The illusion surged, reasserting itself with violent insistence. The lightning creature's silhouette warped again, limbs elongating, face distorting into something inhuman. Page's form darkened, fear bleeding outward in choking waves.
Look, the cave whispered without words. Monsters. Kill them.
Lillith staggered as the pressure slammed into her mind, seductive in its simplicity. Monsters were easy. Monsters deserved death. Monsters didn't require guilt.
But humans did.
She screamed—not aloud, but internally—and forced her affinity inward instead of outward. Instead of bending reality, she anchored herself to it. The ground burned beneath her boots. The heat was real. The pain in her lungs was real.
Her thoughts were real.
The illusion faltered again.
She saw Page clearly this time.
A woman standing her ground despite injury, blade trembling not with fear but with restraint. Someone who had just realized the same truth and didn't know what to do with it.
