I wake up screaming—
but only half of me hears it.
Pain is the first thing I recognize. Not sharp. Not dull. Wrong. Like my body has been edited by someone who didn’t understand the original language.
I try to move my right arm.
Nothing happens.
I open my eyes.
Everything is red.
Not blood—light. Lava-veined walls rising into a sky that churns like a living wound. Black steel arches curve overhead, carved with sigils that crawl when I focus on them too long.
Hell.
My gaze drifts down, and I finally understand why my scream sounds so thin.
I end at the ribs.
My left side is here—arm, leg, heart hammering wild and uneven. My right side is gone, severed cleanly down the center like I was a concept split by committee.
I retch.
Strong hands grip my shoulders. “Don’t move.”
Kael.
His voice is rougher than I remember, like he’s been screaming into fire for days. His eyes burn brighter too, red threaded with something frantic.
“You’re alive,” he says, like he’s arguing with the universe.
“Half,” I whisper.
Behind him, demons in surgical robes adjust machines that look grown rather than built. Tubes pulse. Dark fluid flows. A mechanical arm lowers toward my chest, humming with restrained violence.
“What are they doing to me?” I ask.
Kael doesn’t answer.
Instead, a deeper voice rolls through the chamber, amused and vast.
“So this is her.”
The Devil—no, the King of Hell—steps from the shadows. Kael’s father. Horns crowned in obsidian, wings folded like executioner’s blades.
“Fascinating,” he murmurs. “Even bisected, she destabilizes the realm.”
“She’s not a thing,” Kael snaps.
His father smiles. “Everything is a thing when it’s useful.”
The machine descends.
Darkness surges into me, invasive and cold. My cells rebel instantly—burning, screaming, rupturing the connection. The device sparks violently and explodes.
Alarms howl.
The King sighs. “Pure darkness rejected.”
He turns to Kael. “If she cannot be whole, then make her a weapon. The left half will suffice. Prepare the Chaos Spear.”
“No,” Kael says.
His father’s eyes sharpen. “That was not a suggestion.”
—
Light wakes me.
Soft. Singing. Painfully clean.
I can feel again—but only on the right.
My right.
I float on marble veined with gold beneath a dome of living sunlight. Feathers drift through the air like snow. My missing left side aches with a phantom intensity that makes me sob.
“Elara.”
Raphael kneels beside me, hands glowing as they hover over the jagged line where my body ends.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I tried to bring you back whole.”
I laugh weakly. “Story of my life.”
Angels surround us, their expressions too calm, too interested. The air hums with restrained power.
“She rejects total illumination,” one of them says coolly. “The darkness imbalance is severe.”
A presence descends—ancient, blinding.
The Archangel.
“Extract the equilibrium from her right half,” he commands. “Condense it. Absolute Order. A single detonation will erase the Hell Border.”
Raphael stiffens. “She’ll die.”
The Archangel doesn’t blink. “She is already broken.”
Raphael’s jaw tightens. His hand trembles against mine.
“I won’t,” he says quietly.
“You will,” the Archangel replies. “Or fall with her.”
—
I am burning.
Not flesh—soul.
I open eyes that aren’t eyes.
The Middle Realm stretches endlessly, colorless and screaming. Ghosts drift like ash. Time folds in on itself.
Silas laughs beside me, his form fractured but smug.
“You see it now, Lilith,” he says. “You failed twice. As a Balance Keeper. As a mother.”
I turn to him, and my rage reshapes the void.
“You used her,” I snarl.
“So did you.”
The words hit deeper than any blade.
“You sealed your heart inside her not to save her—but to steal her body when she matured.”
I shake. “I was afraid.”
“Of her surpassing you.”
Silence.
Then I whisper, “Yes.”
I see her—my daughter—split across realms, dissected by gods who call it order and demons who call it strategy.
Something in me breaks open.
“I watched her,” I say. “Every scraped knee. Every lonely night. And I loved her.”
Silas sneers. “Too late.”
“No,” I say softly. “It’s exactly time.”
I tear myself apart.
My soul ignites, ripping through the Middle Realm like a supernova. Silas screams as I drag him into the blast, our essences unraveling together.
The explosion punches a hole through reality.
—
Hell shakes.
Heaven fractures.
I gasp—both sides of me.
Chains snap. Light shatters glass. Darkness dissolves steel.
I am running—crawling—flying.
Central Park blooms beneath me as my halves collide.
Pain. Fire. Wholeness—almost.
I collapse into the grass, lungs screaming, heart cracking open where my mother’s soul once lived.
I see the world through two truths now.
Left eye black as sin.
Right eye gold as judgment.
Above me, the sky doesn’t know which side to choose.
Neither do I.
But I’m alive.
And this time, I will not be divided.