The Goddess turned her luminous gaze upon the queen once more, and when she spoke, her voice had lost all trace of warmth.
The maternal gentleness that had softened her words moments before hardened into something sharper, colder, more terrible—the voice of a deity who had seen empires crumble and was not afraid to watch another fall.
"My descendant," she said, and each syllable fell like a stone dropped into still water, sending ripples of dread across the gathered assembly. The very air seemed to grow heavy, pressing down upon the shoulders of every elf who knelt upon that mountaintop.
"I had thought so highly of you. In all my centuries of watching over this kingdom, I had believed you to be wiser than any queen who came before. I had trusted your judgment. I had honored your decisions. I had taken pride in calling you blood of my blood, descendant of my lineage, keeper of my sacred trust."
She paused, and the silence that followed was more terrible than any words.
"But this decision of yours is the worst I have ever witnessed."
The queen remained bowed, her forehead pressed against the cold stone, her Golden-brown hair spread around her like a shroud woven from autumn leaves.
She did not rise.
She did not defend herself.
She did not offer excuses or explanations. She simply listened, her tears falling onto the stones beneath her, her shoulders trembling with the effort of holding herself together.
"It will bring disaster upon your kingdom," the Goddess continued, her voice sharpening like a blade being drawn from its sheath. "It will awaken forces that have slumbered since the world was young—forces that even I hesitate to name. It will invite ruin, suffering, and death upon every soul within these borders, from the highest elder to the lowest servant, from the oldest warrior to the newest babe."
She leaned forward, her luminous form casting the queen in shadow.
"Have you considered this, my descendant? Have you weighed the life of one child against the lives of millions? Have you measured his suffering against the suffering you will bring upon your own people?"
The queen lifted her head slowly.
Her face was wet with tears. Her eyes were red from weeping, swollen from the hours of grief that had not ceased since the arena fell silent. Her lips were cracked and dry. Her hands, clasped before her, trembled like leaves in a storm.
But her voice, when she spoke, was steady as the roots of the World Tree itself.
"I am sorry, Great One. I cannot do that. I cannot forsake this child."
The Goddess's light flared.
The radiance that had been warm and gentle exploded outward, washing over the mountaintop in a wave of pure, blinding brilliance. Her form, which had been calm and luminous, began to pulse with the rhythm of building fury—a heartbeat of divine anger that resonated through the stones, through the air, through the very bones of every elf who knelt there.
The sacred pond rippled violently, waves splashing over its glowing edges, water turning to steam where it touched the heated stones. The ground beneath their knees grew hot, then hotter, until the elders shifted uncomfortably, their ancient robes pressing against skin that had begun to sweat despite the cold.
The knights clutched their swords, not as weapons but as anchors, something to hold onto in the face of divine wrath.
"Are you so determined," the Goddess said, her voice cold as the void between stars, cold as the darkness that had swallowed the Dreadvex Ape's head, cold as the grave that awaited all mortal things, "to destroy my lineage? To see the bloodline of Sylvaris crumble to dust beneath the weight of your misplaced compassion?"
Her light pulsed with each word.
"I have watched over this kingdom since the First Seed was planted in the primordial soil. I have nurtured it through drought and flood, through plague and famine, through war and peace. I have guided it, protected it, sheltered it beneath my branches. And now you would cast it all aside—ten thousand years of history, of sacrifice, of love—for the sake of a child born from sin?"
The World Tree, which had been shining brilliantly under heaven's light, went black.
Not the black of night—not the soft, velvety darkness that blankets the world when the sun has set, the darkness that children learn not to fear. This was a deeper black, a terrible black, the black of nightmare made manifest and given form.
The leaves that had glowed with golden light now hung limp and colorless, their luminescence extinguished as if a candle had been snuffed out by an unseen hand. The bark that had shimmered with silver veins now stood dark as charcoal, dark as ash, dark as the heart of a dying star. The sap that had flowed through the tree's ancient veins—the sap that was the blood of Sylvaris itself—slowed, thickened, darkened.
