Chapter 5 — Cassandra's Whisper, and The First Man
His true name was still unknown to the world. The news networks breathlessly dubbed him the "Kingdom Builder," but I, Lilith, had been watching from the shadows since that very moniker, as absurd as it sounded, first clung to his ephemeral presence.
A man who could be the world's last hope, or perhaps, its most dangerous flame.
When I first encountered his exploits, a bitter laugh had escaped me. A man who, the day before a tactical nuclear detonation on the Indo-Pakistani subcontinent, had poured his entire fortune into an obscure water purification company in Qatar. That wasn't the fruit of cold financial analysis. That was… an interpretation, an unnervingly accurate one, of a kind only those who had read the final, hidden chapter of an ancient prophecy could possess. "This man," I'd murmured to the silent glow of my own interface, "he's using the Bible… the Seven Seals of Revelation and the Four Horsemen, no less, as his personal investment model." People whispered he was an unpredictable genius, but to me, he felt like the first human I had encountered in what felt like an eternity who spoke my language – a language I had used since long ago, yet one no one else in this world had ever understood. And so, I sent him my first message. A short, intensely coded signal.
"After the Red Horse, comes the Black Horse."
I knew he wouldn't reply. Because, were I in his position, I would have done the same. If an unknown entity suddenly appears, speaking your language, or perhaps peering into an abyss even deeper than your own, you too would remain in silence, attempting to discern its true identity and intentions.
I am Lilith, the disinherited daughter of the Rothschild dynasty. Once, I was among the brightest stars in that gilded, suffocating empire, even rumored as an heir to the family's deepest secrets and arcane wisdom. No more. My name has long been excised from their thick, leather-bound Bibles, from the gleaming golden script of their meticulously kept genealogies. No inheritance, not even a footnote in the hallowed priestly ledgers of the Jerusalem synagogue I once called home. My crime? To publicly declare a 'perilous yet radiant faith' amidst a family as unyielding as stone ( in their conviction that the Messiah was yet to come:
I confessed that Yeshua of Nazareth, the humble carpenter's son, was indeed that foretold Messiah; that He had already redeemed the world with the blood He shed on the cross; and that He would return to judge all this chaos and injustice with His divine authority.
The price was severe. The family treated me as one dead, exiling me from all they held sacred, while the world outside branded me a blasphemer, or simply another wayward scion of a decadent dynasty, to be scorned and forgotten.
They thought they had cast me out empty-handed, erased me completely from the suffocating weight of the Rothschild name, from their golden prison. But they overlooked what no fortune could buy, what no power could truly strip away – the two legacies etched deep within my soul.
The first was the sharpened eye, honed through countless nights spent in my grandfather's secret library, devouring ancient prophecies and the blood-soaked chronicles of empires rising and falling. Within those crimson records, I, alone, learned to read the hidden face of the world, to discern the subtle portents and grand patterns of history in reality, as the Seven Seals of Revelation were broken one by one, and the Four Horsemen rode forth. It was a compass etched into my spirit, a lens that pierced the veil of the world, a gift no money could buy.
And then, there was Mordecai. He was the brightest star in the family's highest echelons, the much-envied firstborn son, the designated heir. And… once, the only name my heart had ever permitted itself to ache for with such fierce, hopeless longing. We had loved each other. In that suffocating golden cage, our shared existence was the only air we could breathe, kindred spirits dreaming the same forbidden dreams of a world remade. But when I defied the family's will and confessed my faith, the path before us brutally diverged. He was the future of the dynasty; I… was the outcast, the heretic.
The day I lost everything and was cast out, he had knelt before me, tears streaming down his face, vowing to abandon all, to leave with me. But I had taken his trembling hand and shaken my head, my own unshed tears burning my eyes. I could not let him turn his magnificent future to ash for my sake.
Perhaps, it is only when you truly love, that you must let each other go in the most agonizing way imaginable. He would remain in the heart of the family, an unseen shield for me; I would walk the wilderness of the world, guided by the light he would vow to keep alive for me.
He remained in the family. But it was not submission. In silence, he swore an oath to become my strongest shield, my sharpest sword, from within. Without him, I might have been lost long ago, adrift in the vast, treacherous ocean of information, unable to find the island of truth. The 'key' he secretly pressed into my hand was a clandestine passage to the top-tier AI, 'Cassandra.'
'Cassandra' hears every whisper of the world, mocks even Babel's colossal surveillance network, and lays bare their deepest secrets and most rapacious schemes before my eyes with chilling clarity. Kai, when he first became known to the world as the "Kingdom Builder," the fact that I could instantly read the biblical codes in his investment patterns and predict his next moves as if they were my own – it was all thanks to Cassandra, and to Mordecai's unseen, unwavering devotion from the shadows.
Of course, with this power, I could have amassed another fortune. Perhaps built an empire even greater than the one my family had stolen from me. But my goal was never something so… terrestrial. I simply wanted to prove it. That the apocalyptic revelations heralding the end of the world were not mere ancient myths, but a reality unfolding right before our eyes, twisted by human greed and arrogance. And in the midst of that vast conflagration of ruin and judgment, I wanted to find even a single, tiny ray of light, a possibility of a new beginning. Perhaps… with the strange premonition that Kai, this enigmatic 'Kingdom Builder,' might be the one to seek that light with me, or even be that light itself.
It will take time for Kai to know me, to understand the vast, shadowed world I inhabit and the colossal secret I carry. But it doesn't matter. I already knew. We would meet, in the very near future, as if drawn by an unseen celestial current. And the premonition of that meeting, the sense that it might be the beginning of a storm that would shake the very foundations of the world, strangely made my heart pound not with fear, but with a bizarre excitement, a solemn, resolute beat like that of a soldier before the final, decisive battle.
That together, in a way no one could ever dare to imagine, we would rewrite the final, blood-soaked page of this collapsing world… I was already seeing it.