The flickering torchlight cast elongated shadows across the ancient parchnt as I flipped through another Chapter of that cursed to. The words weren’t comforting. They never were.
Lucifer Morningstar—the na dripped like a poison both familiar and alien in this world. Fallen Angel, Devil, Betrayer of Heaven, and yet, here he was, more legend than deity, more myth than mory. The details were vague, intentionally so. Whoever wrote this didn’t want the truth to be easily uncovered. Maybe because so truths were better left buried.
The book didn’t say why he fell, only that he had—cast down from celestial heights after a rebellion that fractured the very fabric of Heaven itself. Banished to Hell, condemned to reign over the tornted souls of humans, chained to a throne forged of broken vows and suffering.
And actually, this was both a practical and reasonable punishnt. But the twist ca when he still retained his archangel powers, which shows the Big Ol’ G never truly finished the job.
He didn’t strip Lucifer bare, didn’t erase him like an unwanted verse from the holy song. No—He cast him out but left the blade in his hand. Maybe as a warning. Maybe as a challenge. Or maybe—just maybe—because He knew that without a worthy adversary, Heaven’s grip on the cosmos would grow complacent.
... Or as many believe, Lucifer was really the favourite son after all.
But first of all, let make this clear: this version was clearly not the Demiurgic version of it.
Because if he were to be the Demiurgic Archangel, he wouldn’t have... died.
Yes.
Lucifer Morningstar—the so-called Eternal Fla, the First Light, the Architect of Rebellion—was dead.
Not imprisoned.Not sealed away in so crystalline oubliette between worlds.Dead.
That was the part the to didn’t try to make pretty.
The ink here was darker than the rest of the text, as though the scribe had written these words with sothing heavier than pignt—like they wanted the fact itself to weigh on the reader’s soul. The calligraphy shifted subtly under my gaze, not writhing exactly, but moving the way a horizon moves when heat blurs the air above it.
The text continued:
——"The First Light burned too brightly. The universe—young, imperfect, fragile—could not contain him. The chains of Hell did not still his fire. The will of Heaven could not dim him. Yet all flas require fuel, and even the most radiant fire can starve."
So Lucifer died... of hunger? That couldn’t be right.
No. As I read deeper, the taphors beca heavier, tangled, and vicious—like soone had tried to smother truth under layers of theological poetry. "Starvation" wasn’t literal. The scribe described it as a thirst unquenched, a hunger unending—but not for food, or even for power.
After reading so more, my gaze stared fixated on ’Knowledge’ like "When the first light seeks the knowledge one, where past, present, and future beco a single unbroken scream, the fla will consu itself."
I blinked, trying to untangle the sentence from the deliberate theological knot it had been tied into. The more I stared at it, the more it felt like the words were leaning toward , whispering in a voice that was not quite sound.
Knowledge. That was the hunger.Not wisdom, not enlightennt—those were polite, mortal words. This was the hunger for the kind of truth that cracks the marrow of reality and lets the raw chaos bleed through.
Lucifer Morningstar had gone looking for sothing. And whatever it was, it had burned him from the inside out.
The next passage was worse.
——"When the First Light crossed the Veil of Roots, he beheld the Skeleton of the First Dawn. There, all secrets lay bare, for those who had eyes unclouded. And in beholding, he ceased to be."
That was it. That was all the to gave —just enough to ignite questions and not enough to answer a single damn one.
"What the hell is the ’Skeleton of the First Dawn’ supposed to an?" I muttered aloud.
"Nobody knows, and according to the ancient texts, nobody cared enough except ’Christianity Pantheon’; our pantheon. All the major ones, like Greek, Norse, Shinto, Egyptian, and Hindu, actually even celebrated the demise of a powerful rival. For them, the fall of the First Light wasn’t a cosmic tragedy—it was a party with divine fireworks. Feasts, sacrifices, and in a few particularly grim pantheons, re-enactnts of Lucifer’s "end" where so poor mortal was ritually burned alive to make the story more... authentic." Grayfia answered.
Petty? Yes. Unexpected? Not in the slightest.
That was the thing—across realms, gods were as vain and insecure as any mortal king, just with better wardrobe options and longer grudges. Lucifer’s death wasn’t mourned; it was proof that even the strongest could break. It was an affirmation that no one—no matter how brilliant, no matter how adored—was untouchable.
And yet...
I couldn’t shake the feeling that this story wasn’t the whole story.
Lucifer Morningstar—the supposed embodint of defiance—didn’t strike as soone who would simply lose to an idea, no matter how dangerous. If the "Skeleton of the First Dawn" had truly ended him, then maybe... maybe it hadn’t been just his choice to seek it out. Maybe sothing—or soone—had made sure he went looking.
But the story of Lucifer ended with that.
After that entire book was about Pantheons, almost every major and notable figure was ntioned.
