Perspective: Omniscient Narrator
Source: Combined Leaf-Records of the Sylaris and the Hour-Books of Aeralune
Look, if you ask an elf how the world started, they'll write you a 500-page poem about the beauty of it. They'll pull out grimoires, cry over the sorrow of tragedy, and bore you to death with metaphors.
Ask a fairy, and they'll start singing about nature itself, claiming flowers created consciousness or some other trust me bro nonsense.
Neither of them is giving you the real story.
If you strip away the elven arrogance and the fairy lullabies, and you actually force their oldest archives together, you get to uncover a truth that was deliberately censored, scrubbed, and buried beneath 12,000 years of lies.
History isn't pretty.
It started with a God who had no business being in charge of anything.
*
Part 1: The Age of the Empty Cradle (~15,000 BP)
From the Ledgers of the Fairies and Elves
His name was Nemesis.
The priests who survived his era used to boast that for 30,000 years, no other god was ever born across the continents. That was a lie. The timeline was closer to 2,000 years, but priests love inflating their credibility.
The reason no other god existed wasn't because Nemesis was holy. It was because he was an insecure bully with absolute power. He walked the world with a voice of command, and whenever a child was born with even a spark of divine authority—whether they were dragon, beastkin, dwarf, or demon—he crushed their life in the womb.
He called it "maintaining the Balance."
In reality, he just didn't want any competition.
He had jet-black hair, eyes the color of spilled blood, and zero rivals left to tell him no.
When you live in a world where nobody can punch you in the mouth, you turn into the worst kind of monster: A bored one.
And because he was bored, he took whatever caught his eye.
The first was in a coastal village in eastern Celestine. Her name was Vespera. She was a lantern-singer—a mortal human-woman with long blonde hair, soft pinkish eyes, and a voice so warm that sailors navigated home by her evening songs. The entire village loved her. She mended nets for old widows, shared her leftovers with stray dogs, and never turned away a beggar.
Nemesis saw her standing on the docks at dusk. He didn't speak to her. He didn't ask her name, and he sure as hell didn't care about her songs
He just liked the way her eyes caught the evening light.
So he walked into her cottage, sealed the door from the inside, and raped her.
She screamed until her voice went silent. She scratched at his chest until her fingernails broke off against his divine skin. It didn't matter. To a god who could crack continents in half, a mortal woman's resistance was less than the buzzing of a fly.
When he was done, he left her bleeding on the dirt floor, her dress torn to shreds.
He didn't kill her. Nemesis had 1 rule that he considered his "great mercy": he never slaughtered a woman who carried his seed.
He just fastened his belt, smoothed down his dark coat, and looked down at her battered body with cold indifference.
"Be grateful," he told the ceiling. "You were built for my pleasure. A creature like you has no right to speak to me, let alone refuse me. Pray I don't get bored and come back to enjoy you again."
Then he stepped out into the night and walked across the continent.
A month later, he found the second.
Her name was Sorrel. If Vespera was the sun, Sorrel was the dark moon. She lived on the fringes of Ashgrove—a quiet herbalist with snow-white hair, pale skin, and crimson eyes.
The locals hated her. They called her a witch, threw stones at her fence, and spit when she walked past. Yet whenever their children came down with winter fever, they still knocked on her door in the dead of night, and Sorrel always opened it.
She healed them, asked for nothing, and pulled her hood down so her red eyes wouldn't frighten them.
Nemesis smelled the bitter herbs outside her window. He kicked her wooden door off its iron hinges, took 1 look at her white hair, and decided she belonged to him.
Sorrel fought like a cornered animal. She threw jars of wolfsbane and boiling lye directly into his face. The acid washed off his skin like rain. He pinned her wrists to the stone floor with 1 hand, snapped her collarbone to stop her struggling, and defiled her while her dried herbs burned in the overturned hearth.
Afterward, as she lay trembling in the soot, weeping into her ruined sleeves, he stood over her and wiped his shoes on her rug.
"You're a disgusting thing," he muttered, his crimson eyes gleaming with sick amusement.
"A shunned rat hiding in the woods. You should thank me for gracing this blessing. Consider your survival a gift."
He walked out and vanished into the sky.
He didn't think about them again. He didn't care about their names.
For 7 years, he forgot they even existed, because why would a God remember the dirt he stepped on?
2 completely different women.
1 loved by an entire village, 1 cursed by them.
Both entirely defenseless against a God's whim.
And both left alone in the dark, carrying the consequence.
*
Part 2: 2 Cradles (13,200 to 13,193 BP)
From the Leaf-Records and the Evening Star Hymns
What about Celestara?
What about Lillieth?
They were born in the same week, under a sky where the sun had already begun to flicker. The old star was dying of age, casting long, sickly orange shadows across the earth. But inside those 2 humble homes, the world felt entirely different.
In the coastal village, Vespera held her newborn daughter against her chest and wept tears of pure relief. The baby had a tuft of pale, spun-gold hair, and when she opened her eyes, the entire bedroom illuminated with soft starlight.
"You're the light of my life," Vespera whispered, rocking the cradle while the ocean waves crashed outside.
"My little star. Mama will never let anyone hurt you."
The village celebrated for 3 days. They brought honey, woven blankets, and fresh milk.
They called the baby Celestara—the daughter of the sea and the evening star.
Across the world, in the cold woods of Ashgrove, Sorrel held her own baby while the wind rattled the broken boards of her cottage. The infant had hair as white as snow, and eyes burning red.
And the moment Sorrel pressed the baby's tiny palm against a freshly picked sprig of mint, the leaves withered, rotted, and dissolved into grey ash.
A curse.
Outside, angry voices shouted through the trees. Torches flickered past the fence.
Sorrel didn't run to the priests. She wrapped the infant in 3 layers of wool, pulled a deep dark hood over the baby's pale face, and slipped out the back door into the freezing night.
Deep in the mountain caves, while the baby whimpered from the cold, Sorrel cradled her tight against her heartbeat.
"I love you my dear," Sorrel murmured, kissing the baby's cold forehead over and over.
"Mama is right here, Lillieth. Mama is right here."
And so the seasons turned... Years passed.
In summer, Vespera sat on her sunlit porch, teaching young Celestara how to knit wool sweaters. They needed to sell them at the harbor market before winter set in so they could buy flour and firewood.
Celestara was 5 years old, swinging her tiny legs off the wooden bench, her tongue poking out in intense concentration. She took a scrap of pink yarn and carefully, clumsily stitched a crooked heart right into the chest of a blue sweater.
"Look, Mama!" Celestara beamed, holding it up with both hands. Her eyes sparkled with celestial rings of pink and blue
"I made a heart for you! So when you wear it, you'll know I'm hugging you!"
Vespera dropped her knitting needles, pulled her daughter into her lap, and buried her face in the little girl's golden hair, laughing through happiness.
"It's the most beautiful sweater in the world," Vespera smiled, kissing her cheeks.
"My sweet, clever girl."
