Six Months Ago

A young girl was running through the forest at an absurd speed, dodging around trees and jumping over bushes like they weren't even there.

"I'm finally done!" she yelled to no one in particular "I can meet Mom!" She had finished her last day of training in the church a few hours ago, and she immediately gathered all her things and bolted out of the city faster than any horse, while the journey back to her small village might have taken a carriage a week of galloping through the roads, she simply bolted at full speed through the sparse forest, and she could already see the village in the distance, getting there in only another minute.

"I'm back!!!" she screamed so all could hear, the people around looking at her as if she was some stranger, but it didn't take long before someone recognized her.

"Lily?!" she looked around, seeing an old lady with a shocked face and a few white hairs growing on her scalp.
"Aunty Beth! I'm done with my hero training now! Is my mom home?" she had asked the head priest multiple times if she could meet her mother in the past two years, but he always said she had to finish her training first, or else she'd get distracted. And now she was done! But..
"Oh, Lily..." Aunty said, with a strained face "Come with me for a bit." she beckoned the child to an area with fewer people around "Lily, you're.. all grown up now, I barely recognized you even though it's only been two years.."
"Is that right? I've been busy so, so i can't really tell the difference I guess." she laughed softly "So, aunty, aunty! Where's mom at?" Aunty Beth seemed to want to tell her something, is there something wrong? If her mother is sick she can just heal her with holy magic! She's strong now!
"sigh, Lily, follow me for a bit, will you?"

---

"..What?" she must've misheard. "What did you say?!" there's no way...
"It started around a year ago, she suddenly got sick and, just last month she.."
"What do you mean!" she yelled "That's not possible! The church... The church is meant to-" Tearing up by now, she got interrupted
"The church is meant to protect the Hero's family, that's correct but.. Lily... No one from the church has come to visit for the past two years.."
"..." she couldn't hold herself back anymore, and just broke down crying in Beth's arms "I-It's m-my fault! I-If I got here a month earlier I could've-"
"Shh, Nothing is your fault girl, don't blame yourself over something you didn't even know about" Beth cooed into her ears, hugging the crying mess that was Lily by this point "If you want, you can come to my house.."
"sob" "N-no" the girl kept shivering, as if there was a snowstorm outside. She had come to her house with Beth to see her mother but... "C-Can you.. Just leave me alone for a bit?" she asked
"Alright, it's fine, I'll wait outside, okay?" Beth answered, trying her best to comfort the girl
"Mmh, okay..." Lily answered, unbeknownst to Beth with a dangerous glint in her eyes "I'll- I'll come to see you in a few minutes"
"Alright, be safe, okay?" the old lady said, clearly worried for who she clearly considered one of her own, even if they weren't actually related, she was something of a second mother to Lily ever since her father died fighting off a bear just a week before she was born "Zack will be happy to see you, remember him? You two have so many things to catch up on!" she said, helping Lily sit on the couch and then leaving through the door, standing a few meters away from the house, clearly giving the girl some space.

Lily tried wiping away her tears, but they just kept coming so she decided to ignore them. Looking around the wooden house, clearly abandoned for a month now, memories bubbling up to the surface so intensely, she tried closing her eyes but it just made the images clearer, her favorite meat and potato soup, her mother's delicious cooking, her tight embrace and comforting words when she scraped her knee while playing outside, or when she fell off her favorite tree and her mom had caught her..
"Mom..." She ran up to the second floor, to her mother's bedroom hoping for something, anything, a miracle even... "Mom?" Not here.. her own room? "Mom?" Nothing... "M-Mom.. I'll find you for sure.." The girl tightened her grip on her sword by her waist... "With this.." In the blink of an eye, the girl unsheathed her weapon and immediately tried stabbing her own heart, however... "Damn it!" a barrier instantly formed beneath her sword, a Hero is not allowed to die so easily. She felt it in her gut. She would need something much stronger to meet her mother... «Holy Arrow!» she said, empowering her holy spell, but it simply disintegrated on contact with her.. "sob" "sob" "Mom... I'm sorry..."

"After that, I had to come to the demon continent... I tried many things, fire magic, earth magic, and drowning, but nothing worked though, holy magic always kept me alive or completely shielded me. I thought I had done it when I passed out after jumping off a cliff, but I still woke up in a pool of blood not too long after that..." the girl said, or rather, Lily said.
'sigh, this girl..' "So you want to die so you can meet your mother, and since only I, the Demon Queen, can kill you, you came to my castle, is that correct?" she asked to make sure, clearly something within the girl must have snapped when she blamed herself for her mother's death, such a leap in logic can't be made by any normal child...
"Mm," she nodded.
"Look, Lily, do you think your mother would wish to see you like this? I'm sure that she would like you to live your own life and be happy, you know?" she stated the obvious, something this girl had clearly missed 'not that I can relate to it, but...' she felt bad for the girl, even if she didn't have a child herself, she could feel the pain a mother might when looking at her child doing such things...
"T-That.." Lily's brows scrunched "That doesn't matter! I just have to meet with Mom again! Nothing else matters!" her voice raised, and her holy power flared even through the collar suppressing it, threatening to break it.
She lunged forward and hugged the girl, even with the heat searing her skin "Shh, It's okay, I'm here, I'll stay here. I won't go anywhere, alright?" she said, ignoring her pain, she had more important things to worry about, after all.
"hic, a-ah, I-I'm sorry, I didn't mean to-"
"Don't worry about it, I wouldn't be the Demon Queen if I couldn't handle this much." It's the truth, after all, the Hero and the Demon Lord are the strongest beings alive at any time, and they're supposedly always fated to fight each other, however... "I've decided. I, Lilith Purpura, will adopt Lily, The Hero, as my daughter!"
"Huh?" Lily was very confused.

Nory

Yo! I suddenly had a revelation about chapter 1, so here it is! By the way, this story won't have any fixed update time, I'll update it whenever I feel like it, and I might write more or less depending on how I'm feeling. By the way, I rewrote some parts of the prologue, added a few things and stuff, and I also added a poll for the future of the story, I'll still do mostly whatever I feel like, but I'll keep in mind any suggestions I find interesting, this is the first ever time I write any story, so if you got any tips for me, go ahead and say it, also tell me if you guys like the formatting, or do you wish I gave more space in between dialogue lines?