The sky cracked open like shattered obsidian glass.
From the rupture, a being descended—wreathed in flames that hissed with frost, with wings that stretched wider than the horizon. Its eyes burned a cold, unnatural white. Its voice echoed through Bella's bones long before it reached her ears.
"Lilith."
Her name was a curse on its tongue.
Bella stood frozen at the center of the Realm's awakening, her bare feet gripping cracked obsidian as the air around her blistered with heat and hatred. The black crown throbbed against her temples, responding to the god's arrival like it knew this was the reckoning.
She clenched her fists. Fire spiraled around her arms—untamed, alive.
"What are you?" she asked.
The god's wings beat once.
The wind knocked her to her knees.
"I am Tharion, Keeper of Memory. You swore fealty to me long ago," the god thundered. "And then you betrayed it."
Visions exploded in her head—not hers, but they felt like they were carved into her bones.
A woman in red.
Kneeling in flame.
A pact sealed with blood.
Then a blade.
Driven into the god's chest.
By her own hands.
Bella gasped, staggering back, the crown slipping slightly from her head.
"No. That wasn't me—"
"It was Lilith," Tharion growled. "The Queen of Ash. The Witch Who Devoured the Moon."
The wind swirled into a vortex. Ash lifted from the ground, forming shapes—shadows of what she had been. Her past lives flickered through the haze, watching her. Judging her. Welcoming her back.
Bella forced herself to her feet.
"I'm not her," she said. "Not anymore."
The god stepped closer, and the Realm trembled beneath his power.
"You cannot half-wear the crown, girl. Either you are Lilith… or you are no one."
The flames at Bella's fingertips pulsed brighter. A memory not her own whispered through her mind—how to weave fire into a blade. How to bind shadows into shields. How to speak in the language of forgotten gods.
And she understood now.
The crown wasn't just power—it was a key to knowledge she had buried for a reason.
"I'm Bella," she said slowly, raising her hands, letting the fire shape itself into twin serpents coiled around her arms.
"But if I must become Lilith to survive you—" she stepped forward, eyes blazing violet, "—then let me show you what a broken queen can do."
Tharion roared and brought down a pillar of light from the heavens. It struck the ground where she stood—
And she vanished in flame.
The god blinked.
Then, behind him—
Bella reappeared.
Her voice was cold.
"Wrong target."
She slammed her palm into his back.
The explosion sent them both flying across the obsidian plain.
The world shook.
The skies howled.
And as Tharion's massive body crashed into the far ridge of jagged crystal peaks, Bella dropped to one knee, coughing blood.
The crown flared.
Inside her chest, something cracked—and a new voice whispered inside her mind.
Not the god.
Not the woman.
But Lilith.
"You're waking me up, little girl."
Bella gasped, eyes wide.
"Be careful what you unleash."
Lilith's voice has entered Bella's mind—and now the true queen is stirring beneath the surface.
Bella may have just defeated a god.
But what if the real enemy… is the part of her she just reawakened?