The camera came on me and I wasn’t sure how to feel about it. I hadn’t been seen in Sin City Wrestling since High Stakes and I disappeared without ever so much a trace or even a word. Was now the time to open up about why I was gone for a while? Was mentioning High Stakes even a good idea at this point? These were just some of the questions that I had in mind. But for now, I was looking into the camera feeling something that I hadn’t had in a very long time…

Peace.

For once, I wasn’t feeling like I had much of a burden on my shoulders as I finally spoke…

“It’s been a minute, hasn’t it? I know, you’re going to want to ask me the question of what happened after High Stakes where I basically disappeared without a word. Do you all really think that I’m just going to spill that right out of the gate? No. You know me. I do shit on my terms. I tell my own narrative. I’m not going to suddenly spill all because really, the truth is, I’m not required to pour out my entire life story for you people. I did what I had to do and for now, I am going to leave it at that but for the uninitiated, let’s talk about me and let’s talk about what I’ve done in this company so far.

I was recently the SCW Bombshells Internet Champion and I am going to talk more about that in a bit…

Prior to that, I won the SCW Bombshells World Championship in just my sixth match in this company… at High Stakes at that. Now, if that doesn’t scream brilliance, I don’t know what does. In recent member, no Bombshell has hit this company as hard as I have right out of the gate. But then the Kayla Richards wall happened… and I want to make it clear that when the dust settle, I could feel myself start to slip away a little bit…

I took a pause as I thought to myself that I had to do what I had to do to let out enough to give the proper context, but not so much that I was suddenly giving away every detail to a bunch of people that I felt didn’t deserve it at all.

“It wasn’t losing to Kayla. What did it was the sudden shift to the Internet Championship in the cloud of shit that I had going on personally. I was FORCED into that and I will say for a fact that Queen of the Day is literally the stupidest fucking concept in this company by the way. That’s what dispirited me a little bit. Honestly, I’m not even sure how the fuck I beat Tempest at that point considering where I knew I was going psychologically and when you consider the fact that there was so much personal shit going on that I was dealing with. But in any case, I did it and I pulled through. In my first defense, I even made the challenger that I had run away from this company…

‘Okay Jules, that’s the last time you’re beating that dead horse…’ I told myself in my own mind before I continued my thoughts.

“But all along, it was bound to catch up to me and it did at the worst time and for now I will leave it at that. This tournament that is going on, the Blast from the Past tournament, it is the best time to jump back into the swing of things and from a personal standpoint, I am doing a hell of a lot better than I was six months ago and there’s no question in my mind that I’ve got everything it takes to win the fucking thing and then go on to reclaim that SCW Bombshells World Championship. It’s as simple as that. Now this Aaron chick that I’m facing…

I heard she’s supposed to be this big deal?

Something about the controversy that she’s caused in Kayla’s personal life… or at least she did when she first got here…

Has she even had a match in this company yet? Does anyone know? Whatever. The little hellraiser started out hot in any event but in recent weeks, she’s kind of disappeared. What the hell happened, Aaron? Did you suddenly start having second thoughts about what you were doing? I’ve heard talks about how I got the short end of a draw and how I might be coming back to a disappointing return match but no, I don’t believe in that shit and if you know me well enough, you know that all I do is defy expectations no matter where they come from so Aaron, if this is in fact, really your first match in this company, you’re not going to gain at my expense. I’m not going to let you just run all over me. I’m not going to let you come into that ring acting like you’re going to get a win over me right out of the gate just because I’ve been gone for months and because I’m barely coming back into the swing of things. No, you can go to hell if you think that.

I’ve had enough of the way things were going ever since I fell out of the title picture. Truth be told, when I was the Internet Champion, when it came to being in that ring, I wasn’t happy for a fucking second. I did everything that I could to motivate myself to win that championship and to hold the thing. I still did what a real champion was supposed to do. I wasn’t like other Internet Champions before me that decided to bury the belt and call it a consolation prize. No, fuck that noise but in my heart, I knew that it wasn’t something that I was wanting to chase on my own volition and I will be the first to own that and admit to that. Really, I knew the whole time that trying to break the single reign title record held by Myra Rivers was going to be a fucking tall order and almost impossible, but what the hell? Anything I could just to motivate myself or even in some cases, just getting the fuck out of bed in the morning.

