Chapter 1
Lirith awoke to silence.
Not the comfortable silence of sleep, but the profound absence of sound that preceded either birth or death. She couldn't remember which applied to her and couldn't remember much of anything, actually. Just... hunger.
It gnawed at her from the inside, a living void that demanded to be filled.
Her eyes opened to luminescence. The cavern around her glowed with crystalline formations that pulsed with an inner light blues and purples that reminded her of twilight, though she had no memory of ever seeing such a thing. The crystals grew from walls, ceiling, and floor in impossible geometries, their surfaces reflecting her form in fractured patterns.
What am I?
The question whispered through her mind as she sat up, noticing for the first time that her body felt... wrong. No, not wrong. Unfamiliar. She raised a hand before her face and watched as the fingers elongated slightly, then returned to delicate proportions. Her skin shimmered between pale luminescence and shadow, never quite settling on either.
When she tried to remember who she was, there was only fog and the name: *Lirith.*
And beneath that, carved into her very essence like a brand burned into soul-flesh: Feed or fade.
The curse. She knew it instinctively, though she couldn't recall its origin. She existed to consume. To take. To devour the essence of others or cease to exist herself. The knowledge sat heavy in her chest, equal parts identity and prison.
Lirith stood on unsteady legs, her form stabilizing as she moved. A gown of shadow and starlight materialized around her not clothing in any mortal sense, but an extension of herself. She willed it, and it was. That, at least, felt natural.
The cavern stretched before her, tunnels branching in multiple directions. Each pathway pulsed with different energy signatures, some bright and chaotic, others dark and still. She was about to choose one at random when she felt it.
A presence.
Not like her own fractured, hungry essence, but something more cohesive. Watching. Wanting.
"Hello?" Her voice echoed off crystal walls, surprising her with its musicality. "I know you're there."
Silence. Then, from the shadows between the crystals, movement.
He manifested gradually first as suggestion, then as silhouette, finally as form. A wraith, she understood instinctively. A being of shadow and envy, drawn to light only to consume it. He was tall and lean, his features sharp and beautiful in the way of predatory things. His eyes burned with a green-tinged darkness that fixed on her with unnerving intensity.
"Newly born," he murmured, his voice like silk dragged across stone. "Or newly awakened? I wonder which." He circled her slowly, maintaining distance. "You don't remember, do you? What you are. What we are."
"We?" Lirith turned with him, refusing to show her back.
"Creatures of the in-between. Ebonveil's children." He gestured to the glowing cavern. "This is the threshold, little one. Where the newly cursed arrive. Where hunger is born." His smile held too many teeth. "I am Kael. And you... you are exquisite."
The way he said it made her skin prickle not with fear, but with recognition. He looked at her like she was prey and prize combined. And some part of her, the part that understood the curse intimately, knew she was supposed to look at him the same way.
"I need..." she started, then stopped, unsure how to articulate the void inside her.
"To feed," Kael finished, moving closer. "Yes. I can feel it radiating from you. Such delicious desperation." He was before her now, close enough that she could see the way shadow and substance warred for dominance in his form. "Lucky for you, I am... generous. Shall I teach you what you are, beautiful Lirith? Shall I show you how hunger is sated?"
She should have stepped back. Should have been cautious. But the hunger was growing, and he was *right there*, essence rich and dark and calling to the void inside her.
"Yes," she whispered.
His smile widened. "Then let me show you paradise."
Kael's form shifted, becoming less solid, more sensation. He moved around her like smoke, like touch without pressure, and she felt him everywhere at once teasing, promising, tempting. The hunger roared in response.
"Feel this," he murmured against what might have been her ear. "This is what we are. Not bound by flesh like the mortals. Not limited by form. We desire to manifest. Hunger gives shape."
His essence brushed against hers, and the contact sent lightning through her awareness. This was what she'd been craving connection, consumption, the filling of that terrible void. She reached for him instinctively, her own form beginning to dissolve into shadow, seeking to merge with his.
