The wind was still stained with ash.
Asmodeus stood at the edge of a half-collapsed rooftop overlooking the blackened veins of Haven City. Fires smoldered in the distance—remnants of the fight that ended Eun. The streetlights flickered below like dying stars, and the moon, hidden behind a heavy layer of smoke, offered nothing. The city, for the first time in a long time, felt quiet.
Too quiet.
But in that silence, Asmodeus heard her voice. Not a sound in the air—nothing so real. Just a presence that lingered in the cracks between memory and madness.
"I'm so sorry, my love. I had no choice."
He didn't flinch.
He'd heard it over and over since the moment his eyes opened and Hiro's closed for the last time. Lilith's voice—trembling and honest. Drenched in guilt, but resolute.
She had killed Hiro to wake him.
And now she was gone.
He was awake.
And she was gone.
The Morning After
The fires had died by sunrise. The crater where Eun's body had burned itself into the ground remained. Asmodeus walked past it without a glance.
He made his way through Haven like a phantom, no longer hiding his presence. Shadows trailed behind him like loyal dogs, coiling around lampposts, reaching across alleys, dragging behind like a funeral train.
Mortals avoided his gaze. Some dropped to their knees without understanding why. Some cried. A few just stared—frozen, paralyzed by something they couldn't name.
He paid them no mind.
He walked as if searching.
Not for Lilith—he couldn't feel her anymore.
Not yet.
No... he was looking for stillness. Somewhere untouched by Michael's reach. Somewhere she would have gone if she'd had the chance.
The Garden of Thorns
He found it by accident.
A long-abandoned rooftop garden built atop a cathedral, strangled now by weeds and twisted ivy. At the center stood a broken marble fountain, choked with vines. At one time, this place might have been beautiful. Peaceful.
Now it was dying.
Like everything else.
He stepped toward the fountain and knelt beside it. His hand grazed the edge, and shadows recoiled from him, spreading over the cracked stone like black water. In the silence, he remembered.
The Night She Woke Him
She had come to him as Claire—eyes full of tears, voice soft and apologetic. But the moment she reached him, the mask had fallen. Not in cruelty. Not in deception.
In surrender.
"Hi, Hiro," she'd said, through her sobs. And the sword of light pierced his heart.
He'd felt the last echo of Hiro's spirit drift into the void as Lilith cried over the body.
He hadn't blamed her.
He couldn't.
She didn't awaken him with hatred or rage—she'd done it with grief. With love. With sacrifice.
And that made it worse.
Because now she was gone. And he had nothing but the memory of her eyes looking down on him through another woman's face.
He opened his hand.
In his palm sat a small silver chain. Burned, blackened, worn from time and fire. It had once been Lilith's. A keepsake, a bond. She had given it to him before the First War truly began—before the Archangels turned Earth into a prison of purity.
"If you lose yourself," she'd said, "this will remind you of who you are."
He had worn it always, even while buried in Hiro's body.
Now... he let it fall into the dead water of the fountain.
It hit the bottom with a soft clink, swallowed by the filth and silence.
He stood again.
He didn't need reminders anymore.
The only part of him that mattered now was the one who wanted her back.
In the Citadel
Michael stood in a high chamber made of gold-veined stone and polished light. He said nothing. Didn't need to.
Lilith hovered silently within a crystalline prism—arms suspended in glowing bands of divine scripture. Her eyes were closed, her body still. There were no chains. But she wasn't free.
Lucius entered without speaking. He had learned quickly to avoid words when Michael was thinking.
The Archangel stared into the crystal like it was a mirror. But he wasn't looking at her.
He was watching what she had changed in him.
What she might still change.
Michael turned to the scale at his side. A divine relic, passed down from Heaven's old hierarchy. Its gold frame was pristine, every detail etched in the language of the Host.
But it was wrong.
The right side never moved. The left side—always heavier.
Always.
He dropped something into the left bowl: a petal from a white rose.
The scale tilted.
He added a shard of black crystal—burned from Asmodeus's last known aura signature.
The scale groaned.
Michael nodded.
"She's the reason he lives," he said aloud. "So she will be the reason he dies."
Lucius watched, uneasy. "Do you truly believe he'll come for her?"
Michael's smile was small. Almost gentle.
"He already has."
He turned back to the crystal, brushing his fingers along its surface.
"And when he finally sees what I've done, when he feels the weight of her absence..."
He paused, resting his palm over the scale.
"We'll see how far love bends before it breaks."
Back in the Garden
Asmodeus stood over the fountain as black rain began to fall from the clouds above—thick droplets that stained the ground and clung to skin like oil.
He didn't move.
He welcomed the storm.
The pain in his chest had dulled, not because it had passed, but because it had become familiar. It lived in him now. A quiet ache where her voice had once echoed.
He wasn't just grieving her.
He was grieving himself.
The version of him she had believed in. The one she had brought back with trembling hands and tear-filled eyes.
He had failed her.
And now he would do what monsters did best.
He would burn a path through every soul Michael touched until the sky itself turned black with ash.
YOU ARE READING
The Originals
Kỳ ảoIn a world reborn from the ashes of war, Hiro Wu, a once-powerful Original, now lives a life of quiet desperation as a teacher, haunted by nightmares of his past and a lost love, Claire. After decades of peace, shadows from the past resurface when H...
