Chapter 6
The pendant's knowledge burned in Adrian's mind like fever dreams.
For three days, he barely slept, transcribing his grandmother's accumulated wisdom into comprehensible notes. Lirith watched over him, occasionally forcing him to eat or rest, feeling his exhaustion through their bond like a dull ache in her own essence.
"You're going to collapse," she warned as dawn broke on the fourth day.
"Almost done," Adrian muttered, his handwriting growing increasingly erratic. "There's a ritual here, the Fragmentation Rite. It can separate the curse from the soul, but it requires..." He paused, pen hovering. "It requires confronting the original desire that caused the transformation."
Lirith felt cold. "Meaning I'd have to face who I was. What I wanted so desperately that I destroyed myself for it."
"Yes." Adrian finally looked up, his amber eyes bloodshot but determined. "According to Grandmother's notes, the Heart preserves those original memories. They're locked in your essence, suppressed by the transformation but not destroyed. We'd need to retrieve them."
"From the Heart." Lirith's stomach turned. "Adrian, we barely escaped last time. And that was without actively antagonizing it."
"I know. But there might be another way." He flipped through pages frantically. "The Heart isn't the only repository of memory in Ebonveil. There are... mirrors. Reflection pools that can show truth, including suppressed pasts. The nearest is in the Shattered Cathedral, about three days' journey from the Grove."
Lirith moved to stand behind him, reading over his shoulder. The Shattered Cathedral a place where reality itself had fractured during some ancient cataclysm. Dangerous, unstable, but theoretically accessible.
"When do we leave?" she asked.
Adrian turned in his chair, catching her hand. "Lirith, you don't have to do this. We can find other ways to manage hunger. You don't have to confront"
"I do." She squeezed his fingers. "Every day I feel the curse eating at me, demanding more. The bond helps, but it's not enough. Not long-term. Eventually I'll need to feed fully or..." She couldn't finish the sentence.
"Or you'll fade," Adrian completed quietly. "Like she did. Becoming part of the Heart."
They sat in heavy silence until Lirith spoke again. "Besides, I want to know. Who was I? What made me so desperate that I'd trade my humanity for the illusion of being desired?" She laughed bitterly. "Maybe that woman deserves to be remembered, even if I can't save her."
"You *are* her," Adrian said firmly. "Transformed, yes. Changed, absolutely. But still her. That desire, that loneliness didn't disappear. It just became your foundation."
The observation struck deeper than Lirith expected. He was right. Every time she seduced, every time she fed, she was still that invisible girl desperately seeking validation. The curse hadn't created new hunger, it had weaponized what already existed.
"Help me face her," Lirith whispered. "Help me understand what I did to myself."
Adrian stood, pulling her into an embrace that felt more grounding than any ward or ritual. "Always. But first, we prepare. The Cathedral won't be like the Grove. It's hostile territory, claimed by no faction. Anything could be waiting there."
They spent the next day gathering supplies and defenses. Adrian crafted protective charms while Lirith trained him in basic essence manipulation enough to defend himself if they were separated. The bond hummed between them, growing stronger with each shared moment.
That night, as Adrian slept, Lirith stood at his window watching Ebonveil's twilight bleed into the mortal sky. She felt the curse stirring, hungry again despite recent feeding. It would never truly be satisfied. That was its nature.
And hers.
Unless they succeeded.
"Can't sleep either?"
She turned to find Adrian awake, wrapped in a blanket, joining her at the window.
"Too much to think about," Lirith admitted. "What if confronting my past makes things worse? What if I discover I was someone horrible? Someone who deserved transformation?"
"No one deserves to have their humanity stripped away," Adrian said firmly. "Whatever you were, whatever you did you didn't deserve this curse."
"You don't know that."
"I know you." He touched her cheek gently. "I've seen how you fight hunger. How you choose restraint over ease. How you protect me even when instinct screams to consume. That's not who you were, that's who you're becoming. And that person is worth saving."
Lirith leaned into his touch, drawing strength from his certainty. "What if the ritual fails? What if I'm too far gone?"
"Then we find another way. And another after that. Until we run out of ways or time itself ends." Adrian smiled. "I'm stubborn like that. Grandmother always said it was my worst quality."
