Lilith couldn't remember how many years she had been imprisoned.
She had once tried to count them, starting from when her memories began.
But it wasn't easy.
After all, her sleep schedule was irregular. Sometimes she slept for days, sometimes for months. All she could remember was how many times she had woken up.
But one day, when she couldn't remember whether she had woken up for the ten-thousand-and-seventh time or the ten-thousand-and-seventeenth, she stopped bothering to count such meaningless things.
It was no big deal.
Just as people didn't remember how many meals they had eaten.
When something went on long enough and happened often enough, everything about it became insignificant—it was just a process repeated endlessly over the long years.
Time was meaningless.
That made value meaningless.
And so life was meaningless.
That was why she often envied those who lived short lives—
She envied how they clung desperately to their limited time, satisfying their desires before their lives came to an end, without having to worry that their desires would fade away.
She often felt that way.
She still remembered how, once, she had tasted blood and found it especially sweet. So she went on to taste the blood of every kind of creature.
But now, even drinking blood had become a necessary chore to keep her body functioning. She couldn't find any interest in it.
Of course, she rarely turned anyone into a vampire, and she didn't kill people or animals.
She could only roam within a limited area. If every living thing nearby died, where would she find blood?
Later, she tried to make people feel fear, using it as spiritual sustenance.
For that, she lifted the mist, sometimes letting the land lie exposed beneath the sun and clear skies. Then she went from house