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Chapter Twenty-Five

LILY

Lucifer’s wings stretched wide, blotting out the twisted sky behind him. He stood with the ease of a god surveying his domain, his presence pressing down on me.

I gritted my teeth and tried to step forward—but the shadows around my wrists and ankles refused to budge. I flexed my arms, twisted my ankles, focused on the command thrumming in my blood. Mine. Release me. But the magic refused to release me, because they obeyed Lucifer now.

He smiled, and it wasn’t meant to soothe me. It wasn’t the loving smile of a father. It was cruel and knowing. “You’ve come a long way, Lily,” he said, his voice carrying through the battlefield as if the war itself bowed to him, went silent for him. “I’d almost be proud—if only you weren’t such a disappointment.”

“Disappointment?” I laughed. “That’s a bit funny, considering you’re the family disappointment.”

Lucifer’s expression didn’t shift, but something in the air did. His wings twitched slightly, tension simmering beneath the surface. Then the chasm around us deepened, widened, as if the very ground wanted no part of this fight.

I forced my breathing steady, rolling my shoulders as I shifted my stance. “I suppose I should be honoured,” I said, voice steady. “The great Lucifer, here to kill his own daughter personally. Guess none of your little lapdogs were good enough for the job.”

“Tell me, Lily,” he said, his voice deceptively calm. “Do you truly believe you’ve won anything? That your little tantrum—this rebellion—is anything more than a child lashing out, desperate to be seen?”

I bared my teeth and twisted in my bonds, but the shadows tightened every time I struggled. As much as I wanted to break free, I couldn’t. Not yet. Not with Lucifer’s influence controlling every tendril, binding them tighter than chains.

Alright, if I couldn’t take control of the shadows, then perhaps I could destroy them. I wasn’t only darkness—I was light too. Fire. And light always chased away the dark.

Heat surged beneath my skin, hellfire coiling in my chest, gathering in my palms. I forced it into the bonds, flame licking along the tendrils like a living thing, devouring the darkness, purging it with light.

They recoiled with a hiss. Then screamed and vanished.

I lifted my newly-freed sword arm, Inferno’s Kiss in hand.

Lucifer watched me, his expression furious. “Still defiant.”

Hellfire rushed down my arms, engulfing my blade. “Always.”

“You know, I had hopes for you. I’d believed I could mould you into something greater than us all. Something beyond power. But you proved to be no better than your siblings. Weak. Disposable.”

I ground my teeth. Siblings he had killed the second they’d become an inconvenience. Exactly as he intended to do to me right now.

“Well, you know what they say. Faulty design leads to faulty results.” I shot him a cocky grin. “Maybe if you weren’t such a defective creator, you’d have managed to produce something that made you proud.”

Lucifer’s eyes darkened, rage tightening his countenance. Then he laughed. But the sound wasn’t warm or friendly. It was entirely devoid of amusement.

“Defective?” he repeated in a dangerously low-pitched voice. “You stand here because of me . You exist because of me. Your entire being is a product of my design. Your weakness is because of your mother’s blood. Perhaps that is where I went wrong, breeding with such a lesser creature.”

Lucifer’s lip curled, his golden eyes gleaming with contempt. “A flawed creation will always blame the one who forged it. But tell me, little girl, was it my design that failed, or did your mother’s blood poison you from the start?”

I bared my teeth, heat surging under my skin, fire licking at my blade. No more insults, no more banter, it was time to end this. I lunged, ready to strike him down where he stood.

Lucifer didn’t flinch. Didn’t even blink. He simply sighed—clearly bored—as if swatting down a fly. Then he lifted his hand.

Power slammed into me like a wave of molten lava. My body seized mid-lunge, locked in place by something foreign. My limbs refused to respond, my wings frozen half-splayed, my fire snuffed out as though it never existed. I couldn’t move. Could barely breathe.

Lucifer’s magic wrapped around me and gripped my very bones, anchoring me in place.

“You truly thought you could strike me ?” he asked, his voice low and calm, as though he couldn’t decide if he was amused or insulted. “Please.”

I tried to speak. Tried to summon my fire. Summon the shadows. Fly. Anything. Nothing obeyed me.

He stepped forward, each movement slow, deliberate, like he had all the time in the world. “You’re not ready to face me, daughter. You never were.”

