The silence after the slaughter wasn't peace.
It was the kind of silence that crawls under your skin, nestles in your bones, and tells you you'll never be clean again.
The air stank of scorched metal and blood-soaked ash. My boots cracked skulls with every step. Somewhere beneath me, a soldier still clung to life, gurgling on his own tongue.
I didn't look down. I had looked down enough.
Instead, I looked up—into a sky that refused to weep.
No gods.
No stars.
Just the smoke, and the emptiness.
My hand trembled.
Not from weakness. From memory.
---
A Different Time. A Different Ilay.
Her blood was still warm when I held her.
My fingers were coated in it—slippery, shaking, useless. I pressed them against her wound anyway. As if I could stop death by will alone.
"Serene," I whispered, "stay with me. Please—stay."
But she didn't.
She just… looked at me. Not afraid. Not even angry.
Just… tired.
And then she was gone.
The world blurred. The stars overhead flickered. My scream shattered whatever part of me still believed in mercy.
I begged. I begged. On my knees, hands covered in her blood, I screamed to gods I didn't believe in.
"Take me. Take me instead! "
No one answered.
Not heaven. Not hell.
Only silence.
Until-
"Ilay Kaltenbach. "
It wasn't a voice made of sound.
It was felt. Like shadow curling around your lungs. Like ice in your veins. Like fire where your soul should be.
A figure stepped forward from the dark.
Not a god.
Not a man.
A fallen thing with eyes like black suns and wings made of torn light.
Lucifer.
---
He smiled like someone who had been waiting a very long time.
"So much pain in such a fragile vessel. Tell me, Ilay… do you want the world to feel what you feel right now?"
I couldn't speak. Only nodded.
"Do you want to burn it down?"
I said yes.
Not with words.
With the raw hatred that poured from me. The kind that didn't just want revenge—it wanted remembrance. I didn't want the world to die. I wanted it to suffer.
Lucifer crouched in front of me. Touched two fingers to my temple.
"Then let it suffer. Let the stars tremble at the name they tried to erase. You will be my wrath made flesh."
His fingers burned into my skull.
And then—
Agony.
The kind that rips the scream out of your throat before it even forms.
My blood didn't just boil.
It evaporated.
Every vein lit up like molten metal. My arteries collapsed from the heat. I felt my heart rupture, tear apart with a sickening crunch, and then keep beating anyway—because something else had taken its place.
My muscles twisted like snakes under my skin, tearing, healing, and tearing again. It was endless—violent rebirth. Each fiber shredded as though dragged across a bed of glass and nailed back together by unseen hands.
And my skin—
It peeled itself from my body in layers, like it wanted to escape the thing I was becoming. Inch by inch, it flayed itself open—raw, wet muscle exposed to the freezing breath of some infernal wind.
A thousand needles drove themselves through every nerve.
A million nails dragged down my spine.
I was drowning in my own body—bleeding from my eyes, from my mouth, from places I didn't even know could bleed.
And still, I couldn't die.
Lucifer stood above me, unblinking, untouched, divine.
"This is the price of power," he whispered, his voice laced with something both holy and hellish. "You asked for the world to suffer. So first—you must understand what that means."
I convulsed.
Screamed.
Coughed blood.
And still it didn't stop.
Until the final crack—a thunderous snap from my spine—like the world itself split in two.
And in that silence, I rose.
Not as a man.
Not anymore.
My eyes opened, glowing with fire not born of any star.
My body steamed, bloodless and blazing.
I was a vessel. A weapon. A curse made flesh.
Lucifer smiled.
"Now go, Ilay. Let them know what it means to bleed in the age of a mortal god."
And then he was gone.
But the power remained.
---
Present Day
I opened my eyes.
A scorched battlefield stretched behind me. Rivers of blood. Skies of ash.
And the divine fire—his fire—still crackled beneath my skin.
"I am not a god," I whispered. "I'm the warning they refused to hear."
I turned toward the mountains. Toward the next city. Toward the screams I hadn't yet carved.
But before I could take a step—
I saw her again.
Serene.
Standing in the smoke.
Barefoot.
Blood on her dress.
Hair tangled in wind that didn't blow.
Her mouth moved.
I couldn't hear it. But I knew.
"You promised me."
My chest split in two.
"No," I whispered. "I didn't break that promise. They did."
I held out my hand.
Flames curled around my fingers like a lover.
"I will build a new world from their ashes."
And I walked.
But her voice followed me like smoke: You promised me.