Lilith remained in Starforge’s conquered world in the void long after Lucien had been taken back to his origin world.

At first, she told the others that it was because she wanted to train and grow stronger.

That was true.

But it was not the deepest truth.

The deeper truth was uglier.

When Lucien died, something inside her had twisted so sharply that even now, thinking of it made her chest hurt.

It had not been only grief. It had been helplessness. The kind that bit into pride and stayed there.

And the cruelest part was that even if she return, she had not known whether she truly wanted to.

Because what if she returned and found only silence? What if she returned and learned that they failed to revive Lucien? What if she returned and had to stand there while the others grieved someone she had not even managed to protect?

That fear kept her rooted in the void world.

Fear, and something else.

Something more humiliating.

The first seed of it had been planted long before Lucien’s death, back when they first met Seran and the others.

That had been the first time Lilith truly understood the gap.

They spoke of things she did not know. A world she had never seen. Concepts from another life. Memories from before this one. Systems, cheats, strange common references, habits, instincts, jokes, and griefs shaped by a world she could not imagine because she had never been born there.

They were reincarnators.

She was not.

They had another origin.

She did not.

Even Eirene, whom Lilith had long treated as a rival, had something she lacked. When the world forgot Lucien and Eirene transformed into a Lunarian to force memory back into their hearts, Lilith finally understood with painful clarity that there were layers to the others she could never touch through strength alone.

They had things that connected them to Lucien.

She had none of that.

She had only herself.

Her body. Her talent. Her stubbornness. Her pride.

As a Solhorn, she had always been proud of her strength.

As a woman—

that pride became less useful.

Because strength could protect a man. It could fight for him. It could stand beside him in war.

But could it make him love her?

That question had begun as a whisper.

Then it became a wound.

Lilith sat alone in the conquered world many nights with that question pressing against her ribs like something alive.

She had never liked admitting weakness, even to herself. Yet love had a way of dragging a person into truths she would rather beat to death than confess.

She liked Lucien.

No.

That word had long become too weak.

She wanted to be seen by him. Wanted him to choose her. Wanted to stand before him without feeling the need to compare herself to every other woman near his side.

And because she wanted that, insecurity had bloomed where pride once sat undisturbed.

She hated it.

Hated the way she found herself thinking about the others.

Eirene, gentle and strange and ancient in a way Lilith could not rival. The elemental women, each carrying their own closeness with him. Those who remembered another world with him. Those who could speak to parts of him she could not even name.

Lilith, by comparison, felt unbearably ordinary.

She had never cared much for beauty before.

Then she began wondering whether she should have been prettier, softer, or smarter in a different way.

And that thought was what truly broke her pride.

Because for the first time in her life, Lilith felt not like a warrior trying to surpass an enemy, but like a woman afraid she might simply not be enough.

She told Eirene that she wanted to remain in the conquered world to train.

That was true.

But it was also a lie.

The fuller truth was that she wanted somewhere to hide.

If she buried herself in training, perhaps the emptiness in her heart would quiet down. If she pushed her body hard enough, perhaps the fear would become something cleaner. If she grew strong enough, perhaps the answer to all of it would become unnecessary.

So Lilith trained.

She trained until time became a blur of pressure, sweat, wounds, and hammering purpose.

She pushed her Law of Forging further. Pushed her body further. Pushed her mind into the strange materials of the conquered void world until even her dreams smelled of ore and heat and sharpened essence.

Beloved Bastion had failed to protect Lucien.

That truth never left her.

So she made it her obsession to create something that would not fail again. Something that could stand before a Primordial Incarnation.

This world helped feed that obsession.

The place was rich with strange metals and minerals unlike anything she had seen before. It was where they had found the principal materials used in the Abyssal Core Shards, and those shards had already proven how much they could accelerate comprehension.

Lilith used them relentlessly.

...

Months passed like that.

And she changed.

Her forging became sharper. Her understanding deepened. Her realm advanced. The materials of the world gave her resistance, insight, and strange new ways of thinking about structure under pressure.

Yet even while she grew stronger, a new suspicion stirred in her.

This world hid something.

It was too strange.

So while training, Lilith began wandering farther.

She toured the conquered world between forging sessions and law practice.

At first it was only curiosity.