His magic tightened, then slowly turned me around so I was facing the battlefield and not him and forced me to my knees. His power pried open my fingers until my sword slipped from my grip, clattering uselessly to the ground. I could only kneel there, locked by his will alone, my body trembling with the effort to resist something I couldn’t even see .

“Look,” he said simply. “Behold what your defiance has wrought.”

I didn’t want to look, but I had no choice. His magic held me firm, head tilted just enough to force my gaze across the chasm now carved into the ground.

All I saw was…carnage. My army—my people —were dying.

The battlefield was a storm of fire and ruin, a churning tide of steel and screams, of blood soaking into the hellscape. My forces—once an unbreakable front—were being torn apart, not just by strength, but by something worse. Corruption. Sickness. Madness.

Gavrel’s influence slithered through the ranks like an infection, unraveling discipline, twisting alliances into carnage. Miriel’s pestilence clung to my soldiers, weakening them with every breath they took. Raelia’s corruption coiled around their limbs like hungry vines, draining their will to fight. And Calyx’s illusions—monstrous, warping nightmares—kept them stumbling in terror, slashing at shadows while the real enemy gutted them from behind.

Korrak tore through the battlefield, his fists smashing through hellspawn as he tried to force his way toward me. But for every enemy he crushed, two more took its place. Miriel’s pestilence curled around him like a choking fog, eating away at his strength, slowing him down. He snarled, shaking it off, refusing to stop, but I could see the hitch in his steps, the weight dragging at his movements.

Calder was a blur of silver and shadow, his blade carving a direct path toward me. He was moving fast, too fast, trying to reach me before it was too late. But he wasn’t just fighting against steel—Raelia’s corruption had latched onto him. Darkness surged beneath his flesh, diseasing him from the inside. He pushed forward as hard as he could, but he weakened with every step.

Varz fought next to them, his twin daggers flashing, his strikes surgically precise. He wove through the chaos, a crimson shadow cutting a line toward me. His eyes locked onto mine, filled with fury, with desperation.

Mephisar and Sable loomed over the battlefield, their massive, coiling bodies surging through the enemy ranks. They were unstoppable—but not fast enough. They crushed and burned and devoured, bodies crumpling beneath their claws and fangs, but for every hellspawn reduced to ruin, the fallen sent more, determined to keep my hellwyrms from reaching me.

There were too many.

I couldn’t see the others. Levi. Gorr.

Even Rathiel.

Fear tightened my throat and right then and there, I nearly surrendered.

No.

I couldn’t think like that. I had to believe he wasn’t dead. Because he couldn’t be. I would have felt if he had died, right? My entire existence would have ended if he’d fallen.

But the thought, even the faintest whisper of it, set something off inside me—something reckless, something murderous.

Lucifer could kill me. Fine. He could rip my soul from my body and torment me any way he wanted.

But he would never have Rathiel.

I refused.

Lucifer’s chuckle, smooth and mocking, echoed through my ears. He moved into sight, just within my periphery, and said, “Watch.”

He lifted his hand and snapped his fingers.

My stomach dropped.

I barely had time to process what he had just done when Calder crumpled mid-strike, his sword slipping from his grip as his legs gave out beneath him. His body convulsed once, twice—and then went utterly still.

Korrak dropped to his knees, his molten core dimming, his massive frame swaying before he, too, collapsed onto the dirt.

Varz barely made a sound before his daggers slipped from his hands, and he fell, motionless.

Mephisar let out a strangled, hissing snarl—a final act of defiance—before his giant body slammed into the battlefield, his wings twitching once before falling limp.

Sable followed, her enormous body collapsing in a wave of black scales, her heavy tail carving a deep trench in the scorched earth before she stilled.

All of them.

One moment fighting, clawing, bleeding for me—and the next, gone.

Not dead—I refused to believe they were dead—but down. Unmoving. Ripped from the fight.

My breath locked in my throat, my pulse hammering so fast it deafened me. My body screamed to move, to run to them, to do something—but I couldn’t. I couldn’t move.

Lucifer came to stand in front of me, amusement dancing in his eyes. He was enjoying this, the bastard.

“You fight so hard,” he mused. “And for what? Them?” His eyes raked over my fallen soldiers, disdain curling his lip. “Tell me, daughter, was it worth it?”

He didn’t give me a chance to respond before his magic slammed into my chest and threw me to the ground so hard, my vision went white and the air vanished from my lungs.