Meanwhile, in an abandoned stone hut near the dragonic border, Lillieth watched her mother stumble home at dusk. Sorrel's hands were blistered from digging roots in rocky soil, her back bent from carrying firewood for 12 miles.
5-year-old Lillieth didn't have toys. She had a faded grey hood pulled low over her white bangs.
The moment Sorrel collapsed onto the wooden stool, Lillieth rushed over. She brought a damp rag to wipe the dirt from her mother's forehead. She knelt down, untied Sorrel's muddy boots, and set a cracked wooden bowl on her mother's lap.
"I don't know how to cook yet, Mama," Lillieth whispered softly, her red eyes shining with quiet worry from beneath her hood.
"I only mashed the sweet potatoes with cold water. But... please eat. You worked so hard today. Thank you for coming home to me."
Sorrel looked at the cold, mashed potatoes, then looked at her little daughter's bandaged fingers. She pulled Lillieth into her arms, holding her so tightly that their ribs pressed together.
"I will always come home to you, Lilli," Sorrel choked out.
"Always."
2 mothers.
2 girls.
They had no palaces, no thrones, and no divine scripture. Just enough love to survive a dying world.
And then, their 7th birthday arrived.
*
Part 3: The Showing (13,193 BP)
As both archives recorded it
The jokes stop here.
There is no clever way to tell this part. There are no funny observations, and there are no witty metaphors.
There is only a god who decided that human love was an insult to his bloodline.
It happened in the middle of autumn.
In the coastal village, Vespera had just lit 7 tiny beeswax candles on a honey cake.
In the mountain cabin, Sorrel had just braided 7 wild lavender stems into a small crown for her daughter's hair.
Then space tore open.
A hand of solid, black void ripped through the walls of both houses simultaneously.
Nemesis didn't speak. He grabbed Lillieth by her throat, grabbed Celestara by her shoulder, and dragged them and their mothers into a desolate pocket dimension—a barren plateau of jagged obsidian floating under a sky that had no stars.
The 2 mothers hit the dirt, coughing blood.
They looked up, saw each other's terrified faces, and in 1 single glance, the horrifying realization hit them.
The same man.
The same monster.
The 2 little girls scrambled to their feet, trembling.
Lillieth stood with her hood half-torn, her crimson eyes wide in absolute shock. And standing across from her was Celestara—a girl of such breathtaking, impossible beauty that she looked like a walking painting.
Celestara's pale, platinum-blonde hair cascaded past her shoulders like woven starlight.
But it was her eyes that froze Lillieth in place: they weren't normal eyes. Her pupils were shaped like radiant 4-pointed stars, swimming in a swirling vortex of celestial magenta and deep cosmic blue.
For 3 seconds, the 2 sisters just stared at each other. They didn't know the word sister.
They only knew that the girl across from them was terrified.
Then Nemesis stepped between them, his presence crushing the air out of their lungs.
"Look at you," Nemesis said, his voice rumbling like an earthquake. "7 years, and you crawl like insects. I felt the divine resonance waking up in your veins last month. My blood runs through you. You are my daughters."
Lillieth backed away, her small hands shaking. Celestara reached blindly for her mother's skirt.
"Your mothers are weak," Nemesis continued coldly, not even looking at the 2 kneeling women. "Human garbage. They teach you to be weak. They teach you to hide your face from the world. They teach you to love, to cry, to care. They are making you soft. And a soft goddess is a useless goddess to me."
He drew a curved blade of black starlight from his sleeve.
"Now that I know you exist, I am going to teach you how to become true rulers."
"And rule 1 is simple: attachments are a disease."
Sorrel was the first to move.
With a feral, desperate shriek, Sorrel lunged forward to shield Lillieth.
"Run, Lilli! Run—"
Nemesis didn't even look. His left hand blurred.
There was a wet, sickening tear.
Sorrel's scream shattered across the plateau. Blood sprayed across the obsidian stone as Nemesis gouged out both of her eyes with magic.
She collapsed backward into the dirt, clutching her empty, bleeding sockets, writhing in agony.
"MAMA!" Lillieth shrieked, her voice tearing her throat apart.
She bolted toward her mother, but Nemesis's iron hand clamped down on Lillieth's tiny wrist. The grip was unbreakable. Lillieth kicked, bit, and clawed at his arm, her withering curse flaring wildly, but her decay couldn't penetrate his skin.
Across the plateau, Celestara was paralyzed, tears streaming down her pale cheeks.
Vespera saw her daughter crying. Despite the blood dripping from her own mouth, Vespera began to crawl forward on her elbows.
"Celestara... baby, don't look... look at Mama..."
Nemesis sneered. He took 2 casual steps forward, swung his blade downward, and severed both of Vespera's legs at the thighs.
A spray of crimson coated the front of Celestara's white dress.
Vespera didn't scream. Her breath left her in a ragged, choking gasp. But she didn't stop crawling.
She dragged her bleeding torso through the dirt, clawing at the obsidian with broken fingernails, leaving a wide smear of red behind her, desperate just to touch her daughter's foot.
"Celestara..." Vespera whispered, her voice failing. "Mama is... right here..."
Celestara fell to her knees, screaming until her voice broke into silence, reaching out her tiny, blood-splattered hands.
Nemesis grabbed Celestara by her golden hair and pulled her head back, forcing her star-shaped eyes open.
"A mortal woman will only hold you back," Nemesis told the 2 weeping 7-year-olds, his face entirely blank.
"This is where your weakness dies. Watch carefully."
You know the rest... my dear reader.
I don't need to explain any further, and those girls shouldn't have had to see it.
All that matters is that the lantern went out. The hood fell into a pool of red.
And when Nemesis finally opened a rift and stepped through, he left 2 little girls standing alone on a plateau of black stone, staring at 2 fresh corpses.
No words were spoken.
Celestara knelt beside her mother's body, pressing the crooked heart on her blue sweater against Vespera's cold chest, begging her to wake up.
Lillieth sat in the dirt, clutching her mother's empty, bloody hands, pulling the shredded hood over her own face so nobody could see her sobbing.
Their childhood was over.
The normal world was dead.
*
Part 4: The Growing Apart and the Dying Star (13,193 to ~11,500 BP)
The Dawn of the Hour and the Ash-Garden
When people talk about Gods, they always focus on the power. They talk about the miracles, the divine light, the armies of worshippers kneeling in marble halls.
They never talk about the loneliness.
After that day, the 2 sisters were pulled into completely opposite skies.
Celestara was taken up into the high atmosphere by the primordial star-spirits. They built her palaces of solidified starlight, spun her gowns of iridescent silk, and taught her the language of cosmic resonance.
She grew into an ethereal, blinding beauty—a goddess who wore a veil of living lace, whose star-shaped pupils saw the birth and death of constellations.
She lived above the clouds for nearly 200 years.
But she never forgot where she came from.
Down on earth, the sun had nearly choked to death.
It was the year ~13,120 BP. The ancient sun was cold, pale, and bleeding ash. Across Celestine, a horrific plague known as "The Greying" took hold. Without sunlight, crops turned to mush, livestock went blind, and children grew pale and brittle, their lungs filling with fluid before they simply stopped breathing.
