I cannot say for how long I lay, face down in the dirt, mourning Beelzebub’s passing.

  If my family spoke, I heard them not. When they departed, I said no goodbyes. Exhausted and aching, there was nought I could do but weep and wail until eventually my eyes opened once more within the walls of Castle Dreadskull seated in the library.

  The fellflame torches were dimmed, casting the room into a muted, evening copper. My eyes were slow to adjust to the dancing shadows, but upon taking stock of my surroundings, I found I wasn’t alone.

  Lord Genesis was with me.

  Seated in the chair across from me, one leg draped over the other, head propped up on his knuckles and a book held loosely in his other hand. He exhaled a breath of smoke and turned the page with a gentle touch. Smoldering like strange emerald embers in a pool of black, his eyes flickered but remained carefully transfixed on the book at the sound of my awakening.

  “Then it’s done? You’ve slain Beelzebub.”

  I lowered my head and drew my knees to my chest. “I have.”

  “You seem distraught.” There was an almost eerie tranquility in the Fiend Lord’s voice. Though I suspected there was little love lost between him and the Fiend of Rot, I had expected him to be furious at the loss of so loyal a companion nonetheless.

  My brow furrowed, eyes stinging at the first hint of new tears.

  “And you are not…does it mean nothing to you that one you’ve known for millennia is gone?”

  A pregnant pause.

  “Beelzebub’s demise means everything to me, Little Moth.” He said at last. His eyes gleamed; the corner of his mouth twitched. There seemed to be something else he wanted to say, but after much deliberation, he settled for asking, “Is this not the outcome you desired when seeking your answer?” He raised his eyes from his book. “What reason is there to tamper with my fellblood if not to destroy it?”

  “My experiment has been a failure, Lord Genesis.” Though it pained me to admit it — my voice cracked, and the tears rolled down my cheeks anew — I answered without hesitation. “Death was not the solution I sought. Death is no solution.”

  A page crinkled. The book closed with a gentle thump.

  “I cannot understand you, Celeste.” The Fiend Lord frowned. Brow knit with frustration, he set the book aside and leaned forward. “What other answer could there be for evil in its purest form? The world would celebrate my end, just as they will surely celebrate that of Beelzebub.”

  “I would not. I could not. Just as I refused to accept the ends of the legends and tales of which you are so fond, I will not — cannot — accept that there is no other way.”

  “Answer the question, Celeste.”

  The look on the Fiend Lord’s face was unreadable. Eyes burning, lips pulled back into a half-snarl, but trembling at the effort. There was a restlessness in him — claws digging into the arms of his chair, a persistent flaring of his nostrils — but also a hint of desperation, or perhaps only exasperation, in his voice.

  Averting my gaze, I chewed on my lip before replying. “In learning that the Witherlily possessed a thinned strain of fellblood, and seeing how it neither consumed its neighbors nor lashed out at others, I wished to see if I could find a way to utilize the unholy power it provided.” I waited for him to interject, to tell me to make my point clear. But when he remained silent, I continued.

  “The result of my experiments was a mixture I called ‘Hope’s Tears.’ Purified of its corrupting and corrosive nature, I could utilize its revitalizing power to grow entire gardens in minutes with the same persistence the Fellbeasts and witherlily enjoyed. Unkillable, yet yielding their bounties to grow them back mere moments later.” I couldn’t help but smile, thinking back to the look on Charles’ face when he watched the corn grow anew. “My home fed forever with just a few drops.”

  Lord Genesis’s expression was as enigmatic as ever. A thin frown, but with a lightness in his eyes that stirred a fluttering feeling in my stomach. Quietly, I hoped he would not turn away, would not flee back into his usual sneering dominance.

  “But the mixture could not purify large quantities of Fellblood. The amount found in even a single phial proved too much. I needed something that could allow it to punch through the corrupting power of the blood, weaken its bite so that its teeth could be safely removed.”

  “Hm…” Genesis sat back in his seat, a growl rumbling in his throat. “The fruit.”

