The dark iron dagger screeched like a thousand screams as it shattered in Lilith's hand, ripping her palm open and scattering shards of metal everywhere. A concussive burst of force threatened to knock her back, were it not for the body of Cobalt slumping limply into her arms, his eyes glazing over the moment Immoderata was destroyed. She bent her knee to catch his fall, clinging onto the Incubus as she struggled to catch her breath.

A light spatter of rain fell from above, doing little to quell the flames but dousing the smell of smoke in the air. Lilith's gaze met Elya's, and for a moment the two bloodstained demons just stared at one another. Not a word was spoken, but the Devil could feel a pang of understanding in her heart. She didn't see her as a threat, but a fellow companion of the man she cared about. Carefully, Lilith laid the Incubus down in the grass.

"Is... Is it over with?" she asked, clutching her bleeding palm.

Elya didn't answer. Instead she just crawled over to Cobalt, coughing and spluttering as a deluge of her own blood spilled from the corners of her mouth. She touched his neck and held her ear to his chest. Gazing into his frozen, glazed eyes, the Fallen peered back at Lilith and gave her a shaky nod. She seemed uncertain.

"He's okay?"

Another nod. Still unsure.

"Right..." Lilith sighed, wiping her hand on her spectral coat.

Lilith tried to give the Devil a reassuring gaze, but the fear and pain in her eyes was palpable. Her gaze then quickly shifted over her shoulder, and her eyes widened and her face paled. Feeling a prickle on the back of her neck, Lilith balled her fists and turned around. She would have been stupid to assume that it would be over so quickly.

Sure enough, something stood just a few feet away from her. A black, shadowy mass, hovering just a few inches off the ground. Trails of oily darkness leaked from the broken shards of the dagger, slowly snaking their way through the grass towards the shape, gradually forming a dark figure. Two balls of purple light appeared within, boring through Lilith like eyes.

"Obsession. It's all around," it said, its voice cold and grating, but hauntingly familiar.

Lilith balled her fists and motioned for Elya to stay put. The Fallen nodded shakily and clung to Cobalt, shielding his unconscious body with her wings.

"Iota," the Devil said simply, the name coarse and jagged on her tongue.

The figure warped and fluctuated. Two legs touched down upon the earth, dripping pitch blackness like oil. Arms slowly spread from a nebulous torso, which sprouted a head to house the violet eyes.

"Lots of names. Iota. Deleria. Beverley. Tori. Camille. Petricia. Hally. Elya. Cobalt. Others I have forgotten," the Curse uttered.

A jagged mouth formed upon its face.

"No matter now. I am Immoderata. I alone am of import."

"Like Hell you are," Lilith spat, her fists tightening.

Tiny black flames flickered within the purple glow, flitting from one demon to the other, narrowing as Immoderata focused on Elya.

"Lost little girl, last of her line."

It raised an arm, forming long, distended fingers as it pointed.

"A whole family line of wielders. Mother to daughter, repeated again and again. Until your mother failed her duty and slit her throat. You tried to follow, but your hand found me," it rasped.

Elya gasped and wrapped her wings further around her and Cobalt, her watering eyes betraying her fear. Lilith stepped in front of Immoderata, shielding the Fallen from view.

"You've done enough to them," she spat, her words dripping with revulsion.

"I only helped. Their obsessions were already there. The girl needed skills and knowledge. The boy needed reassurance for his hunger."

It's voice... Immoderata didn't sound hateful or malignant. It just sounded... confused. A Devil's soul twisted beyond recognition in death, forced to inhabit a reality it was never designed to face.

"... Why?" Lilith asked, unsure of just what she wanted to hear.

Immoderata stared for a moment, its form shifting and warping with every gust of wind. The rain kept falling, forming a cold mist that blurred Lilith's vision ever-so-slightly.

"They were threats to their own dreams. Drastic words and deeds are necessary."

"That doesn't justify controlling them!"

"It does. For their own good."

This thing... It didn't even know what it was saying. Just the twisted echoes of a dead woman's faulty reasoning.

Immoderata took a few steps forward, growing more defined by the second. Lilith could also make out the familiar silhouette.

"I just want to help. Without their desires, they cannot continue on. They must be disposed of, and I must try again."

"Stay back!"

"I must try again."