Celestara descended to the human realm on a rainy, freezing afternoon.
In a muddy cemetery outside a ruined village, she saw an old farmer on his knees. The rain was washing away the loose dirt of a tiny, fresh grave. Beside it lay the body of his 8-year-old daughter, her skin chalk-white, her eyes clouded from the Greying.
The farmer wasn't cursing the heavens. He didn't have the energy to rage. He was just hitting his forehead against the mud, sobbing into the dirt.
"Please..." the old man wept, his voice muffled by the rain. "Just a little warmth... just 1 hour of sun... why couldn't she feel the sun just once..."
Celestara stood behind him, the rain parting around her celestial robes.
She looked at the farmer's shaking shoulders. She looked at the dead little girl.
And in that farmer's broken weeping, she heard Vespera's dying gasp. She remembered the cold hands of her mother on that obsidian plateau.
Celestara didn't recite an ancient chant. She didn't draw a magic circle, and she didn't ask Nemesis for permission.
She simply looked up at the dying, blackened star in the sky, closed her eyes, and made a wish.
Let them be warm.
Do not let another father bury his child in the cold.
Her chest ignited.
A pillar of pure, blinding, celestial resonance shot straight out of her heart, tearing through the storm clouds, piercing the upper atmosphere, and slamming directly into the core of the dying sun.
The cosmos groaned.
The ancient, dead star shuddered, collapsed inward for 1 terrifying second, and then exploded into brilliant, roaring, golden life. The black soot was burned away in an instant. A shockwave of pure, rejuvenating heat rolled across the world, vaporizing the rain, thawing the frozen fields, and drenching the earth in glorious, golden noon.
The elves called it The Dawn of the Hour.
The farmer looked up, tears evaporating from his cheeks in the sudden warmth, and fell to his knees in worship.
From that day forward, the world belonged to Celestara.
High Elves, Fairies, and humans fell to their knees in millions. They built her the 100 Wells, the Temple of Hours, and the Lantern Rites.
She became the supreme goddess of light, life, and beauty.
Meanwhile, what about Lillieth?
While Celestara was crowned with starlight, Lillieth walked through Hell.
Every town she approached drove her away with stones and burning torches.
Her very presence caused wheat fields to wither and well water to turn sour.
The "civilized" races called her the Mother of Curses, a walking plague sent to punish humanity.
Only 2 races opened their gates: the Demons of the Abyss and the Dragonborn of the jagged peaks.
Here is the funniest irony of that entire era: the so-called "monsters"—the horned brutes with serrated teeth and scales—had infinitely better manners and human decency than the priests in silver robes.
They didn't care that her touch killed plants. They were born in ash and brimstone; they respected survival.
When 10-year-old Lillieth stumbled into the dragonic crags with her rags freezing to her skin, a massive red dragon didn't breathe fire on her. He curled his tail around her shivering body to block the mountain wind.
When she walked through the demon citadels, demonic warlords bowed their horned heads in deep, solemn silence.
They built her a sanctuary. They called her their Queen.
Yet Lillieth never felt loved.
To them, she was an icon of supreme power—a terrifying weapon of decay.
She kept her tattered hood pulled low over her white hair and crimson eyes.
She never showed her face to a single living soul.
Even when she saved them, she did it from the shadows.
During the Great Blight of the Southern Plains, when an abyssal parasite threatened to wipe out every demon child in the realm, Lillieth walked through the plague wards alone. She didn't heal them with light. She used her curse in reverse: she layered a micro-curse onto their blood, rotting the parasites from the inside out and granting millions of demon soldiers permanent immunity to disease.
She saved over 4,000,000 lives in 2 weeks.
They cheered her name for a month. But when the banquet was held, Lillieth was nowhere to be found.
She was sitting alone in Manovalent's Garden.
It was a jagged, sorrowful sanctuary carved from black stone. Nothing grew there.
The flowers were petrified wood, their petals frozen in eternal decay.
In the center hung a wooden swing tied to a dead, ash-covered oak tree—a swing that never moved, because the wind refused to enter. Lillieth sat on the stone bench for centuries, hugging her knees, staring at her blackened hands.
Across the world, Celestara sat in the Evensong Garden.
It was a paradise of eternal twilight, filled with glowing white roses, singing waterfalls, and golden grass. Millions of prayers echoed through the sky every hour.
2 sisters.
2 gardens.
1 surrounded by light, 1 surrounded by ash.
Both of them trapped in beautiful, solitary cages. They had everything a god could ever desire: immortal beauty, infinite worshippers, divine authority that could rewrite the stars.
Everything except the 1 thing they had lost at 7 years old:
Someone who looked at them like a normal person.
And then, 1,500 years later... the mail arrived.
*
It was a Tuesday morning.
In the Evensong Garden, Celestara was resting her chin on her hand, listening to the 10,000th elven hymn of the day, bored out of her mind.
Suddenly, a soft breeze rustled the golden grass.
Sitting on the marble balustrade, right beside her sacred tea cup, was a plain, unsealed envelope made of cheap, coarse brown paper.
Celestara blinked. Her star-shaped pupils narrowed. Her garden was sealed by 14 layers of primordial cosmic wards; not even Nemesis could enter without shaking the continent.
She picked up the envelope with trembling fingers, opened it, and unfolded the crooked piece of parchment inside.
Written in messy, lopsided, thoroughly weird handwriting was a short note:
> "Hey there, goddess of beauty—or personally, I'd just like to call you the goddess of beauty. Caught you off guard, huh? Haha. You look like you haven't taken a break in 600 years. Though I plan to change that very soon!!! It's nice to meet you. I am the Fool."
Celestara stared at the letter. Her mouth opened.
The Fool?
A sudden, breathless sound slipped past her lips—a tiny, astonished laugh she hadn't made in 1,500 years.
At the exact same hour, across the ocean in the dead stone of Manovalent's Garden, Lillieth looked down at her lap.
Lying on her black skirt was an identical brown envelope.
She pulled her hood back slightly, her crimson eyes wide with suspicion, her fingers flaring with withering decay. But when she touched the paper, the wood pulp didn't rot.
It stayed completely intact.
She pulled out the letter:
> "Hey there, Lillie. How's it going? It is I, the one, the hidden, the nobody, talking to you, aching to see you. Can't see you for a long, long time, but I'll be writing to you often, so don't throw this in the fire!!! It's nice to meet you. I am the Fool."
Lillieth stared at the words 'Hey there, Lillie'.
Nobody had called her Lillie since her mother was murdered in the dirt.
Underneath her ragged hood, a single, warm tear traced a clean line through the ash on her cheek. And for the first time in 15 centuries, the corner of her lips lifted into a faint, trembling smile.
For the next 100 years, the letters kept coming.
And for the first time since they were 7 years old, the 2 broken goddesses found a reason to desire something more than eternity.
