POV: Lilith
"The gods are watching, but they never lift a finger."
That thought echoed in Lilith's mind as she perched on the jagged spine of a cathedral long abandoned by its god.
Once, this place held hymns. Now, only the wind howled through shattered stained glass, scattering fragments across the rooftop like the scales of a dead angel. The once-sacred tower leaned as if ashamed, its stone ribs blackened by smoke and time. Beneath her, the town square of Quorva writhed.
Not with life. With fever.
Quorix's image had vanished just minutes ago, swallowed back into the heavens—or whatever passed for them now. His voice, however, lingered.
It hadn't been a sermon. It had been a growl.
"Find the thief. Bring me the traitor's head, and I will raise you among the divine."
A promise. A curse. A game.
Then came the second half the part that made people scream. That made mothers clutch their children. That made zealots draw blades on their neighbors.
"I am no shepherd. I do not guide.I do not forgive insurrection.
You were chosen, Quorva. My cradle. My altar. And you have failed me.
Every hour that passes without my offering returned, I will take one of yours. One child. One family. One soul for every drop spilled.
The gods do not plead. We balance.
Let your walls crumble. Let your streets burn. If five days pass and I remain defied
I will come not as your god… but your judgment."
Then silence.
Silence so loud it felt like thunder with its throat cut.
The faithful might pray. The fools might flee. But Lilith did what she always did she listened.
Not to words. To the city.
To the shift beneath them.
Panic didn't erupt. It bloomed slow and sticky, like rot.
A woman tore off her wedding ring and tried to trade it to a priest for forgiveness. He didn't even glance at her.
A merchant tipped over her own crates, scattering jewels into the dirt. "Take them!" she screamed. "You'll take them anyways!"
A boy no older than six cradled a dying stray dog in the square's center. When no one stopped him, he placed it gently on a cracked altar stone, pressed his forehead to its fur, and whispered something too soft to hear.
All around her, people didn't scream they surrendered.
To fear. To faith. To whatever came next.
Men whispered with blood in their teeth.
Three different villagers marked each other, silently naming scapegoats.
Fear didn't make people repent.
It made them predictable.
She adjusted her grip on the ledge, fingers steady despite the wind.
Five days. That was his countdown. And somewhere in this god-drenched maze of madness, that girl was still alive.
Lilith didn't believe in miracles. She believed in leverage.
And she would find it before the fire spread too far to smother.
She pulled her hood tighter rough from blood and weather and remained perfectly still, like a gargoyle watching rot spread through a holy city.
She scanned the square below not for people, but for patterns.
The crowd broke apart in knots, not dispersing but reorganizing like a carcass being picked clean by flocks of crows.
Men whispered behind cupped hands. Women clutched their children tighter than their purses. Someone bartered over a bracelet, then pulled a knife when the other tried to haggle.
She memorized. She calculated.
"They're not afraid. They're famished," she thought.
"Godhood's on the table. And hunger's stronger than faith."
Quorix's enforcers began their sweep uniformed, but not clean.
Armor dulled by ash, streaked in ritual wax. Their eyes were the worst. Glassy. Frenzied.
Not men anymore beasts promised crowns.
One slammed a man into a wall for blinking too long.
Another tore open a crate and found only cloth, then beat the vendor anyway.
A scream rang out near the well. A child was dragged into the square too small, too pale.
Mistaken identity.
Or maybe not.
Lilith turned away.
"Quorix is losing time. And when gods feel pressure, they bleed through their believers."
She moved.
Lilith dropped from the cathedral silently, her boots kissing the rooftop before she sprinted low through corridors of shanty homes and moss-eaten statues.
She passed walls where gold paint once dripped in divine symbols now cracked and fading. Rats ignored her. They knew better than to chase things that didn't flinch.
Word traveled differently in Quorva. Not through mouths through graffiti, twisted hymns hummed by madmen, coins smeared with messages.
That's how she found the alley.
That's how she found the offering.
The stench hit first: not rot, but burnt herbs and copper trying and failing to mask butchery.
Then the body.
A priest, nailed like a parchment to a broken sun sculpture.
Limbs splayed in parody of reverence.
His chest cavity opened with such care, Lilith felt for a moment like she'd entered a surgeon's hall not a crime scene.
"Precise," she muttered.
"No rage in this. This was… performance."
Next to the priest, scratched in drying blood into the stone wall:
an X
Not hidden. Not rushed.
Mocking.
Her jaw tightened.
"He's not fleeing. He's Toying with us."
She crouched, examining without touching.
The blood was congealed, but not cold.
Whoever had done this had been here within the hour.
Then something beneath the copper stench. A spice.
Cinnamon.
Smoked cinnamon.
Lilith turned slightly, her fingers drifting toward her blade but didn't draw. Not yet.
She was being watched.
A shadow shifted across the far rooftop. Then two more.
Not enforcers no glint of armor, no breath like steam in the cold.
One moved with a limp. One carried something long and wrapped.
They paused as if sniffing the air.
Then, like oil poured into water, they vanished between buildings.
Lilith was already in pursuit.
Her path was silent no crunch of gravel, no breath to betray her.
She reached the corner. Scanned.
Empty.
Only a loose thread caught on a rusted nail.
Crimson cloth, patterned with the twisted sun sewn upside-down.
She stared too long. Then pocketed it.
"It seems quorix has added more pieces to the board ."
But something told her…
this wasn't the last she'd seem of them.
She ascended again, scaling the cracked skeleton of a bell tower. From this height, Quorva looked less like a city more like an exposed wound.
Fires flickered on the horizon. Small, for now kitchen stoves flipped, lanterns broken in panic. But they were growing.
Below, a woman bartered with a priest.
Her child stood beside her, clinging to her cloak.
The priest held a ledger.
The mother handed over a necklace.
Then coins.
Then the child.
The boy didn't cry.
Neither did the mother.
Lilith looked away.
Farther out, smoke twisted into the sky.
An explosion distant, dull, but undeniable.
A scream followed not close, but not far enough either.
the explosion had shaken the city. Its echo still trembled through Quorva's narrow streets. Smoke curled upward like dark fingers clawing at the sky, blotting out stars and hope alike.
From somewhere deeper in the city, a bell rang. Not by intention by impact.
The clang was crooked, off-beat, metal groaning against metal like ribs shifting under strain.
Something was hitting it. Again. And again. Not with rhythm, but with weight.
Debris, maybe.
Or something worse.
Each strike echoed like a broken clock trying to remember time.
Lilith's gaze flicked upward. Her senses sharpened.
The bell wasn't tolling. It was screaming.
Crows scattered from the rooftops, their wings slicing through the smoke in sharp, spiraling arcs. Dozens. Maybe more.
They weren't fleeing the fire they were fleeing whatever had touched that bell.
As she stepped from shadow to shadow, her boot nudged something soft.
A ragged teddy bear.
Singed. Scorched. Its button eyes half-melted, staring skyward through the ash.
The seams torn. The stuffing leaking.
Its presence was jarring a silent witness to ruin.
Lilith knelt. Picked it up.
Her jaw clenched.
The city bled.
And its wounds were far from healing.
Above it all, the Temple of Quorix loomed like a monolith untouched by time. Its marble gleamed unnaturally white impervious to soot or smoke. The spiral sun above its gate spun slowly, impossibly, like a mirage defying gravity.
Lilith's eyes didn't narrow.
They calculated.
"Five days until the full moon," she said to no one.
"If I don't find the girl before then…"
She let the thought hang.
In this city, spoken fears had a habit of coming true.
She turned.
Leapt.
one among many but she moved with purpose vanishing into the dark