Chapter 146 – Sleep Where the Fire Is Soft
Midnight came quietly.
The sky beyond the Elwood house had gone dark, the stars veiled in soft clouds drifting over the rooftops. The city was still — no sirens, no honking horns, no magic pulses in the air. Just a calm night after a day filled with revelations and fire.
In the lab below, the screens had dimmed. The data was secured, encrypted, hidden behind Alex's multi-layered locks. There was no more to extract, no more to chase. Not yet.
They needed rest.
Especially her.
Hanabi followed Alex and Ciel upstairs, stretching her arms with a yawn she didn't try to hide. Her legs were heavier than she expected — not from exhaustion, but from the weight of everything she had just heard, seen, and felt. Even fire had limits.
"Guess I'll take the couch," Hanabi muttered, rubbing the back of her neck. "Unless you've got a closet that opens into a hot spring."
Alex glanced over his shoulder. "We have a guest room."
Hanabi raised a brow. "Does it have emotional support charm pillows?"
"No," Alex said flatly.
Ciel giggled beside him. "But our bed does."
Hanabi blinked.
"…Wait. Our bed?"
Ciel nodded, as if she were discussing something mundane, like laundry or tea. "I sleep with him every night."
Hanabi's brain skipped a beat.
"You—what?"
Ciel tilted her head. "I used to sleep in the symbol, but after I got a body, I started sleeping next to him. It helps me feel human. And connected."
Alex said nothing. He just kept walking up the stairs with the casual pace of someone who had accepted this arrangement long ago.
Hanabi stood frozen for half a step. Then stormed up after them.
"You sleep next to him. Every night. Without telling me?"
"You didn't ask," Ciel replied cheerfully.
"I just got here!"
"And now you are here," Ciel said, smiling as she slid open Alex's bedroom door. "Which means you're welcome, too."
Hanabi stopped in the hallway.
"…You're inviting me?"
"Yes."
Ciel walked inside with the grace of someone who had already claimed the right — not by dominance, but by love. She turned back toward Hanabi and added with soft sincerity:
"We're not rivals anymore. Right?"
Hanabi stared.
Ciel's golden eyes glowed faintly in the hallway light.
Hanabi exhaled, slowly. Then stepped into the room.
The space was simple, clean, a bit too neat for someone as chaotic as Hanabi — but it felt lived in. And somehow, even before she sat down on the edge of the bed, it felt like somewhere she belonged.
Ciel had already pulled the blanket aside. Alex was removing his coat in the corner, quiet as always.
"I snore when I'm nervous," Hanabi muttered.
"I hum lullabies in my sleep," Ciel replied.
"I hog the blanket."
"I wrap around people."
"…Are you trying to scare me?"
"No," Ciel said sweetly, climbing under the blanket. "I'm preparing you."
Hanabi snorted, tossed her hoodie into a corner, and slid into the other side of the bed.
Alex climbed in last, silent, and laid between them.
The bed creaked once.
No one spoke for a while.
Until Hanabi whispered into the dark—
"…This is weird."
Ciel replied with a smile in her voice. "This is family."
And for once…
Hanabi didn't argue.
The early morning light slipped in through the edge of the curtains, soft and golden, painting the room in the warm hush of a day not yet begun.
Birds chirped faintly beyond the window.
Inside the bedroom, it was quiet — the world held in stillness and shared breath.
Alex lay between them, still asleep, one hand resting loosely beside his head, the other just grazing the blanket.
Ciel had already stirred.
Her golden eyes fluttered open moments ago, focused on the ceiling. She was still, peaceful, her silver hair fanned across the pillow like threads of moonlight.
And then beside her, she heard it — the soft shift of fabric, the tiny exhale of someone else waking up.
Hanabi.
She blinked a few times, adjusting to the morning haze, then looked to her right and found Ciel already awake and watching her.
"…You're up early," Hanabi whispered.
Ciel gave a serene smile. "So are you."
Hanabi stretched slightly under the blanket but didn't move from the bed. Her fingers fidgeted with the corner of the sheet.