So believe me when I say, Aaron, that I’ve got at least a year’s worth of anger and frustration and bitterness ready to unleash on you not because I hate you or dislike you. I don’t know you. As a matter of fact, I am rather indifferent to you because you’ve done nothing to me and you’ve done nothing that is going to make me hate you or really feel anything about you. You just happen to have bad timing this week and that’s all I really need to say about that. This Sunday is the start of making things right and that’s exactly what I am going to do when I beat you and I advance in the Blast from the Past tournament. I am not someone that accepts failure. I’m sure as fuck not someone that embraces failure to ‘learn from it’. That’s for the piss poor drama queens like Myra by the way. To me, anything less than winning this tournament is a failure and considering how things were going for a while there before I took the time off that I did, I think I’ve had just about enough of it…

That familiar fire and anger was back in me and I knew I had to stop there. That’s what I did when I shut the camera off and decided to just keep that fire and anger locked and loaded until Sunday.

Therapy Day Four: Look in the mirror

Scene opens in a therapy room that feels stark yet safe. Pale blue walls. A ticking clock. One lamp. No windows. Lilith sits slouched in a worn armchair, eyes rimmed in red, jaw clenched. Dr. Harris sits across from her, notepad closed. No barriers. Just listening. Fingers tapping against the converse shoes she had tucked under her.

Dr. Harris, her own personal therapist, the only one who even cared enough to try and get into the twisted wonderland that was her mind. Sat in his big high backed chair, eyes peeking at her over the top of his notebook. The leather bound tome rested between them, almost as if he used it to shield himself from her.

Dr. Harris speaks up, looking at Lilith. “You came back. I wasn’t sure you would.” He tapped his fingers on the arm of his chair.

Lilith gives a tired laugh, a small shrug of her shoulders. “Neither was I. But the quiet gets loud. Thought maybe your voice would drown it out for a while.”

He nods and motions towards her seat. “Let’s sit in the quiet for a moment, then. You don’t always have to fill it. You don’t have to perform here.”

Lilith stiffens at that word: perform. Her fingers twitch. The facade flickers. The silence, she hates it, yet he forces it upon her as if she’s some drunken prom date.

Dr. Harris speaks gently, intrigued by what she had said. “You say the silence gets loud. What is it saying?” He was intrigued by her comment, taking notes as she began to talk.

Lilith speaks without looking up, messing with the hem of her jacket sleeve. “That I’m losing him. That maybe I already have. That I was always just noise to him. White noise. Static.”

Dr. Harris wanted to pull more from her. “Static can be comforting, Lilith. People play it to help them sleep. But it can also be overwhelming. Suffocating even to others. What does that feel like to you?”

“It’s suffocating, overwhelming and lonely.” Lilith took a deep breath, mulling over the thoughts in her mind. “He made me feel real. Like I wasn’t just... something broken. I gave him everything. And now he looks at me like I’m the ghost haunting his past. Not the person who longs to help build his future.”

Dr. Harris nodded and continued. “And you feel abandoned.” Again.. intriguing.

Lilith’s eyes flash. “No. I feel betrayed. There’s a difference. Abandonment is passive. Betrayal is deliberate. He chose this distance. He chose to forget.”

The anger inside her grew, burning white hot. She was trying all she could to hold it in, to save it, to use it in the ring. To use it to win.

Dr. Harris took a deep breath, pinching the bridge of his nose. “And what do you choose now?”

Silence stretches. She bites her lip, then speaks softly. Lilith takes a moment to think about it and slowly she starts to speak. “I chose to remind him. With words. With warnings. With... violence, if I have to.”

Dr. Harris speaks without flinching from how she might react. “And did it work?”

Lilith shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. I saw his eyes during my promo. The twitch. The shift. He felt it. I know he felt it.”

