57. The Hand Behind the Curtain
“Abaddon!” Lilith lunged, cradling the Demon girl whose chest had been gouged open. The Little White Dragon dragged her back, away from that blood-red hand, like retreating from a blazing brand. Her free right hand tightened on the Shattered Ark, nerves strung like bowstrings as she swept the shadows. “Damn it, what is happening?”
Abaddon coughed, small and shaking in Lilith’s arms. Her pallor turned ashen, like moonlight smudged by soot. She parted her lips and spat a clump of dusk-purple blood that spattered Lilith’s blue-white cloak.
“Abaddon!” Panic surged first, then action. Lilith stared at the Demon girl whose heart had been carved out, her mind a storm of prayers and denial. She didn’t know if a Demon could live without a heart; Abaddon’s face said the answer. “Can you still speak? Tell me—how do I save you?”
The Demon girl struggled, raising her right hand. Her small fingers trembled like a leaf in rain, then brushed Lilith’s cheek with a moth-light touch. Abaddon searched Lilith’s deep blue eyes for a long beat, then forced a faint shake of her head.
“No. Don’t let go. There has to be a way. I—I’ll take you to the Keeper of Secrets right now. They’ll save you.” She knew what Abaddon meant; reason hammered like iron: without the source-heart, a Demon couldn’t live. Yet her unspent innocence flared, a candle in the gale, praying a path would open.
Abaddon said nothing. She gave a small, stubborn shake, then let her eyelids fold like fading petals. She sank into Lilith’s arms, still as the ebbing tide.
“Abaddon?” Lilith asked, her voice a thread.
But the girl in the Little White Dragon’s arms did not answer, silence deep as a sealed well.
She wouldn’t even get that chance; the moment snapped like brittle ice.
Long campaigns had honed Lilith a blade of instinct. Every true fighter carries it, whatever mask it wears—killing intent sense, spider-sense—all the same iron under paint.
It’s the skin-prickle that warns of the strike about to land, like thunder outrunning thought.
Lilith felt the deadly arc coming. Mind lagged; body moved. She sprang, nerves lit like wires, both hands gripping the Shattered Ark to catch the blow.
What hit her blade was a hand—pale, clean, porcelain-smooth—yet twin to the blood-red hand that had reached through Abaddon’s chest to clutch her heart.
Lilith had seen that hand before, not in a blur but recently. Back then, those fingers had held neither heart nor blade, but— a teacup.
“Annie?” The name slipped out, disbelief sharp as frost. Her memory had always been ink-true—a humanities student in the last world, sharpened by divine blessing after rebirth. Magic study honed her eyes. She was sure.
That hand belonged to her innkeeper, the Vampire named Annie, sweet as sugar once and now bitter as night.
But why was she here, a shadow walking from a locked room?
“Ah, so I’ve been noticed?” The familiar voice chimed at Lilith’s ear. A dark-violet vortex unfurled before the Little White Dragon, and a silver-haired, picture-perfect Vampire girl stepped out of the whirl, like moonlight poured from a wound.
Lilith had filed Annie under the cute, neighbor-girl slot. But the Vampire before her erased that mask. In her left hand, Abaddon’s heart still twitched like a trapped bird. Dark-violet blood painted half her cheek, and she smiled with her eyes half-closed. One word fit like a seal: demon.
Not the Demon race of this land, but the demon from her first world’s lore—the emblem of vice, greed, hunger—the kind that walks in as the villain, like smoke that stains glass.
“Why—why would you, Annie—” The questions crashed, shards without shape, like a mirror dropped on stone.
Why was she here? Why wield the void like a loom? Why strike Abaddon? Why smile like a storm? Or was it all of it?
Fog rose in her chest. Was this a battlefield with a mortal foe, or a threshold with an innkeeper? The Little White Dragon didn’t know. She only tightened her sword-grip until knuckles shone, a cold crescent in the gloom.
“Why? Haven’t you pieced it together?” Annie’s smile stayed charming as poison. Her left eye—scarlet—slit open, and Lilith saw a woman’s clean disdain there, like frost skimming black water. “I thought you were sharp, little one. Are the rumors wrong? Do Ancient Dragons breed fools like you?”
“What are you actually saying?” Lilith leveled the Shattered Ark, the blade a cold line between them, like a horizon that forbids crossing. This wasn’t the Annie she knew. If she hadn’t stolen Annie’s face, then the innkeeper had been a mask all along.
“I’m saying I fed you clues—crumbs bright as pebbles—and you still didn’t guess.” Annie kept smiling as she opened her eyes fully. The smile never reached them; only pure disgust flickered there, like oil on water. “Weren’t you curious? Qiao was infected, yet I visited daily and never fell sick. And Morris was sealed for ages—leave Elasha’s royal privilege aside—how did a ‘normal’ innkeeper stock so many odd drinks?”
“You mean…” The shape clicked, cold as steel laid to skin. She had brushed the sun-devouring fiend and stayed untouched; Annie wasn’t normal. Lilith’s gaze iced over. She lowered her voice. “What are you, really?”
“Me?” Annie scoffed. She lifted the heart in her left hand and brought it to her lips. Her mouth opened, and she bit into it like an apple, crimson juice shining like wine.
“I’m a bishop of the Void Sect. Of course, I have a name you’ll find more famous.” She smiled, blood-sweet as night-blooming flowers. “You can call me Eve.”
