LILYTH
AUTHOR
YEAR 314 · CHAPTER ONE
The Cloud-Breaking Prince
BISHOP
Content note: gore, torture, self-harm
8 MIN READ
This is who he becomes.
This chapter is where it starts.
I don't even remember this bone pile's name. The grey ashes and pearly white fragments Mother made sure to bring all the way to my grave.
And maybe it's better this way.
The warmth of Brook's fingers embracing mine lingers, like a shield numbing the ugliness brewing deeper than hunger in my stomach. Her reassuring squeeze was faint enough that Izanami might not have noticed it.
And if She did, the punishment should be minimal.
If anything, I hope Brook was rewarded. For not shedding a single tear while enduring her twin's slow, drawn-out death sentence. The perfectly obedient Inquisitor I failed to be.
And that's good. I don't need tears from her to know the unspeakable.
We learned to care in silence.
And I, sure as Hell, love her.
The dry wind, rising fast, sucks her last touch out of my skinny bones, leaving my starving body heatless. Shivering.
My knees bite into what feels like dirt, although everything here seems to be made of nothing but soft clouds. Not white. Purplish grey. On grey… on grey. That hint of color mixed with wet ashes, adorned with silvery chromatic shimmers. But even those can't hide the rot. Like home. Duller.
No guard. No doors. No walls.
No exit.
The Neverlands were always a place left for our imaginations to fill in. True demise, reserved for the worst traitors.
Prettier than I thought.
Dying wrapped in sweet death smoke. Reverberating silence.
Dying peacefully.
✦
Until someone starts crying. Close enough to make me let go of my head and straighten up — I never realized I'd curled up in that boy's ashes.
It makes me curious, until it turns shrill. Screeching — the same inhuman sounds tortured people let out a couple of days in.
Heartfelt begging for mercy. True agony.
Raw.
Enough for a lifetime. I can't bear that sound anymore.
My fingers plug my ears. For comfort at first, until the pleas get louder. Then my palms press hard, out of desperation now.
Yet the disgusting cacophony doesn't fade. It takes my cheekbones breaking under my palms for me to understand I'm the one making those sounds, and they won't stop.
It's not even the familiar pain of breaking my own bones — it's the snap under my insistent hands, then the bone welding itself back together just as fast.
Then snapping again.
Clean under my fingertips, then more brittle the more I insist. Until the self-inflicted violence is rewarded with more healing. Every one of the dozens of times it takes for my voice to give out, and for my hands to finally unlock from my head and plummet to the ground.
I hate it. I hate it. I hate it.
The skin of my knuckles shreds against the mirage floor with every hit, until the force sends a sharp, bone-white fragment flying into my forehead, and blood pours into my left eye.
My mouth opens, trying to quench both my hunger and my thirst with it, when the thought hits me so hard I spit the sticky fuel out.
I am not starving.
For the first time in years.
✦
It's enough to bring my mind back into my body. Not all at once. My joints are dry and stiff; they almost creak as I unfold them. But slowly, I make it to sitting on the cloudy floor.
And I stay there. Bathing in the stillness of not being hungry.
Then I dare look.
My hands. Thicker. The splintered bones made new, but the skin still torn.
My forearms. Muscle rolls under the skin when I make a fist. A luxury I've never had.
The realization makes me stand up abruptly.
My shoulders. My chest. I'm Brook's height. As tall as her. As broad.
Something warm swells in my chest. This is it. The body Mother always wanted from me. The proof Izanami Herself is pleased. The recognition I was exiled for failing to earn.
Here. Now. With only Her as my witness.
The warmth curdles. Does it make me a true Berserker?
I wipe the blood out of my eye. It keeps coming.
My fingers find the cut on my forehead. The wider cut. I press around its edges. Twice the size it was. I am not healing myself.
My body's foundation is pristine. But my skin worsens…
I finally hate something enough to torture it.
Myself.
And apparently, She loves it.
Commandment Zero. Panem et circenses. She gives the bread, we are each other's circus.
It's my first time as the showstopper.
The sickness behind it doesn't settle as fast as the visceral disgust. As real as this flesh are the nameless boy's calcified remains — the charred bone pieces caught in the folds of my clothes.
I need to clean it off.
My hands move on their own. Swiftly. With all the precision my profession required. Piling up the remains, gently enough not to scatter the ashes. Sweeping the dust off me, stretching fabric and chasing creases, then focusing on the floor, until an unworthy shallow grave forms.
Caring for the dead is punishable, Mother's voice drills into my brain. Because She doesn't like it.
We're the monkeys; this is Her circus.
"I'M NOT YOURS," I yell.
It's weak against someone who thinks your birth is their right, but it had to be said.
The mirage clouds shake under my feet like a divine warning, until the boy's remains levitate around me.
No. Everything — anything.
But not him.
She already took enough from him.
I need time to remember his name.
My hands reach blindly for the pieces, trying to gather his lingering memory into their protection, but each piece I manage to cage forces my fist open and rejoins the sick choreography around me.
After one carves a hole through my palm, I give up.
Examining the wound, I can't take my eyes off the spectacle behind it. Staring at the horror show through my own hand, watching coal turn into bone.
And dust into flesh.
I only catch a glimpse of his mutilated body. The holes in his forearms where we carved out muscle — just as it was when I set it on fire earlier. The shiver gripping my spine only stops when the hole closes on the nightmare.
It's not real. It's not real. It's not real.
He's not real.
My bloody hand, whole again, shields my eyes from the vision I refuse to entertain.
But the smell hits.
The sour chemical burn of acid-burned flesh. A nauseating potency I can smell even breathing through my mouth.
Then come the whimpers. Begging me to end him. Barely audible, as if afraid to be punished with more life.
Is he real?
I shake my head.
If it's not over, it's about him, not you.
Doubt makes me ignore the atrocity and drag myself beside him, laying his head on my lap, where I feel his dying heat.
It takes everything I have to focus on his eyes, but when I do, he's already there to meet mine, giving me the same permission he did earlier.
No matches. Mother, Her Majesty the Queen, isn't here. No need for a last thrill.
My left hand cups his chin, while my right grabs his hair.
My muscles ripple, ready to complete the job.
"I'm sorry. It'll be over soon," is all I can mutter as the boy closes his eyes. Trusting me once again.
And a bright light leaks from my fingers, my hands losing their grip in surprise.
Pale mauve. Starting at my fingertips, seeping through hair and skin…
I've seen it before.
Never so bright.
Muscle melts under my skin as the insatiable hollow in my stomach takes over.
And the boy's breath is not shallow anymore.
The anger is so sharp my vision goes black. Her message couldn't be clearer: using her gift for healing and mercy is unworthy of strenght. But why award it at first?
What does She want from me? It's been eighteen years and I've never figured it out.
Something tears me out of my head. Takes my hand and pulls weakly on it until I'm back amid the endless clouds.
I look down to find the boy's hand has found mine. Whether it's a plea for help or for me to finish the job is hard to tell through the growing starvation.
I don't think I have it in me to kill him a third time.
If it's not over, it's about him, not you.
I finally look into his eyes, but they're not waiting for me this time. No permission.
His hand squeezes mine with the same care as Brook's, while his eyes stare at the shaking fingertip of his other, pointing into the emptiness of the infinite grey.
"That way," he begs. "Don't stop."
NEXT · CHAPTER TWO
Promoted four years early. Assigned the torturer and the boy he killed
She tames legendary beasts and knows torture from the inside. Now she’s been made a Doctor, overnight, for two cases nobody else could take.
And she suspects why. Next enters Dr. Briar.
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