Then it became fixation.

Then it became obsession.

And eventually, the world answered.

Another month passed before she first felt it.

A pull.

Lilith stood still with narrowed eyes.

Something in this world was calling to her.

Or perhaps not calling.

Responding.

She could not tell which disturbed her more.

Maybe it was the result of too much exposure to the materials here. Maybe her forging law had synchronized with some buried principle. Maybe obsession itself had become a key.

Whatever the reason, the sensation only intensified when she followed it.

She moved through the world slowly at first, then with greater certainty, until the pull drew her toward one of the deepest mining zones. It was the same vast excavation where Starforge had extracted the major components used in Abyssal Core Shards.

The opened mine greeted her like the mouth of some buried giant.

Lilith entered without hesitation.

She descended through old excavation paths, and kept following the tightening pressure deeper and deeper.

Her heart had already begun beating harder by then.

...

The pull led her at last to what looked like a dead end.

A natural stone.

Lilith stood before it and knew immediately that this was not truly the end.

The pressure was strongest here.

She placed a hand against the rock and let her Law of Forging spread into it, trying to part the wall by force of understanding.

Nothing moved.

Her eyes sharpened.

Then without wasting anger on surprise, she set to work.

She used tools first. Then law. Then raw force. Then careful structural chipping where the stone showed the faintest signs of hidden stress.

Days passed.

Lilith did not stop.

On the seventh day, the wall finally gave.

The last section broke open, and the pressure beyond it surged out so suddenly that she almost lost her footing.

Then she saw what lay inside.

A vast hollow earth opened before her.

It was enormous.

And at the center of that hidden world—

Lilith’s breath caught.

A single massive bark stood embedded in the hollow ground, rising like the severed remnant of a tree so ancient that even the memory of its full size felt impossible. It radiated a pressure that made every instinct in her body pull taut.

She knew that pressure.

Or rather, she knew something frighteningly close to it.

The Law of Creation.

And that was not the most impossible part.

Because growing from that bark was a single fruit.

One vibrant fruit. So full of vitality that it looked less like something grown and more like condensed life itself.

Lilith stared.

A bark should not bear fruit. Not like this.

Yet there it was.

She moved toward it. 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

Or tried to.

The moment she entered a certain range, the pressure crashed down harder. Her body slowed. Her breath thickened. Even with Celestial-level strength, she could not move properly toward the bark.

Lilith gritted her teeth.

Then pushed again.

And failed again.

Helplessness surged through her so fast and so viciously that for one sharp moment she almost wanted to scream.

Weak.

She was still weak.

Weak enough that she could not even approach a dead bark in a hidden world.

Weak enough that the gap between what she wanted and what she could reach still mocked her.

That old wound opened again.

The need to grow stronger. The need to reach what lay beyond her. The need to stop being left behind by things she could not grasp.

Her obsession erupted.

Lilith advanced again.

One step. Then another. Then another.

She trained there. Failed there. Collapsed there. Rose there.

Again and again.

The pressure resisted her every attempt. The fruit trembled on the bark. She kept coming. Kept resisting. Kept pushing as if force of will alone could rewrite the law between them.

And then—

something changed.

The fruit reacted.

Lilith froze.

It vibrated once, then again, as if answering not her strength, but the sheer concentrated intensity of her desire to break past her own limits.

She took another step.

The fruit wriggled against the bark.

Lilith’s eyes widened.

She did not dare blink.

She pushed forward once more through the pressure.

Just then—

The fruit detached.

For one breath it hovered in the air.

Then it flew.

It flew directly into Lilith’s hand.

...

She stared at it.

For the first time in days, perhaps weeks, her mind gave her nothing.

Only stunned silence.

Now that it rested in her palm, the truth became clearer.

This fruit had been the one calling her.

She could feel the connection now.

Lilith’s eyes narrowed.

Without wasting the moment, she turned and left the hollow.

She returned to the surface first.

Only when she was back beneath open sky did she finally sit cross-legged and place the fruit before her.

Its fragrance alone carried force. Its skin shone with impossible life.

Lilith looked at it for a long moment.

Then, without hesitation—

she bit into it.

And the moment the flesh touched her tongue, power unlike anything she had ever known exploded through her being.