Parallel Memory

Chapter 586: The former devil kings secret

The king’s eyes glistened faintly, though no tears fell. Perhaps his body no longer had the strength to weep. His gaze lingered on Lilith with a quiet tenderness, as though he were drinking in the sight of her for the first and last time. His voice, ragged and strained, cracked softly through the silence.

"Your mother... Lilia. She was not one of us. She was human."

The words struck Lilith like a blade slipped between her ribs. Her breath caught; her heart stumbled in her chest. She had long carried the absence of a mother she never knew, an emptiness that no explanation had ever filled. Whispers in old palace halls, half-muttered evasions, the silence of those who served her—those had been her only inheritance. To finally hear a name, her name—it was like a wound she had carried unknowingly her entire life had just been torn wide open.

Her lips parted, but no sound escaped. All she could do was stare at the broken figure before her, the father who had once been a towering figure of power and majesty, now reduced to skin and bone, his voice barely above a whisper. And yet, every word he spoke carved itself into her soul.

The king’s gaze drifted, as though peering back through the endless years. "I met her on a journey to the human domain... to a settlement I was told had fallen into ruin. I thought I would find only enemies there. Only hostility. But instead..." His lips trembled faintly with the memory, "...instead, I found her."

He closed his eyes for a heartbeat, and his voice grew soft, distant, almost tender. "She had been taken prisoner. Locked in their dungeon for defying a corrupt noble. She was alone. Afraid. Yet when I looked into her eyes... I saw no despair. No begging. No broken spirit. Only courage. Fierce, unyielding courage."

A cough shook him, weak and wet, but he pressed on, his will forcing the words through the frailty of his body. "Even as a human, she did not bow. She did not yield. And I... I could not look away. I freed her. I swore she would never wear another chain. I thought I had only rescued her, but in truth..." His voice wavered, faint as a candle’s flame, "...she rescued me. In time, we fell in love. She became my world."

Lilith’s tears broke then, spilling hot down her cheeks. She could not stop them, could not hold them back. For so long she had lived with silence where her mother should have been, with coldness where love should have lingered. And now, to hear of her—not as a faceless shadow, but as a woman of courage, strength, and love—it filled Lilith’s chest with warmth so fierce it ached. And yet, grief hollowed her at the same time, for all she had lost, for all the years her mother had been absent from her life.

The king’s voice darkened, bitterness creeping into its dying edges. "But the devils... they would not accept her. They said I had betrayed our kind, that I had weakened the throne. They saw her as a blemish, a fracture in our pride. When you were born, Lilith, their fury turned upon her. They used a border conflict as an excuse, a chance to strike. I could not... protect her." His voice broke, a whisper dragged raw by regret. "They forced her away. I... failed both of you. That shame has burned in me every day."

Lilith shook her head violently, choking on her tears. "No, Father! You didn’t fail me—you didn’t fail her. It wasn’t you. It was them. They tore us apart. They were blind, cruel, and selfish." Her words were raw, trembling with rage, with sorrow, with a desperation to absolve him of the guilt he carried.

Her father’s eyes softened, the sorrow within them lightened, as though her defiance had lifted some part of his burden. "Perhaps," he breathed, a thin smile curling faintly across his lips. "But... there is one truth that may yet give you hope."

Lilith froze, her body rigid, her breath lodged in her throat.

Lilith had never truly questioned her mother’s absence when she was a child. The palace, despite its shadows and restrictions, had been filled with warmth whenever her father was near. The Devil King, despite his duties and the expectations that weighed heavily on his shoulders, had always found time for her. He ensured she was surrounded by laughter, lessons, and moments that filled her days with joy. To her young heart, it had never felt as though something was missing—because her father’s presence had been so constant, so overwhelming in its love, that it seemed to make up for any void.

