Prologue
Elias Varo
She is curled up in the tub like something half formed. A fetus... Or a mistake. I swirl my fingers in the water. The water’s gone cold, and her lips are blue. Still no bubbles. Still no movement.
I crouch beside her, my shoes leaving prints on the white tile. It’s quiet in here. I like the quiet.
No crying. No begging. No,“I don’t understand what you want from me.”Just silence. Like she’s finally listening.
She looks peaceful, which is a funny word for someone with a bottle of pills spilled across the floor and foam crusting her lips. I reach out and tap her cheek with two fingers. Her skin’s cold and waxy. Dead.
I tilt my head and sigh from frustration. God. She was erratic, hungry, desperate for meaning in everything. Every look, every touch, every silence. She wanted to be understood so badly, it bled out of her.
She begged me to explain her own thoughts to her. She would sit cross legged on my floor, biting the skin around her thumbnails until they bled, asking questions like...
“Why do I get so angry?”
“Why do I always want to be punished?”
“Do you think I’m beyond repair?”
I always told her no. Of course not.
“You’re just a system in need of reprogramming.”
And she smiled. Every time. Like that sentence alone was love.
But that’s not the part that matters. What matters is that she chose this. Not death, no. She chose me. She let me in. Let me shape her. Mold her. Burn her down and build something better from the ashes. She said she trusted me. She said I was the only one who ever made her feel real. So what does it mean when something I created dies? Was she broken when I found her, or because I touched her?
These are the kinds of questions no academic board wants to hear.
I lean forward, elbows resting on my knees, and study her like she’s still breathing. Like she might blink and ask me what happens next.
I would’ve told her, you evolve! That’s the point, Lilith. You become more than the trembling, pathetic thing you were born as. That’s what love is, isn’t it? Not comfort. Not kindness.
Transformation.
She just wasn’t ready. I warned her, didn’t I?
“There’s no going back once I’m in your head.”
She begged for more. More control, more attention, more of me. She wanted to be rewritten, and I obliged. But now she’s floating in a pool of silence, and her father’s already knocking at the edge of my career like a vulture circling something ripe.
You bastard. You used her. You broke her.
Yeah, yeah semantics. I didn’t break her.
She broke herself trying to keep up.
I stand, wipe my hands on my slacks, and walk back to my desk. Everything’s still where it was. The journal’s open, spine cracked from too much use. Page after page filled with ink. Observations. Diagrams. Session notes disguised as pillow talk. Her name is at the top.
The Lilith Project.
I stare at it for a long time. Then slowly, deliberately, I press the pen to the page and drag a line through it. Once. Twice. Over and over until the words disappear beneath the smudge. No one will read this. Not until the next one. And there will be a next one. Because this wasn’t failure. This was proof of concept!
She wasn’t strong enough. That’s not my fault. It’s not my flaw. It’s hers.
I don’t need weaker subjects. I need better ones. Subjects that can withstand the unravelling and still walk upright. Still love me for it. Because I am not the villain here.
I am the architect. The sculptor. The god of reconstruction.
She collapsed under the weight of herself, and I won’t let that happen again. I close the book slowly, the spine cracking beneath my fingers like a joint popping back into place.
This time, the structure will be stronger. The design, flawless.
