Chapter Text
After the Beginning, a human was casted out of the Garden of Eden. No, not Adam and Eve. The first woman.
The one they called Lilith.
First wife of Adam. Although that title felt a little wrong now, didn’t it?
First Denier of Adam. That’s more like it.
But anyway, back to our tragic character. She wasn’t so much as casted out , as most scholarly studies and other scriptures may say.
No, she was more so...casted down .
Beneath the Earth, where she stumbled on brimstone and rocks, she rolls and tumbles down the crust of the floating blue-green planet. Her long black hair gets caught with dust, grime and an assortment of branches.
Poor thing could use a detangling.
But she lands onto a large layer of stone, her hands bracing her head and face from the fall. She stays still for a while, awaiting for something else that could come crashing into her.
Nothing came, it was just her alone on the rock.
Once she found it within herself to stand up with newly formed gray robes around her body, she rose from the ground and looked at the wild expanse of…rocky nothingness for a while. She stands there, confused and the slightest bit frightened.
But she hears a cry. A far distant one, but it was still present nonetheless. It snaps her attention like a moth to a flame.
Would be more fitting to use a butterfly in this sense but, semantics.
Listening closely, and inching towards the direction of the noise, it appears her first thought was wrong; it wasn’t one cry, it was many.
It was the sound of many, many voices crying.
And before she could even think otherwise, she scrambles towards the sound. She hikes up her newly formed skirt and runs towards the tall, cavernous, expansive cave that surrounds her. From the distance, she sees a bright light along with the vaguest sensation of heat.
Blistering heat. Heat strong enough to set something on fire.
Turning the corner to where the screams of agony grew louder, Lilith is greeted with a grisly sight, the source of all the screaming. The burnt smell of sulfur overtakes her senses as she stares in horror at what could be millions of…humanoid beings being drowned by waves of flame.
She has seen those beings before, they were similar to the ones stationed at the four cardinal directions of the heavily-gated Garden.
Angels. She stumbled upon millions of angels screaming and shouting in pain.
And thus she is confronted with the first choice she ever had to make after being expelled from the Garden: does she walk away or does she walk forth?
Well, it’s not like she could damn herself more, could it?
You could ask her now for the reasons on why she did it. Rage, spite, maybe pity or compassion. Maybe even a deep sense of empathy from someone who too fell from the good graces of an Almighty being.
She knows not exactly why she did it, but she did it anyway.
With bare feet and a human corporation, she walks on the shore of the Pit. And after inhaling a little bit to settle her nerves, she reaches her hand towards one of the angel’s outstretched ones and pulls hard. Some of the flames lick at her skin as she hisses at the pain.
It does help that the angel’s charred wings were also trying to boost the being afloat. She hoists her arm over her shoulders as she drags the angel to the surface. To say the angel looked like a mess is a severe understatement.
Not even an understatement anymore, but a lie.
The angel was akin to a melting ball of wax, wings completely a burnt black with pieces of the angel totally melted off. The being probably wouldn’t be able to stand on her own feet.
Surrounded by nothing except dust and ashes, Lilith uses her very human hands to craft something that only the Almighty Herself could do.
How foolish of the human to try, for the only forms she knew were of the animals of Eden. And as such, she could only mimic those creatures in such an imperfect way.
But they were all she could do in order to piece the Fallen angel whole again. With clumsy gestures, she fashions scale-like skin and presses them against the melting angel’s face. The angel cries loudly, sobbing in the physical torture she feels.
Lilith shushes her carefully, “Hush, this will hurt but it will help.” She continues her work, crafting teeth at the side of the angel’s face that started to melt down as well. Her promises felt hollow at the time, seeing as it looked like the angel was to perish at any minute.
But to the human’s surprise, it worked.
Even as terrible as the angel looked now, razor sharp teeth, beady blue eyes and a sickly pale complexion with silver scales on her skin, she was whole. Complete.
Reborn in more ways than one.
Once the angel had a somewhat working body, Lilith leaves and returns back to the Pit to gather the next angel. This time, the fire started to spread at the hems of her robes before the edges burnt themselves off completely.
Lilith’s mortal hands begin to darken like tar, her legs starting to buckle within the first three hundred angels she lifted. But she does not stop.
At least, she could admit to you now that part of what drove her was anger.
“You hear them cry, you hear them pray,” Lilith demanded to the One Above, the Highest of the High, “and you let them Fall the same way you did me. You casted them out for a reason I yet not know...”
With every Fallen angel she brings ashore, her soul begins to weigh heavily and her human body begins to fail. Despite this, she continues. She crafts horns for another, a lizard, a shark, an ox, frog eyes, cow hooves, manes of lions.
She becomes a mockery and a tragedy of what the Almighty is. “..But at least I do know that I can choose to be better than you.”
This was a new feeling that had yet to be labeled at the time but a feeling Lilith could only be described as the mirror to the flaming Pit.
Hate.
“You threw them away the same way you did me. Oh, Almighty One, I am nothing like you.”
Her hands, now darkened and burnt themselves, move with practiced ease, creating newer forms quicker than ever. Crocodiles here, a tiger there, the shadow of a bat in the corner.
She feels herself slowly sink deeper into the Pit once she reaches the thousands count. And she does not stop.
Her human body couldn’t handle the blistering pain of flesh being burnt anymore for the repeated time. The gray robes on her body were close to tatters.
And she knows that the angel she carries would be the last one she could save before she perishes.
She makes this one count, crafting eyes yellow and bright like a star, with scales and the mark of a serpent on the side of his face.