Dr. Harris took a deep breath. “Is that why Aaron Asphyxia had to become collateral?”

Lilith after a long pause began to speak. “Aaron’s not the point. She was just... well she was the canvas. I painted her in rage so he could see the picture I’m still trying to finish.”

Dr. Harris wrote some notes in his book he kept on her. “But Lilith, if your art is built on blood... how will you know when it’s finished?”

She looks at him for the first time, really looks. There’s fear there, buried under all the fury. Lilith speaks quietly, almost weakly. “Maybe I don’t want it to be. Maybe the painting of pain is all I have left.” Her whole body shook. “Perhaps it’s my fate..”

Dr. Harris walks to a shelf, pulls a small mirror from the top, and sets it gently in front of her. “Then tell me, Lilith... when you look into this, do you see Kevin? Or do you finally see you?”

She stares at it. A war brews behind her eyes. She deeply gazed into the mirror, her reflection distorted for her a few times over. “I don’t know who that woman is. She is a stranger to me.”

Dr. Harris looked surprised. It’s clear to him that Lilith was starting to understand. “Then that’s what this session is. Not about Kevin. Not about Aaron. Or anyone else you’ve ever wrestled against. Not about being remembered or feared. It’s about figuring out what you want to be when the noise stops.”

Lilith gritted her teeth. “But what if I need the noise?” Her voice was almost a growl, unnatural. Feral even.

Dr. Harris shook his head. “Then we learn how to listen to it without letting it consume you.”

Silence again. But this time, not oppressive. A pause. A breath. Scene shifts slightly. Lilith alone in the hallway outside the therapy office. She holds the mirror in her hand, staring. Her reflection stares back. She whispers, not to Dr. Harris this time—but to herself.

“I don’t want to be forgotten. But maybe… I don’t have to be lost either.”

She slides the mirror into her bag.

She didn’t want to admit it, she didn’t have to. How she felt, belonged to her and her alone. Something she wasn’t used to having.

Something that belonged to only her.

Like she wanted him to belong to her.

Blackout.


Blackout.

The world didn't stop with it.

 If anything, the dark became louder. A heavy, breathing thing pressed against Lilith’s ribs, clawing at her lungs, whispering sharp little nothings behind her eyes.

 She stumbled through the hallway outside Dr. Harris’s office, the mirror shoved deep into her bag like a stolen secret, its weight dragging on her shoulder like an accusation.

Her feet moved without thought, her breath shallow, hands twitching with every step.
 She had left the room where words were supposed to fix her.
 Now she was stepping back into a world that didn’t want her fixed at all.

Good girls get fixed, the mirror seemed to murmur against her hip.
 You’re not a good girl, Lilith.
 You’re something else.

The streets outside were colder than she remembered, the sky bruised purple and gold at the edges like a healing wound.
 People passed her without looking.
 Cars honked in the distance, a mechanical scream that barely scratched the surface of the static roaring in her skull.

Somewhere between one heartbeat and the next, she heard it.
 His voice.

"Lilith."

Soft. Broken. Beautiful.

She froze in place, her heart slamming against her ribs so hard it left her dizzy.

 The world blurred at the edges, the ground breathing beneath her boots.

"Lilith," Kevin’s voice called again, a whisper curling through the gutters, seeping up from the cracks in the sidewalk.

"Come find me."

Lilith pressed a trembling hand over her heart and smiled, wide and wicked.
 She could still hear him.
 Still feel him.
 Still belong to him.

She turned without thinking, her feet dragging her toward the theater — the stage where the next chapter of their story would be written in blood and bruises and breathless screams.
 Where he would watch.
 Where he would remember.

And standing between them —
 in the way, in the path —

Frankie Holliday.

The little lamb.
 The new blood.
 The wide-eyed fool who thought stepping up in Sin City Wrestling meant anything but a death sentence.


The theater loomed ahead, sagging under its own weight, black windows glinting like broken teeth.
 Lilith’s boots thudded against the cracked pavement as she approached, her shadow stretching long and twisted behind her.

