Chapter 443
With the support of the other Gods, and with the authority they had claimed through those unconventional means, the youngest and his followers intervened directly in the continuation of reincarnation across every box of the universe.
They observed.
They interfered.
They prevented, by every method available to them, individuals possessing unusually high levels of power from completing the process of reincarnation successfully.
It was an action that, when thought about carefully, felt childish.
Like the anger of a small child who could not accept being abandoned by their parents.
Yet the impact was very real.
And it was vast.
Although the youngest one's attitude appeared childish on the surface, Xavier knew very well that behind the behavior that resembled a sulking child lay a terrifying potential.
Since his birth— even before Xavier and Myra decided to end their lives— the two parents had already been wary of the hidden potential possessed by their youngest great-grandchild.
There was something in his eyes.
Something in the way he looked at the world.
Something in the energy radiating from his small body that convinced Xavier this child would never become an ordinary being.
He was believed to possess power equal to Xavier himself.
Xavier XVII, who had lived through countless lives and adventures.
Or perhaps he might even surpass him.
Reaching a level never before attained by anyone within their bloodline.
And when such potential combined with burning anger, with an unhealed disappointment caused by being abandoned by those who should have protected him, a force was born that could alter the course of reincarnation across the entire universe.
That was why Xavier believed that the Gods— whether acting under the direct command of the youngest or willingly obeying his wishes— would try with all their might to obstruct the reincarnation of himself and Myra Astrielle into other worlds.
They did not want those parents to return.
They did not wish to grant them a second chance at a happy life.
They did not wish to see the faces that had abandoned them in such a cruel manner.
Every time Xavier's and Myra's souls attempted to be reborn in some world, every time the process of reincarnation began and the seeds of new life started to form, that was when the Gods would arrive with all their power.
With all their interventions.
With every subtle or brutal method available to sabotage the process.
They would ensure that individuals with extraordinary potential would never be successfully born.
Never be allowed to grow.
Never become threats to the authority they had struggled to claim.
"Is this the command of the Gods? Or is that youngest one still trembling in fear behind his throne?"
Myra Astrielle, with all the intelligence and cunning she possessed, eventually found a way to escape the strict surveillance of the Gods led by their youngest great-grandchild.
She did not fight.
She did not attempt to break through the obstruction with violence.
She did not try to shatter the walls built to imprison her soul.
Instead, she used a far subtler and more ingenious method.
Each time she attempted to reincarnate into another world, Myra altered her identity.
She changed her name.
Changed her face.
Changed her history.
Changed everything that could identify her as herself.
She slipped into new bodies with completely different backgrounds.
With fabricated memories she planted so carefully that no one could distinguish what was genuine and what was constructed.
Even the personal history of the body chosen for reincarnation was rewritten by her hand.
She created convincing false trails.
She built foundations of life that seemed to have existed for a long time.
So when the Gods attempted to trace her existence, all they found were dead ends and contradictory clues.
Myra Astrielle became a ghost that could not be captured.
A shadow that could not be grasped.
A mystery their own descendants could never solve.
But Xavier was never as fortunate as his wife.
For reasons he could not fully understand— whether because the laws of nature were harsher toward him, whether the Gods were more vigilant toward his soul as the greatest threat, or whether it was a curse attached to him from the moment he chose to end his life alongside Myra— Xavier always failed.
Again and again he failed to reincarnate.
He tried thousands of times.
Perhaps millions of times.
Casting his soul in countless directions along the Multiverse Path, attempting to enter worlds that seemed welcoming and open.
Yet every time he tried, every time he almost felt the warmth of a womb ready to receive him, every time he nearly heard the first heartbeat that would belong to him in a new life, unseen hands would pull him back.
Unknown forces would drive him away.
Impenetrable walls would block his path.
Xavier became an eternal wanderer between dimensions.
A soul cursed never to experience life again.
A spirit drifting upon the ocean of nothingness without ever finding a shore upon which to stand.
The loneliness he endured throughout those thousands of years of wandering was perhaps far more painful than death itself.
For death at least offers silence and peace.
While eternal wandering offers only endless despair.
Until Xavier arrived at a moment he had never expected before.
A moment that would change everything about his existence among the layered realities.
Amid the silence that had accompanied his wandering for thousands of years, amid the darkness between dimensions that had become so familiar to him, he suddenly felt something strange.
Something different.
Something he had never sensed before.
There was an interruption.
A disturbance.
An anomaly within the structure of reality around him.
Something was attempting to enter the universal box that had always been the exclusive territory of beings born within it.
Something was trying to become a permanent inhabitant of the Multiverse Path— a place that could normally only be traversed but never inhabited by wandering souls like himself.
"The obstruction along the Multiverse Path has been strengthened to an absurd degree."
Xavier decided to ignore the strange interruption.
He chose instead to focus on his latest attempt to break through the wall of reincarnation that had always repelled him.
A strange certainty suddenly grew within his chest.
A premonition that this time things would be different.
That this time his attempt would succeed.
That this time he would finally feel the warmth of life again after thousands of years drifting between dimensions.
He gathered all his energy.
All his consciousness.
All the courage that remained after being worn down by endless failures.
And he shot forward toward the gaps in reality that appeared most promising.
Yet just as he was about to reach the point where reincarnation normally begins, just as he could almost imagine himself being born again in some world with a new body and a new life, something suddenly stopped him.
It was not an invisible wall as before.
Not ghostly hands pulling him back.
Instead, it was a message.
A fragment of a whisper from another dimension that flowed directly into his consciousness without needing any translation.
The message arrived with a vibration he could not mistake.
A vibration produced by only one soul across the entire multiverse.
A vibration he had longed for during thousands of years yet had never been able to reach.
Myra Astrielle.
His wife who had deceived the Gods countless times.
His wife who had lived and died within cycles of reincarnation he could never follow.
His wife who was now sending a message filled with longing from a place he could not reach.
To be continued…