"I said stay back, Iota!"

It froze for a moment. Its purple eyes burned into the Devil, churning her stomach and making her feel uneasy.

"I am Immoderata," it repeated in that quiet, familiar voice.

She could feel a lump form in her throat.

"You were my friend once."

"Yes. No longer."

It cocked its head.

"I can feel it in you. The need," the Curse said suddenly, gazing straight through Lilith.

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Something cold ran down the back of her neck, and she knew for a fact that it wasn't just the rain.

"The... need...?"

"Everyone has it."

It pointed at Elya. The Fallen was having difficulty keeping her eyes open; only the raw fear from seeing her tormentor in the proverbial flesh was keeping her lucid.

"She had a need for love. The need to be strong, capable and swift; to fly to his aid when he needed her to mend his wounds and ease his mind."

The twisted digit protruding from its hand jabbed in Cobalt's direction. The Incubus was pale and drenched in sweat despite the rain.

"He has a need for flesh. To devour it in any way he can. To take those he loves and consume them wholly."

Finally, it turned its finger onto Lilith.

"You have a need for justice. For your mother, who's name you still carry. For your father, who's grief blinds him to sense. For your people, who-"

"You don't know shit about me. I said it before, and I'll say it again; you know absolutely fucking nothing," Lilith interrupted, baring her teeth as her wings spread wide.

In kind, a pair of shadowy wings formed upon Immoderata's back, alongside a thrashing tail tipped with a barbed spade.

"Zelde-"

"Zelde is fucking dead! She died the day the skies split open! When this fucking mark was branded into me! When my home was torn apart!"

Tearing open her coat, Lilith clutched a hand to the symbol branded into her chest. Her mind was cast back to the day of her induction into the Alpha Corps; when the threat of the Rapture was hanging over their heads, and the first few cracks in her father's infallible facade began to show. When he stopped seeing her as a daughter, and started seeing her as a weapon.

And still Immoderata stared. Quietly, calculating every possibility.

"You won't accept my help," it said simply.

"You're damn right I won't."

"But he will. He has before."

Lilith's eye went wide.

"What...?"

"He doesn't remember. His mind is full of locks. Not my doing. But he accepted my hand. I gave him the strength to fight back. To try to take what he deserved. Even now, he'd still take me up once more."

"Bullshit!"

"I can kill the madness in his mind."

Her teeth clenched tight enough to risk breaking.

"Liar," Lilith growled.

"I can quell the hunger. Temper it into focus. Give him freedom to live. To love. To lavish."

"He'd rather face Incupsychosis than a lifetime of getting puppeteered by the likes of you!"

"How do you know that? You've only squatted in a corner of his mind. A piece of me has walked its halls for years."

Lilith bit her tongue. There was no denying that the Curse had gotten its talons into Cobalt long before Lilith had ever even met him. It was always there, obfuscating his reasoning and blinding him to the obvious dangers in his vicinity. Maybe it did know him better, but she wasn't about to just stand and let her friend get Cursed.

It was the greater of two evils.

Fists balled with determination, Lilith stormed towards Immoderata. The Curse had taken the form of a shadowy Devil, constantly shifting and changing ever-so-slightly. As she made her approach, however, its eyes suddenly flashed, sending a wave of pain through her skull.

"Your minds are still bound. I can help you right your regrets too."

"Don't you fucking-!"

"Don't you wish you had the strength to correct the mistakes of the past? To save your mother? Your friends? Your people?"

It shimmered and shifted, growing taller and more masculine in appearance. She could make out tresses of long hair, as well as a suit of angular armour. She'd recognise it anywhere; Rho took his personal protection seriously.

"Don't you want to measure up to your father?"

Again, the Curse shifted, but Lilith turned her eye away before it could complete its transformation. She just focused on moving forward.

"Don't you want the power to rival that silver stranger? The might to strike them down for what they did to your home?"

Lilith froze. A single memory flashed across her mind's eye; a chance encounter with a diminutive stranger in a small, forgotten garden nestled deep within Pandemonium. They weren't a demon, but something else, dressed in a simple robe woven from a single piece of white cloth, bearing silver skin that gleamed in all the colours of the rainbow, and gazing at a crown of woven thorns they held in their hand. They were no visitor, no guest, but rather an interloper. A harbinger. Had she known, she could have struck them down right there and then. But no, in her ignorance, Lilith sat and spoke with them. And then she allowed them to leave, whereupon they showed up again at the palace to set the deadline for the Rapture. If only she had...

