The Broken Halo

Chapter 1005 - 1004: What Lilith Saw [GT Bonus - ]

’What did you do in there, Blackmoon?’

Lilith watched blood gather at the corner of Simon’s mouth.

She wiped it away her powers and adjusted the demonic energy passing through his heart. His breathing remained shallow, and an occasional tremor travelled through his body.

She had expected him to find something when he examined his mind. The ring, perhaps, or the barrier that kept it out of reach.

She hadn’t expected to end up kneeling in his blood.

Simon had no idea how much she had withheld from him during their earlier conversation.

When he allowed her to take over his body against Sunless, their fusion had given her an opportunity she hadn’t possessed before. The moment her awareness entered his sea of consciousness, she noticed how strange it was.

The black mental energy was unusual enough. The depths beneath it were worse.

She had followed the unfamiliar presence below.

Her awareness had crossed those depths in seconds. She had far more strength and control than Simon possessed then, and the distance hadn’t troubled her.

Fragments passed her as she descended, some showing a human life and the betrayal that ended it.

She saw only portions. Even so, they were enough to make his claim of being the Demon King of Death rather embarrassing.

Then she reached the barrier.

Beyond it hung a ring, shining with ivory-white light.

Lilith had tried to examine it. Her perception stopped at the barrier, and going closer changed nothing. She couldn’t identify the ring or judge its distance.

Before she could decide what to do, the barrier opened.

Only a small section, but enough for her to see through.

A man was sitting upon a mountain peak.

His upper body was bare, his white hair tied behind his head. His hands rested on his knees, and clouds moved below the summit.

He was merely meditating, but the sight of the man made Lilith to freeze.

The man hadn’t looked at her. He hadn’t released his power or made any attempt to threaten her.

Yet she knew that even in her prime, she would have been no match for him.

She tried to measure his strength.

Nothing.

She couldn’t even tell what kind of power she was sensing, much less measure it.

Then she studied his face.

He looked like Simon.

No.

He was Simon.

Older, far more powerful, and without the features of his present demonic body, but she had no doubt who she was seeing.

The realisation nearly broke her concentration.

Simon Carter hadn’t been his first life.

She was looking at him as he had been before he became the Hero of Earth. Somehow, that unfathomable existence had lived and died as a human, then been born again as the demon she knew.

’How many lives have you lived?’

She had known she was looking at Simon, yet nothing explained what had happened to him.

How had someone that powerful ended up struggling to escape a clan like Shadowgrave?

The man continued meditating, giving her no answer.

Then the ring flashed.

”Don’t tell him what you’ve seen.”

The old voice reached her from beyond the barrier.

”Let the brat find it himself. You’re not to help him with this.”

Lilith had barely turned toward the light when the opening closed.

A force caught her awareness and drove it out.

There was no opportunity to resist. One moment she was looking into those impossible depths. The next, she was back in control of Simon’s body, with Sunless still before her.

Only the discipline she had developed over her life kept the shock from disrupting the fight.

The ease with which she had been expelled frightened her almost as much as the man.

Had the owner of that voice refused her entry, all her strength would have accomplished nothing. She had seen what it allowed her to see.

Lilith’s gaze returned to the blood on the floor.

She had never heard that voice again.

Nor had she told Simon about the man.

When he asked whether she knew the source of his protection, she had said she didn’t. That much was true. She still had no idea what the ring was.

But she had left him believing she had seen nothing beyond a few memories of Earth.

He would be furious if he learned how much she had withheld, but she had no choice.

His pulse suddenly quickened beneath her palm.

Lilith guided the next surge of demonic energy away from an already strained pathway, allowing his regeneration to repair the damage before sending more through it.

”Easy,” she murmured.

His breathing steadied slightly.

Since the battle with Sunless, she had spent much of her time quietly watching him, often going long stretches without speaking.

Before that, she had plans for Simon. She had intended to make him useful to her father’s goals, whether he agreed with every part of them or not.

Some of what she had considered might have harmed him more than it helped. At the time, she had been willing to accept that.

Simon would never have agreed.

However, seeing the man on the mountain had put an end to those intentions.

At first, caution had been the reason. After what she had seen, continuing with those plans might have brought disaster upon her.

But the longer she watched him, the less she needed that warning.

This Simon was extraordinary too.

He made reckless decisions, argued when he should listen, and refused to stop when she told him he had reached his limit. Yet he also endured the consequences and found ways to survive that she hadn’t expected.

She had seen talented Daemons in her time. She wasn’t impressed simply because a boy could defeat someone a rank above him.

But obtaining two Royal bloodlines and four Seeds of Sin while still a Greater Demon?

Her eyes lowered toward his heart.

Whatever he had been before, she no longer needed to rely on the possibility of him recovering that life. The one he was living now already offered more than she had initially hoped.

She didn’t want to harm him.

There was another reason to be careful, though.

Months ago, his encounters had begun troubling her.

He had obtained the blood of the Devourers while he was still a weak boy. Later, he found the Chaos Wraps and Chaos Blade. His demonic cat bloodline then awakened under pressure from a Basilisk without requiring the Bloodline Origin Path.

Then the Fleshwood Heart Resin fell into his hands.

He devoured it and gained abilities that repaired his flesh, restored mental energy, and healed his soul.

Any one of those opportunities would have changed another demon’s life.

Simon kept finding them.

His talent explained what he did with those things. It didn’t fully explain why so many of them came within his reach.

She had considered luck.

Then she had watched how other people’s decisions brought them into his path, and how encounters that seemed unrelated eventually gave him something he needed.

She had become convinced that someone was interfering with his fate.

And with the fates of those around him.

She couldn’t prove which events had been arranged. She didn’t know who was responsible or how much they controlled.

But she no longer believed it was all a coincidence.

The Chaos Blade bothered her most.

Had someone made sure Simon found it?

Had her meeting with him been arranged before she even knew he existed?

Lilith looked at her hand resting over his heart.

Someone capable of manipulating Fate was terrifying. They could change lives without ever appearing before the people affected.

Such beings were walking calamities. If one of them had brought Simon to her, she couldn’t assume her own choices had escaped their attention.

Whether that being was connected to the ring, she didn’t know.

Too many things remained unclear.

And now Simon was lying in his own blood after exploring what should have been his memories.

’Why did this happen to you?’

She had been thrown out, but she hadn’t suffered anything like this.

What had he encountered? Had he tried to force his way farther than he should?

The possibility made her frown.

Of course he might have.

He was just that greedy for not only power but for knowledge and for quenching his curiosity.

”You couldn’t just look and come back?”

He remained unconscious.

Lilith kept him on his side and continued regulating his circulation. His regeneration was working, but it couldn’t repair everything at once while his power surged unevenly through him.

She dealt with what she could reach and left his mind alone.

For now, he needed to survive. The questions could wait.

He had already given her enough reasons to want him alive without considering who he might once have been.

And perhaps, when he woke and found her beside him, he would have one more reason to trust her.

She didn’t expect him to forget his suspicions. She would settle for him trusting her a little more.

Several minutes passed.

The blood beneath his nose stopped flowing. His heart settled into a more regular beat, and the stiffness slowly left his fingers.

Lilith leaned closer when his throat moved.

Simon coughed.

A second cough shook his chest, followed by another that brought blood onto the floor. She supported his shoulder as he drew a harsh, uneven gasp.

His eyes opened.