"Oh my," she murmurs, her delicate features contorting in distaste. Her finger traces along a particularly ominous illustration of what appears to be a landscape of fire and brimstone. "Pyrothos is essentially what mortals imagine when they think of hell—rivers of molten lava, ash-filled skies, creatures born of flame."
She pauses, eyebrows shooting toward her hairline. "The ruler styles himself as Mephistopheles. Complete with horns and a throne of smoldering brimstone."
"Seriously?" I snort, blowing on my cocoa. "Next, you'll tell me he carries a pitchfork and has a pointy tail."
"He calls himself Abaddon."
"The ruler of the fire realm named himself after the angel of the abyss. What, was 'Satan' already trademarked?"
Seraphina continues her rapid page-turning, the ancient parchment crackling beneath her fingertips. I lean closer, trying to decipher the faded text, when a particular illustration makes me pause.
"Wait—who's that?" I tap the weathered drawing that dominates the page.
The illustration, though centuries old with faded pigments and crumbling edges, shows a woman of unmistakable presence. Even through the artist's primitive techniques, her fiery copper hair seems to writhe like a living flame down her back. Her eyes—rendered in a green so vivid it must have come from crushed emeralds—pierce through time with an unnerving intensity. Her alabaster skin stands in stark contrast against the backdrop of darkness, making her appear to glow from within.
Despite the age of the drawing and its crude lines, something about her face seems disturbingly familiar.
Seraphina's finger traces the faded script beneath the illustration, her brow furrowing as she translates—"According to this passage, she was Abaddon's consort—his 'flame of desire'—the one who escaped him, fled from his... devotion." Her voice drops as she continues reading, the words seemingly catching in her throat.
A chill creeps up my spine as I carefully study the copper-haired woman's face. Those eyes, that cruel set to her mouth—
"Does she have a name? Because she looks eerily similar to—"
Lilith," Seraphina whispers, the name falling from her lips like a stone into still water. Her eyes lift to meet mine, wide with shock. "The ancient text calls her 'Lilith, beloved of the eternal flame' and 'keeper of his darkest desires.'"
"Holy shit." The words escape me in a whisper as my brain scrambles to process this bombshell.
I lunge for my laptop on the coffee table, nearly knocking over my cocoa. My fingers fly across the keyboard, pulling up search engines and academic databases I haven't touched since my research days.
"What are you doing?" Sera peers over my shoulder.
"Fact-checking the apocalypse," I mutter, scrolling through the results.
The screen fills with images and texts—ancient manuscripts digitized by universities, theological forums, and obscure religious texts. I click through to a high-resolution scan from the British Museum—a medieval illuminated manuscript showing a copper-haired woman with a serpent coiled around her arm, standing beside a fallen angel. The Latin caption beneath it makes my stomach drop.
"Look at this," I point to the translation notes. "According to Apocryphal texts, Lilith wasn't just Adam's first wife who refused to submit—after leaving Eden, she became consort to Samael, another name for Lucifer after his fall. This 12th-century text describes Lilith as 'she who followed the Morningstar into exile.' And here—" I navigate to another page, this one from the Dead Sea Scrolls archive, "—references to a female entity who 'abandoned Eden's light for the embrace of the fallen one.'"
Page after page confirms it—scattered throughout ancient texts, hidden in the margins of biblical lore, whispered in apocryphal stories deemed too dangerous for canonical texts—Lilith, the woman who chose darkness, who became consort to Lucifer after his fall from grace.
"Our bougie-bitch vampire nightmare used to date the actual devil," I say, my voice hollow with disbelief. "Because, of course, she fucking did."
Seraphina's eyes widen. "You don't think..." she whispers, glancing between the book and me. "Could Pyrothos actually be what mortals have called Hell all this time? With Abaddon—"
"The original fallen angel," I finish, my mind racing faster than my thoughts can form.
The puzzle pieces click together in my mind, each connection sending little electric shocks through my synapses. I press my fingers to my temples to organize the cosmic revelation unfolding.
"Think about it," I murmur, more to myself than to Seraphina. "Lucifer falls from heaven. He's doing his whole 'prince of darkness' routine when suddenly—bam!—my father seals the realms." I stand up, pacing the small area in front of the Christmas tree. "Consider this—Abaddon has been trapped in Pyrothos this entire time, separated from his flame-haired vampire girlfriend."
I stop abruptly, nearly knocking an ornament off the tree. "And all those stories about the devil's influence on Earth? That wasn't Lucifer at all, but Loki. Two tricksters, different mythologies, same MO."
Wait.
My hand flies to my mouth. "Holy shit,Sera. If Abaddon has been imprisoned all this time, separated from his beloved Lilith—his 'keeper of dark desires'—that's leverage we might be able to use." I tap my fingers against the book's ancient cover. "This isn't a love story—it's a prison break from an ex-boyfriend from literal Hell."
I lean forward, the implications crystallizing. "The last thing she'd want is for—
"We just found her weakness," Seraphina cuts me off, her eyes gleaming with understanding.