"Frankie," she whispered, tasting the name on her tongue like wine.
 "Pretty little Frankie. Fresh little Frankie. Unbroken. Untouched."

Her lips curled into a jagged smile.
 She could almost see Frankie inside already —
 tightening her boots, fixing her hair, telling herself that she was ready.
 That she belonged here.
 That she could survive this.

Lilith’s hand tightened into a fist so hard the mirror in her bag shifted, whispering against the canvas.
 She wanted to rip that hope out of Frankie’s chest with her bare hands.
 She wanted to show her how stupid hope was.
 How naive dreams were.

Because dreams didn’t survive people like Lilith Locke.

"Did you think it would be easy, Frankie?" Lilith hissed into the empty air as she stepped into the shattered lobby.
 "Did you think you could just walk in here, throw a few punches, and make yourself a name?"

She laughed, the sound hollow and sharp enough to cut glass.
 The world bent around her, the walls pulsing in and out with every breath she took.
 The floor cracked under her boots.

"You're not a fighter," she sneered. "You're a sacrifice."

The theater lights flickered once, twice.
 Somewhere in the distance, a door slammed.
 Lilith didn’t flinch.

She marched through the darkness like it was a church built in her name.
 And she was here to burn it to the fucking ground.


The ring stood at center stage, cracked and sagging, ropes fraying like severed nerves.

Melissa lingered at the far edge of her vision — steady, strong, solid.
 A monument to survival.
 A minor annoyance.

But Frankie —
 Frankie shone in Lilith’s mind like a target painted in blood.
 She could already see it —
 the panic tightening in Frankie’s throat when the first blow landed.
 The way her hands would shake trying to cover up the terror.
 The way she’d realize too late that this wasn’t a match.
 
It was a funeral.

Lilith paced along the cracked floor, boots dragging, fingers twitching at her sides.

"I want you to know something, Frankie," she said, voice carrying through the empty theater like a sermon. But she whispered her prayers to him, only to him and him alone.
 "I’m not here to beat you."

She stopped at the edge of the ring, tilting her head at the imagined girl standing inside.
 Wide eyes. Trembling hands. Hope bleeding out of every pore.

"I’m here to break you."

She smiled, slow and sweet, like rot blooming under silk.

"I want to watch you fall apart, piece by pretty little piece. I want to see the fear crawl up your spine when you realize you were never built for this."

Lilith stepped through the ropes, the canvas groaning under her weight.
 She moved like something loosed from a nightmare — slow, deliberate, hungry.

"You walked into the wrong story, little lamb," she cooed.
 "You didn’t know the author was already writing your ending."

She crouched in the center of the ring, tracing idle circles on the canvas with her fingertip. Her beautiful little dreamscape.

"And me?"
 "I'm not here to make you famous, Frankie."
 "I'm here to make you a cautionary tale."

Her eyes gleamed as she pictured it —
 Frankie broken at her feet, Melissa scrambling to pick up the pieces, Kevin standing in the dark, watching it all unfold.

Watching Lilith.

Remembering.

She licked her lips, tasting copper and static.

"You’ll be a stain on this company’s memory," Lilith promised.
 "A whisper. A joke. A name people forget five minutes after I bury you."

She closed her eyes, swaying slightly, breathing it all in —
 the blood, the dust, the inevitability.


The hallucination sharpened.

 Kevin stood at the edge of the ring now —
 arms crossed, expression unreadable.

Lilith smiled wider.
 Her whole body sang with the need to be seen.
 To be acknowledged.
 To be claimed.

"You see me, don't you?" she whispered to the ghost.
 "You always saw me. Even when you pretended you didn't."

The mirror in her bag pulsed against her hip, whispering back:
"Mine."

She rose slowly to her feet, never breaking eye contact with the phantom in the shadows.

"I’ll tear them apart for you," she promised.
 "I’ll break Frankie until she doesn’t even remember her own name. I’ll shatter Melissa until all that’s left is regret and broken ribs."

Lilith staggered forward, the world tilting and warping around her.