The World Tree had become a dark oak structure.
Still alive—the Goddess would not let it die—but drained of its glory. Stripped of its beauty. The colors that had painted the kingdom since before memory began faded to gray and black and the deep brown of old wood left too long in the rain.
It looked less like the home of elves and more like a monument to mourning.
The queen wept.
Her tears fell onto the stones, and the stones drank them, and the stones remained cold.
But she did not relent.
"Great One," she said, her voice cracking but not breaking, the words forced through a throat tight with grief. "I cannot forsake this child. Even if I lose my throne. Even if my name is struck from the records of history and my statues are toppled and my memory is cursed. Even if I am remembered only as the queen who failed—I cannot abandon him."
She lifted her head, meeting the Goddess's blazing gaze.
"I cannot."
The Goddess was silent for a long moment.
The wind, which had ceased when her fury rose, began to blow again—soft at first, then stronger, carrying the scent of leaves and earth and distant rain. The World Tree's color slowly returned, the black fading to brown, the brown to gold, the gold to the familiar shimmer of life and light that had always marked the home of the elves.
But the Goddess's light did not return to warmth.
"Your reason for going so far," she said, her voice quieter now, but no less intense. "There must be something I have not seen. Something that makes this decision so difficult that even the elders—who have served this kingdom for millennia, who have counseled queens through every trial and tribulation—have chosen to stand with you."
She looked at Theilon, at Seraphine, at Thorn, at all the ancient beings who knelt before her.
"Not only the elders," she continued, "but the whole kingdom, if what I sense from their prayers is true. The people of Sylvaris have never been difficult to read. Their hopes, their fears, their loves—they rise to me like smoke from a fire. And I smell in their prayers... compassion. For this child. For this human child whom they have never met."
She looked back at the queen.
"So I ask you again, my descendant. Why have you gone so far? What is it about this boy that has moved an entire kingdom to mercy?"
The queen lifted her head.
"Great One," she said. "He is One of us."
The Goddess paused.
Her light, which had been pulsing with lingering fury, slowed. The rhythm of her radiance softened, becoming less like a war drum and more like a heartbeat. The rage in her voice dimmed, replaced by something that sounded almost like confusion—an emotion she had not felt in millennia, an emotion she had thought herself incapable of feeling.
"One of us?" she repeated, as if testing the words, as if tasting them for poison.
The queen rose from her bow, though she kept her posture humble, her hands clasped before her, her head slightly bowed. She did not approach the Goddess—that would be presumptuous, that would be disrespectful—but she stood tall enough to be seen.
"Great One, he was created using royal blood. The Human who made him—the ones who called themselves Graduate Novens—they stole the blood of our lineage. The memory reading revealed that it happened long ago."
She paused, gathering her strength.
"His veins carry the essence of Sylvaris. The blood of our ancestors flows through his heart. He may have been born in a laboratory, in a tank of glass and steel, but the blood in his veins is the blood of queens."
Her voice grew stronger.
"And the very law you taught us, Great One—the law that has guided our people since the First Seed was planted—states clearly: You shall never forsake your own blood. You shall never harm your own kin. For the blood of the World Tree runs through all who share it, and to wound one is to wound the tree itself."
She stepped forward, just one step, her hands opening at her sides.
"So how can we forsake him, Great One? How can we harm him? For he has our race's blood flowing through his veins. He is kin, no matter how he was created. He is family, no matter how he came to be. He is—" Her voice cracked. "He is ours.....My Child."
The Goddess's form stilled.
The light that pulsed from her—that had been blazing and flickering and flaring—settled into a steady, contemplative glow. The radiance that surrounded her dimmed slightly, as if she was turning her attention inward, searching her own ancient memory for truths she had long buried.
"Oh," she said.