  I nodded. “I know not why the juice of the Snakebite plum is so toxic to your kind, but my hope was that in small enough quantities, I could use it to shield the tears from the corruption long enough to purify an entire life form.” Choking down the tightness in my throat, my voice cracked as I spoke. “The Answer was never meant to be a poison, Lord Genesis. It was meant to be a cure; a means to pacify and purge the malice from the fellblood.”

  He said nothing, simply staring back at me with smoldering eyes. For seconds. Minutes. Until the great wooden clock at the entrance chimed thrice — signifying the wee hours of the morning.

  “What will you do now, Celeste?”

  "I don’t know.” I answered honestly. “The answer I faced tonight is not the one I seek. I cannot be satisfied with such an ending.” My lips pressed together for a beat before continuing. “What is the ending you desire, Lord Genesis? Am I to become a replacement for Lord Beelzebub? Lady Banshee?”

  My gaze met his, matching its intensity. “You mean to see me become a Fiend.”

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  “I do.”

  “Why?”

  “Only those who walk the Dream can become a Fiend.” Genesis’s eyes burned just a hint brighter. The corners of his mouth twitched upward. “And no other in ten thousand years has captured my interest as you have. Stubborn, clever, driven. I long to see your true self awakened.”

  “I am already my true self, Lord Genesis.” I frowned. “Others? How many others?”

  Genesis raised his hand, lifting three fingers. “Three who were known to me and who refused my offer.” A flare of pain within him, but unlike before, he made no effort to hide it. His hand moved to his chest, claws digging into his skin and drawing blood. “I gave them the same choice as Beelzebub and Banshee. When they refused, I struck them down.”

  My hand crept to my chest, clutching it tight. A burning tightness, like a knife buried in the sternum, its sting radiating in all directions. It was different — distinct — from the other aches Genesis buried within himself. It was honest. A pain he was not afraid to acknowledge.

  “Why kill them?”

  “They preferred death to becoming like me.” The knife twisted. He smiled a bitter smile. “Heroes to the very end. A mere statue would have done them no justice. They bled to defy me; I bled in remembrance of them. To think that such sentimentality would be my undoing.” He chuckled and shook his head.

  As he spoke, my eyes widened and my mouth grew dry.

  “The witherlilies.”

  “I remembered the flowers from my first incursion into the Northern reach of Willowhaven, thousands of years before the region fell. Something about them stuck with me. Their petals blackened, but white as snow at the stem. A ghastly sight to see dotting the fields. A fitting memorial to those who peered into the dark, but remained pure to the end.”

  He raised his eyes.

  “Will you become a Fiend? Be damned to eternal night but know power unyielding? Or will you become another flower in my garden, Celeste?”

  “I choose neither, Lord Genesis.” Though my heart ached for the life I had taken, the answer came to me as easily as breathing. “I know that there is no avoiding confrontation for us. As the Promised Healer, I’ve no choice but to stand against you.”

  “Then you intend to kill me?”

  “No, my good sir. I will not.” I shook my head. “I intend to find a different ending. To forge one myself, if I must. Lord Beelzebub’s death was…” My lips screwed shut. Trembling, I forced them to move once more. “I will not let another life end when I could save it. That is why I am here.”

  Genesis rose from his chair in a single, swooping motion. Eyes gleaming like a predator in the dark, he stalked toward me one leisurely step at a time. Though my shoulders shook, I squared them and sat upright to face him when he leaned down to look me in the eye.

  “There is no Promised Healer, Little Moth.” He rose to his full height and walked to the bookshelf. His fingers played with the spines of the tomes, reverent and caring. “There never was. You chastise me for finding meaning in children’s tales, while you cling to one to give your nature meaning.”

  “I thought the same until the day my Soulspark awakened.” I summoned a flicker of starlight in my palm. Fading, little more than sparks, but enough to cast an ethereal glow on the dark room. “What else could it be that allows me to reforge bone, regrow limbs, and stave off the wings of Oblivion, herself?”

  “Yours is a fascinating power, indeed. But it is no prophecy fulfilled. There is no Promised Healer because I was the one who first spun the tale.”

