Lilith Between Flesh And Spirit

Chapter Seven: Shrieks And Cries Compose His Attire ***

Warning for violence and murder. The Archons stop at nothing!

Seth shakes his head and throws his gaze towards Elaois, his lips flattening. "This was not part of the deal. I agreed to bring you Lilith if you let Norea go."

Elaois stands up and presses a button on the edge of his balcony that makes Seth's cage coming closer to him. "You are just the slight inconvenient who stands between Norea and us, not even a threat!"

With fear trembling his chin, Seth darts his head back on Norea among the mass of humans that escape the ballroom. Gripping on the bar of his cage, his knees buckle down.

He has failed her again.

He lost Norea a long time ago in their first ever lives when they parted ways to survive the Archons. It broke his heart back then as she remarried with a man named Noah and yet he still came to her help to burn down his famous Ark.

Now locked in this physical prison like he is in the one of his mind, Seth could only but watch Norea die all over again.

Aches devouring the wound in his heart, this empty organ beating for that one woman he loves and could never save. It gives him the strength to stagger back on his feet and to shout one last promise to her. "Norea, go now and never tell them anything about the revelation of the Luminary."

Elaios chuckles at the poor statement. "Is that so?"

His deep laugh bounces over the vast room's wall, swallowing everything into Stygian fogs. It erases all the distance, leaving them under a sky made of a thick dark clouds rolling like boulders with lightning ready to kill anyone on the spot.

This is the sword of Damocles looming over Norea and Seth's fates—their fear that all hopes are gone.

In this suspension of time and space, Norea and Seth are only faint ghosts of themselves, airborne particles whom the reflections flicker as the atmosphere tenses. Norea could only guess that Elaios is the one who is now holding Seth hostage with a knife under his throat as the Archons are all the same indistinguishable black cloaked figures that towers over her.

One of them moves forward and closer with his greyish pale branch-like fingers shooting out a crimson spark that wraps itself around Norea's throat, forcing her to kneel in front of him. He smells death, feels hollow like famine, and shrieks and cries compose his attire and he only possesses a red pair of blood iris—the same one as Lilith—the only thing that could suck Norea's soul out of her body.

"Do you really trust Seth?" His voice materialises into an unbearable sound, the lost echo from a cave, the perfect dead voice of a demon.

Norea darts her eyes between Seth and the Archons. This has happened before. She can sense the hypnosis of those red lights increasing her blood flow, reducing her neuroprotection for the Archons to penetrate her mind.

Norea chortles and shrugs. She has nothing left to lose.

"What is all that? Don't you like a pretty girl that can fight and beat you to the punch?" And with this provocation, she spits into the void that is the face of her enemy and runs away from him.

Only her electrifying collar holds her back from reaching Seth.

After shaking his head, the Archons slit his eyes back open again and his elongated arm sweep on the ground before catching Norea's neck, dragging her back to strangle her better. "Seth came to us in his last afterlife, exchanging your life to find another person to replace him in his toil!"

Seth rasps at the remark, Norea throwing an incredulous look at him.

"He came to us, imploring us to set him free from coming back to this life repeatedly."