“Instead…… you must not reveal anything about my child to anyone. And no matter what happens, please help me find the child.”
After firmly emphasizing the promise one last time, he looked up at the sky.
The river made of stars sparkled and shone in the heavens. He intended to tear this land apart and further expand the size of the sky that embraced the earth.
‘I’m sorry, Eradia.’
Finally, thinking of his sister who would be resting peacefully above that sky, unaware of this incident, Seianes drew out his spear.
He wanted to find Abrisius.
If he could hold the child in his arms again, he could give anything as the price.
There was no need to think further. Gripping his spear anew, he thrust it down beneath his feet without hesitation.
CRASH!
A tremendous roar echoed loudly across the land. As if breaking, as if shattering, the earth made an enormous noise as large and small cracks formed where he stood, and the lands began to split apart.
“Oh my…….”
As the spot where he stood shook precariously, Siomopess lightly flew up. The scene unfolding below was truly spectacular.
As the lands tore apart and expanded the world, the sky covering the earth split into two. Eradia, who had known nothing, was so shocked she could only let go and watch.
The sun and moon, which had always been at each other’s backs, were startled.
As the sky split and followed the land torn far apart to different places, the two that had always been together also became separated.
New lands were born. Leaving behind the land where summer was just about to begin, autumn and winter crossed over to lands that had no seasons yet and bloomed different seasons there.
The world was changing moment by moment due to one god’s unilateral actions. Siomopess, who had been quietly watching this, looked up at the sky.
As the sky tore, the Milky Way was born. Taking in the beautiful sight, Siomopess could finally feel at ease.
The split constellation. The two lands where day and night were divided, appearing as the sky tore.
Now only the task of hiding his younger siblings’ bodies remained.
“Well then, now tell me.”
Seianes, the culprit behind all this spectacle, had no real emotion about it.
Even though he had committed the atrocity of splitting the land, separating the moon and sun, and causing the earth’s seasons and time to divide, his goal was only one thing.
“Where my child is.”
His eyes turned fierce, as if worried that Siomopess might escape into the void.
Naturally, Siomopess had neither the intention nor thought to do so. Simply wearing a small smile on his lips, he descended from the void to match Seianes’s eye level.
“Siblings born from primordial Chaos on this earth knew about your child.”
The emotions Amir had spat out. He spoke while still sensing the lingering attachment laughing behind his shadow. Now that there was no death, she had left her place, but she would probably return to follow him soon.
“You asked how I knew about that child, right? She said something quite meaningful…… Your child has now become a being that is neither human nor god.”
“……What does that mean?”
“I don’t know the details either. But what I do know is that it’s not the worst situation. Lingering Attachment said the child who inherited the blood of the one they hate most is in a city where they live.”
How could Amir and his sisters have known about the child he had hidden so tightly?
Something felt off, but he had no intention of pressing that issue now. First, finding out where Abrisius was mattered most.
Fortunately, he could roughly guess where.
“……The place where Father’s human son is.”
Because the one Amina and his sisters hated and loathed most was none other than Henelion. Because they detested so terribly those who had swallowed their one and only younger brother that they even lent power to Ircadeon.
The being they spoke of detesting terribly was probably at that location.
“Well then, I have things to do.”
Having said everything he knew, Siomopess disappeared. Since he had given a clue about where Abrisius was, the oath he made to Zeyaom was also fulfilled.
As Siomopess vanished, Seianes turned his head and gazed in the direction where Abrisius would be.
Fortunately, as the land split, it seemed the repercussions hadn’t reached the country where the child would be.
“Now I can really find you.”
How fortunate that the child existed on his land, neither underground nor in the sky above.
With the hope that he could truly meet the child this time, he began to move again.
* * *
“L-look over there! The rivers in the sky have become multiple!”
At those words, the expressions of people who looked up at the sky were colored with shock. The river that had wrapped around the sky like a sash had truly split into many branches.