They lay there quietly, Alex's soft breathing between them, the warmth of the blanket shared between fire and light.
Then Ciel spoke again — gently, as if she were sharing a secret rather than making a suggestion.
"You should give him a morning kiss."
Hanabi froze.
"…What?"
Ciel tilted her head slightly toward Alex. "It's something I do every day. When he wakes up."
Hanabi's face went red — fast and furious.
"You—what—you do that?! Every morning?!"
Ciel nodded sweetly, eyes aglow with calm pride. "It's one of the ways I remind him he's loved."
Hanabi's heart was going haywire. Her yandere instincts — usually stormy and possessive — now flared up, not with rage, but with burning, overwhelming embarrassment.
She opened her mouth to say something, closed it, opened it again, then buried half her face into the blanket.
Ciel waited patiently.
Then Hanabi whispered, just barely audible:
"…Thanks for the idea."
Ciel giggled softly. "You're welcome."
A pause.
Then Hanabi peeked out from the blanket again, cheeks still burning.
"…You're not mad?"
"Why would I be?" Ciel said, her voice soft as wind. "We both love him, don't we?"
Hanabi bit her lip, eyes flicking toward the sleeping boy between them.
He looked so peaceful.
So completely unaware of the chaos blooming on either side of him.
"…This feels like cheating," she muttered under her breath.
Ciel smiled, leaning in just slightly. "Then make it count."
Hanabi groaned softly and buried her face again — but the smallest of smiles tugged at her lips.
The morning quiet held for just a little longer.
Alex shifted slightly under the blanket, his breathing deeper now — not quite asleep, but not fully awake either. His eyes remained closed, his body relaxed between the warmth of two steady heartbeats.
Hanabi stared at him.
Her pulse pounded louder than the birds outside.
She turned to Ciel, who simply gave her an encouraging nod, her golden eyes gentle and reassuring.
Now or never.
Slowly, trying not to let her hands tremble, Hanabi leaned forward.
Her hair brushed the edge of his shoulder. Her lips hovered just above his cheek. For a second, she hesitated.
Then—
She kissed him.
Soft.
Brief.
Warm.
When she pulled back, her face was already red.
But she still whispered, with a voice shakier than she wanted,
"…Good morning."
Alex's eyes opened.
They were still calm — but now filled with the faintest glint of surprise. And something warmer beneath it.
He turned slightly toward her, lips parting as if to speak.
But then—
Ciel leaned in from the other side, pressed a kiss to his other cheek, and echoed sweetly,
"Good morning."
Alex blinked once.
Then again.
Then let his head fall gently back onto the pillow.
"…This is going to become a routine, isn't it?"
"Yes," Ciel answered instantly.
Hanabi buried her face in the blanket again, groaning.
"Please don't say it like that…"
But Alex just closed his eyes again with a sigh that somehow sounded more like peace than protest.
Outside, the sun rose quietly.
And inside, the boy once alone in every world…
Now woke up to love on both sides.
Chapter 147 – The World Stirs
What Alex unleashed had already outpaced him.
Even as dawn broke quietly over rooftops and morning light crept through kitchen windows, the deeper world — the one hidden beneath governments and temples — had begun to awaken with thunder in its lungs.
The data wasn't just irrefutable.
It was undeniable.
Undeniably true.
Undeniably damning.
And for the first time in decades, the forces that usually walked in shadows were forced to face each other in the open.
The Magic Association, headquartered in Vienna, moved first.
When the encrypted archive hit their internal servers, it wasn't disbelief that met it — it was recognition.
Some of the files were once in their hands.
Some names were familiar.
Some documents bore stamps that had been quietly retired years ago.
And with that recognition came a brutal clarity:
Hideomi Tenkawa had lied to them.
He had presented falsified reports, edited casualty records, redacted experimentation protocols. For years, he had told them that the early projects were dismantled, the rogue researchers purged, the ethics violations contained.
They believed him.
Now they knew they had been used.
And their credibility hung by a thread.
Within hours, the High Council of the Association convened behind closed doors.
They reviewed the evidence again. Then again. Then in silence.