The single syllable carried the weight of centuries.
"Oh."
Her hand, still extended toward Yuuta, trembled slightly.
"To think that humans would dare to steal royal blood," she continued, her voice still cold but no longer furious. The anger had drained away, replaced by something more complex—disbelief, resignation, and a sorrow that seemed to stretch back to the dawn of time. "To think they would have the audacity—the blasphemy—to mix our sacred essence with their mortal flesh. To take the blood of queens and pour it into a weapon."
She looked at Yuuta—at the small, broken child standing behind Sophia's leg, at his lifeless red eyes, at his pale face and trembling hands.
"And yet," she said, "he is still a living nightmare. The one who defies death. The one who was born to suffer and make others suffer in return. The Human may have used our blood to create him, but they also used something else. Something darker. Something that even I cannot fully see."
The queen bowed again.
"Great One, we ask for your mercy upon him. We have observed his suffering—all of it, from the moment he was created to the moment the Dreadvex Ape fell. We have witnessed his pain, his fear, his desperate love for my daughter. We have seen the scars that cover his body and the wounds that will not heal."
She lifted her head, her eyes meeting the Goddess's luminous gaze.
"Is it so hard to understand why we cannot forsake him now? Is it so difficult to comprehend why a kingdom that has hated humans for ten thousand years would kneel before a human child and beg for his forgiveness?"
The Goddess was silent.
The wind continued to blow, softer now, carrying the scent of rain that had not yet fallen. The stars above, which had been hidden by the darkness of the World Tree's transformation, began to appear again—pinpricks of light in the vast expanse of the void.
The Goddess sighed.
It was a long, weary sound—the sigh of a being who had lived too long, seen too much, and could not forget the wars that had scarred the world. It was the sigh of a mother watching her children make mistakes she could not prevent, the sigh of a teacher watching her students struggle with lessons they had refused to learn.
"The Silent War," the Goddess murmured, almost to herself. Her voice was soft now, distant, as if she was speaking to herself rather than to the gathered elves. "The bloodshed. The betrayal. The children who were taken and never returned. I had hoped... I had hoped that age was behind us. I had hoped that the wounds had healed. But now..."
She looked at Yuuta.
"Now I see that the wounds never healed. They simply waited."
She stretched out her hand.
"Bring him to me," she said.
The queen's heart leaped in her chest. She rose from her knees, her legs trembling, her hands reaching toward her daughter and the child she held.
Sophia stood with Yuuta behind her, her green eyes wild and suspicious. She had heard nothing of the conversation—the Goddess had kept her words from the child's ears, and so from Sophia's as well, for the broken princess could only perceive what Yuuta perceived—but she understood what her mother intended.
She growled.
The sound was low and dangerous, a warning from a mother wolf to anyone who dared approach her cub. Her bandaged hands gripped Yuuta's shoulders, pulling him closer, pressing him against her back. Her green eyes, wild and unfocused, fixed on the queen with an intensity that bordered on violence.
The queen stepped forward slowly, carefully, her hands raised where Sophia could see them. Her palms were empty. Her fingers were spread. She made no sudden movements, no aggressive gestures.
"Trust me, my daughter," the queen said softly. Her voice was gentle, soothing, the voice she had used when Sophia was small and frightened of the dark. "I will bring no harm to your younger brother."
Sophia's growl faltered.
The words younger brother seemed to pierce through the fog of her broken mind, reaching something that had survived the Froven wolf's death roar, something that had refused to shatter even when everything else had crumbled. Her green eyes searched her mother's face for any sign of deception, any hint of cruelty, any echo of the woman who had smiled while the Dreadvex Ape broke a child's bones.
The queen did not look away.
She did not blink.
She held her daughter's gaze with all the love she had failed to show over the years, all the tenderness she had buried beneath centuries of cold rule and colder decisions, all the desperation of a mother who had nearly lost everything and was determined to hold on to what remained.