Lucifer walked over to me and pressed a foot against my chest, squishing me like he would a weak hellspawn. His weight was unbearable—not just physical, but something deeper. Something that felt like gravity itself, pressing, pulling, tearing me apart from the inside.

I choked on air, my lungs burning, my limbs refusing to obey me.

Lucifer glared down his nose at me,

“You have never understood, have you?” he snarled, his face warping into something truly hideous.

He pressed down.

Agony.

A sound escaped from me, something raw, broken.

“This was always going to be the outcome,” Lucifer continued. “You were never going to win.”

I gritted my teeth, refusing to give him the satisfaction of a scream.

“Tell me, daughter.” He leaned down and gripped my throat, pinning me to the ground. “How does it feel to finally know your place?”

Somewhere deep inside me, something sparked. A flicker of power stirred to life in my chest—born of rage, or desperation, I couldn’t tell. But it was there. I reached for it—desperation clawing at my insides—but with a single wave of his hand, Lucifer ripped the fire away from me.

The flames guttered out, snuffed like a candle in the wind. Gone.

Again.

I was as helpless as a newborn hellcat, defenseless against him.

His grip tightened, his cold, unrelenting fingers digging into my skin as he lifted me up, holding me high in the air, my feet dangling uselessly above the ground. I clawed at his fingers, desperate for air, desperate for escape, but his hold didn’t falter. I couldn’t move, couldn’t fight. My wings hung limp behind me, and my heart drummed so violently, I feared it might burst.

“Did you truly think you could defy me?” my father demanded.

I gasped, struggling for a breath that refused to come. My chest heaved in vain, and my mouth gaped. Panic surged through me as darkness clawed at the edges of my vision. But it wasn’t just the suffocating grip on my throat—it was the crushing force of my father’s power. Lucifer didn’t just control the realm; he commanded it, bent it to his will. His fingers tightened and my wings twitched weakly, a pathetic reminder of how powerless I was in his grasp.

“Did you really think,” he growled, the sound vibrating through my bones, “you could stand against me?”

The ground trembled beneath us, the entire realm seeming to quake from the force of his fury. His black wings flared wide, casting a massive shadow over the battlefield. Even the distant geysers, which once roared with unrestrained passion, seemed to shrink, their flames sputtering under the weight of his presence.

I tried to summon my powers again, to call the fire to me, but not a single spark flared inside me. Lucifer had won. He’d beaten me, and he knew it.

“I will tear you apart,” Lucifer whispered, malice dripping from his every word.

A glint of cruel satisfaction lurked in his eyes before he slowly, deliberately, turned me in his grasp, his grip loosening. He faced me toward the battlefield, forcing me to look upon the devastation, and I sucked in a rasping breath. My fallen soldiers, the gutted remnants of my rebellion, lay strewn across the scorched ground, broken and defeated. Blood and ash coated their bodies, and my heart broke at the sight of their sacrifice.

But it wasn’t just the dead that surrounded us.

Lucifer’s forces stood like dark sentinels amidst the carnage, their eyes fixed on me. They encircled us, an audience to my destruction, their expressions cold, indifferent to the violence. This was no longer just punishment—it was a spectacle. A message to all who dared defy him.

Lucifer loosened his grip just enough for me to drag in a lungful of air.

And then the agony struck.

It was sudden, brutal.

His fingers dug into the base of my wings. Searing agony shot through my back like liquid fire, spreading with an unbearable heat that consumed everything in its path.

A scream erupted from my throat—raw and ragged, echoing across the battlefield. My father tore asunder every shred of muscle and bone. Blood poured down my back in hot, sticky streams as he ripped my wings from my back, piece by piece.

I gasped for breath between screams, my body convulsing with each savage wrench. Lucifer didn’t pause, didn’t hesitate. Every movement was deliberate, every second filled with unbearable torment. He wasn’t just ripping my wings from my body—he was destroying me. Shredding my soul.

Finally, with one last, excruciating tear, my wings were gone. The scream that escaped me was ugly. A burning void seared across my back where my wings had once been, and the pain, the loss, the overwhelming emptiness crashed over me in waves. My father had ruined me, left me nothing more than a shell of what I once was.

I sank into despair, wishing for the darkness to take me. If I could just sink into it, maybe I’d never resurface. Maybe I could finally be free. But amidst the torment, a sound cut through the haze.