Until the Archmage of Internal Oversight stood and declared, in a voice that carried to every senior chair:
"We cannot cleanse the blood from our hands—
But we will not let this stain remain untouched."
The council voted unanimously.
Tenkawa would be charged.
His hidden networks would be dismantled.
And every name tied to the experiments — whether benefactor, researcher, or witness in silence — would be brought to magical trial.
A formal edict was issued by the Association and sent to every allied magical government:
"We stand with the families. We will bring the guilty to justice.
And we invite independent observers to witness that justice unfold."
It wasn't just self-preservation.
It was survival.
Because if they didn't act now, they knew—
The bloodlines would do it without them.
The Bloodline Families were not so restrained.
The ancient houses moved as only dynasties of old power could — with ceremony and wrath woven together.
In Japan, the Tachibana, Minamoto, and Sōma families sent out fully-armed retrieval divisions, not to negotiate, but to reclaim.
In England, the Ashbourne Coven opened the vaults they hadn't touched since World War II — releasing spellarmors once banned by magical ethics.
In Russia, the Velikov Circle announced the reopening of the Winter War Lodges — a message to all supernatural governments: this is no longer political.
It was personal.
And in Rome, the Vatican's Secret Arcane Division — known simply as Custodes Lux — gathered beneath the black-stained glass of the Hidden Chapel.
They didn't just believe the reports.
They'd seen some of these rituals before.
What shocked them wasn't the cruelty.
It was the sophistication.
One of the senior inquisitors whispered during the meeting:
"This is not heresy by accident. This is heresy with funding."
The Cardinal overseeing the division stood from his seat and said simply:
"The Church does not tolerate sorcery.
But we absolutely do not tolerate unholy science built on the backs of children."
He turned toward the map displayed on the chapel's etherglass.
Red dots flared across the world, each one a site linked to Tenkawa's hidden labs.
"Find them," he said.
"And remind the world that God is still watching."
What began as a whisper…
…was now a storm.
And in the center of it all — unknown to many — a boy who once thought himself ordinary sat between fire and light, preparing for the next strike.
Chapter 148 – When Bloodline Wakes
The sky above the coastal mountains was overcast, heavy with clouds that refused to cry. Wind stirred the cliffs, dry and sharp, like the breath of something that had been waiting for centuries to rise.
Below, nestled into the roots of the granite range, sat one of Hideomi Tenkawa's hidden research outposts — a former monastery turned underground lab. On the surface, it looked abandoned. No markings. No aura. Just stone and silence.
But the moment was short-lived.
Because the bloodlines had arrived.
They came not in secret, but with the unmistakable power of those who do not ask permission.
The Hōjō, the Weisshaupt, the Khoury, the Velikov, and six other families descended upon the location from land, air, and through portal gates opened by ancestral rites — old symbols burned into the ground, their edges crackling with fury and legacy.
No soldiers. No warlocks. No proxies.
Only heirs.
Heads of families.
Wielders of inherited spells older than nations.
They did not knock.
They opened the entrance with force, the wards collapsing under a layered storm of divine fire, dimensional compression, and absolute will.
The sealed gates shattered into dust.
Inside the facility, the researchers who had not yet evacuated scrambled in panic.
They had believed they had time.
They had believed the Association would stall the response.
They had believed the Vatican would hesitate.
But the bloodlines were not bound by law.
They were law.
They swept through the facility like judgment given form.
Spell seals activated.
Security automatons shattered.
The first encounter was merciful: a brief stun ward, a binding chain, a warning.
The second encounter was not.
By the time the deepest chamber doors were breached, the surviving researchers had already begun destroying data.
It didn't matter.
"We already have the files," said Elise Weisshaupt, her silver armor gleaming with runes that whispered vengeance. "Now we've come to collect what was stolen."
They found the chambers.
The sealed rooms.
The containment cells with runic tags etched into bone.
And within them—
Not all victims.
But survivors.
Some were lucid.
Some were unconscious.
All bore the scars of experimentation.
