"There are two kinds of love—the one that frees you, and the one that devours you."
— Anaïs Nin
The city slept beneath a film of rain, but our apartment pulsed with something alive — a quiet, feverish heartbeat echoing between glass walls. Reflections followed us everywhere now: warped copies of ourselves, half-lit by candlelight and smoke.
Lilith stood by the window, her reflection multiplied infinitely in the mirrored glass — a thousand Liliths watching one Aurelius. She didn't need to speak anymore. Her silence carried command.
I watched her shadow glide across the floor and felt that strange pull again — a gravity made of danger. The scent of iron still lingered from our last "experiment." She'd called it a lesson in truth. I called it necessity.
"Tell me," she whispered finally, without turning, "do you still believe you can control what you've created?"
Her voice was smoke, wrapping around me, coaxing out the arrogance I tried to disguise as calm. "I don't control it," I said. "I am it."
She smiled — the kind that doesn't reach the eyes. "That's what all gods say before they fall."
I approached her slowly. The room felt smaller with every step, filled with our breath, our history, and the ghosts of everyone who'd touched our lives and burned for it. The glass around us vibrated softly, like it too could feel the tension building.
Her fingers traced my jaw, soft, almost reverent. "You've changed," she murmured. "Your eyes used to hold questions. Now they only reflect answers."
"And you?" I asked. "You used to crave salvation. Now you crave ruin."
She laughed — low, intimate, dangerous. "Maybe that's the only way to stay alive with you."
We were two predators circling the same flame. Our love had become ritual — not of touch, but of power. Words replaced caresses, thoughts replaced kisses. Every confession was a wound; every truth, a seduction.
Lilith tilted her head toward the mirror. "Look," she said. "Tell me what you see."
In the reflection, I saw us not as lovers, but as myth — serpents coiled around the same branch, whispering truths that no one else dared to speak.
For a fleeting moment, I thought the glass moved — bending our shapes, merging them. Then I realized it wasn't the mirror that changed. It was me.
Something in her gaze devoured the last hesitation in my soul.
I smiled, cold and infinite. "If destruction is creation reversed," I said quietly, "then perhaps we were gods all along."
Lilith leaned close, her breath ghosting my ear. "Then let's see," she whispered, "how many worlds we can break before morning."
Outside, thunder cracked like applause.
Inside, the mirrors trembled — and in every one of them, we were already gone.