A voice. Distant at first, muffled by the overwhelming pain crushing me.

“Lily!”

I barely heard it through the suffocating haze of agony. My body trembled violently, unable to handle the fact that my wings were just gone. My breath came in short, ragged gasps, my fingers twitching uselessly at my sides.

I couldn’t move.

I couldn’t breathe.

“Pitiful,” Lucifer murmured, almost to himself.

Then his fingers curled tighter around my throat, and the world exploded.

Agony.

Not the kind that burned, not the kind that bled.

Worse.

His power was deep, raw, a terrible rending of something beneath the skin, beneath the flesh, beneath the soul. It wasn’t fire, wasn’t ice—it was pure, unrelenting erasure. It seeped into my marrow, curling through my veins, breaking my bones, peeling apart the threads of my soul with the ease of a god tearing down a temple.

I convulsed, my vision blurring at the edges as everything inside me splintered.

I tried to move, to fight.

But I was nothing in his grasp.

Darkness opened within me, vast and endless, ready to swallow me whole. I was slipping toward oblivion, toward nothingness. It would be easier to let go. To stop struggling. To just stop.

A broken roar split the air.

Fury, raw and violent.

I couldn’t see through the haze of pain, but I felt it—an explosion of force slammed into Lucifer, severing his hold over me in a single, brilliant strike.

The unbearable pressure vanished, the weight of annihilation lifting just enough for me to collapse, gasping, as I hit the ground. I couldn’t move, couldn’t lift my head, couldn’t do anything but exist in this moment, unsure if there’d be another.

Somehow, I forced my eyes open, blinking sluggishly as my vision swam in and out of focus. But what I saw nearly stole my breath entirely.

Lucifer reeled backward. He clutched his wrist, blood pouring from the stump where his hand had been. He looked… thrown. I’d never seen him look so shocked before.

Rathiel stood between me and Lucifer. Blood slowly dripped from his blade, sizzling against the ground like acid.

I blinked as the pieces slowly came together. Rathiel had saved me by cutting off my father’s hand.

Lucifer clutched his bloodied wrist, his eyes blazing with unbridled fury. He stared at his severed hand, laying in the dirt in front of me, then at Rathiel, then back at his hand. His fingers, the same ones that had ripped my wings from my back, curled uselessly before going still.

Before my father could retaliate, Rathiel slammed his palm against the ground, blood still wet on his fingers. His power surged, a pulse of raw, untamed energy radiating outward. From Lucifer’s spilled blood, he erected a massive, shimmering barrier. It expanded and grew before encircling my father and sealing him inside.

Lucifer lunged forward, slamming into the barrier with all the force of his fury, but the blood wall refused to break. It reverberated with his impact, absorbing the force, holding firm. No matter how he struck, how his power raged against it, the prison remained intact, sealing him within the cage.

Rathiel had trapped my father.

Rathiel turned to me, his movements swift yet careful as he lifted me from the ground, cradling me against his chest. I barely registered the movement, my body nothing more than dead weight. His arm pressed against my back, where my wings had been, jostling wounds too fresh to touch, but I didn’t feel it. Or maybe I did, but my body simply couldn’t process anything. Too much damage. Too much loss. Too much everything.

“I’ve got you,” Rathiel murmured, voice low, steady, but there was something frayed beneath it. “Just hold on.”

I wanted to answer, wanted to say something—his name, a reassurance, anything at all—but my throat refused to work. My body was too battered. The light inside me sputtered weakly, struggling against the poison Lucifer had left behind, the remnants of his power still curling through me like an infection. His attack had done its job too well.

The world tilted as Rathiel took to the air, his wings beating hard, pushing us far away from the battlefield—and from Lucifer. The wind roared in my ears, but it felt distant, like I was already slipping into some place beyond the world, beyond sensation. My head lolled against Rathiel’s chest, and even though I knew I should fight it, should force myself to stay awake, the blackness kept tugging at the edges of my vision.

I had to stay awake. I had to.

I forced my gaze up. Met Rathiel’s eyes.

“Stay with me, Lily,” he said, his voice rough, urgent. The wind buffeted his words, but I heard them. Felt them.

I wanted to—I did. But the darkness was too strong. The exhaustion too deep.

The last thing I heard was Lucifer’s enraged scream from below, a sound that would haunt me for the rest of my days.