The Hōjō matriarch knelt before a girl whose aura was still flickering with suppression curses. She held the child's face with trembling fingers and whispered something in ancient Japanese — a blessing of return.
The Khoury envoy raised a sigil flare to the sky.
"We have recovered twenty-three."
It was only thirty minutes later that the Magic Association's agents arrived — flash-gated in from Austria, robes trailing wind and indignation.
They stepped into a battlefield already concluded.
Files gone.
Perpetrators bound or broken.
Survivors wrapped in clan-marked cloaks.
The Association enforcers demanded jurisdiction.
The Velikov family archmage laughed.
"We have taken back what is ours. If you wish to claim the rest…"
She stepped aside and gestured to the remaining rooms, where the wounded yet unidentified were still being stabilized.
"…Then act with us. Not above us."
Another hour passed before the Vatican arrived — not in force, but through three Inquisitors clad in white-gold armor, escorted by exorcists bearing the Seal of Saint Auguste.
They said nothing at first.
Just surveyed the halls.
And then spoke one sentence:
"God watches, even when you bury the children beneath the floor."
One site was reclaimed.
One truth exposed.
But this was only the beginning.
Because there were twelve known facilities.
And countless lives yet unaccounted for.
Chapter 149 – No Mercy in the Dawn
They came for the rest like a tidal wave of legacy.
Twelve hidden facilities.
Twelve scars on the magical world's soul.
And now — twelve sites of reckoning.
The bloodline families, the Magic Association, and the Vatican did not wait for consensus. Each moved according to its own code. Some struck like swords. Others judged like courts. And a few… burned like prophecy.
At Facility 3, buried beneath a sealed salt flat in Uzbekistan, the Velikov family broke the teleportation gates with raw stormcraft, shattering the mirrored anchor halls with bolts of ancestral rage. Within minutes, they had subdued the inner defenses and found the mages responsible for the spirit-stitching process — still mid-procedure.
The archmage ordered the spell reversed.
The children survived.
The researchers did not.
Their memories were flayed open, witnessed, then destroyed.
Their bodies were hung upside down in the entrance hall — not for cruelty, but as a warning.
At Facility 5, cloaked beneath a false trade university in Italy, the Ashbourne Coven arrived too late to stop the memory-wipe spell from activating — but just in time to extract the soul-bond logs embedded in the floor. They used forbidden blood-glass to pull the truth from the dying walls themselves.
The administrator was caught attempting to flee through a backdoor spell circle.
They didn't kill him.
They unspelled him.
Removed his name from every spell registry.
Stripped his identity from the collective magical memory.
A punishment so complete… it was as if he never existed.
At Facility 7 in Iceland, the Khoury Dynasty found something worse: the facility had been emptied. Cold. Clean.
Except for one room.
Inside, they found a child. Barely four years old. Crying quietly in a warded cube, surrounded by nine ritual staves meant to record his death as data.
The mage in charge — a woman in her thirties, high-ranking, composed — refused to run. She welcomed judgment.
They gave it to her.
Not by spell.
But by invoking the Oath of Flame — an ancient rite requiring her to feel every pain she had inflicted, multiplied by each victim.
She screamed for seven hours.
And the Khoury didn't look away.
Across the world, fire was the common language.
But not all chose fire.
The Magic Association, embarrassed, enraged, and now desperate to reclaim their reputation, began deploying Justice Writs. These scrolls, backed by global magical consensus, allowed for the immediate capture and magical sealing of anyone proven to be involved with the Tenkawa Network.
They didn't kill.
They sealed.
Frozen in time. Minds preserved for court. Pain paused.
They were to be judged at the International Magical Tribunal, where witnesses — including surviving children — would testify.
It would take time.
But it would be clean.
Or so they claimed.
The Vatican, however, did not wait.
At Facilities 4, 6, and 11 — all deep within Europe's old territories — the Custodes Lux entered in silence.
Clad in white and gold, faces hidden behind mirrored helms, they made no demands.
They gave no warnings.
They arrived, evaluated, and executed.
There was no court.
Only confession.
And if a soul would not confess…
They took it anyway.
