Chapter 829: Mother and her Twins
Lilith was sitting on the bed, with a pillow propped behind her back and her loose hair falling over her shoulders in disarray.
Her recovery was still recent, and even though Vergil had removed the curse left by Lust, her body still carried the exhaustion of someone who had spent far too long trapped inside her own mind. The room was quiet, illuminated by low flames and a few stability runes that still glowed on the walls.
Beside the bed, Sepphirothy remained seated in a chair, her eyes closed and her posture upright, as if she were meditating or merely resting without allowing her body to fully relax.
For a few minutes, neither of them spoke. The silence between them was not empty, but ancient. There was too much there that had never been said at the right time.
Things a mother should have said to her daughters, things daughters should have asked their mother, things history, war, and Lucifer had destroyed before they could exist in any normal way.
Lilith breathed slowly, trying to accept the simple fact that she was awake, while Sepphirothy remained motionless, her fingers resting on her lap, her energy carefully sealed beneath layers she herself had created over millennia.
Then they both felt it.
The aura came from very far away, but distance did not matter. Even thousands of kilometers from the entrance of the Abyss, that presence crossed space like a heavy and inevitable wave.
It was not an uncontrolled explosion, nor a vulgar release of power.
It was something deeper, more intimate, as if an entire existence had finally stopped denying its own form. Lilith opened her eyes at the same instant. Sepphirothy did as well, though her expression showed no real surprise.
The room seemed smaller under that pressure.
Lilith stayed silent for a few seconds, feeling the energy spread through the world like an ancient name being spoken once more. Then she lowered her gaze, and a sad smile appeared on her face.
"She finally accepted herself," she said, her voice weak, but clear. "After so long denying her own existence."
Sepphirothy remained looking toward the window, even though nothing was visible from there besides the night and the distant lights of the castle. Even so, she seemed to see far beyond it.
"I knew this time would come," she answered calmly. "Sapphire could always run from herself for a while. Never forever."
Lilith rested her head against the pillow and released a heavy sigh. The pressure coming from the Abyss did not seem to threaten her, but it touched memories she would have preferred to leave buried.
"I am sorry," she said suddenly.
Sepphirothy turned her face toward her.
Lilith continued before she could be interrupted.
"You two are literally twin sisters. My daughters. Fruits of my sick love, even if that love was born inside a horrible, distorted world full of wrong decisions. And yet you grew up hating each other your entire lives. Grew up trying to erase one another, deny one another, turn your own existence into opposition. The lack of love, the lack of a mother, the lack of something to hold you before the world poisoned you... all of that created you this way."
Sepphirothy observed Lilith in silence for an instant. There was no anger in her eyes, but there was no agreement either. When she spoke, her voice remained low and firm.
"You are wrong."
Lilith blinked slowly.
"Not completely," Sepphirothy continued. "But you are wrong about the main point. Because of the way we were created, we became who we are today. I am not saying it was beautiful, fair, or healthy. It was not. But the blame is not yours in the way you are trying to take it on. You gave birth to two demonesses nourished by all the evil of this world, and those two demonesses were born adults in a matter of days. There was no ordinary motherhood possible there. There was no childhood. There was no time to learn one another."
Lilith looked away, pressing her fingers against the sheet. There was pain in that memory, a pain not even Vergil’s healing could remove.
"Even so, I should have done things differently."
"Perhaps," Sepphirothy said, without cruelty.
"But that does not change the fact that Sapphire also chose to seal almost all the memories she considered unnecessary from that era of war. I did the same in another way. We both survived as we could. You did not control everything."
Lilith closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
Her voice came out lower when she answered.
"From the beginning, I should not have given birth to you from my own womb and then used the demonic energy of the demon world to make you adults in a matter of days. It was wrong. Even back then, even with everything happening, I knew it was wrong."
Sepphirothy remained quiet for a few seconds. The mention of their birth still carried a weight difficult to touch. It was not a simple memory, nor something that could be organized into an ordinary family story. They had been born from love, yes, but also from necessity, power, fear, and manipulation. They had been made to grow before either of them could be children. They had been thrown into the world already ready to carry names, wars, and expectations.
"At that time, I knew you did not want that," Sepphirothy said. "You did it because the world around you was already broken before we were born. And yes, all of this began because of Lucifer."
The name fell between them like an ancient stone.
Lilith lowered her head.
For a few seconds, she once again looked like the woman trapped in Lust’s dreams, forced to watch cruel possibilities, repeated mistakes, and children becoming reflections of a tragedy she had failed to prevent. When she spoke, her voice was heavy with a regret that had been repeated so many times inside her it had almost become part of her body.
"Still, I should have protected you. As a mother should protect."
Sepphirothy did not answer immediately. She looked at her own hands, and for an instant her expression lost part of its usual distance.
