"Ah, I see. I suppose I haven't told you the truth either."
"The truth? What on earth are you talking about? I don't even understand how the situation turned into this!"
Mother?
No, wait. What is happening?
Mother didn't know the truth?
"Honey, calm down."
"How am I supposed to be calm right now?! Kevin is my son! My biological son whom I carried and gave birth to! And now you're saying he isn't? What kind of nonsense is that!"
Mother shouted, her eyes trembling as she stared at Father in utter disbelief. Father let out a long, heavy sigh.
He looked at her with a pained expression before shifting his gaze back to me, his voice grave.
"As I said before, Kevin... he is not our biological son."
"Darling!"
"I know this is confusing. But... given how things have turned out, the truth can no longer be hidden."
"No longer hidden? Is this because of what happened between Kevin and Seele?"
"Yes. Once the truth is revealed, that issue will no longer be a problem."
Seeing Father's bitter smile, I felt a sharp pang in my chest.
After all, this whole mess started because of what happened between me and Seele.
"Kevin, the truth is... we did have a son once."
"...You did?"
"Yes. We lost him when he was around the age you were when you first came to our home."
Father's expression clouded with melancholy as he prepared to unveil a heavy burden of history.
"That boy's name was also Kevin. He was my biological son... but he passed away at the age of thirteen from a terminal illness."
.
.
.
.
.
"Do you happen to know of the Three Great Houses of Schicksal?"
"Are you referring to the Apocalypse, Schariac, and Kaslana families?"
"You're well-informed. Indeed. Schicksal was the organization established by those three houses to combat the Honkai."
However, the reality is that Schicksal was an organization built with a single person in mind.
"...What? For just one person?"
"Yes. That is what's written in the Records of the Apocalypse from that era."
The Records of the Apocalypse.
It was a sort of historical chronicle kept by the House of Apocalypse since the founding of Schicksal.
According to the rules, the Overseer of the House of Apocalypse could not write it themselves; it was recorded by the chroniclers who followed them.
They recorded even the things the Overseers desperately wanted to hide. It spoke volumes of their pride and courage as historians.
To give you an idea of their thoroughness, there was an entry detailing how a previous Overseer had flicked a booger that accidentally landed on a passing Valkyrie's uniform, only for him to pretend he hadn't noticed. It was essentially Schicksal's version of the Veritable Records of the Joseon Dynasty.
However, once Otto Apocalypse ascended to the position of Overseer, the Records of the Apocalypse became his personal property.
For some reason, he decided to become his own chronicler. Aunt Theresa once told me that he filled it with incredibly useless and private details—like how a certain dish he tried tasted absolutely abysmal, or exactly how and where he stubbed his pinky toe. He treated it like a personal diary.
At the very least, it meant Otto Apocalypse recorded his life without filter or falsehood.
But that's not the point.
The entries from before Otto's time stated clearly: Schicksal was an organization established for the sake of one individual.
"Don't tell me... that person was our ancestor?"
"Precisely. His name was Ogite Son. He was a Saiyan who appeared like a comet to save a world plummeting toward destruction at the hands of the Herrscher of Finality."
"Ogite Son..."
Somehow, that explained why I was able to transform into a Super Saiyan.
A Super Saiyan transformation is triggered once a sufficient amount of S-Cells have multiplied in the body. The problem is that these S-Cells only exist within those who carry Saiyan DNA.
Furthermore, S-Cells require a peaceful heart to proliferate. Given the constant state of emergency in the past, S-Cells rarely had the chance to multiply actively.
As a result, only a minuscule amount of S-Cells was passed down through generations. It was said that only Ogite Son and his immediate children could transform... after that, it became a myth that few actually believed.
"That's why when I heard you had transformed into a Super Saiyan, I was honestly shocked beyond belief."
"I didn't know myself, either."
It had happened back when Senior Mei first awakened as the Herrscher of Thunder. Driven by a desperate wish to bring her back and a searing rage at my own powerlessness against a Herrscher, I had awakened.
Then again, we who live in the present are essentially living in the most mentally peaceful era possible.
The occasional Honkai Beasts we encountered didn't feel like much of a threat.
...No, it wasn't just that. There was also the undeniable joy of facing a strong opponent.
Well, because of that, I met Kiana and got entangled in the original storyline... in the end, I can't say I regret it.
If I hadn't, I wouldn't be living this life today with my wolf-like wife and my rabbit-like daughter.
"At any rate, even the transition to the current era's calendar was centered around that man."
Ah, that made sense.
In a normal world, the calendar is divided into BC and AD based on the birth of Jesus Christ, but in this world, there is no record of Jesus Christ ever existing.
I had read in history books here that the era was divided simply because of the birth of Schicksal.
I never thought that was a cover-up for the real truth.
"But why are you telling me this now?"
Even if such events took place, our family isn't among the houses representing Schicksal today.
The fact that we vanished from history books meant something catastrophic happened, or someone wanted us politically erased.
"And I don't see what this has to do with the fact that I'm not your biological son."
"...I suppose that's a natural question, since you have no memories of the past."
No memories of the past?
"The Son family was effectively slaughtered and purged from Schicksal's records by the orders of former Overseer Otto. It hasn't even been twenty years since then."
"...What?"
Wait, only twenty years?
That meant the House of Son was erased so cleanly that not a single whisper of its existence remained in just two decades?
"To be precise, other than you, me, and your younger sibling, not a single person of the Son bloodline remains on this earth."
I... had suspected as much to some degree.
I had never met a single relative in all my years.
I had quietly assumed Father was an orphan... but I never imagined the entire clan had been annihilated.
"I avoided the disaster because I had already severed ties with the family after they vehemently opposed my marriage to your mother."
"You severed ties?"
"Yes. Your father was part of the direct lineage of the House of Son. Normally, I would have been expected to marry someone chosen by the family... but the moment I saw your mother, it was love at first sight."
Father smiled warmly at Mother as he spoke, reminiscing about his youth.
His wife and Seele watched with sparkling eyes at the romantic sentiment, while Mother simply cleared her throat and signaled him to get on with the story.
"Ahem. To get to the point... the head of the family, your grandfather, was incredibly stubborn. By today's standards, he was the ultimate 'old-timer.' He didn't even hesitate to lock me up."
"He locked you up?"
"Yes. He intended to keep me confined until the arranged marriages were finalized. The person who helped me then was my older brother."
"So you had a brother."
"And that man... is your actual father."
"Ah, I see."
"...Hmm."
...Wait? Why did I react like that?
Shouldn't that have been a shocking revelation?
"To continue, thanks to my brother's help, I was able to escape the family and settle here. Even afterward, we kept in constant contact, sharing news of our lives."
A brother who supported his sibling's love.
They must have been incredibly close.
Father's face was full of smiles as he spoke of his brother.
"Then one day, the news suddenly stopped. At first, I thought he was just busy. But a month passed, then two... as time continued to flow without a word, I realized something had gone horribly wrong."
"Wrong?"
"I tried to search for information, but for some reason, I couldn't find a thing. I soon learned the reason why."
"The House of Son could no longer be found within Schicksal."
"Couldn't be found?"
"Yes. To be precise, everything—every record of the House of Son—had been perfectly erased. As an outsider now, the information I could access was limited, and I couldn't dig any deeper."
"It was as if the entire family had vanished in a single instant."
"And there is only one person on this planet capable of such a feat."
"Otto Apocalypse."
"Exactly. There was no one else who could have orchestrated a cover-up so absolute."