The Judgment of Radiance — an ancient Vatican rite — was invoked five times that week. Each time, the surrounding area glowed with divine fire that left no ash.
Their message was clear:
There are sins beyond redemption.
By the end of the second week, ten of the twelve facilities had been purged.
Most of the victims had been recovered.
Some had died.
Some were still missing.
And some were beyond repair — their minds and mana cores fractured beyond healing.
But one truth became clear:
The world had changed.
The illusion of oversight was broken.
And now — every nation, every magical system, every legacy clan — was watching each other more closely than ever before.
But two facilities remained.
Still hidden.
And Tenkawa had vanished.
The final spells faded.
The flames cooled.
The screams ended.
And when the dust settled, when the blood stopped pouring, and the last reinforced vaults were opened—what remained were not curses or corpses, but children.
Some walked out on their own.
Some had to be carried.
Some flinched at light.
Others didn't speak at all.
They were young, most of them.
Six. Nine. Eleven.
A few were teenagers who had stopped counting their birthdays long ago.
Their eyes held memories older than they deserved to carry.
But they were alive.
And now, for the first time in years—
They were free.
In the aftermath of each facility's liberation, the bloodline families began the process of identification.
Some recognized their kin immediately.
A mark behind the ear.
A fragment of spell-song.
A birthright aura once believed extinguished.
These children were taken back into warm arms, returned to ancestral homes that had kept their rooms untouched all these years. They were welcomed with tears, with offerings, with promises of protection that would not be broken again.
But not all children had someone waiting.
Some had no names left.
No sigils.
No bloodline signatures that could be confirmed.
Their records had been erased.
Or never existed to begin with.
These were the forgotten.
And it was for them the world did something rare:
It reached out.
The Magic Association, in a gesture of collective atonement, created the Sanctum Ward Program — a new division offering permanent shelter, education, and magical guidance to any rescued child without a family. For the first time, these children would grow not as experiments, but as students. Apprentices. Citizens.
Several high-ranking officials personally volunteered as mentors.
Some even offered to adopt.
The bloodline families, too, stepped forward.
One by one, noble clans sent envoys requesting custody — not for prestige, but for redemption.
The Weisshaupt family took in a mute girl with blue fire scars.
The Ashbourne Coven adopted a boy whose voice resonated with multiple spell harmonics.
The Hōjō, as penance, pledged to raise four children from different cultures in equal standing with their heirs — an act that stunned the magical community.
And the Vatican?
They opened the gates of the Sancta Nostra Orphanum, a sacred sanctuary that hadn't received new wards in over two centuries.
The youngest survivors — some not even old enough to read — were taken in by the Custodes Lux themselves.
Raised not as weapons.
But as souls to be protected.
One inquisitor was heard telling a weeping boy with shattered hands:
"You do not need to cast spells to be holy."
So much had been destroyed.
But something was being rebuilt.
And though the children had been born in darkness—
Now, they were walking toward the light.
Chapter 150 – The Final Fires Will Burn
This was not the end.
Though twelve facilities had fallen, though survivors had been freed and the world had turned its wrath upon the hidden rot—Hideomi Tenkawa was still alive.
And worse—
He still had followers.
Not ordinary researchers.
Not bought-out mages.
But loyalists.
True believers.
Those who saw Tenkawa not just as a leader—but as a visionary, a prophet of magical evolution.
They called themselves the Loyalists.
They were hiding in the last two sanctuaries — labs not included in the original leaks, protected by powerful concealment barriers, temporal delay wards, and buried beneath remote, long-abandoned structures.
But none of it mattered.
Because Alex already knew where they were.
He stood on the edge of the Black Sand Basin — an abandoned plateau warded by illusions that flickered faintly like broken reflections of light. The air smelled of heat and old metal. A mirage fortress, invisible to satellites, cloaked from magical detection.
But not from him.
Alex raised a hand.
Flicked his wrist once.
The space before them shimmered, collapsed, and peeled open like wet paper, revealing the hidden structure beneath. Black stone, obsidian glass, glowing crimson sigils that hadn't pulsed in decades.
