"I'm starting to think that your hobby is collecting rare immortals," Rex Lapis said with an amused face, Alatus nodding beside him.

"Hey! You should be honored that I adopted your sorry butts into our family!" Lilith shouted with indignation. "It's not my fault that I have such an awesome aura that people naturally gravitate towards me!" She suddenly paused, a troubled look on her face. Or maybe it's just the prophecy's influence working here...

Alatus gave her a worried look as Rex continued, "First, you found me, a Great Earth Dragon. Then you befriended Alatus here, one of the greatest Yakshas to date even at such a young age. Finally, you adopted Venti, a greater wind spirit who, against all odds, developed a sense of self and survived for longer than a few decades, like others of his kind. Your luck must be godly."

Well, when you put it like that- Lucifer thought.

We are technically the descendants of gods, Lilith finished, the two of them not realizing that they had thought the same thing at the same time.

"Don't put it as something so unromantic as 'luck'! Call it 'fate'!" Lilith demanded.

"I wonder to this day why we are possibly twins," Lucifer sighed.

"Oh, dear brother of mine! How could you say such a thing!" Lilith mock gasped, pressing a hand against her chest.

"I say it as the only twin with their head not in the clouds," Lucifer shook his head with a slight grin.

"Yeah, 'cause your head is stuck up your a-" Lilith began to tease before Alatus slapped his hand across her mouth, knowing where this conversation was going. She playfully glared at him before nibbling his palm. He whipped his hand away frantically, his face slightly disturbed yet flushed a light red.

"'Aight, get a room you two," Lucifer said with an amused face. "Some of us want to have an appetite for lunch."

"Speaking of lunch, where's Venti?" Lilith wondered. "He said he'd be here for lunch so he can meet the whole gang."

"I'm here~" Venti's sweet voice giggled into her ear. She yelped, clasping a hand over her ear while Venti materialized in front of her, laughing.

"Now you know how I feel," Alatus mumbled to himself, causing Lilith to shoot a short glare at him. She teleported behind him and, reaching forward, stretched his cheeks as far as they could go.

"Is this the insolent mouth that dares to make fun of me in my time of strife~?" Lilith grinned darkly, eyes glinting.

"Ish twu," Alatus mumbled, not bothering to try and escape once she decided to exact her minor revenge.

Lovebirds, Lucifer, Rex, and Venti all thought simultaneously.

"Anyways," Lilith said, releasing Alatus's cheeks, "I made quite the feast, if I do say so myself, to celebrate a new member of our family! I have no idea if Venti can eat though... Do you even have a mouth?"

"Probably not in a human sense," Venti said. "We wind spirits prefer absorbing the elemental particles of our environment, so eating food is like absorbing flavored elemental particles. It just slowly fades away as we eat."

"Oh, thank goodness! I was worried about leaving you out or something," Lilith sighed in relief. She gestured at the boys to sit as she and Lucifer went to grab the food from the kitchen, as well as some sunsettia juice and cups.

Once everything was set, Lilith started distributing the cups of juice. However, when she offered a cup to Rex, he politely declined. As she stared confused at him, he reached into the sleeve of his coat and grabbed a small white porcelain cup... and his (infamous) Osmanthus wine.

"Oi! No alcohol on the table! You're in the presence of minors here!" Lilith said accusingly, pointing at Rex.

"We're the oldest here," Lucifer deadpanned.

"Exactly! We've lived for 6,500 years, thousands of years longer than anybody else here, and we've never even had a whiff of wine!" Lilith threw up her hands in exasperation. "It's bloody unfair if you ask me."

"Your real thoughts are bleeding out here," Lucifer rolled his eyes. "It's only natural since we don't have the finances nor ability to go to a mortal town and casually buy wine. We also look like children. There's no way anybody in their right mind would sell us wine."

"Stupid slow-growing bodies..." Lilith grumbled. "Rexy is way younger than us, but he's been drinking that Osmanthus wine since forever! I want to taste it too!" She shot a pleading look at Rex, but he averted his eyes and sipped his wine. She sighed and began stuffing her face with some lotus crisps.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

"Alatus, you antisocial potato! Why'd you leave me in the middle of that chaos?" Lilith demanded, storming over to where Alatus sat on the roof of the ruins, gazing over the landscape. "It was bad enough that Venti absorbed some of the Osmanthus wine and got drunk; after you left, he also-" she cut herself off, slightly blushing. "-started randomly turning into a whirlwind and messing stuff up!" she half-lied. While what she said was true, he also teased her about Alatus being the reason why she was crouched next to a stream mumbling to herself. Rex and Lucifer also participated in the teasing, although in Lucifer's case it was more like a grilling.

"Then I'm glad that I left when I did," Alatus chuckled slightly. Then, his face settled into a troubled expression as he stared at the distant mountains.

"Hey... what's wrong?" Lilith asked gently, noticing that something was off. She lowered herself to the ground, dangling her legs off the edge of the roof.

"I just have... a bad feeling. I know that I was lucky for these past years, and I'm wondering how much longer it will last," he mused uneasily.

"Peace really is a fragile thing," Lilith nodded. "One moment you could be the happiest person in the world... the next everything could be taken away from you." She rested her chin on her hands, her eyes glimmering as if she was about to cry. She blinked, and the glimmer was gone. "Things get broken that can't be fixed. Things... and people." She smirked sardonically. "We're all broken, in a way."

Alatus stayed quiet throughout her talking, not wanting to interrupt a rare glimpse into the inner thoughts of his cheerful Lilith (ayo, caught in 4k, you possessive bean).

"But if we can't be fixed, we can just reconstruct with a new foundation. The past is the bodies buried under our future empire, with us always in control. The moment we lose that control..." she raised her head and looked into Alatus's eyes. His breath was stolen away by the dark abyss of her dull eyes. "...we fall."

She hopped to her feet energetically as if she hadn't just bared her soul to Alatus. "All this depressing talk made me tired! C'mon, let's go kill something," she shot a crazed grin at Alatus then jumped off the roof. He shook his head at her devil may care attitude, smirked, and jumped off after her.

Many Geoshaps and Whopperflowers died that day.

A.N. It's kind of short, ik, but sh*t's going down in the next chapter so look forward to that! Even in the seriousness and craziness of the next chapter, I will still shove fluff and spice in it 'cause I have no life.