Seriously, who the hell is the author of this book?
How the hell were they even able to collect this much information and live to complete the book?
What were they? The caraman of the universe? The all-mighty caraman of creation, quietly filming the universe’s most private disasters from so cosmic balcony, munching on popcorn as civilisations burned.
If so, I had questions—naly: how did you not get shanked by a jealous god halfway through your little biography project?
Like Zeus’s bisexual streak, Odin’s ’eye’ opening mont in the well of wisdom—which, by the way, is just a poetic way of saying he got drunk enough to poke his face into a magical wishing puddle and ca out with a permanent eyepatch.
Or Shiva’s generous nature to grant boons left and right to the Asurs as if the god of destruction moonlighted as a cosmic charity worker for anyone with a halfway convincing sob story.
And then, as I thought about it. The author must have premium quality dirt on each and every pantheon like a divine gossip broker, the kind of omniscient busybody who didn’t just witness creation’s scandals—they hosted the afterparty and sold exclusive rights to the story.
If there really was soone like that, then they either:
1. No longer existed, erased so completely their na couldn’t be uttered in any realm, or
2. Were still out there, watching, taking notes, and chuckling at my confusion right now.
Neither option made feel particularly comfortable.
I glanced back at the to, my eyes catching on a marginal note in cramped, almost spidery handwriting. It wasn’t the sa style as the main script—different hand, different century, different... intent.
——"The First Light’s hunger was not born in Heaven. It was planted. Fed. Nurtured until the thirst could not be quenched without crossing the Veil."
Planted.
Like a seed.
And we all know what seeds beco if you water them with enough obsession—they grow into sothing ugly, invasive... inevitable.
The more I stared at that marginal note, the more it felt wrong that it even existed. The rest of the to had this curated, deliberate quality—like a museum display where every shard of pottery is exactly where it should be. But this? This was graffiti in the holy archives. A truth soone didn’t want to put in the official exhibit but couldn’t bring themselves to destroy.
I flipped the page.
Empty.
No script, no symbols, not even the faint bleed-through of the previous page’s ink. Just a faint scent—ozone and ash, like the air right before a lightning strike. I brushed my fingers along the parchnt, and for a second, my skin prickled.
"You... finished it?" Grayfia stared awestruck at with an expression that was equal parts disbelief and the faintest trace of... was that fear?
Her voice was steady, but the way her crimson eyes tracked wasn’t casual. It was clinical, dissecting without a scalpel, as though she were searching for sothing—so mark or aetheric burn the to might have left behind.
"Yeah," I said, setting the book down a little too casually. "Wasn’t exactly light bedti reading, but I made it through without bursting into holy flas. So, that’s a win."
"You should not be so flippant," she said sharply, and for a heartbeat I caught a rare crack in her composure. "That to is forbidden for a reason."
"And yet," I gestured toward it, "you put it on the table in front of like a particularly cursed dessert nu."
Her lips pressed into a line. "Because I didn’t think you would be able to finish it."
I leaned back in the creaking chair. "You thought I’d get bored and wander off to play with so cursed artifacts instead?"
"No," she said, voice dropping low. "I thought it would stop you."
The weight in her tone settled on like lead. Not warn . Not frighten . Stop . That ant she knew there was sothing in that text—buried between the sanctimonious poetic drivel and theological posturing—that wasn’t ant to be read, let alone understood.
"Stop...?"
I continued, "How the heck will a book stop from reading it? And haven’t you read it yourself?"
"I have but... I could go past... three pages." Grayfia’s gaze bore into as she said, "Three pages. That was all. Then it... pushed back."
"Pushed back?" I raised an eyebrow. "What, like the book tried to slap your hand away?"
Her eyes narrowed. "Like it tried to take my mind."
I laughed—because that was my default response to anything that sounded just a little too much like prophecy or curse. "Well, maybe it liked better."
"It doesn’t like anyone," she said, almost a whisper now. "It consus. It is not a thing you read—it is a thing you survive."
I tilted my head, considering that. "Who else survived this? Otherwise, how the hell do you know about ’Skeleton of the First Dawn’?"
"Lilith Morningstar told ."
"My mother, huh? That makes sense. But why are you calling her ’Lilith Morningstar’, isn’t it ’Lilith Nocturne von Morningstar’, like ?"
Grayfia’s gaze hardened, but there was a flicker—sothing quick and sharp, like the glint of a blade in the dark.
"That was her na when she told ," she said, each word precise, almost asured. "Nas... change. Titles shift. But when she spoke of Lucifer’s end, she was not Lilith Nocturne von Morningstar. She was his daughter."
Wait!
Hold up!
Thamba!
Tenere!
My brain screeched to a halt, like soone had yanked the ergency brake on a speeding carriage.
"His daughter?" I said slowly, tasting each syllable like it might be poisoned.
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