  The light in my grasp vanished, and the heat drained from my body. Withered and frozen, I turned to face him slowly. My heart stood still in my chest; my breath ran dry in my lungs.

  “What?” My voice merely the suggestion of sound. A ghost’s dying breath.

  Genesis refused to face me, eyes transfixed on the shelf. There was a sting in his chest. Somehow it was the most agonizing of all the aches I’d felt from him.

  “Thousands of years undefeated, crushing all who opposed me. Nations turned to ruin, continents turned to dust, an ever-flowing ocean of blood in my wake. It was too much for those who remained to bear. Left without hope, they stopped fighting. Though I drew strength from the frictionless carnage, it was a hollow existence.”

  He glanced at me. “I needed them to fight. A Beast with no Hero to stand against it is no different from a storm or flood. A force of nature — mindless, meaningless.” Our eyes met; his nostrils flared, and he looked away.

  “I sent Belial to a tavern in Northswain, where I’d seen those haunting flowers. There, they conjured a vision of my design: a promise that one day, someone would appear to set things right. A Hero? No…Heroes do not mend the world, they merely stop its destruction. If the people were going to resist the pull of an irresistible tide of destruction, they needed to believe that there was hope for a world to fight for.”

  Genesis fell silent.

  A prickling numb spread through my body, now disconnected from my thoughts. I stared back at him, but saw him not. The world around me was blank, devoid of light and shadow. Floating somehow in the space between Dream and Reality, I could not speak. My mind knew not the words, nor my lips, their shape and sound.

  It wasn’t until he moved that I did the same, blinking my eyes. I rose from my seat, only to fall to the floor. The strength was gone from my legs, fatigue from my confrontation with Beelzebub catching up to me. Pinned by the ache in my chest, I stared unseeing at his retreating form.

  He paused at the library entrance, resting his claws on the frame of the doorway.

  “You should rest, Celeste. We draw ever closer to the conclusion of this tale. There are but two outcomes that lay before us. You can join me in the dark as a Fiend, or you can face me at journey’s end where one of us will become the last witherlily.”

  He turned away.

  He was leaving.

  “Lord Genesis!”

  I know not why I called out to him. The words formed without my thoughts driving them. Desperate for something, anything, to distract myself from his ultimatum, I asked the only question my mind could piece together in the moment.

  “Why did you visit me?”

  He turned back and craned an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

  Heat flooded my cold, pallid cheeks. “In the Dream. A fortnight ago, now. You came to me and we…you…” Even now, I still had yet to understand what it was that transpired between us. What this awful-yet-intoxicating ache might mean. Hoping that he might put it into words, I gazed back with wide, hopeful eyes.

  He shook his head.

  “I know not your meaning, Little Moth. I have been away since the night we came to blows.”

  “You have?” Though the burning in my stomach cooled, the steam it produced chased the numb from my body and clouded me from the dreadful ringing his revelation left in my mind.

  “After we parted, I ventured South, to the Valeguard encampment you saved. I expected to find them in grim disbelief. That they had been slaughtered, and yet lived by some unseen miracle.” Genesis dug his claws into the wooden door frame. “Imagine my shock to see them in cheerful spirits. Laughing and singing as they rebuilt what had been destroyed, trading tales of an angel with butterfly wings who descended from the sky to bring them back from the Abyss.”

  For a moment, a flutter of relief and joy in my chest. But the feeling fled when I saw the Fiend Lord’s claws tear into the wall, cleaving wood and stone alike.

  “I could have slaughtered them all. They’d have died before knowing pain or terror.

  “Did you?”

  “I could not bring myself to harm them. I wrestled with the thought for hours. But as sunrise drew near, I turned and walked away.” Genesis glanced at me one last time. He opened his mouth, but left without another word.

  With his departure, the dregs of adrenaline that had carried me through our conversation dried. My body heavy, and eyelids heavier, I sank to the floor, asleep before my head hit the ground.

  Thank you so much for reading!

  Act 2 is done! We're 2/3s through the story <3 Coming very close to the conclusion!

  Feedback of all kinds is appreciated to help make the story better, improve my writing, and keep me motivated!