Sophia's grip on Yuuta loosened.
Not completely—she would never completely let go, could not completely let go, for Yuuta had become as essential to her as breathing, as fundamental to her existence as her own heartbeat. But she loosened enough for the queen to step forward and lift the child into her arms.
Yuuta did not react.
He had been carried so many times. By scientists who hurt him. By elves who hated him. By strangers who saw him as a weapon or a monster or a thing to be disposed of. He had learned, through years of pain, that being carried meant nothing. It did not mean safety. It did not mean love. It simply meant that someone had decided to move his body from one place to another.
His red eyes remained lifeless.
His face remained blank.
He did not cling to the queen's neck as a child should. He did not wrap his arms around her. He did not bury his face in her shoulder. He simply lay in her arms—limp and unresisting, his small body held against her chest, his chest rising and falling with breaths that seemed to cost him everything.
The queen rubbed his head gently as she carried him.
Her fingers smoothed his black hair, working through the tangles, feeling the warmth of his scalp beneath her palm. She whispered soft words to him—apologies in languages he did not understand, promises he could not hear, endearments that meant nothing to a child who had never been loved—but he did not seem to hear.
He simply stared at nothing.
Waiting.
Always waiting.
She placed him before the altar.
Yuuta stood on the cold stone, swaying slightly, his small hands hanging at his sides. His bandaged feet—for the healers had wrapped even his feet, protecting wounds that had not yet closed—were bare against the ancient rock. His black hair lifted in the wind.
He was so small.
So terribly, heartbreakingly small.
He looked up at the figure of light—the Goddess of the World Tree, Root and Soul, the divine being who had watched over Sylvaris since before memory began, since before the elves had learned to speak, since before the world had taken its current shape.
The figure was warm.
It was lively.
It glowed with a gentle radiance that seemed to reach out to him, wrapping around him like a blanket, like a mother's arms, like the warmth he had never known in his short, terrible life.
For the first time since the arena, Yuuta blinked.
Not the slow, lifeless blink of a child lost in the fog of trauma—that blink that spoke of exhaustion so profound that even blinking required effort. A real blink. Curious and uncertain, as if he was trying to understand what he was seeing, as if some small part of him that had not been destroyed by pain was struggling to wake up.
His lips parted.
No sound came out.
But his eyes—those red, lifeless, terrible eyes—did not look away.
Erza and Isvarn, standing at the edge of the altar, found that they could hear again.
The silence that had fallen over the mountaintop lifted like a fog before the morning sun, and the sounds of the world returned—the whisper of wind through the branches, the soft murmur of the sacred pond, the breathing of the elders and the knights and the queen. The Goddess's magic, which had blocked the words from Yuuta's ears, did not block them from Erza's.
She heard everything.
The Goddess looked down at Yuuta.
She raised her hand.
Her fingers—formed of light but solid as flesh, glowing with power but gentle as a mother's touch—reached toward the child's head.
The elders gasped.
None of them had ever seen the Goddess touch a mortal. In ten thousand years of prayers and offerings, of pleas and petitions, of desperate cries for help in times of war and famine and plague, she had never once laid her divine hand upon a living being. She spoke. She listened. She guided. But she did not touch.
Except now.
Her fingers rested on Yuuta's black hair, and she looked into his red eyes, and she saw.
She saw beneath his skin without lifting his clothes—for what need did a Goddess have for cloth and flesh? She saw the scars that covered his body. The long, thin lines of whips that had been wielded by hands that did not care. The circular burns of cigarettes and brands, each one a small, perfect circle of agony. The jagged cuts of knives and broken glass, some shallow, some deep, some that had scraped bone.
She saw the holes.
The perfect, circular holes where needles had been forced into his flesh again and again, in the same places, week after week, month after month, until the skin had given up trying to heal. The holes were everywhere—on his arms, on his legs, on his chest, on his back, on his neck. Some had been made once. Some had been made dozens of times. The scar tissue around them was thick and white and dead.