*
Part 5: The 100 Years of Messages (~12,120 to 12,020 BP)
From the Leaf-Records of the Sylaris and the Demon Lore-Keepers
At first, neither sister wanted anything to do with them.
They only opened the envelopes because they were terrified of Nemesis. The seal on the back carried their father's crest—a black crescent over an unblinking eye—meaning the sender was officially an envoy of the "One True God."
So they read them out of fear.
Then fear turned into confusion. And confusion turned into the weirdest routine in the cosmos.
Because whoever was writing those letters didn't sound like a terrifying divine inquisitor. He sounded like a guy sitting on a fence post with an apple in his hand, asking the stupidest questions imaginable.
To Celestara, he wrote:
> "Hey, quick question. Do you actually enjoy elven singing? Because from where I'm standing, it sounds an eloquent yet weird rap battle. Be honest. Nobody's listening!!!"
Celestara didn't reply.
She folded the parchment, set it beneath her porcelain jewelry box, and stared at it for 3 days.
To Lillieth, he wrote:
> "Heard you live near the dragon peaks. Yo quick questions, are dragons just big lizards? If so, what will happen if they start rapping like the elves? Please confirm. This is vital scientific research!!!"
Lillieth didn't reply either.
She blew out her tallow candle, pulled her hood tighter, and told herself that if she ignored him, the idiot would eventually die of old age.
He didn't die.
A new letter arrived every single month, without fail, for decades.
The fairies noticed first. As obedient little spies for Nemesis, they fluttered to their master's throne, trembling, reporting that a mysterious messenger was slipping letters through cosmic wards.
Nemesis didn't even look up from his work.
"Harmless trash," the god dismissed with a wave of his hand.
"A servant delivering mundane chatter to keep the tools distracted. The Fool has better things to do."
He didn't care. And because he didn't care, history forgot to record the messenger's face.
Even to me, as the narrator looking back through the ancient archives, the man's face is completely blurred. It's like space itself censored him. If an elf looked at him, they saw someone pale and slender; if a dwarf looked, they saw someone broad and scarred; if a demon looked, they saw a shadow.
The handwriting shifted, too. For Celestara, the ink flowed in clean, elegant strokes that felt warm to the touch.
For Lillieth, the letters were written in dark, heavy charcoal that smelled faintly of pine wood and rain—capturing exactly what their isolated hearts secretly craved.
It took 23 years for Celestara to finally write back.
The Fool had sent a letter asking:
> "What's your favorite book in the entire world? And don't say 'holy' scripture. Pretty pleaseee?"
Celestara sat at her starlight desk for 6 hours, dipping her quill into silver ink, writing 3 sentences, scratching them out, and starting over.
Finally, she wrote about an ancient mortal fable—a story her mother Vespera had read to her before bed when she was 6 years old, about a lonely fisherman who befriended a mermaid. She wrote 2 pages, hesitated, and then stopped abruptly, convinced the messenger would find it childish and boring.
2 weeks later, the reply arrived:
> "Wait, why did you stop?! What happened to the mermaid?! Did she go back to the sea or did they buy a boat together?! Tell me the rest please, I'll be waiting :)"
At the bottom of the page was a tiny, crooked doodle of a stick figure with a smiley face, holding a fishing rod.
Celestara stared at that little doodle.
Why does a mortal servant write like he's sitting across from me on the grass?
Nobody has ever asked what I like. They only pray for what they need from me... I never knew someone simply talking to me could feel so lovely.
Her lips parted. A tiny, radiant blush crept onto her pale cheeks, and she immediately pulled out 5 fresh sheets of parchment to finish the story.
A month later, a heavy package dropped onto her balcony. It wasn't gold, and it wasn't divine silk.
It was Part 2 and Part 3 of that exact human fable—books that had been out of print for over 150 years.
Tucked into the cover was a note:
> "Found these in an old dusty archieves within Celestine. Enjoyyyy!!!"
Celestara held those battered books against her chest and cried until dawn.
Lillieth held out longer. It took her 35 years to break.
She was stubborn. She was angry. She was convinced that anyone who showed kindness to a cursed witch was either scheming to use her or setting a trap.
Then, on a freezing winter night in Year 35, she opened an envelope and read:
> "I haven't told anyone this, but I feel like I really want to see those eyes of yours that have been hidden under that hood for so long. Pleaseeee don't report me to Nemesisss :((("
At the bottom was a doodle of a stick figure weeping dramatically into a puddle.
Lillieth stared at that ridiculous sad face for 2 hours.
Why is he making a sad face?
Why would anyone want to see my eyes? My father called them an omen of ruin. My sisters look away. Even the demons stare at the floor.
Does he really not know what I am? ...Idiot.
Her hand shook as she picked up a piece of charcoal. Her withering aura scorched the edges of the parchment, but she forced herself to write 1 single, furious sentence:
> "My eyes are ugly and red. If you look at them, you will go blind. Stop sending me these foolish drawings."
The Fool's reply came 4 days later:
> "Challenge accepted."
Lillieth choked on her tea.
Over the next 60 years, the letters became the only thing tethering the sisters to sanity.
The Fool told Celestara she needed to eat 3 meals a day. "Being a goddess doesn't excuse bad habits. Yummyyyy fooodddd. Go eat."
He told both sisters in the same week that he had planted a tiny sapling near the southern seashore of Celestine. "Just a normal seedling. But I asked the earth to be patient with it. Maybe in 10,000 years, it'll grow into the biggest tree in the world and stop a calamity. Who knows?"
And when he got busy and didn't write to Lillieth for 2 entire years, she spent 24 months pacing Manovalent's Garden, chewing her thumbnail, convinced he was dead.
When a 3-page letter finally dropped onto her lap, she almost burned it out of pure spite.
The Fool had written:
> "I'm sorry! I got dragged across 3 continents dealing with Nemesis's nonsense! I know you're furious. I want to hear your rant! Can you please rant at me instead of being upset? Call me every name in the book. I promise I'll reply to you every single week for the next year to make up for it!!!"
Lillieth read those 3 pages twice.
Then she sat down on her stone bench, pulled out 8 sheets of paper, and spent 4 hours writing the most scathing, insulting, petty complaint letter in demon history—listing every single minute she had waited.
And true to his word, he replied every single week.
100 years of writing and sending letters.
Nemesis thought he was keeping his daughters locked in checked cages.
He didn't realize that someone had already picked the lock from the inside.
*
Part 6: The Uninvited Guest (~12,020 BP)
From the Hour-Books and the Leaf-Records
In the 100th year, Nemesis got careless.
He commanded the Fool to deliver a formal divine decree to the 2 goddesses in person.
For the first time in history, the messenger was permitted to cross the threshold.
He went to the Evensong Garden first.
Celestara was lying on the golden grass beneath a weeping willow of pure starlight, wearing her lace veil, reading the worn pages of her mother's fable.
A pair of scuffed leather shoes walked into her vision.
She froze.
The High Elves who guarded the perimeter fell into a confused stupor—space around the man seemed to blur, his presence slipping through their perception like water through fingers.
