The underworld wasn’t meant to dream.
And yet, Lucifer stood alone in the Void Hall, breathing raggedly as a vision that didn’t belong to him tore across his mind like a wildfire.
A hand reaching for his.
Golden eyes wide with pain.
A voice—her voice—whispering “Forgive me.”
The vision vanished.
Lucifer grabbed the edge of the stone balcony, knuckles white. The world snapped back into place, heat pressing in from all sides. The sky above Hell rumbled with a silent storm.
“Jue…”
That name, once foreign, now lived in his bones. And yet—why did she already feel like a memory?
Elsewhere — A Room of Light and Stone
Jue stood before an ancient mirror, watching her reflection. Her long white hair cascaded past her shoulders in a waterfall of moonlight. Golden eyes stared back, unreadable.
She didn’t age. She didn’t bruise. She didn’t belong.
Zero’s voice hummed in her mind like wind through wires.
“The target is remembering. Disrupt the chain before recognition stabilizes.”
“He’s seeing me,” Jue whispered.
“He’s remembering you—from the previous version of this realm.”
Her heart stopped.
“This is a dangerous side effect. He should not retain past cycle memory. End contact now. Reset.”
“No.”
“Then escalate betrayal immediately.”
“No.”
“Operator JUE-11, you are risking timeline fracture and annihilation.”
She turned from the mirror. “He’s remembering me… because he felt it, Zero. Because even a billion resets can’t erase love that real.”
“Love was never the goal.”
“It never is. And yet, here we are.”
The Throne Room – That Night
Lucifer was waiting for her.
No guards. No fire. Just him, alone in the center of the vast throne hall, eyes glowing red like dying embers.
“You were in my dream,” he said.
Jue stopped at the entrance. “…Dreams mean nothing here.”
“This one did.”
He stepped closer. “You cried in it. You said you were sorry. Then… everything burned.”
Jue’s stomach twisted.
“Jue…” he said, slower this time. “Do I know you? Not from this life—but another? Another timeline?”
[ALERT: MEMORY BLEED IMMINENT. TARGET SOUL STRUCTURE UNSTABLE.]
She felt her pulse racing—mechanical, synthetic, but somehow real now.
“You’re remembering echoes. Shadows of nothing.”
“But I felt everything.”
He moved closer. “Tell me the truth.”
She opened her mouth—
—but said nothing.
Instead, she did what she always did when truth threatened everything.
She reached for him.
Their lips met in the center of that cold room. It wasn’t heat she gave him, but stillness. A breath of quiet in a world born of chaos. She kissed him like it was the last lie she had left to give.
And when they parted, his voice cracked.
“Was that real…?”
Jue closed her eyes.
“…Yes.”
[SYSTEM NOTE: Path divergence confirmed. Betrayal event postponed. Mission compromised.]
Later That Night – The Garden of the Damned
Jue stood in the garden again, now alone, watching the flowers flicker like silent prayers. Each one a soul Lucifer remembered. A rebellion. A death. A sacrifice.
What will he do, she thought, when he has to plant one for me?
“You are falling in love with the target.”
Zero’s voice again.
Jue didn’t answer.
“Emotion is not your programming. You were created to manipulate, not feel.”
“I wasn’t created,” she said. “I was chosen.”
“And that choice comes with a price.”
She felt it in her bones.
Lucifer, the god of Hell, the most feared creature in the underworld, had once loved her in another timeline. And now, without knowing why, he was doing it again.
But this time…
This time, she wasn’t ready to break him.
“You will have to choose soon,” Zero whispered. “Him… or the mission.”
Jue reached down and touched one of the memory flowers.
It bloomed gold beneath her fingertips.
And for the first time, a flower whispered her name.
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