But as Lilith grew older, her eyes sharpened. She began to notice the subtle things, the cracks in the façade her father so carefully maintained. In the rare moments when he thought himself alone, she saw the heaviness in his expression, the way his gaze lingered on the horizon as if searching for something long lost. There were evenings when the laughter faded too quickly, replaced by silence that even she, as a child, could feel pressing down. She realized then that he missed someone deeply—someone who had once been part of his life, someone who had left a wound time could not heal.

Lilith had questions, of course. Whispers of her mother reached her ears from careless servants or murmurs in distant halls, half-truths spoken like forbidden tales. But she never voiced them aloud. To do so, she felt, would only remind her father of the sorrow buried beneath his smile. She feared that asking about her mother would dim the light in his eyes, that it would drag him back into memories he had tried so hard to bury beneath the love he poured into her. So she kept her silence, accepting his unspoken pain, even as curiosity grew within her. And when, at last, she heard him speak of her mother with his own lips, she finally understood the depth of his feelings—the quiet grief he had carried for years, all for the woman he had loved and lost.

"She lives," the king whispered, his words little more than air. "Lilia lives. I... I felt it, even after they cast her out. Even when the years grew long and my strength waned, I could still feel her presence. Your mother survived in the human domain. I do not know where. But she is not gone. And if fate is kind..." His breath hitched, but his eyes gleamed faintly, "...you may yet find her."

The words struck Lilith harder than any blade. Her chest swelled with a hope so sharp it was painful, a fire igniting in the hollow that grief had carved within her. For years, she had believed her mother lost, erased, nothing but silence. To think that she might still walk in this world—that she might still breathe somewhere under the same sky—was almost too much to bear.

Her father’s smile dimmed, the faint light in his body slipping away like sand through a clenched fist. "That is why I endured," he murmured, his voice weakening. "So that you might know... so that you might not carry only emptiness. And now... I can rest."

"No," Lilith whispered, clutching him tighter, shadows trembling like living things around her. "No! Don’t leave me. Not now. Not when I’ve only just found you again." Her sobs ripped through her, raw and jagged, shattering the silence of the decrepit cell.

The devil king reached up, his hand shaking as though made of glass, and brushed a strand of her silver hair back behind her ear. The gesture was tender, achingly familiar, the same one he had made countless times when she was a child clinging to him in the vast halls of the palace. His lips curved faintly.

"Do not weep, my child. I see you now... free of their chains. Strong. With someone at your side to guard you." His eyes shifted briefly toward Zero, a flicker of something—relief, trust—passing through his fading gaze. "You are safe. That is enough."

Zero bowed his head, silent but resolute. The weight of the moment pressed on him like iron, the weight of the dying king’s trust settling onto his shoulders. He did not flinch. He accepted it, unspoken, with the same unyielding calm that had carried him through every shadow, every storm.

The king’s trembling hand fell back, lifeless, to the cold floor. His chest rose once... twice... and then stilled. His lips curved faintly in his last breath, a smile not of power or pride, but of peace. Content.

The silence that followed was suffocating, heavy, oppressive. The weight of his passing pressed into the stone walls of the forgotten prison, as if the chamber itself mourned.

Lilith crumpled around him, clutching his body as though her own soul might shatter if she let go. Her sobs tore into the air, unrestrained, her grief spilling without walls, without dignity. Shadows writhed around her like serpents in mourning, curling protectively about her form, but even they could not shield her from the jagged wound of loss.

Zero moved silently beside her, his presence steady and unyielding. He did not speak—for there were no words that could matter here. Instead, he placed his hand gently on her shoulder, firm and grounding, anchoring her to the present, reminding her that though one bond had ended, another still endured.

Lilith’s sobs continued, her body trembling against the stillness of her father’s corpse. She had gained so much in a single breath—the truth of her mother, the promise of her survival—only to lose the man who had endured years of torment to give her that truth.

And yet, through the storm of grief, one truth remained: he had died not in despair, but in peace. Content, because she was free. Because she was alive. And in knowing that his mission to the human domain was not a mistake. There was still hope for peaceful cooperation between humans and the devils.