The man didn't announce himself. He didn't even bow.
He just dropped a heavy wooden crate of red apples onto the grass with a loud thud, wiped the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve, and looked down at her.
"Hey," he said, his voice casual, raspy, and completely relaxed.
"Nice lawn."
Celestara slowly sat up, her mouth slightly open. Her radiant, 4-pointed star pupils widened, swirling with pink and cosmic blue.
"You..." she breathed. "The Fool?"
"In the flesh." He slumped down onto the sacred grass right beside her, groaning as his spine popped. "Those stairs up to your palace are an absolute hell. Whoever designed them should be ashamed of themselves."
Celestara stared at him.
Nobody had ever sat beside her on the grass. Nobody had ever spoken to her without trembling.
She looked at the golden, glowing blossoms near his knee.
The Fool picked 1 of her sacred starlight lilies, inspected the petals, and sniffed it.
"If I eat this flower," he asked deadpan, "will I have painkillers in my body?"
Celestara blinked twice. "...What?"
"I have a headache," he explained, turning the sacred flower in his fingers. "Thought eating a holy petal might make my head feel better. Worth a shot, right?"
"Why would you eat a sacred flower?!" A high-pitched, incredulous gasp broke from her chest. "It's a conduit of celestial light! It's not medicine!"
"Shame," he sighed, tucking the stem behind his ear like a complete peasant.
"Guess I'll stick to complaining... WAGHHHH IM SO TIRED!!!"
A sudden, breathless sound slipped past Celestara's lips.
Her shoulders shook. She tried to bite her lip, tried to hold on to her 1,500 years of divine dignity, but it was completely hopeless.
She laughed.
It was a bright, musical, ringing sound—a sound so full of pure, unscripted joy that the temple bells across the capital began to chime in resonance.
"You're truly a fool," she beamed, her star-eyes shining with tears of amusement. "An absolute fool."
"I get that a lot," he smirked.
She paused, remembering her training. Her expression softened, growing formal. "Did my father send you with a decree? What does he want?"
The Fool looked at her. Really looked at her.
His eyes were warm, dark, and utterly still.
"I don't care what he wants," the Fool said softly.
"What do you want, Celestara?"
The garden went completely quiet.
The breeze died in the willow branches.
What do you want?
Nobody had asked her that. To the world, she was a figure of miracles; she existed to grant what other people wanted.
Her throat tightened. She looked down at her lap, her fingers curling into her lace skirts, unable to answer because the truth was too heavy to speak.
The Fool stood up, dusted the grass off his trousers, and offered her an apple from his crate.
"Think about it," he said with a wink. "I'll be back for the answer."
*
3 days later, he walked into Manovalent's Garden.
The Demons of the Abyss had stationed 500 elite shadow guards around the perimeter. The Fool walked right through them. When a dragonic sentry tried to block the path, the Fool simply offered river water, patted the dragon's head, and strolled past while the beast stood there confused.
Lillieth was sitting on the wooden swing tied to the dead oak tree.
Her hands were clasped in her lap. Her dark hood was pulled down past her nose. Around her boots, the black stone was petrified, cold, and dead.
She heard the gravel crunch.
She didn't look up. "Leave," her voice rasped, cold and threatening.
"Touch this stone and your flesh will rot to the bone."
The footsteps didn't stop.
A man stepped into the ash clearing, cleared his throat theatrically, and gave a deep, ridiculously exaggerated courtly bow.
"Excuse me, ma'am," he called out cheerfully.
"I'm looking for a wonderful goddess who likes to hide her face under a very stylish hood and treats all her followers with gentle kindness from her heart. Have you seen her?"
Lillieth's breath hitched under her linen.
She slowly turned her head.
Through the shadow of her hood, she saw him: dark duster coat, scuffed boots, hands wrapped in clean linen bandages. A casual, tired smirk on his face.
"Oh..." Lillieth whispered, her voice trembling. "It is you then. The Fool."
"Guilty as charged." He walked straight up to the dead oak, leaned his shoulder against the bark, and nodded at the swing. "Mind if I join you? Or is this a VIP-only rotting tree?"
"My presence kills life," she warned sharply, pulling her skirts away from him. "Plants die. Wood decays. Mortals choke on my air."
The Fool reached into his deep coat pocket.
He pulled out a single, fresh, vibrant red rose.
He held it out to her.
Lillieth stared at the blossom. Her heart pounded against her ribs like a trapped bird.
"Don't," she whispered, her voice cracking. "It will only die."
"Take it, Lilli."
Trembling, terrified, she lifted her bare, pale hand and touched the stem.
Instantly, a wave of grey, withering decay flared from her fingertips.
The vibrant red petals curled, turned black, dried into brittle dust, and crumbled away in the wind. In 2 seconds, only a bare, petrified thorn remained in her palm.
Lillieth pulled her hand back as if burned, tears stinging her crimson eyes beneath her hood.
"I told you," she choked out, turning her face away in shame.
"Everything I touch rots. I am a curse... So, stay away!"
The Fool didn't back away.
Instead, he reached out with his bare, bandaged hand and caught her wrist.
Lillieth gasped, expecting him to scream in pain.
He didn't scream. His skin didn't turn black. His flesh didn't rot.
He just held her trembling, cold fingers in his warm, steady grip, unyielding as bedrock.
"Only true flowers wither away, Lilli," he said softly, looking directly into the shadow of her hood.
"Fake ones stay red forever, but they have no soul. That flower died because it was alive. It proved it had life in it."
He smiled—a gentle, tired, crooked smile.
"And maybe 1 day, I'll bring you a flower that doesn't wither from your touch, but grows because of it."
Lillieth stared at their joined hands.
He's holding my hand...
He's touching me... and he isn't dying.
She swallowed hard, her chest heaving. "You said in your letter... you wanted to see my face. That is impossible. There is nothing to see. Only an omen."
"I don't care about omens," he replied simply. "I want to see you as a person."
Lillieth pulled her hand back, lowering her head until her chin touched her chest, clutching her hood with white knuckles.
"No," she whispered, terrified of being despised. "Not yet... Never..."
The Fool didn't push. He just shoved his hands into his coat pockets and leaned back against the dead tree.
"Fair enough," he chuckled softly.
"Then I'll keep waiting patiently until you let me see you for who you are."
*
Part 7: 20 Years of Sunlight (~12,020 to ~12,005 BP)
From the Leaf-Records and the Hour-Books
For the next 20 years, history went completely off the rails.
2 immortal goddesses who had spent 1,500 years ruling separate halves of the cosmos suddenly began acting like rebellious teenagers sneaking away from cathedral bells.
Neither of them knew the Fool was visiting both.
He kept his schedule meticulous, slipping between high heaven and the abyss like a ghost, offering each of them the 1 thing neither had ever known: completely ordinary, unglamorous, exhausting human company.
With Celestara, he was an absolute disaster for divine etiquette.
1 summer, Celestara cast a concealment charm and snuck down to the mortal harbor of Celestine. She found him sweating under the noon sun, helping dockworkers haul heavy wooden crates of grain onto a merchant wagon.
