Seeing that she didn't get any reaction from Omen, the girl couldn't help but ask, facepalming.
"…do you really not know anything about yourself, ay, Master?"
"…"
The girl brushed a strand of his messy white hair aside and continued.
"You asked me before, right?" she said, her voice quiet but clear. "About what Reverse Cultivation and being called ghouls is all about?"
Omen blinked and looked up at her.
Her crimson eyes glowing faintly in the dim light, reflecting the flicker of the fire like bloodied glass.
"Yeah," the boy questioned. "You said you were one too… but what does that even mean?"
Lilith's gaze softened, but there was a strange depth to it.
"Ghouls are not unlike humans, to be honest…" she began, her tone turning colder.
"We used to be human. Every ghoul traces their origin back to humanity. But somewhere along the line…something went wrong." Omen stayed silent, listening carefully.
"There are two kinds of us," the girl continued, her voice low and steady. "The first are the royals, descendants of the first generation of Reverse Cultivators.
Not only were these kids born without a dantian but they were born…practically dead.
She paused. "The path of Nihaar was already ingrained into their biological codes, plus it wasn't much a surprise that their parents were also non living beings…"
Stroking her hand through Omen's head, the girl looked at the boys black eyes playfully.
"Well, if you do start reverse cultivating, get ready to get a pair of flaming blue eyes instead-" The 18 year old boy looked at the girl with confusion.
"What do you mean??"
"Well…I told you there were two kinds, right? The other kind are the ones who forsake their humanity to walk the path of the dead."
Omen scratched his forehead, "but what's that gotta do with blue eyes?"
Lilith sighed as she explained, "Only two kinds of people have blue eyes among the reverse cultivators. First being the ones like you who forsake their cultivation, and second being our ancestors who also chose the same path. Red eyes our only a trait of the descendants of the Reverse Cultivators, that's it."
The girl's words lingered in the air, sounding heavy.
Omen frowned. "So…you're one of the royals?"
Lilith gave a small, humorless laugh. "I was supposed to be."
She tilted her head slightly, her long black hair falling over her shoulder. "My parents were part of the original bloodline, the oldest blood in fact. But I was…different."
The girl's tone dropped, "I was weak. I didn't have the strength of my brothers. Couldn't control my hunger or even mutate properly. So, they cast me out. Said I'd only bring shame to our name." The embers of bornfire flickered across Lilith's face, her eyes staring in distance.
For the first time, Omen saw something fragile in her, something real.
Not the cold girl who had sliced a monster to pieces, but someone who had been thrown away.
The boy didn't say anything, but he was still overwhelmed by the sudden influx of information.
Omen only now realised the fact that the devil like beauty he was travelling with was literally a walking corpse.
Well, a living, breathing corpse if he was to be exact.
All this only made the slim boy question more about why his parents would leave behind such a thing for him.
'Is it because they knew that this was my only shot?' Omen ruminated bitterly. Everyone knew that a was broken dantian could not be fixed.
Lilith took a quiet breath and continued, "Our race passes everything down through Sutras, old scrolls and scriptures filled with our bloodline's teachings and techniques.
They're sacred to us.
Even the Ghoul King himself left his knowledge behind in those Sutras. They're how our kind remembers who we are."
Her hand reached into her space ring and pulled out an old, blackened book, the one they'd found in the ruins. It's cover looked ancient, bathed in thin cracks like dried veins, with faint markings glowing faintly across the surface.
Omen raised his head slightly to look.
The shift made him aware of how soft her thighs were beneath him, cold to the touch, yet strangely comforting.
His face reddened at the thought, but he quickly looked away so the girl wouldn't notice.
Lilith noticed, of course.
The corner of her lip twitched upward, but she didn't say anything.
"This," she said, holding the book up, "is a Sutra too." Her red eyes scanned the old cover carefully.
"But it's not one I've ever heard of. It's not from my clan. And if it was lying in those ruins…it might be something older.
Maybe even forgotten."
Omen frowned. "Why can't you just teach me yours?" He had read the incantation of the Hollowed eyes sutra and i wouldn't be a long shot saying that he did not want to go on with it.
Meanwhile, the red eye girl could only sigh. "It's forbidden…our bloodline Sutra is bound to our souls. Sharing it with someone outside the clan would kill me."
The girl looked back towards the first part of Reverse Cultivation Sutra he received.
"Part I: The hollowed Eyes"
She opened the book carefully, it's first few pages were written in some kind of ancient, swirling text, symbols almost alive with faint red light.
"From what I can understand…this Sutra isn't about control or balance like most ghoul arts." The girl's expression turned serious. "It's…darker."
Both of them turned serious as she turned the page to the preface.
A faint pulse came from the book, like a heartbeat.
Omen felt a strange pull in his chest, almost like something was calling to him.
Lilith softly muttered, her voice echoing slightly in the still cave.
"This Sutra…once fully practiced gives you control over a thousand eyes…"
Omen's brow furrowed. "Thousand Eyes?"
She nodded. "The preface says something strange. Listen," she traced her finger over the old symbols, reading slowly.
"When a thousand eyes open, the world shall see nothing but death.
For every gaze is a curse, and every blink…an explosion."
The fire crackled violently, a burst of sparks lighting up the cave for a moment.
Omen stared at Lilith's face, a cold chill running down his spine.
The girl slowly closed the book, her red eyes glinting under the dim firelight.
"This isn't a normal Sutra, Omen," she said quietly. "It's not made to attack. It's made to erase."
Omen didn't respond, cold sweat already covering half his back.
The image of those glowing words burned into his mind like a map he couldn't look away from.
And in the silence that followed, the faint pulse from the book seemed to match the beat of his own heart as Lilith repeated another phrase from the book.
"One eye to see.
A hundred to stalk.
And a thousand to kill."
***