Chapter 152
Within their tears lay a deep fear of the loneliness their sister would face, and a collective guilt for the fact that they would remain in heavenly glory, while she—who had protected them—would instead fall and become lost in the impermanence of the mortal world.
'The mortal world is not a punishment, not at all.'
Amid the sea of tears and the tight embraces that seemed unwilling to release her, Aldraya stood in her deepest confusion.
She, who had long been familiar with the discipline of prayers and curses, now had to confront the overflowing emotions of the siblings she loved.
Her hands, which once rose in praise or gripped divine blades, now felt clumsy, unaware of what to do to soothe the explosive sorrow surrounding her.
Every sob, every grasp upon her robe, felt like a knife tearing apart the remnants of her resolve.
Yet beneath her confusion, her resolve had already burned into a steel that could no longer be reshaped.
She understood well the source of their despair, feeling every tear that fell like poisonous rain upon her own heart.
But she also saw clearly the chains of cause and effect that could not be undone.
She was the instigator, the one who conceived the idea of rebellion that eventually tainted the minds of her eleven siblings, perhaps even inspiring Equinox to revolt in his own way.
The obligation to take responsibility was a moral burden she now carried consciously, a logical consequence of every decision she had made.
With gentleness yet unwavering conviction, she released herself from their embrace one by one.
Her dimly glowing silver eyes looked upon each of their tear-streaked faces.
Within that gaze lay an unspoken message.
That this was her decision, a path she must walk alone.
This sacrifice was her highest form of responsibility, not only to Quil-Hasa, but especially to them.
By shouldering all the sins, she ensured they would remain in the light, protected from the wrath that should have fallen upon them all.
At last, with a heart shattered yet steps unwavering, Aldraya turned around.
'Every breath in this new life is a disguised devotion.
Every heartbeat is a safeguard for the future I strive to protect.'
Aldraya took a deep breath, the sound of her exhale breaking the night's silence that wrapped around her steps.
Her consciousness—once drowned in an abyss of bitter memories—slowly rose back to the surface of the present.
Yet her journey through remembrance was not over.
A darker, more personal fragment still awaited.
After leaving the Heavenly Realm and Hell behind, a final decision formed in her mind.
In a place that was no longer heaven nor hell, at the quiet edge of reality, she ended her former existence.
With the power she had left, she severed her own thread of life, a spiritual suicide that freed her from the wounded and estranged form of an angel.
That freed soul then plunged into the cycle of reincarnation, scattering across countless worlds.
In each of her new lives, she was born with a different form and profession.
From an ordinary farmer in a rural world, to a scholar buried in the depths of ancient libraries, to an adventurer roaming the farthest edges of distant galaxies.
Every breath in these mortal lives was part of her endless search.
Yet beneath the mundane routines of each life, there remained one hidden mission she always carried.
A waiting and a search without rest.
In every world she visited, in every life she lived, her eyes always scanned her surroundings.
Her soul, bound by an ancient vow, continued to sense the faint pulse of a familiar existence.
She searched, waited, and hoped to find the reincarnation of the only human hero who had ever understood her and had promised to protect her—King Xavier XVII.
Every silhouette that resembled him, every flicker of familiar energy, made her heart race, rekindling the hope she had buried deep within herself—that somewhere, in some life, they would meet again and fulfill their vow.
'Beyond all boundaries countable by any mathematics.'
After living one long mortal life, once she was certain that there were no traces of the hero in that world, a ritual of despair would unfold once more.
Aldraya would end her life again, an act that, for her eternal soul, was not death but merely shedding a temporary shell of flesh.
Her tireless spirit would then be flung once more into the current of reincarnation, seeking a new world, a new life, with hope that, though often deceived, never truly died.
This cycle continued endlessly.
Every failed ending of a life was followed by the same decision, then by a new birth in a different realm.
The process of birth, searching, and deliberate death had occurred so frequently that the number surpassed the limits of mortal mathematical understanding.
Even the largest concepts such as Berkeley cardinals—beyond the infinite hierarchies of set theory—could no longer encompass the count of her journeys.
Her existence within the cycle of reincarnation had become a cosmic constant that lay beyond and above all systems of numbers.
This was both her curse and her sacred mission.
An eternal pilgrimage guided by a single compass.
To find the reincarnation of Humanity's Hero, King Xavier XVII.
Every world she stayed in was merely a temporary inn, every new identity was merely a mask that would one day be removed.
Behind all professions, names, and forms, her core remained unchanged.
A former Angel lost in time, repeatedly killing herself for the sake of a promise of reunion that might never be realized.
'Nothing more than a shell, the outer skin of a journey immeasurable.'
After an unfathomable number of reincarnation cycles—a journey so long that Aldraya herself refused to recall every memory born in each world—she was finally brought to a new place of arrival.
The deliberate deaths that had surpassed all boundaries of numerical logic cast her into the bleakest existence of all.
The world in which she now resided.
In this world, the soul that was once a Supreme Angel—who once observed the entirety of the universe—was now trapped in the form of a homeless girl.
Her frail body had no home for shelter, no family to wait for her.
Everyone she had known in this life was gone, leaving her alone, fighting against the cold nights and scorching days.
The mortality she chose as her punishment and path to redemption now manifested in every hunger pang and every tightening breath.
And amidst her pitiful struggle to simply stay alive, danger lurked in its vilest shape.
Thugs who sensed her weakness and isolation continued to hunt her.
To them, she was not a human being, but a commodity—an object they could sell for a wad of money.
Every dark alley, every empty corridor became a battlefield of escape, where this former watcher of the cosmos now had to run in fear from the hands that wished to chain the last fragment of her freedom as a human.
A cosmic irony so bitter—one who was once so mighty now struggled simply to not be treated as an object.
'After countless lives, I now end up entering an institution of learning.
What an irony.'
Returning from the sea of dark memories, Aldraya shifted her thoughts to a fragment slightly brighter.
To be continued…