kweenjaded

For as long as the stars have burned, she has existed. She has been called many names—Gaia, Lilith, the First, the Eternal Witness—but time has eroded meaning, leaving only silence. When the sun finally devoured itself and Earth drifted into the abyss, she closed her eyes, expecting oblivion.

But she did not die.

Eons passed, and Earth—no longer Earth—was reborn in a distant galaxy, reshaped by her unconscious will. Now a training ground for civilizations across the cosmos, the planet teems with life once more. And she, no longer Lilith yet not fully something else, awakens in a body that is hers but unfamiliar. She knows everything yet feels nothing. Memories exist as echoes, not experiences.

When a young explorer, Tilana, stumbles upon her, she is given a name—Lily—a word tied to a flower that no longer exists. As Lily navigates a world both familiar and alien, she must relearn what it means to feel, to connect, and to exist. But something lingers in the depths of this reborn world, something that calls to the remnants of who she was.

To see tomorrow, one must kill yesterday. But what if yesterday refuses to die?.

Lily: The last lily of a forgotten world.

"No one is born a killer. The world makes you one. Slowly. Methodically. Until one day, you don't even hesitate."

Zane never thought about his first kill.

Not because he was in denial. Not because he felt guilt.

But because it simply wasn't important.

It had been quick. Unremarkable. The kind of thing that happened in the underbelly of Vatra's districts every night.

And yet, somehow, it had changed everything.

It had been a month since Lily broke him out of prison.

A month of running. A month of hiding. A month of trying to piece together how, exactly, he had gone from the heir to a powerful family to the universe's favorite scapegoat.

Vatra had always been a chaotic place, but for a fugitive, it was something else entirely.

There were only two ways to survive in a place like this.

Zane wasn't the kind of person who liked to disappear.

Which meant, sooner or later, this was inevitable.

It happened in one of the lower districts.

Not the worst part of town, but close enough.

The man had come out of nowhere. A knife. A demand. The usual story.

Zane barely had time to register the words before the blade came for him.

It wasn't even a skilled attempt—just some lowlife trying to take advantage of someone who looked like easy prey.

That this idiot had looked at him—him—and thought, yes, that one. That's the man I'll rob today.

That would have been funny, if not for the fact that Zane was already in a bad mood.

So when he blocked the strike—when his hands moved on instinct, years of training bleeding into the motion—

And then the knife was in his hands.

And then it was in the man's throat.

No rush. No horror. No sharp inhale of realization.

Just the quiet acceptance that he had crossed a line.

A line that had always been there.

A line that, in his family, he had been trained to cross since birth.

That all this time, he had thought of himself as something different.

That, despite everything, some part of him had still clung to the idea that he could be something other than what he was made to be.

Zane didn't check if the man was dead.

He just cleaned the knife, tucked it into his coat, and walked away.

Just the weight of inevitability settling into his bones.

The next morning, his face was everywhere.

Not for escaping prison. Not for a crime he didn't commit.

This time, the warrant wasn't just words—it was a video.

A single, perfect frame of him standing over the body, the knife in his hands, the

Captured in crisp, unforgiving detail.

If it wasn't so goddamn predictable.

Arc 2 Chapter 4: The First Cut is Always the Deepest