Lilith was always fond of snakes, ever curious creatures they were. If she ever had a favorite animal, it would be the serpent.
‘This one,’ she thinks, ‘let this one be strong, be curious but most of all, let this one be dangerous.’
And as she finishes with this angel, she lets out a pained exhale as the angel looks at the human with shock. The angel springs to life with vigor.
And thus Lilith, the first Denier, human, dies on the shore of Hell.
But the energy of Hell does not weigh her down anymore, if anything it invigorates her.
And as her human body fell and died by her feet, her soul remained intact. Lilith removes herself from the body that felt like a tight cocoon around her.
She was not human anymore.
“What are you?” The angel hissed, red hair fanning beneath him like a veil. And Lilith turns around to face the newly formed entity.
Unlike the Almighty the angel knows, this one knows nothing. And unlike the Mother the angel knows, she still answers.
“I don’t know.” She says, a sad smile on her features appear.
She continues with her mission, ready to walk back towards the Pit for the remaining angels that cried themselves hoarse, no shout comes out their mouths anymore.
Without the limits of a human corporation, Lilith was quick to reach the millions count.
The latest angels that Lilith tried to help were prideful, choosing their own animal aspect for her to fashion. And while the requests were surprising, she does comply. There was even one who chose something as nimble as a fly. Slightly partial to the angel requesting it, as they were one of the few who didn’t cry, Lilith creates the tiny insects to always be their constant companion. The Fallen angel’s face remains stony as Lilith completes their body. Once she’s finished, she turns to the last angel.
The last angel in the Pit was the one buried the deepest.
And once again Lilith was faced with a choice: does she walk away or does she walk forth? Her answer remains the same. It’s not like she could damn herself further from this.
Despite not being human anymore, she was still foolish.
She walks on the flames of the Pit, having it rise up to her thighs, the tides going higher as she reaches for the last hand in the Pit. And like with others before her, she pulls with all her strength.
But to her surprise, the beings wings flapped menacingly, leaving her almost overturned as she sees the rest of the Fallen angels watching in awe. Some kneel at the presence, the first one kneeling being the one Lilith had fashioned the fly for.
This being is breathtakingly beautiful, still surprisingly whole. White blonde hair and pleasant eyes that peer at this human who took it upon herself to save the Fallen.
“You.” Is all the being says before bringing down his hand and making Lilith topple over into the Pit, back hitting the flames as she once again falls deeper and deeper.
And while she didn’t fall onto a waiting vat of sulfur, she falls with her scarred and burnt back onto hard rock once more.
She stays still for a while, awaiting for something else that would come crashing into her.
Nothing came. It was just her alone on the rock.
And like she had done for others, she grabs a hold of whatever ash and dust there was on the ground before slowly crafting herself something to fix her back. She has healed others; it is about time that she healed herself.
She stayed in that blank cave for 6000 years, forgotten by most of the Fallen angels and remained a mystery to the Nephils.
Lilith made her choices, and if she had the chance to go back, she would do them all again.
Even if it meant that when the world ends, she’ll spend all of Time alone.
= Seven Years into the Rest Of Their Lives =
Adam sits on the grass, humming a little while Dog lays his head on his Master’s lap. “That seems sad.” The teenage Antichrist says.
His Aunt Lilith muses, “Is it really?”
“I mean, wasn’t it lonely? Didn’t anyone visit you?”
Tapping her chin, Aunt Lilith squints her dark red eyes behind her glasses before muttering, “I mean, outside the Dark Council and Lucifer, no one really knew where I was or that I even existed. They were definitely…visitors of a kind.” She shrugs nonchalantly, “From what I heard, I was a collective hallucination made to ease their pain. It’s a vast improvement from the last rumor.”
Adam blinks curiously, “Which one was that?” A stormy look overtook Aunt Lilith’s eyes, “They thought I was Her and the animal corporations were a punishment.”
She sighs, trying to get rid of the budding anger at the reminder of that. “But anyway, it was a long time ago. And I’ve indulged your curiosity enough, youngling. Off you go.”
Adam bursts out laughing, “Come on, these stories are cool! I mean, you haven’t even gotten to the part where I come in!” He asks with a grin as Aunt Lilith rolls her eyes with a good-natured smile. “Next time, I promise, but you need to go before your mother worries.”
At the sound of that, Adam winces as he gets up from his seat, “Yeah, I see your point.” Looking down on his companion, he says, “We better go ahead, Dog. Mum would probably be halfway through another aneurysm if we stay up any longer.”
The sun had already set when Aunt Lilith recounted her story and by the time she finished, the light posts of Tadfield were already lit up. Butterflies still fluttered about the shrubbery of the backyard with crickets sounding off as the stars in the sky began to shine through the inky black.
“I heard there’s going to be a meteor shower tonight.” The boy tells Aunt Lilith. “Oh?” She says in response, still a little unfamiliar with some of the earthly phrases and customs.
“Yeah, stars falling from the sky and you get to make a wish, it’s great. Might stay up in my room watching them for a while.”
Aunt Lilith looks up at the sky too, this time with an odd sense of woe coloring her features. “Falling stars, huh?”
= • =
A man looks at the night sky in a penthouse as he stares at the shooting stars.
A meteor shower had been scheduled as per the celestial calendar, and yet he can’t help but feel the stinging melancholy watching as the bright balls of light begin to pull away into the gravitational field of some planetary body nearby. They continue to fall further away from his reach.
“Something bothering you, your Grace?” He hears someone ask.
His wounds ache in the slightest way but he smiles placatingly. “Nothing. Just wondering is all.”