There is a certain understanding we have of paradise and hell. I had that too. How wrong I was.

When we met, I was starved - starved from cold nights and grey skies that had stretched across years.
He was brilliant, at first. Emotional depths, I thought, distant in a way that mirrored my own.
I didn’t see the sharp smile, the teeth glinting behind it. Power and control shaped every move he made,
softened only by words I mistook for poetry.

It took time. Glances, hints, nothing serious at first - but they grew, day by day, like embers catching flame.
He knew I was not one falling easily. Finally, we agreed to meet in a quiet café, the air thick with coffee
and unspoken promises. At some point, he took my hand, his grip warm yet commanding.
Then, something shifted. The café dimmed, its chatter dissolving into a void.
A night sky unfurled before me, studded with stars - ancient, newborn, pulsing with secrets.
Two vast silhouettes loomed against the cosmic expanse, their edges shimmering with celestial light.
I reached out, heart racing, as if I could graze their divine forms. An eternity passed in a breath.
Then the darkness receded, the café’s hum returning, and he sat there, watching me, as if nothing had happened.

I was awake, truly awake, the vision as real as the pulse in my veins. It shook me to my core and still does today.
A glimpse of paradise, I thought. A sign, surely. It was, but not for me and him.
Somewhere, a god froze in shock of my misinterpretation.

We met again. He is the one, I told myself, ignoring the warnings. The promise of paradise was so tempting,
so seductive, its call drowning out the whispers of its eternal foe.

He called me Eve, smirking. “I always see you with that apple.” I thought it was a lover’s jest.
For him, it was a challenge, one he craved for long. To me, Eve was freedom, the spark of wisdom born from defiance.
My belief pure and innocent. Eyes in the dark longing for this, which I couldn’t see.

A dance of back and forth began. Stolen kisses, fleeting touches, but never a true claim. “Little Eve,” he’d say,
pride gleaming in his rejection, as if my desire fueled his twisted fire. I tried harder, convinced, I had seen it in the skies.
Hell deceives, a lesson I’d forgotten, clothed in a black net woven of silk and promises.
Desires unlived but kindled are hell’s elegant weapons.

A day came when I was done. I hated how he looked at me, how “Eve” dripped from his lips like a curse.
His words felt corrupt, blasphemous, but striking too deeply to resist. Yet he begged, almost, and said,
“I will come tonight.” A bait so perfectly served. Something in his voice rekindled my belief in paradise.

That night was magical, an enchantment. Every word he spoke lowered my guards, a hypnotizing spell I couldn’t see.
I stood there, no walls, only naked skin. He, in his expensive suit, gazed at me, eyes dark with desire and
a will of steel, cruel, yet brimming with lust and shadow. “No,” he said, “I will resist you, little Eve.”
His laughter roared from the deepest lairs of hell.

A blade in my back, a hundred in my heart. More than pain, a soul’s core laid bare, ready to be devoured by hell’s hunger.
But somehow, I had fire still and burned the darkness away. Hell is cold, a truth seldom told.

I stood, barely, as he left, then fell to my knees. Is this what they mean by a fallen angel?
The darkest night followed. Hours vanished. The pain unbearable and my mind collapsed, nearly.
A knife lay in my hand, but I set it down. No blood spilled that night, especially not mine.
It tore me apart, every fiber of my being. I thought of the silhouettes, how wrong I was. A god somewhere watched, waiting.
Years passed before I understood.
That night, I died and was reborn. The silence was infinite.

The Dark Night of the Soul, they call it. Little do they know, it’s the walk from hell to paradise.
Only then can we reach the golden shores, not as a gift, but as a truth forged in fire.
Eve, from somewhere, looked at me, knowing, smiling. She knows I will succeed, as did she.