The moment he spotted the supreme architect of cosmic light standing among fish barrels, he didn't bow.
"Perfect timing." He pointed at a 60-pound crate of barley, wiping sweat from his forehead with a bandaged wrist. "Grab the other handle. My lower back's suffering in hell."
Celestara stared at him in utter disbelief. "I am the vessel of the Celestial Dawn. You want me to... carry oats?"
"People are hungry, your Radiance." He nudged the wooden crate toward her boots. "Lift with your knees. Divine dignity won't shatter from a little honest labor."
She huffed, bunched her gossamer skirts, and took the iron handle.
For 3 hours, the supreme ruler of heaven hauled sacks of grain and boxes of apples beside mortal sailors who had no idea who she was.
When the last wagon rolled out, the Fool collapsed onto an empty crate, groaning dramatically.
"My legs are officially dead," he muttered, rubbing his shins. "They had a good run."
"Then sit there and rest," she said, wiping soot from her cheek with the back of her wrist.
"Can't. Wagon has to leave." He pushed himself up, climbed directly on top of the largest wooden box, and patted the wood beside his boots.
"Actually... carry the box. You're strong, you're pretty, and I'm very tired."
Celestara's jaw dropped. "You want me to carry the box with you on it?!"
"Think of it as some exercise," he deadpanned. "Come on. Don't abandon poor old me."
She pouted, shook her head, and lifted the 200-pound crate with him perched on top.
As she marched down the pier, carrying the crate and 1 sarcastic human, he started waving at the sailors like an emperor reviewing his fleet.
Celestara laughed so hard that temple chimes rang across 3 distant provinces.
When she finally set him down and asked why he had made her do something so ridiculous, he reached out and brushed a stray platinum strand behind her ear.
"Because it's normal," he told her softly. "You spend your whole life holding up the sky. Nobody ever lets you just be a normal girl and complain about it. Plus... I knew you wouldn't drop me."
Then there was the prayer.
During the solemn Grand Equinox, while Celestara knelt on solid starlight before 10,000 High Elf priests chanting in harmony, the Fool—disguised in choirboy linen—knelt directly behind her.
While the priests bowed their heads to the marble, he leaned in and whispered against her ear:
"Hey. I forgot the incantation... Can you put in a good word for me? Tell the big guy I'm trying my best!!"
Celestara bit the inside of her lip until it bled.
Her shoulders trembled so violently trying to suppress the laughter that 10,000 priests looked up in reverence, convinced their goddess was weeping from holy communion.
Then came the gift.
On the 10th year, the Fool walked into Evensong Garden carrying a bundle tied with rough brown twine.
He held it out, his ears slightly pink. "Took me 4 months to learn. Don't look too closely at the seams on the left sleeve. They're an insult to wool."
Celestara untied the knot.
Inside lay a hand-knitted wool sweater of pale ocean blue.
Right over the left breast, stitched in clumsy pink yarn, was a lopsided, crooked heart.
Her breath caught in her throat.
Her fingers traced the uneven yarn with trembling care.
It was the exact pattern. The exact sweater she had knitted for her mother Vespera when she was 5 years old—the sweater that had soaked up blood on the black stone floor.
"Whenever you're cold, put it on," the Fool muttered, staring down at his boots in embarrassment. "And if you're not cold, wear it anyway. That way when I'm not around, you'll know someone was stupid enough to stab his own fingers with needles for 4 months just to keep you warm."
Celestara didn't say a word.
She pulled the wool to her chest, buried her face into his coat, and wept until dusk.
That night, lying on the grass wrapped in the oversized blue sweater, she answered the question he had asked 10 years before.
"You asked me what I wanted," she murmured against his collar. "I know now."
"I'm listening."
"I want to put it down." Her voice was small, raw. "The Veil of starlight. Just for 1 evening. And I want someone to ask me afterward if I've eaten."
He was quiet for a beat.
"Did you eat?"
"...I'm starving."
He reached into his deep coat pocket, produced an apple with a dark bruise on 1 side, and set it in her palm.
"Then here," he said, "let me feed you. The sky can hold itself up for 1 night. I asked it. It said it's fine."
She laughed, wiping her nose on the wool sleeve, and bit into the fruit.
"Do you know the old divine law?" she asked around a mouthful. "A god is meant to love all things equally, without preference. Loving 1 person is a crime."
"Then your law is stupid," the Fool said, pulling out a second apple and biting into it. "Who wants to love a rock the same as a person? That makes zero sense."
Her smile wavered. "And if the law is right? What if choosing breaks something inside me?"
"Then it breaks," he said, shrugging. "People break things every day. You drop a plate, you sweep the floor, you move on. If you break, I'll piece it back together."
She looked up at him, her eyes wide.
"Nobody has ever stayed when I'm exhausted," she whispered. "Everyone only wants me when they need me."
"I don't care about your blessings," he said bluntly.
"Honestly, it hurts my eyes. Turn it down, sit down, and finish your apple."
She laughed, still smiling when she fell asleep against his arm.
He didn't move for 6 hours, even when his fingers went entirely numb.
On the 12th year, Celestara rested her head against his chest beneath the quiet white roses.
Her fingers curled into the wool of his lapel.
"My chest hurts," she whispered into the twilight.
The Fool glanced down from the sky, chewing on a dried apricot. "Did you swallow an apple seed? I told you to spit those out."
"No, you idiot." Her voice was small, tight with a strange, heavy ache. She touched the fabric over her ribs. "Right here. It aches every time you come, and it aches 10 times worse when you leave."
The Fool paused, his hand resting on his knee.
"You've been visiting me for over a decade," she murmured, staring at his jaw. "You're always busy working. Yet, you make time to visit me. Each time bringing new fruits to taste. Even going far to find me those that are not in season."
She looked up into his dark, tired eyes.
"You have never asked me for a single thing."
"I asked you to carry my crate on the pier."
"That doesn't count!" Her voice cracked, a sudden, desperate edge breaking through. She sat up, clutching his duster sleeves, her star-eyes brimming with raw, unspilled tears. "Do you know what I am? I am the Goddess of the Dawn! For 1,500 years, every human, every elf, every spirit who ever knelt before me had their hands open! They begged for rain! They begged for crops! They begged for health, for gold, for vengeance, for life! Every single person in this universe only speaks to me because they want a miracle!"
Her knuckles went white against his wrists.
"It's not equal... I don't like it." She squeezed his hands. "Ask me for something."
"Celestara—"
"Ask me for something!" she pleaded, her voice trembling, a tear finally breaking free and rolling down her cheek. "Ask me for a blessing! Ask me for eternal youth! Ask me to pull a star down from the sky and hand it to you! Just ask me for 1 wish! Please... tell me what you want from me!"
The Fool didn't look away.
He reached up, took her trembling wrists in his warm, calloused palms, and gently pulled her hands down from his coat.
"Even if you beg me for the rest of eternity," he said, his voice flat, gentle, and utterly immovable, "I could never force myself to ask you for anything."
