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.

"The difference between a pet and a predator is only a matter of control."

Tilana had never considered herself a good person.

But she also wasn't the naive, wide-eyed girl people often assumed she was.

For all of Lily's strangeness, for all her otherness, she had looked at Tilana and seen nothing but kindness.

Her father always said she was too curious for her own good.

That she had a bad habit of picking up strays.

Humans. Beasts. Things that lurked in places they shouldn't be.

Not when she dragged home a half-starved animal.

Not when she smuggled in a fugitive orphan.

He had barely glanced up when she told his guards a lie about where she found her.

As if Lily was just another pet project.

And maybe that's what she had been.

Until her father sat her down one night and told her, in his usual quiet, deliberate way:

"You didn't bring home a stray, Tilana. You brought home a tiger cub."

And just like that, everything changed.

Tilana had never been afraid of Lily.

Not when she had first met her, asleep near the Echoli.

Not when she had realized Lily was more than human.

Not when her father had taken her away, saying it was for her own good.

It wasn't always sharp. Sometimes, it was soft.

She was not something that could be kept.

Because if she couldn't kill the tiger, she could at least make it need her.

She wasn't just an anomaly—she was an opportunity.

Tilana knew something like her had never been found before.

But in the subtle ways that mattered.

Lily would always find her first before making any decisions.

Lily had started mimicking her behaviors, even in small ways.

The tiger cub was learning the leash.

And suddenly, she had been dragged away.

Away from the slow, patient process of taming the untamable.

He expected results. Expected discipline. Expected her to become exactly what he needed her to be.

Because Tilana wasn't a good person.

And she knew, better than anyone, that in order to win, you had to understand the game.

Because Tilana had not spent months molding her into something dependent just to throw it all away.

And if the higher-ups thought they could take that away from her—

Arc 2 Chapter 7 : The Taming of a Tiger ally