She saw his ribs, cracked and healed and cracked again, the bones thicker in some places where they had mended poorly, thinner in others where the healing had been incomplete.
She saw his legs, broken and set and broken again, the bones no longer straight, no longer aligned, held together by nothing but stubborn flesh and the will to survive.
She saw his organs—his heart, his lungs, his liver, his kidneys—each one damaged by the poisons they had injected into him, each one struggling to function, each one a testament to the cruelty of those who had made him.
And she saw his soul.
The Goddess's hand trembled.
Her light flickered—not with anger this time, but with something else. Something that looked almost like grief.
"Oh," she whispered, and her voice was small now, small and sad and filled with a sorrow that seemed to stretch back to the beginning of time. "Oh, child. What have they done to you?"
Yuuta did not answer.
He simply stood beneath her hand, his red eyes staring up at her, waiting.
The Goddess saw more.
She saw the suffering that was carved into his very soul—not just the pain of the laboratory, not just the terror of the Death, not just the agony of the arena. All of it. Every moment of torture. Every second of fear. Every heartbeat of despair. Every needle, every burn, every broken bone, every tear he had ever shed.
It was etched into the fabric of his being.
Inseparable from his existence.
Part of who he was.
And she saw something else.
Something that made her hand tremble even more.
"His suffering," the Goddess said, her voice barely audible, a whisper that seemed to come from very far away, "is so deep that leaving it within him... leaving his memories intact... it is like a time bomb waiting to destroy Nova."
She looked up at the queen.
"We have to seal his memory."
The queen's face went pale—paler than it had been in the arena, paler than it had been during the three days of memory reading, paler than the stones upon which she knelt.
The elders stirred, murmuring among themselves, their ancient faces troubled. Memory sealing was not unknown to them—it had been used before, in cases of extreme trauma, when the weight of the past threatened to crush the present. But never at the command of a Goddess. Never for a child so young. Never for a child whose memories were so terrible.
"What does that mean, Great One?" the queen asked.
The Goddess's hand remained on Yuuta's head.
"It means," she said, "that we must remove his memories. Not destroy them—they can never be destroyed, for they are woven into his soul as thread is woven into cloth. But seal them. Lock them away where they cannot reach him. Where they cannot poison his dreams and twist his heart and turn him into the weapon the scientists wanted him to be."
She looked down at Yuuta.
"If we do nothing… he will not survive. His soul will shatter. And when it does, its fragments will scatter across Nova. Each fragment will carry his suffering… and each will seek revenge for what was done to him—against all who stood and watched… including your kingdom.
The world will burn, my descendant. Not in fire… but in grief."
The Queen's hands trembled.
"…Our kingdom as well?"
The goddess's gaze did not waver.
"Yes. You have already wounded him. Your name has been carved into the depths of his soul—into his pain, into his hatred. When he rises, he will come for you… and for the kingdom that allowed him to suffer."
The Queen's mind screamed. Fear gripped her heart like ice.
"T-Then… what must we do?" she whispered.
The goddess closed her eyes, as if the answer itself was a sin.
"We must seal his memories. Erase the past that binds him to this pain… and let him live the rest of his life in peace—never remembering what was taken from him and his life will be gone forver."
"Then seal them, Great One. Please. Save him From Grief."
The Goddess nodded slowly.
"I shall," she said. "But this is not a simple sealing. This is the highest level of memory magic—the Crown of Seven Sealed Memories. It has not been used since the world was young, since the first elves walked beneath these branches. It will require all of my power, and even then, it may not be enough."
She looked at the queen, at the elders, at all the gathered elves.
"But I will try. For this child. For the blood that flows in his veins. For the suffering he has endured and should never have been asked to bear."
She raised both hands now, placing them on either side of Yuuta's head.
Her light blazed.
And the seal began to form.
To be Contiuned...