"And you’ll watch," she breathed.
 "You’ll see what you made. You’ll see what you left behind."

Her smile cracked wide open, teeth bared.

"You’ll remember me."

The lights above her flickered violently.
 The air thickened with static.
 The floor groaned under the weight of what she had become.

Lilith stretched her arms out wide, a broken messiah in a church built of ruin.

"You’ll never forget me again."


The theater trembled around her, dust spilling from the rafters like ash.
 Lilith staggered through the ropes, boots dragging, her body humming with the kind of electric madness that only ever came before a killing blow.

"Frankie, Frankie, Frankie," she sang, the name dripping off her tongue like something too sweet, too rotten.
 "Did you think anyone was going to save you?"

She turned in a slow, lazy circle, addressing the empty seats.
 The silent ghosts.
 The phantoms of a crowd that would bear witness to the slaughter.

"Melissa won't save you. She’ll be too busy trying to survive herself. She knows what’s waiting here. She’s tasted it before."

Lilith’s head cocked sharply to the side, listening.
 The mirror in her bag buzzed against her hip like a heartbeat.

"But you, Frankie..."
 "You still believe this ends with your hand raised, don't you?"
 "You still think you’re the heroine of your own little story."

A laugh ripped from her throat — wild, sharp, deranged.

"Nobody wins against me, Frankie."
 "Nobody leaves the same."

She stumbled to the edge of the ring, leaning over the ropes, grinning down at the imagined Frankie below.

Fragile. Delicate. Breakable.

"You’re going to beg," she whispered.
 "Not for the win. Not for the match. You’re going to beg just to be allowed to crawl away with a piece of yourself still intact."

Her fingers flexed and unflexed, nails digging crescent moons into her own palms.
 Blood welled up and dripped to the canvas, each drop a vow.

"I’m not going to pin you, Frankie. I’m not going to end it clean."
 "I’m going to drag it out. Stretch it until the screams are the only thing keeping you tethered to this world."

The world tilted again.
 The edges of the theater frayed like burned cloth.

Kevin leaned closer out of the shadows.
 Watching.
 Always watching.

Lilith’s breath hitched.

"This isn’t just about you," she admitted, voice cracking around the edges.
 "It’s about him."

She pressed a bloody hand to her heart.

"It's always been about him."

The lights buzzed overhead.
 
The mirror in her bag whispered, a million tiny voices weaving together into a single undeniable truth:

"You are his ghost."

Lilith’s smile sharpened, teeth flashing.

"You don’t matter, Frankie," she said, voice slipping into something cold and sweet.
 "You’re a means to an end. You’re the blood I spill to get his attention."

She stepped down from the ring, stalking across the stage, dragging her hand along the tattered curtains.

"Melissa’s smart enough to know she’s a casualty."
 "But you?"
 "You thought you were making a debut. You thought you were ascending."

Lilith giggled, a high, hysterical sound that echoed against the broken walls.

"All you’re really doing is dying slow."

The mirror in her bag pulsed again.

 Stronger.

 Hungrier.

She dug it out with trembling hands, holding it up, staring into her own fractured reflection.
Her face splintered into a thousand jagged pieces —
 smiling, sneering, screaming.

Kevin’s voice whispered through the cracks.

"Break her."

Lilith pressed the mirror to her chest like a rosary.

"I will," she whispered back.
 "I’ll break her in your name. I’ll stain the canvas red for you."

The mirror heated against her skin until it burned.
 She didn’t let go.

She welcomed the pain.
She needed it.


The stage seemed to breathe beneath her.
 The walls pulsed.
 The seats swayed like trees caught in a hurricane.

Lilith closed her eyes and pictured it:

Frankie on her knees, gasping, bleeding, trying to understand where it had all gone wrong.
 Melissa retreating, broken, irrelevant.
 Kevin standing at the edge of it all — watching her, seeing her, remembering.

Her lips curled into a slow, savage grin.

"I'm not just going to beat you, Frankie," she purred, voice syrupy and venomous.
 "I'm going to make you wish you never set foot in my world."