Celestara stared at him, her breath hitching. "W-Why...?"
"Because you're not an altar to me," the Fool replied softly. "The moment I ask you for a wish, I'm just another worshipper standing in line with his hands out. And I didn't come here to worship you. I came here to sit with you."
He nudged her shoulder with his elbow.
"Now lie back down. You're blocking my view of the moon."
Celestara sat frozen on the grass.
Why is companionship like this?
He doesn't want my blessings. He doesn't want my miracles.
He just wants to sit with me.
She dropped her forehead against his shoulder and began to smile—not from sorrow, but from a profound, terrifying relief that made her immortal godhood feel completely empty.
And yet, later that same night, as she rested her face against the collar of his coat, her breath caught.
Faint. Subtle. Almost lost beneath the smell of crushed grass.
The bitter, sharp scent of petrified woodsmoke and volcanic ash.
Celestara's eyes flickered in the dark.
Ash didn't exist in the celestial realms of Celestine. It only rose from the burning fissures of the southern Abyss—the ruined domain where her shunned sister had been banished 1,500 years ago.
Has he been to the underworld?
Did he see her?
Her fingers tightened on his coat. A sudden, cold spike of jealousy and dread dug into her chest.
She wanted to ask. Her mouth parted to speak the words.
And then she stopped herself.
No. He's here with me. He knit this sweater for me.
She was terrified that if she asked, the fragile, impossible warmth she had waited 1,500 years to feel would shatter into dust.
So she buried her nose deeper into his chest, closed her eyes, and swallowed the silence.
*
Meanwhile, in Manovalent's Garden, the same quiet miracle was taking root.
The fairies knew almost nothing of what happened in that dead grove. Only the oldest dragons and demon elders ever caught glimpses of it.
In the 3rd year, the Fool walked through the petrified ash trees with both hands behind his back.
Lillieth sat on her rope swing. "What are you hiding?"
"Remember when we first met?" He stopped 2 paces away. "I told you I'd bring you a flower that wouldn't die in your hands."
He brought his hands forward.
It was a woven crown of living blossoms—soft pink camellias, yellow buttercups, white lilies, and 2 dark red roses braided at the center.
Lillieth recoiled, clutching the coarse linen of her hood.
"Pull your hood down, Lilli," he said quietly. "I want to see you wear it."
"Don't," she whispered, backing into the petrified trunk. "The moment it touches my skin, it will turn to soot. Please. I don't want to watch another living thing die because of me."
"It won't die, Lilli."
"You don't understand my curse—"
"Then let it rot," he said, stepping directly into her space, his voice completely level.
"If it rots, I'll braid another 1 tomorrow. And the day after that. Until the earth gets tired of killing flowers and lets you keep 1. Pull the hood down."
She looked at the blossoms. She looked at his steady, unyielding eyes.
Slowly, her hands shaking, Lillieth untied the frayed ribbon.
She pulled the hood back.
Her snow-white hair fell across her shoulders. Her skin was deathly pale, and her crimson eyes—wide, terrified, brimming with tears—looked up at him.
The Fool didn't flinch.
He lifted the crown and set it gently upon her white hair.
Lillieth shut her eyes tight, bracing for the brittle hiss of burning leaves.
Nothing happened.
1 second passed.
Then 2.
The air smelled of wild honey, damp soil, and rain.
Lillieth opened her eyes. Trembling, her fingertips brushed the red petals above her brow.
The flowers were alive.
The leaves stayed green. The roses held their shape, drinking in her presence.
"How...?" Her voice hitched, tears breaking free down her cheeks. "Why aren't they burning...?"
"Because I told them if they die on you, I'm throwing them in the trash," the Fool said, stepping closer. He reached out and caught a tear on her cheekbone with his thumb.
"You really think you're undeserving of this? Stop scaring yourself, Lilli. You're just a girl crying alone."
Lillieth broke.
For the first time in 1,500 years, she threw her arms around a living person, burying her face into his collar, weeping so hard the flowers trembled against her temples.
And through the tears, her lips parted in a breathless, radiant smile.
Then the Fool knelt in the grey ash before her swing.
"Lilli. Do I have your permission to look at your eyes."
She stared down at him, hiccuping through her tears. "...Now?"
"Now. Tomorrow. Every time I visit. I'm sick of talking to a hood."
"My eyes are red," she said, half-laughing through her grief.
"Everyone in this world knows red is an omen. It means danger."
"Red is just a color, Lilli. Stop being dramatic," he said, looking straight into her eyes.
"Apples are red. I eat apples every day. Red looks good on you."
She couldn't speak. She nodded once, hard.
Nobody has ever looked into my face without fear.
My father looked right through me. The world ran from me. And this fool... he looks straight at my eyes and talks about fruit.
How does someone look at a curse and say it looks good?
Later that night, on the swing, she told him what she had never spoken aloud.
"The day we met," she said, staring at their joined hands. "When you caught my wrist. I wasn't afraid you would rot."
"No?"
"I was afraid you wouldn't." Her grip tightened on his fingers. "Because then I would have to want you to stay."
The Fool let the silence breathe.
"My followers kneel 10 paces back," she whispered. "They call me Mother of Night, but not 1 of them has ever let their shadow touch mine... Yet, You're sitting on my swing. What's special about you?"
"Yeah, well, your followers are cowards with terrible taste," the Fool said, stretching his legs out. "It's a great swing. And you've been hogging it all to yourself for 1,500 years. Scoot over!"
She snorted, the sound surprising both of them.
"No one has ever told me I was needed," she said quietly.
"Then you've been hanging out with morons," he replied.
"Come on. Who else is going to keep me company when I'm bored?"
In their 8th year, they had their very first fight.
It didn't start with curses or divine rage. It started with a loud, hollow rumble coming directly from the Fool's stomach.
He had arrived in Manovalent's Garden 2 hours before dawn, dragging his boots through the grey ash, dark circles carved under his eyes. His skin was pale as tallow, his coat streaked with dry mud.
He sat on the stone bench beside her swing, slumped forward with his head in his hands, and yawned.
Lillieth, who had lowered her hood the moment she heard his footsteps, stared down at him with narrowing crimson eyes.
"When did you last eat?" she demanded, crossing her arms over her chest.
"Yesterday," the Fool muttered into his palms. "Or maybe Tuesday. My diet is all over the places, Lilli. Don't worry about it."
"Tuesday was 4 days ago!" Her voice rose in genuine, outraged shock. "You haven't eaten in 4 days?!"
"I was busy," he groaned, leaning his head back against the petrified wood. "Nemesis sent me across 3 mountain ranges to audit dwarven mines. Then a bridge collapsed. I forgot. It happens."
"You forgot?!"
Lillieth stood up so fast the chains of her swing rattled against the branches.
She paced back and forth in the soot, her hands clenched into trembling fists, her white hair whipping across her shoulders.
"You idiot!" she yelled, glaring at him with pure, bratty indignation.