"After having my own son, I understand the difficulties of motherhood better," she said. "Not completely, perhaps. Victor was born because of choices that cost me almost everything, and even so I would do it again. But precisely because of that, I cannot blame you the way you may expect me to. Mothers are not perfect goddesses. Sometimes they are only women trying to prevent something worse from happening with the wrong tools."
Lilith raised her eyes to her.
There was surprise there.
And sadness.
"You speak as if you have already forgiven more than I deserve."
"Perhaps I have merely become old enough to understand that eternal hatred demands too much energy. I am well over five thousand years old."
Lilith let out a weak laugh, almost soundless. Then her expression became more serious, and she studied her daughter carefully.
"Then why do you still keep your feelings sealed?"
Sepphirothy smiled calmly, without looking away. "Because my feelings are far too problematic for me to simply release them the way Sapphire is doing now. She repressed parts of herself, yes, but what she locked away was still part of a structure that could be reintegrated through violence, pride, and acceptance. In my case, things are more complicated."
Lilith continued looking at her.
"I sealed many things," Sepphirothy explained. "Guilt, love, resentment, fear, attachment, devotion, rage. Everything was organized into layers, contracts, and internal restrictions. Some of them have existed for so long that if I release them all at once, I may not recognize my own mind. So I do it gradually. Since recovering my memories, I have been releasing what I can without breaking the rest."
Lilith sighed, but this time there was a trace of tired affection in her expression. "Sealing yourself in a contract with the Heavenly Father just so Victor could be born was not exactly something I would expect from a demoness."
Sepphirothy’s smile grew a little, and for the first time in that conversation, she seemed genuinely happy. "That is what a mother does for her child."
Lilith fell silent.
The sentence struck her in a way no accusation could have. There was no judgment in it. No hidden barb.
Sepphirothy had merely said a simple truth, but that truth carried everything Lilith felt she had failed to do. Even so, there was also something comforting in it. Because despite everything, her daughter understood. Perhaps she did not forgive her absolutely, perhaps she would never forget, but she understood.
In the next instant, the space before them distorted.
The presence arrived before the form.
Sapphire appeared in the room as if she had crossed distance itself without considering it necessary to open a visible passage. The pressure that entered with her made the runes on the walls glow by reflex, but there was no lack of control in her aura. On the contrary.
It was firm, compact, and terribly clean. Lilith felt her heart tighten when she looked at her. Sepphirothy remained motionless, but her eyes narrowed slightly, immediately recognizing the change.
Sapphire looked younger.
Not like a superficial transformation made for vanity, nor like an illusion of beauty. It was real rejuvenation, crossing body, soul, and presence. The marks of recent exhaustion had disappeared, her skin seemed to carry new vitality, and her eyes had a different gleam, older and more dangerous.
She did not look like a woman trying to recover lost strength. She looked like someone who had found her own origin and returned with it integrated into her body.
But the change was not only youth.
There was something in her that had previously appeared only in fragments.
That woman was Agares.
Not a title used for convenience. Not a bloodline carried as weight. The presence before them was the only Sapphire Agares that this world deserved to know.
The demon queen who had terrorized eras, the warrior who had killed angels and fallen angels, the woman who loved without apology and fought without diminishing herself. She carried the old extravagance without seeming trapped in the past, and her current maturity without seeming weakened by it.
Lilith brought one hand to her mouth, unable to speak immediately.
Sepphirothy slowly rose from the chair.
The two sisters stared at each other.
Now it was impossible to ignore. Sapphire’s features had changed enough to reveal without resistance what she had tried to hide for millennia.
The resemblance to Sepphirothy was clear.
Not identical in color, not the same in presence, but undeniable in the structure of the face, in the grandeur, in the gaze, and in the origin they both shared. Red and silver. Fire and metal. Two distinct expressions of the same root.
Sepphirothy looked at her sister for a few seconds and then spoke with a calm carrying something that almost seemed like longing. "You came back, Red."
Sapphire smiled.
It was not the cruel smile of the old isolated version, nor the tired smile of the woman who had felt defeated in the Abyss. It was something whole, provocative, and alive, as if she could finally admit who she was without trying to kill any part of herself to do it.
"I came back, little sister."
Lilith closed her eyes for an instant, and a few tears fell without her trying to hide them. They were not tears of pure sadness. There was pain, yes, but there was also relief. For far too long, her daughters had existed as two halves at war with their own origin. Now, even if nothing was completely resolved, something had changed.
Sapphire walked to the bed and stopped before Lilith.
For a few seconds, mother and daughter simply looked at each other.
Lilith tried to say something, but her voice failed.
Sapphire tilted her head slightly, observing her with an expression that mixed firmness and an affection difficult to admit aloud. "Do not cry so much. I still do not know how to deal with that."
Lilith laughed through her tears.
Sepphirothy released a discreet sigh, almost amused.
Comments