She dropped the mirror to the stage floor.
 It shattered on impact.
 The sound rang out like a gunshot in a church.

Lilith knelt among the shards, running her fingers through them, letting the glass slice her skin without a flinch.

"I’ll carve your name into my bones, Frankie," she promised.
 "I’ll drag you into memory kicking and screaming."

She lifted a shard to her lips, pressing it against the corner of her mouth until a thin line of blood blossomed.

She smiled wider.

"You don't get to be forgotten, Frankie."

She dragged the glass down her throat, leaving a crimson line like a necklace.

"You get to be a monument to my devotion."

The lights above flickered again, harder this time.

The air trembled with the weight of it.

The mirror shards buzzed against the floor like insects, singing her name.


Lilith rose slowly from the broken mirror, bloodied fingers leaving red fingerprints across her throat, her lips, her heart.

Every step toward the center of the stage was heavier now, the air so thick she could barely breathe.
 But it wasn’t suffocating — it was intoxicating.
 A baptism in the ruin she had built for herself.

"Frankie, Frankie, Frankie," she sang again, almost a lullaby now.
 "You should have stayed away. You should have picked another night. Another place."

She stepped back into the ring, dragging herself over the ropes like a wraith come home.

"You don't belong here," she whispered, spinning slowly in a circle.
 "This isn't a victory. It's a dissection."

Her eyes rolled back as she breathed in the memory of blood that hadn't even been spilled yet.

"I will break your legs, Frankie."
 "I will crush your ribs. I will split your lip and black your eyes and tear you open until you don't even recognize your own reflection."

The canvas thudded under her boots, echoing louder than the heartbeat in her ears.

"And when you're lying there," Lilith crooned, voice soft and loving, "gasping like a dying thing, wondering what went wrong..."

She closed her eyes and tilted her head back, smiling.

"You'll look up and see me."

The shadows in the theater shifted.
 Morphed.

Kevin stood again at the far edge of her vision, hands in his pockets, head tilted, watching.
Silent.
 Patient.
 Unforgiving.

Lilith’s heart splintered in her chest, spilling rage and devotion in equal measure.

"This is all for you," she whispered to him, voice cracking.
 "Every broken bone, every scream, every drop of blood — it’s all a love letter you’re too much a coward to read."

The mirror shards on the floor hissed.

The ropes creaked.

Lilith staggered forward, every step heavier than the last.

"Frankie, you poor stupid girl," she said, almost kindly.
 "You never even stood a chance."

The ring spun around her.
 The world folded in on itself.
 Reality peeled back like rotting wallpaper, leaving nothing but the shrieking hum of inevitability.

"You’re not the beginning of something, Frankie."
 "You’re the proof that it’s already too late."

She fell to her knees at the center of the ring, hands pressed flat against the canvas, forehead bowing low.

A supplicant.
 A sinner.
 A soldier.

"And you, Melissa?" she sneered without looking up.
 "You're just collateral."

The canvas pulsed under her hands like a living thing.
 The blood on her fingers smeared into it, seeping deep into the fabric.

"This is where you both end," Lilith promised.
 "This is where you both are unmade."

She dragged herself upright, every inch of her trembling with the force of her devotion.

"Not because you're weak."
 "Not because you're unworthy."

She grinned, wild and broken.

"But because he needs to see."

She spread her arms wide again, the cracked ceiling above her splintering with the weight of it all.

"Kevin Carter," she breathed into the void, "I'm still here."

Her voice cracked apart on the name.
 Tore something open inside her.

"I'm still yours."

The mirror shards around her shivered and shook.

The air thickened into concrete.

Her body sagged under the pressure of it.

"And I'll keep breaking them, Kevin," she vowed.
 "One by one by one, until you look me in the eyes again and remember what you made."

She pressed her bleeding palms to the mat and smiled through her own ruin.

"You said you needed me."
 "You said you couldn't do this without me."

The lights above buzzed louder.
 A bulb shattered somewhere high in the rafters, raining glass down like glittering rain.

Lilith didn't flinch.