"They really thought this would work?" Hanabi muttered behind him.
"They believed no one would get this far," Ciel said softly.
Alex stepped forward.
"No more hiding."
Inside the first sanctuary, they found six of Tenkawa's Royalists — each cloaked in silver-lined robes, their eyes marked with black-scribed glyphs of loyalty and mind-forging.
They didn't run.
They didn't beg.
They smiled.
"You're too late," said one.
"The Ascension will continue," said another.
Alex didn't argue.
He didn't draw a weapon.
He simply moved.
And within seconds—
All six were on the ground.
Crushed barriers.
Nullified wards.
Two had their arms shattered before they could complete a spell.
One was disarmed before his breath could finish a chant.
The rest didn't even see him move.
They groaned, immobilized, locked in pain fields Alex cast without a word.
He stood over them, his voice colder than stone.
"Where's the final lab?"
One of them, wheezing through a punctured lung, laughed.
"You'll never find it."
Another spat blood.
"He's beyond you. Beyond this world. His work will outlive your pathetic crusade."
Alex didn't even blink.
"I already know where it is."
Silence.
Their smiles faded.
And then—
Hanabi stepped forward.
She'd said nothing the whole time.
But her eyes were burning now — quiet, controlled, and deadly.
She walked past Alex without a word, crouched beside the nearest loyalist, and whispered something in a voice only he heard.
He turned pale.
She raised her blade.
And without hesitation—
She killed them all.
Quick. Clean. One by one.
Not as revenge.
But as judgment.
When she was done, she wiped the blade across her sleeve and stood.
"They won't be joining him."
Alex didn't stop her.
Ciel didn't flinch.
And the silence that followed wasn't one of shock—
It was peace.
The first lab was gone.
One remained.
They didn't rest after the first.
There was no celebration. No relief.
Only motion.
From the shattered ruin of the penultimate lab, Alex had traced the final signal—its core signature embedded in the command glyphs used by the loyalists Hanabi executed. They hadn't needed to speak. Their mana trails were already screaming their secrets.
And now—
They stood before the final gate.
It wasn't a ruin.
It wasn't buried.
It wasn't hidden by glamour or spells.
It was a fortress.
Built into the side of a mountain, its walls shaped from blackstone and reinforced steel, pulsing quietly with containment energy. The air buzzed faintly with deterrent fields. Above the iron entrance, a single banner fluttered in the high wind — dark crimson, marked with the symbol of an eye formed from fractured runes.
This wasn't meant to hide.
This was meant to dare someone to come.
Alex stood at the center, cloak billowing in the windless weight of the mountain pass. Ciel to his left. Hanabi to his right. None of them spoke for a moment.
Because they knew—
Tenkawa was inside.
And whatever he had left to show the world…
This would be it.
Hanabi stared at the fortress, arms crossed, her jaw tense. The shadows under her eyes hadn't faded since the last fight, but her fire burned steadier now. Controlled. Cold.
"So this is it," she muttered.
Alex nodded once. "Final facility. Last signature. No one else on the network."
Ciel's golden eyes narrowed as she scanned the layers of energy woven through the gate. "He's not trying to flee this time."
"He's waiting," Alex replied.
Hanabi scoffed, her voice bitter. "Coward waiting for his altar."
Alex shook his head.
"No," he said quietly. "He's the kind of man who doesn't run because he still thinks he can win."
They stared in silence at the fortress.
Behind those walls was the man who had orchestrated everything — the disappearances, the experiments, the rituals, the children lost and broken.
He had seen the world burn around him.
And still, he waited behind that door.
Alex stepped forward.
He raised his hand, fingers glowing faintly with a controlled resonance — not a spell, but something more fundamental. A frequency that aligned with the wards like a master key.
The gates groaned.
Shuddered.
And slowly began to open.
A rush of sterile air spilled outward — the scent of chemicals, ozone, and bloodless steel.
Inside, no alarms sounded.
No resistance emerged.
Just a long hallway of clinical white light and silent challenge.
Alex glanced back at the two girls beside him.
"Let's end this."
And together—
They stepped inside.