"You're afraid of death. Of becoming like me."

Of course she was afraid. Lilith had always feared death, even when she stormed the surface of Hell as commander of the Omega regiment. It was only in recent months that Epsilon's theory of Curses and their origins had been confirmed for her, and that only served to compound her fear further

Was that the price of immortality? A permanent end? An eternity as a mockery of who you once were? Should she be relieved that Iota found a way to live on, or lament the spectre carrying her dead comrade's voice? Why did she return as a Curse and not Rho? Why not her mother? Why not any other Devil more deserving of another life?

Where was the justice?

Where was the justice in any of it?

What did Pandemonium do to earn Heaven's ire? What did the Devils do to warrant such unprovoked cruelty?

"You lie to yourself, but you're obsessed. You play those days in your head, over and over, wishing them to be different."

"Stop..." Lilith breathed, squeezing her eye shut.

"One by one you watched the regiments crumble. The Hardliners. The Screaming Devils. Satan's Eyes. The Mad Dogs. The Skylarks. The Paranoiacs. The First Line. The Red Saviours. And all the others."

"Stop it...!"

"What about your own men, Zelde? What about Hell's Fury? What would they say to their surviving commander if she were to deny the strength that could have once saved them?"

"I SAID STOP!"

Rushing forward, Lilith plunged her fist deep into Immoderata. Her fingers swirled through cold, thick shadow, but held fast. Gripping as tightly as she could, she began to drag the Curse towards the burning house in the centre of the glade.

"You can't kill me, you know. I'll return to that dark place beyond the Chain, with all the others. I'll form a new body, and I'll find a way back," it told her, its voice sounding so alien yet so familiar.

"Then I'll find you and kill you all over again!" Lilith yelled, tightening her grip on Immoderata.

It laughed. A dead, hollow sound.

"Unless you meet me there first. A broken, twisted, failure of a soul."

"Don't fucking count on it!"

"What will happen when his madness takes him? What will happen to you? To your legacy? To your-?"

"ENOUGH!"

With an almighty roar, Lilith grappled Immoderata and lifted it high above her head. The Devil's voice rang out through the forest as she hurled the Curse straight into the flames, staggering back as sparks sprayed against her skin. It screamed as the fire ate through it, causing it to thrash and writhe.

"YOU ARE CURSED! BOTH OF YOU! EVEN WITHOUT ME, YOU BOTH LIVE A TORTUROUS EXISTANCE! EVERYTHING YOU KNOW WILL BE SWEPT AWAY! YOU WILL LOSE EVERYTHING ALL OVER AGAIN! HUNGER AND REGRET WILL CONSUME YOU BOTH! THE CRUEL MARCH OF TIME WILL-!"

The last of the house's supporting walls gave way, causing the remnants of its upper floors to completely collapse in on themselves, silencing Immoderta's cries forever. Lilith stared into the blaze for a few moments before falling to her knees. Hot tears streaked down the right side of her face, but she didn't have the strength to cry.

Everything it had said... it cut right to the bone. No matter how much she tried to kid herself, there wasn't a day where Lilith didn't think about the Rapture. The flashbacks, the nightmares, the constant reminders of everything she had lost... it was too much. And when she learned of how her father planned to launch a new campaign after over a millennium, she came to understand that he was suffering too. The regret had blinded him, causing him to confuse a need to claw back their glorious past for simple suicidal despair.

Taking a deep, shuddering breath, the Devil wiped her face and walked back over to the two demons in her midst. Elya was holding tightly to Cobalt, but both had long since fallen unconscious. Off in the distance, she could hear the wails of sirens; the fire department most likely, drawn by the huge plume of smoke in the air. Once they arrived, she would have to hide herself away in the Incubus' mind.

But until then, Lilith just sat down next to them and thought on the Curse's words.

It used everything and anything it could glean from the darkest recesses of her mind to try and sway her, that much was obvious. But still...

She couldn't help but feel that it was right. That everything - the Rapture, the fall of Pandemonium, her mother's death - was all her fault.