She reveled in it.

"I won't let you forget that."

She dragged herself upright, stumbling, laughing, broken.

"I won't let you forget me."

She staggered toward the ropes, gripping them until her fingers bled fresh.
 Her breath heaved in ragged sobs that twisted into giggles halfway up her throat.

"Frankie won't save you."
 "Melissa won't save you."
 "Only I will."

She leaned over the ropes, speaking not to the crowd that wasn't there, not to the lambs she'd already marked for slaughter —

but directly to Kevin.

"You made me this way."

Her voice cracked, shattered.

"Now you get to live with it."

The final light overhead sparked, then died.

The stage plunged into darkness.

And somewhere, in the pitch black of her broken kingdom, Lilith Locke smiled wide enough to break her own face.


The blackout swallowed her whole.

The world outside the ring collapsed into a smothering, endless nothingness.
 But Lilith didn’t fear the dark.
 The dark was where she lived.
 Where she breathed.
 Where she remembered.

Her body sagged against the canvas, the blood leaking from her sliced skin spreading outward, pooling beneath her like a black halo.
 It wasn’t just blood anymore—it was consecration. A sacrament born from ruin.
 The mat was slick and warm under her palms, breathing in shallow, labored pulses as if the ring itself had come alive to mourn her.
 The fabric clung to her skin like a lover desperate not to let her go.

She stayed there for a long moment.
 Long enough to feel the tremors rattle up from the floor into her bones.
 Long enough for the hallucinations to begin whispering in her ears again, scratching at the soft, exposed places inside her skull.

"Lilith..."

The voice wasn’t real.
 She knew that.
 She didn't care.

Her body twitched, muscles locking and seizing, her breath hitching on a broken sob.

"Come find me," Kevin’s ghost purred against her spine, the heat of him ghosting up the arch of her back, phantom fingertips tracing the curve of her ribs.

Lilith pushed herself upright, rocking slowly back and forth on her knees, her arms wrapped tight around her bloodied chest as if trying to hold herself together by sheer force of will.
 Her hands slipped against the blood slicking her skin, making wet, obscene sounds as she clutched herself tighter.

Her head lulled back, exposing her throat like an offering, her voice a fragile whisper.

"I'm still here," she told the empty dark. "I never left. I never will."

The world around her flickered, reality stuttering like a dying heartbeat, and in the swirling blackness, she saw it—
 a shape slumped across the mat a few feet away.

 Broken.
 Bleeding.
 Perfect.

Frankie.
 Or what was left of her.

Lilith crawled toward the hallucination, leaving a thick, glistening trail of blood behind her like a slug dragging its ruined body across a blade.
 The smear steamed faintly in the stale, freezing air, like the breath of something dying.

She reached the phantom form, her hands trembling as she cupped the imagined girl's cheek, her thumb smearing fresh blood across imaginary skin, painting her as hers.

"Poor thing," she murmured, voice cracked and broken, throat raw from screams she hadn’t even noticed spilling out.
 "You never had a chance."

She leaned down, pressing her forehead to the illusion’s brow, rocking them both slowly, her breath coming in wet, ragged sobs.

"You walked into my funeral thinking it was your coronation," Lilith whispered, her mouth brushing the phantom’s ear. "You thought you could survive me."

Her fingers dipped into the blood pooled around them, warm and viscous, and she began to paint.
 Long, looping strokes across the canvas, over the hallucinated Frankie’s chest, across her own torn skin.
 Symbols no sane mind would recognize.
 Words scratched out in crimson.

At first, she painted circles.
 Then hearts.
 Then the only thing that mattered.


Lilith carved the letters into the mat with her nails, the tips split and bleeding, smearing blood into every desperate curve.
 Her mouth moved in silent prayers as she etched, the madness wrapping tighter around her ribs, each breath shallower, sharper.

"You see, Frankie..." she said, voice lilting into a mad, sing-song rhythm, a lullaby for corpses.
 "It's not enough to beat you. It's not enough to break you. I have to offer you. I have to bleed you dry and lay you at his feet so he'll remember."