"You absolute, reckless moron! You spend 8 years walking into this cursed grove telling me not to be dramatic, and you can't even remember to put food in your mouth?! Are you trying to starve to death before my curse even gets the chance to touch you?!"
"I'm fine," the Fool waved a dismissive hand, keeping his eyes closed. "I'll buy soup at the next village tomorrow morning."
"You will not buy soup tomorrow morning! You will eat right now!"
Lillieth turned on her heel and marched to the hollow trunk of the ancient dead oak where she kept her few possessions.
For centuries, she had never prepared food for anyone. Everything she touched withered to ash. But over the last few years, driven by a quiet, obsessive terror that he might collapse on his way to see her, she had spent hundreds of hours experimenting in secret—learning how to wrap roasted sweet roots and smoked mountain meat in triple-layered thick waxy leaves so her bare skin never made direct contact with the food.
She stormed back to the bench, carrying a steaming parcel wrapped in twine.
She slammed it down onto his lap.
"Eat!" she ordered, puffing out her cheeks, her chin tilted up with regal, stubborn arrogance.
The Fool opened 1 eye, looking down at the bundle. "What is this?"
"It's food, you blind idiot! I baked it in the volcanic embers!"
"Is it poisoned?"
"Eat it before I strangle you with your own bandages!"
With a faint, amused smirk, the Fool untied the string and pulled back the leaves. The smell of sweet, roasted root and savory meat drifted into the cold air.
He picked up a piece, but his hands were trembling slightly from sheer exhaustion.
Lillieth watched his shaking fingers. Her breath hitched. A sudden surge of possessive, protective frustration flared in her chest.
She snatched the roasted root right out of his hand.
"You're useless," she snapped, her face turning crimson from her forehead to her throat. "Completely useless. Open your mouth."
The Fool blinked, genuinely caught off guard. "Wait, are you feeding me?"
"I am the Mother of Night!" she declared bossily, leaning in close, holding the warm root right in front of his lips with fierce, defiant determination.
"I rule all the demons! If I decide my servant needs to be fed, you will open your mouth and chew! Now open!"
The Fool stared at her wide, furious red eyes, framed by the living flower crown.
A slow, crooked grin tugged at the corner of his lips.
"You're very bossy for a girl living on a swing."
"Shut up and eat!" she hissed, her cheeks burning.
He leaned forward and took a bite from her fingers.
He chewed. He swallowed.
"...Not bad," he deadpanned. "A little heavy on the salt, but 8 out of 10. Could use some garlic."
"It does not need garlic!" she shouted, though her chest swelled with such fierce, overwhelming pride that her eyes stung with sudden moisture.
She shoved another piece against his lips.
"Eat the rest! All of it! I am a goddess, and I can take care of you just fine! Don't you dare think you're the only one who can bring things!"
He ate the entire parcel, right down to the last crumb, while she hovered over him like a tyrant guard, wiping a speck of roasted peel from his chin with the edge of her sleeve.
When he finished, he slumped back against the trunk, groaning with a full belly.
"Alright," he mumbled, his voice thick with sleep. "You win. You're a terrifying provider, Lilli."
Lillieth sat down beside him on the stone bench, her knees pulled tight, watching him as his breathing leveled out into deep, exhausted slumber.
Her fingers reached out hesitantly. She brushed a stray strand of dark hair from his bruised forehead.
Why is he like this?
No one has ever looked at my red eyes without running. No one has ever sat in this ash and asked for seconds.
And he fell asleep right next to me.
Then, her gaze fell upon the cuff of his duster.
Tangled in the rough dark wool was a single, luminous thread—spun from pure celestial starlight and scented with dawn lilies.
The breath died in Lillieth's throat.
Dawn lilies only bloomed in 1 place in the cosmos: Evensong Garden.
Celestara.
Her crimson eyes darkened with a cold, suffocating stab of venomous dread.
He's been to her temple. He's been seeing my sister.
Her fingernails bit so deeply into her palms that dark divine ichor welled beneath her skin. A violent impulse screamed in her mind to wake him, to shake him by the shoulders, to scream until he swore he had never touched her sister's golden robes.
She leaned over him, her chest heaving.
And then she looked at his sleeping face. The dark circles under his eyes. The quiet, relaxed curve of his lips.
The fire in her throat turned to ice.
If I ask him... what if he tells me he prefers her light?
What if he walks away and never comes back to this swing?
A whimper trapped itself behind her teeth.
Slowly, carefully, Lillieth reached down, plucked the golden thread from his cuff, and let it dissolve into grey soot in her palm.
She slid closer to him, pressed her forehead against his shoulder, and closed her eyes.
I won't ask. He came to me. He's eating my food.
She chose the lie, because the truth was a darkness she could not survive.
*
It was beautiful.
It was warm.
And it was the fatal mistake.
Here is the ancient law of divinity:
A god remains immortal only as long as they remain untouched by mortal flesh. Divine purity isn't a moral rule; it is an energetic seal. The moment an immortal gives their heart and their body to a mortal, that seal fractures.
They become mortal.
In the 16th year, within the twilight petals of Evensong Garden, Celestara stood before him with her palm pressed flat against his chest.
"You know what this costs," she said quietly. "The seal breaks. I'll bleed. I'll get old. I'll die 1 day, and the sun will keep rising without me."
She swallowed.
"And I don't care. That's what scares me."
"I know what it costs," the Fool said, his voice unusually steady.
"Say the word, and I'll walk out that gate right now. I'll go back to the docks and sleep by the sea."
...
"Stay here with me."
That was her heart's desire.
To love someone. To be loved.
In the same year, beneath the living crown in Manovalent's Garden, Lillieth stood with her bare hands hovering above his shoulders, trembling.
"Everything I have ever held has turned to grey dust," she whispered. "I don't know how to touch a person without killing them. If you turn grey in my hands, I'll never touch anyone again."
"Then touch me and find out," the Fool said, sliding his arms around her waist, drawing her against his chest.
"Stop overthinking it. If you kill me, you can bury me under your swing... Until then, hold on."
Her hands landed.
That was her heart's desire too.
To love someone. To be loved.
He never lied in either garden. He told each of them she could say no. He meant it every time.
Keep a tally of what he said. It matters later.
There was zero hesitation.
There was zero regret.
The divine hum snapped inside their chests. Their infinite lifespans drained away into mortal warmth.
And they smiled into his collar, because to be mortal and loved by him was worth 10,000 empty eternities.
High in the void, Nemesis watched.
His crimson eyes burned with cold, mounting rage.
He summoned the Fool to his obsidian court, his divine killing intent crushing the stone floor to powder.
"You ruined my tools," Nemesis growled. "You broke their seals. Shall I strip your flesh where you stand?"
The Fool looked up at the One True God.
His expression was utterly blank.
"You could," the Fool said casually. "Or you could hear my offer."
What was that offer?
History has no record of it. The elves never found out, and the fairies never wrote it down. If the Demon Lord knows, he isn't answering letters.
All that is known is that Nemesis lowered his hand.
And the trap snapped shut.
*