"I think it might be your best."
They stood together in comfortable silence until dawn broke fully, painting the sky in shades of amber and rose. It was a beautiful sight Lirith realized she'd taken for granted as a human. Back then, every sunset had been just another day ending in loneliness.
Now, they meant possibility.
"We should leave soon," Adrian said. "The veil will be strongest at noon."
They crossed into Ebonveil three hours later, emerging in familiar territory near the Grove. Solis appeared almost immediately, flanked by Verdant and Twilight.
"The bound ones return," the nymph observed with amusement. "Seeking the Cathedral? Dangerous choice."
"Do you know what's there?" Lirith asked.
"Reflections. Truths. Broken realities." Solis's expression turned serious. "And the Architect. He claims the Cathedral as his domain, and he doesn't appreciate visitors. Especially not those seeking the mirrors."
"The Architect?" Adrian pulled out his notes. "Grandmother didn't mention"
"Because even she feared to write his name." Verdant shuddered an unusual display from typically unflappable nymphs. "He's ancient. Older than the Heart, some say. He built Ebonveil's first structures, but something broke him. Now he guards the Cathedral's secrets jealously."
"We don't have a choice," Lirith said. "I need those mirrors."
Twilight drifted closer, touching Lirith's forehead. Images flooded her mind a vast, impossible structure of shattered glass and fractured space. And at its center, a figure whose face kept shifting, never settling on any single form.
"Take this path," Twilight instructed, tracing a route through the air that glowed briefly before fading. "It's the safest approach. And..." They hesitated. "Be careful with the Architect. He deals in trades, and his prices are never what they seem."
"Thank you," Adrian said sincerely.
The nymphs faded back into the Grove, leaving them alone with the glowing path. They followed it for two days, camping in protected clearings that Lirith's instincts marked as safe. Adrian used the time to teach her about his world stories of university life, childhood memories, the mundane beauty of mortality she'd forgotten.
In return, she taught him about Ebonveil's deeper mysteries: how desire shaped reality here, how intention mattered more than action, how belief could literally restructure existence.
They were becoming more than bonded. They were becoming partners in truth.
On the third day, the Cathedral appeared.
It rose from the landscape like a wound in reality, towers of shattered mirrors reflecting infinite impossible angles, walls that existed in multiple spaces simultaneously, doorways leading nowhere and everywhere at once. The architecture hurt to look at directly, as if the structure itself rejected coherent observation.
"This is insane," Adrian breathed.
"This is Ebonveil," Lirith corrected, though she felt the same unease. "Stay close. Don't trust what you see. The reflections here show truth, but truth filtered through broken perception."
They approached the main entrance, a massive doorway that seemed to shift between open and closed depending on viewing angle. As they stepped through, reality twisted sickeningly, and suddenly they were inside.
The interior was worse than the exterior. Mirrors everywhere, each reflecting different versions of themselves, some accurate, some distorted, some showing alternate choices they might have made. Lirith saw herself fully human, saw herself completely consumed by the curse, saw herself standing alone while Adrian's reflection showed him aged and dying.
"Don't look too long," she warned, pulling his attention away. "The mirrors show possibilities, not certainties. They'll drive you mad if you let them."
"Too late for that," a voice echoed from everywhere at once. "Madness is the price of truth, little succubus. And you've come seeking truth, haven't you?"
A figure materialized before them tall and imposing, his face cycling through a dozen different features before settling on something almost human. Almost, but not quite. His eyes were pure silver mirrors, reflecting their own shocked expressions back at them.
"I am the Architect," he said with a smile too wide for his face. "Welcome to my Cathedral. Let's discuss what you're willing to sacrifice for your precious memories."
The mirrors around them suddenly showed a new reflection: Lirith and Adrian, separated by an impassable void, reaching for each other while their bond frayed into nothing.
"The price," the Architect continued, his smile growing impossibly wider, "is the very connection you think will save you. Your bond, freely given, in exchange for her past."
Adrian's hand tightened on hers as realization crashed over them both.
To save Lirith from the curse, they'd have to destroy the only thing keeping her anchored to humanity.