She laughed then—a soft, cracked sound, too sweet, too broken to be anything but monstrous.

"And you, sweet thing," she cooed to the phantom, tracing the blood-slick letters with a trembling finger, "you're going to help me bring him home."

Lilith grabbed a shard of shattered mirror, its jagged edge glittering like a promise in the dark.
 Without hesitation, she dragged it across her forearm, watching with glassy fascination as the skin split open like wet paper, the blood welling up thick and sluggish.

She pressed her bleeding arm against the mat, smearing more blood over the twisted symbols she had drawn, sealing them in flesh and devotion.

"This is our vow," she whispered, voice thick with reverence. "Our sacrifice. Our covenant."

The hallucinated Frankie twitched beneath her—a final, shuddering death rattle that existed only in the deepest, darkest corners of Lilith’s shattered mind.
 But Lilith didn’t care.
 Lilith believed.

She straddled the broken body, her hands painting, smearing, claiming every inch she could find, like a lover branding her beloved with sacred ruin.
 She dragged her bloodied fingers across the hallucination’s eyes, closing them forever.

"You belong to me now," she crooned, her words sinking into the rotting wood and broken canvas.
 "Just like he does. Just like they all will."

She smeared more blood across her own face, down her throat, down between her breasts, marking herself with savage, ritualistic strokes, each one cutting deeper into her own skin, deeper into the heart of her unraveling.
The canvas sucked at her knees, the walls groaning around her as if the theater itself was crumbling under the weight of her devotion, groaning beneath the burden of her madness.

"Do you see me yet, Kevin?" she sobbed into the dark, her voice cracking like dry wood under a cruel hand.
 "Do you feel me breaking for you?"

The hallucination faded, slipping through her fingers like smoke.

But Lilith didn’t notice.

She pressed her bloodied palms flat against the mat and began to crawl, dragging herself forward inch by inch, leaving a wide, jagged red smear behind her—a dying comet across the blackened sky of the ring.

Toward him.
 Toward the shadow that wasn’t there.
 Toward salvation or damnation—she no longer cared which.

"I’ll make them remember me," she rasped, her voice a threadbare promise barely clinging to her ruined lips.
 "I'll make them all remember what you created."

The mirror shard gleamed beside her, winking cruelly in the fractured light—a final broken promise, a final weapon.

Lilith gripped it tight, the edges slicing fresh lines into her palms, and pressed it to her ribcage.
 The point bit deep, deeper than before, carving slow, deliberate lines over her heart.

"If love won’t bind you to me..." she whispered, forehead pressed to the blood-slick mat, "then blood will."

She carved again, dragging the shard down, deeper, faster, until the pain became a second heartbeat pounding in her skull, until the blood ran like tears down her body.

The ring trembled beneath her, the ropes twitching like severed tendons, the structure itself weeping beneath the onslaught of her madness.

Above her, the ceiling split open, bleeding dust and broken wood.

The world rained down on her.

But Lilith kept going.

Painting.
 Praying.
 Promising.

"Frankie was the first," she crooned, voice rising into a fevered pitch, a hymn sung by a dying saint to a god who never loved her.
"But she won't be the last."

She began to laugh again, the sound climbing higher, higher, until it cracked against the ruins of the ceiling.

"I’ll unmake them all for you, Kevin. Every Bombshell. Every champion. Every broken doll they throw at me. I'll tear them apart and build a throne of their bones just so you can see me again."

The darkness pressed in tighter, suffocating, wrapping its fingers around her throat.

Lilith collapsed fully now, splaying herself across the bloodied mat, arms outstretched like a martyr nailed to a cross of her own making.
 Her chest heaved.
 Her vision blurred, splitting the world into shards of red and black.

But still, she smiled.

"You needed me once," she whispered into the endless void, her breath rattling like death through shattered lungs.
 "And you will again."

The final lights above flickered.

Guttered.

Died.

The world around her caved in.

And in that endless, breathing dark, Lilith Locke remained—broken, bleeding, smiling.

Still his.

Always his.