Lyriet awoke from a long, deep sleep that would never end—waking with pain.
Her sleep was not the simple sleep desire of humans. It was also a symbol of human ‘death.’
The day she opened her eyes from deep sleep, death disappeared from the lives of humans suffering from famine and pestilence.
Now humans would no longer die from starvation or disease. However, a terror greater than before greeted them.
“Why is he still alive even though his head was cut off?”
“It’s a curse, a curse!”
“Kyaaaaa—!”
In the plaza where an execution was being carried out, people screamed in shock. A prisoner whose head had already been severed was wriggling and moving before them in that state, still breathing.
“Uwahhh—! It hurts—! I’m alive—! S-save me! What is this…… No, just kill me! Why won’t I die!”
The prisoner was also horrified to see himself alive despite having his head cut off. He screamed to be killed, unable to bear the searing pain from his neck and his own hideous appearance that could no longer be called human, but there was no one who could grant that request.
For humans who were on the verge of death from starvation and disease, a world without death was hell.
“It hurts…… I feel like I’m dying……”
“Father!”
“But the doctor said he would stop breathing three days ago.”
The old man who seemed about to die kept stopping breathing and coming back, having to continue suffering in pain without being able to die.
“Ahh…… It hurts…… The wound, the wound……”
A person whose heart was pierced and who should have died instantly continued to live while feeling pain, gasping and screaming in a terrible situation on the verge of death.
“Why is this beast still alive even though all its limbs are torn off?”
Not only people, but livestock in slaughterhouses and beasts caught by predators also continued to breathe and move even in a state of severe blood loss.
The shock of the humans who witnessed that scene was indescribable.
One of the world’s cycles, ‘death,’ had completely stopped.
And Henelion, who could be called the cause of this incident, was peacefully smiling and watching the scene as if he knew nothing.
“If humans don’t die like this, Ircadeon, no…… The people of the Underworld won’t increase.”
Had he forgotten the fact that what he had done defiled the world’s order?
Satisfied only with the fact that he could maintain his current position, he listened to the sound of his heart.
“Your words are the correct answer.”
Though he knew it wasn’t so, having already lost his reason, he was only moving according to the voice of his heart.
At the same time, the Goddess of Sleep, Lyriet, who couldn’t find the instigator of this incident, was just writhing in pain.
“It hurts, it huuurts……”
Shedding thick tears, she clutched her chest and tried somehow to pull out what was deeply embedded in her heart, but it was useless.
“……Noona, are you okay?”
“I don’t know, it hurts. I feel like I’ll die from pain.”
Her younger brother Lyutios comforted her from the side, but it didn’t help at all. Lyriet’s sleep was an important matter for him too.
If she didn’t sleep, he who couldn’t sleep couldn’t dream, and if Lyutios couldn’t dream, those who had already died couldn’t go to the land of the dead.
“What on earth is going on?”
The gateway where the already dead should go and the path leading there had disappeared at the same time she woke from her dream. Countless souls who had lost their way were wandering about in confusion.
“Who did this? Who dared…… Who dared to touch us?”
Unable to suppress her anger, Lyriet fumed and screamed.
The two siblings had never once woken from sleep since birth. Though they had awakened from sleep for the first time in their lives, rather than joy, an unprecedentedly deep rage surged forth.
Moreover, they had never even imagined waking from sleep in this way. To dare break the cycle and chain of life by driving ice into her heart to prevent sleep and pushing her into pain.
“It huuurts……”
“Calm down, Noona, let’s think carefully about who could do such a thing.”
Soothing the sobbing Lyriet, Lyutios whispered calmly.
But no matter how much he thought about it, he couldn’t get a grasp on it. Epynis had disappeared without even leaving a trace, not leaving a single clue.
“……Noona, seeing such a bold act was committed, could it be Henelion?”
“Ugh, him? Why would he do such a thing? Like he has nothing to do.”
“I can’t be certain, but who else besides Henelion would commit such an act against us? Ircadeon stuck in the Underworld?”
Though Lyriet had been doubtful at her brother’s words, no matter how much she thought about it, she shook her head at the utterly absurd notion.
Lyriet. Siomopess. Lyutios.
They were gods born between Huipion, the God of Time, and Azamos, the God of Life, gods who governed domains that no life could resist.
Nephews in positions that even Henelion couldn’t carelessly touch.
“Even so, that’s too much. Unless he’s gone mad.”
“……Right?”
As she said, unless he had gone mad, it was unimaginable to carelessly touch them who governed the domain of life.
