The air in the bathroom was cold, the tiled floor biting into Alex's knees through his jeans, a stark contrast to the feverish heat of Lilith's words.
The dim bulb overhead flickered, casting jagged shadows across her face, her eyes glowing with an otherworldly light... ancient, fractured, alive with centuries of grief.
"I was dying, Alex." Her words cracked like thunder in a distant storm, her fingers twitching as if grasping at memories too vast to hold.
"Everything... my divinity, my power, my home, the Celestial Court, my family... torn away. I bled across dimensions, stripped to nothing. A god reduced to… less than dust."
Her throat bobbed, a raw swallow, her shoulders hunching as if the weight of that void still pressed against her spine. "For the first time in eternity, I was afraid."
Her voice trembled, not with weakness, but with the memory of a wound that had never healed.
"I was alone in the void between worlds, fading. And that's when… it spoke to me."
