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 words the scholar spoke still echoed in his mind: *"This is not for you, little pawn. You are a loose thread I've no use for, but even loose threads have their place."*

He hadn't known what they meant. Not really. Not until the ground cracked beneath him and the world started to crumble.

Lilith—or whatever she had become—was no longer bound by the laws of existence he understood. The air itself bent around her, reality warping as though it couldn't decide what she was. The cocoon of Vatra burned, and with it, everything that made sense.

Zane remembered screaming her name.

She hadn't turned. Hadn't looked.

The scholar had laughed. *"Such emotion for a mortal. Tell me, little sister, do you feel it? Does it hurt?"*

He didn't hear her answer—if there was one. The next thing he knew, the scholar had grabbed him by the scruff of his neck like a discarded pet and dragged him into the void.

Zane's first memory after that was the mining star.

The barren wasteland where he woke up, broken and bruised, with nothing but his name and a warning burned into his mind:

Ten years had passed since that day, but the storm of Vatra still haunted his dreams.

And now, as he sat aboard his ship, staring out at the endless stars, one question clawed at the edges of his mind:

Prologue : The fool Who Lost