" without giving me the tools to fight?
Hatred flooded her—not only for the War General inside her arm but for all the priests, including the one who now lay dead. They were the masters, and she, the property—the weapon that never had the right to defend itself.
"Looks like you don't know much, do you, little girl?" Malus's voice was a harsh growl, dripping with mockery. "They stole my strength and your truth. You think I'm the monster, but they were the thieves."
Lilith clenched her fists at the edge of the cloak, stopping abruptly before the faint shimmer of the Aether Barrier that marked the Vale's boundary.
"All I want right now is for you to shut up," Lilith replied, her tone cold and cutting, anger keeping her from giving in to panic.
"You don't want me to shut up. You want me to tell you how to use the power they stole from you—so you'll never be weak again. And I will, Lilith. But only when you ask me to."
Lilith ignored the temptation. The only thing between her and freedom was the barrier—the last remnant of Elara's lie. She didn't have the priest's pure mystical energy to deactivate it with a chant.
With a silent sigh of hatred aimed at the memory of the man who had condemned her, Lilith looked down at the Black Mark pulsing slowly. She had no choice. She had to force her way out