"Yes," Kael encouraged, his voice growing rough. "Take what you need. We'll dance in darkness together, you and I. We'll…"
But then something changed. As their essences began to intertwine, she felt it beneath the seduction, beneath the offered sustenance, something else lurked. His envy, green and poisonous, threaded through every touch. He didn't want to share pleasure with her. He wanted to *possess* her. To prove he could seduce the new creature, the beautiful thing that had appeared in his domain.
She tried to pull back, but discovered his essence had wrapped around hers like chains.
"Where are you going?" Kael's voice had shifted from seductive to sharp. "We've only just begun. You wanted this. You need this."
Panic flared. Lirith's form solidified in self-defense, trying to separate herself from the wraith, but he'd anticipated it. His shadows tightened, pulling her deeper into the merge. She felt him trying to subsume her entirely not to feed mutually, but to consume her new, vulnerable essence.
"Such a perfect prize," he hissed. "A succubus freshly cursed, ripe with potential. If I absorb you now, your power becomes mine. Your beauty becomes…"
"Mine!"
The word exploded from Lirith with a force that surprised them both. Her power raw, untrained, but absolutely sovereign erupted outward. She was not prey. She was not a prize to be claimed. The curse might chain her to hunger, but it didn't make her weak.
It made her dangerous.
Purple light blazed through the cavern as her true nature manifested. She was a succubus, yes a being of desire and consumption. But she was also a predator, not a victim. The hierarchy Kael had assumed crumbled as her power ripped through his shadowy bonds.
"You…" he started, his form fragmenting under her onslaught.
"Underestimated me," Lirith finished, her voice carrying an authority she hadn't known she possessed. Her hand was solid now, clawed and certain drove through his chest, not to harm but to take.
Kael screamed as she pulled, drawing his essence into herself not through seduction but through sheer, undeniable will. The hunger inside her roared in triumph as power flooded her being dark, envious, but hers now. She took only what she needed, leaving him weakened but alive.
A lesson, not an execution.
When she released him, Kael collapsed into a dispersed shadow, struggling to maintain cohesion. His green eyes blazed with fury and unexpectedly awe.
"What... are you?" he gasped.
Lirith looked down at her hands, now steady and sure. The hunger had quieted to a manageable whisper. "I don't know yet," she admitted. "But I know what I'm not. I'm not prey. I'm not anyone's possession. And I won't be tricked into becoming one."
She turned toward one of the tunnels, instinctively choosing the one that felt different from the others. It pulsed with warm light, foreign to Ebonveil's eternal twilight. Mortal light.
"Wait," Kael called weakly. "You can't... the mortal realm... you're not ready..."
But Lirith was already walking, the wraith's essence settling into her being, teaching her things without words. How to shift her form. How to move between shadows. How to sense the needs and desires of others.
And most importantly: how to recognize when someone wanted to chain her.
As she approached the tunnel's end, where the warm light grew stronger, she paused. Something waited beyondn a presence unlike anything in Ebonveil. Not predatory. Not consuming. Just... curious. Open. Alive in a way that made the hunger stir with an entirely different kind of interest.
Behind her, Kael's voice echoed one final warning: "Mortals will destroy you, beautiful fool. They always do. You'll see. You'll feed on them and hate yourself, or you'll care for them and watch them die. Either way, you'll break. Come back when you do. I'll be waiting."
Lirith didn't respond. She stepped into the light, her form shifting to something less overtly supernatural, still beautiful, still otherworldly, but potentially passable as human. The transition between realms felt like passing through silk and electricity.
When her eyes adjusted, she found herself in a stone chamber lined with books. Candlelight flickered across aged pages and arcane instruments. And seated at a desk, hunched over a massive tome, was a young man with dark messy hair and ink-stained fingers.
He looked up at her arrival, his amber eyes widening. For a long moment, they simply stared at each other immortal and mortal, predator and prey, darkness and light.
Then he spoke, and his voice carried none of the fear she'd expected.
"Hello," Adrian said softly, setting down his quill. "I've been waiting for you."
And despite everything the hunger, the curse, the warning still echoing in her mind Lirith found herself smiling.
"Have you now?" she replied. "How... interesting."
The candles flickered as their gazes held, and in that moment, neither of them knew they'd just set in motion a love story that would span centuries, break curses, and redefine what it meant to hunger for something beyond mere survival.
But they would learn.
One lifetime at a time.