The earth and sky tore, and the river situated in the heavens split into multiple branches. Humans who didn’t know the circumstances behind what Seianes had done were horrified.
For them, what Seianes had done was no different from a calamity.
Especially as the continent tore, waves surged and submerged parts of several countries’ cities, splitting them apart. As cities split in two, countless people were separated from their families, lovers, and neighbors they had lived with.
People were stunned in situations where they couldn’t do anything. On top of that, Seianes’s actions of thoroughly ravaging the earth while searching for Abrisius also became a problem.
The unprecedented famine went beyond making humans’ lives difficult—it also took their lives.
“It’s a curse. This must surely be a curse.”
Humans who didn’t know the full story of the incident thought all these events were the gods’ wrath. The great commotion that occurred in one night plunged all of human society into chaos.
When the great famine first occurred, led by the temple priests, they held festivals to appease the gods’ anger. Even with their meager means, they tried to resolve it by bringing everything together and offering sacrifices, but what returned were only terrible situations.
When nothing was resolved no matter what they did, enraged people knocked on the doors of Zeyaom’s temple, which had instigated them to hold ceremonies.
“Why is it that you people don’t know the reason either!”
“Mother, Mother passed away…… My child too, my wife too……all dead……!”
“You said we had to appease the gods’ wrath! We scraped together what we didn’t have and offered it, and this is what we get in return?”
Humans immersed in sorrow and cries turned arrows of criticism toward the temple priests.
“We don’t know either! Why, why this happened, we don’t know either!”
However, the priests were just as wronged. They had received oracles from the god they served devoutly with sincere prayers, and merely performed according to them.
“But according to the oracle, the gods were angry…….”
“That damned oracle, oracle, oracle!”
At the priests who kept babbling only about oracles, an enraged man finally began to overturn the altar.
“If there’s a god, tell them to come out right now and punish me!”
Breaking the ritual objects in the temple, even assaulting the priests who tried to stop him, he dared commit blasphemy inside the temple.
And at that moment, an intense light that shook like thunder pierced through the man who was wreaking havoc.
Without even time to scream, the man instantly burned in the light and crumbled into dust. As if to prove the man had existed, only the burn marks from the light remained where he had stood.
“Hiiiik!”
The people who witnessed that scene were shocked by what happened in an instant and closed their mouths.
“H-he’ll receive divine punishment…….”
Someone whose soul had left them, having witnessed the gods’ fury, muttered.
When even the place to blame was gone and everything was stagnating in despair, one young child walked between the center of the crowd. The child who stood on the scorched floor where the man had burned to death opened their mouth straight toward the people.
“Foolish humans. Why do you act so ignorantly and drive yourselves into suffering?”
Silence instantly descended.
It was a beggar who lived day by day begging, without name or relatives.
Since the kid who had been picking up scraps of ceremonial food near the temple suddenly spouted nonsense, no one paid attention.
“Must have gone crazy from starving. What is this kid saying right now…….”
Someone muttered that they should stop the crazy beggar, but among those crowds, the temple’s high priest, who alone sensed something, blocked them.
“Again, one more time. Please speak.”
When she knelt before the boy and asked, as if waiting, the corners of the boy’s eyes curved benevolently.
“A calamity whose cause is unknown has struck. Within the tangled threads, seek the inside of the World Tree, for the future has been seen, so praise. The God of the Earth has entered the land in the direction where the sun sets, so it is said that you must immediately offer the youngest and most precious human from that country.”
The child, who had merely muttered what was heard and seen, quietly closed their eyes and collapsed on the spot as soon as they finished speaking.
The high priest, who quickly caught the fallen boy to prevent injury, spoke in a voice filled with intense ecstasy.
“Ahhh…….The great World Tree has come and gone.”
At his one statement, everyone present looked up at the giant statue on the altar with wonder. It seemed as though Zeyaom, the World Tree that penetrated the surface and underground, was looking at them with a benevolent smile.
