Chapter 5 — The Offering
Sketchbook to ash • Choir of wind • Fame without a face
Dio places his battered sketchbook on the damp floor. The spine cracks softly, like the release of a long-kept breath. His hands hover, trembling with exhaustion and want, before he lets go. The pages lift on their own, edges quivering like wings, then tear free. They spiral upward, dissolving into dust that burns gold beneath the blue light—embers refusing to fade.
The mirrors awaken. Murals bloom across their surfaces—raw, vivid, alive. His sketches pour out of the glass: faces he once loved, the ones he ruined, streets he thought he’d escaped. They twist into motion, expanding until every inch of the chamber pulses with his work. The city outside catches the reflection, his reflection, and begins to hum his name in neon, in rainwater, in blood.
He feels it then, the ache of being seen, the dizzying pull of creation made flesh. Every drawing was a confession, every line a vein. Now they open all at once, and the light that pours through him is unbearable, divine.
Lilith steps forward, the air bending around her. Her eyes gleam like candlelight caught in wine. “You’ve given everything,” she whispers. “Now take what’s left to give.”
Her fingers, cool and certain, find his wrist. The moment she touches him, the ache sharpens into hunger—sweet, endless, ancient. The chamber darkens. The mirrors throb with heartbeats not their own.
He looks at her and sees forever looking back. “Will it hurt?” he asks, though his body already leans toward hers.
“Only once,” she says, smiling. “Then never again.”
Her breath brushes his skin, iron and honey,and the world blooms red. The smoke, the art, the glass all fold inward, swallowing the sound of his last mortal pulse.
When the light returns, Dio stands beside her. The mirrors calm. His reflection smiles back, eyes darker now, luminous and sure. The city beyond the glass still whispers his name, but now it’s a prayer.
Lilith takes his hand, her voice a purr against his ear. “Artists never really die here,” she murmurs. “They live forever through what they’ve made.”
And when he turns toward her, the grin that answers is his and hers and utterly eternal.