“……No matter how much I think about it, I can’t find an answer. Who on earth.”
Having no particular grudges and unable to think of anyone who would dare touch them, Lyutios clutched his head.
Meanwhile, Lyriet was still suffering.
“*Hic*, huu……”
With her sorrowful crying, the river in the sky that guided the dead grew quiet with sadness.
And when the river of stars was submerged in deep abyss with her crying, a man walked along the riverbed.
A man who wandered the world for the peace of drifting souls. However, because of Lyriet and Lyutios who had awakened from sleep, the passage leading to the land of death was blocked, and he became a pitiful death who could neither come nor go.
Siomopess.
Having nothing to do as the path to death was blocked, he appeared.
“Is it fun for you two to be like that?”
Startled by the cold voice that sank the entire sky like a whisper, Lyriet and Lyutios opened their eyes wide and turned their gaze toward where the voice came from. It felt strange to see him appear before their eyes like this when they had only ever seen him in sleeping dreams.
“Does this look fun to you right now?”
“Not fun at all.”
However, now was not the time to be immersed in sentiment.
At his joke-like question asking if it was fun, the siblings furrowed their brows deeply and glared at their older brother Siomopess.
“……Don’t joke around. I’m really glad to talk like this in a waking state after so long, but Oppa knows better than anyone that now isn’t the time to joke around like this.”
“That’s right, this isn’t just our problem.”
It was just as the two said. Currently, Siomopess had also had his domain carelessly violated.
But he didn’t get angry or sad like his two younger siblings. He just gazed steadily at the two with a face that seemed to accept all of this.
“Even if I wanted to help, it’s impossible. I also had my rights violated. But for now, it’s better to just stay still.”
“What? To just stay still like this? Do you think my inability to sleep is only my problem?”
Unable to bear it, Lyriet burst out shouting.
A world where the cycle of life was broken and death had disappeared. The pandemonium that would unfold among the living corpses—that was no longer the Surface but deep underground, in other words, no different from hell where sinners lived.
“You’re joking, right?”
Before Lyriet could say anything, Lyutios stepped forward first. Leaving his noona whom he had been quietly holding and comforting, he approached and stood before his hyung. He didn’t want to stay still listening to words not even worth hearing.
“I don’t know what Hyung is thinking. But I can’t let this pass like this. It’ll be the same for Noona. I don’t know who woke Noona from her sleep, but I’ll find them somehow.”
“Lyriet can no longer sleep. Her body has been filled with the breath of the Goddess of Insomnia.”
“What?”
At the eldest’s words, the siblings’ pupils shook. The Goddess of Insomnia. Among the goddesses between the concepts of vitality, happiness, life and living, and simultaneously thought, obsession, and pain. She was both the antithesis of Lyriet who guided death and a goddess who prevented death and extended life.
“Why her? Did she really go mad?”
To Lyriet’s words asking with an absurd face, Siomopess shook his head and continued calmly.
“Henelion’s child put her breath into your sleeping airway.”
At those words, Lyriet and Lyutios’s faces turned deathly pale. The two were fated to be on opposite sides, so they shouldn’t become close or even meet. And yet he put the breath of that opposing existence into Lyriet’s mouth.
A thousand angers whooshed up from within the siblings.
“Then, if that’s the case, right now this is……”
“Yes, it’s exactly as you’re thinking. Henelion has gone mad.”
One who has lost reason and moves as emotions whisper. Having dared to make opposing gods collide and properly touched the cycle of death and life—it could only be explained as madness.
“So to solve all the problems, this comes first.”
As soon as the words ended, Siomopess’s hands firmly grabbed his younger sister and younger brother.
“I’ll find a way to solve everything, so just stay put until then.”
“What? Are you going to half-kill Henelion?”
Asked Lyriet, who was on the verge of losing reason from rage. She felt like she could only feel relieved if she tore Henelion’s insides apart right now.
Siomopess silently shook his head. Instead, he brought his fingers to their foreheads.
“Oppa?”
“Hyung…… What are you doing right now……”
The sensation of flesh touching flesh that they had never felt in dreams.
Flustered for a moment at the unfamiliar feeling they were experiencing for the first time, the eyelids of the two who couldn’t fall asleep no matter what grew heavy and they fell into a deep sleep just like that.
“You just need to stay like this for a bit.”
Looking at the collapsed bodies of the two, Siomopess muttered. Holding the souls of his two sleeping younger siblings in his hands, he headed to the Surface.
At least until that day their parents had hinted at long ago came, he had a duty to protect these two souls.
