“Ah, Abrisius……”
Their gazes overlapped once again in the reversed position.
As black eyes like the night sky gazed down intently at Seianes, his heart dropped with a thud once more. As if to prove that those eyes had once been red, a spark-like glimmer flickered within them.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
Abrisius’s fingertips lightly pushed against his chest, gently stopping Seianes from trying to get up.
“You in my arms are always lovely.”
Looking at Abrisius, who returned the words he had once said long ago, at him who had now grown up, Seianes unconsciously held his breath.
It was a feeling he had never experienced before.
A feeling both liberating and overwhelming, like facing a field in full spring bloom. A dizzying thrill flowed down his body. The feeling was strange.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
His heart beat again with pounding thuds. He should separate from the child like this, he should……
Those eyes curving like a crescent moon were so lovely that he wanted to keep looking at that child like this.
“No, that’s enough now.”
Seianes, who had barely regained something called reason, sprang up. Abrisius, who was pushed back by the difference in strength even though he had grown, slid and plopped down on the floor with a thud. Having grasped his senses, Seianes barely managed to contain the surging emotions.
‘I must be crazy. What was I thinking about that child……’
That child was no different from a son. Yet he was absurd and ashamed of himself for daring to have such strange thoughts about the child.
“Why? Keep playing with me.”
“If you’re going to fool around, stay here.”
Seianes lightly replied to Abrisius, who kept whining like a child, and turned his back to leave. As he left, Abrisius sprang up his upper body as if he had been waiting and sat down.
“I guess I need to be more aggressive.”
He smiled quietly with eyes filled with desire, where none of the innocence Seianes knew could be found.
“Seianes won’t know. How pretty he was when I looked down at him from above.”
How red his ripened face was, how excited he was when he heard the shallow breathing through his slightly parted lips—he’ll never know for the rest of his life.
Sitting there, he quietly watched the retreating figure in the distance.
“Caw, caw.”
Lily appeared beside him and settled down. At the now-familiar appearance of the crow, Abrisius stroked her crown with his small hand and continued to gaze until Seianes’s retreating figure disappeared.
Seianes’s figure walking leisurely across the meadow was so brilliant it was hard to capture with the eyes.
“I love you.”
Abrisius’s eyes glinted with desire as he quietly exhaled his desire.
Even within the eyes that had turned black, the burning desire repeatedly turned uncontrollably red. Abrisius loved him enough to want to be consumed by love like this forever. Dark obsession bloomed black within him.
* * *
When Atlante perished under the name of divine punishment and became a page in mythology, a new chapter of the story opened.
<The time has come.>
An oracle descended upon Cairens, who had just turned 20.
The priests of Henelion’s Temple bowed their heads respectfully to the great god’s son.
Cairens, accepting their greeting numbly, moved his steps toward the altar at the end of the corridor.
‘So this day has finally come.’
His faded eyes, which had long lost their vitality, glanced up at the giant statue of Henelion positioned on the altar.
Once upon a time, he had called that thing father and begged for his life.
Examining the memory that had long become a distant past, Cairens unconsciously let out a scoff. The child who had blindly followed the god back then had now been reborn as an existence that denied the gods.
Upon reaching the altar, the High Priest appeared and offered holy water in a chalice toward Cairens with both hands. Cairens carefully received it.
The holy water he sipped was bitter and salty. Feeling his tongue tingle, Cairens observed his surroundings. He felt suffocated by the vaguely longing eyes pouring onto him under the name of the son of a god.
“If you’ve finished drinking, please give me the cup now. O descendant of the great bloodline.”
As Cairens emptied the cup, the High Priest courteously took the chalice back from him.
He placed the returned chalice back on the altar and began muttering unintelligible words.
A moment later, a sound like a massive explosion echoed through the temple.
Uncontrollable smoke surged eerily from the chalice, and through the steam, Henelion’s form wavered and revealed itself.
—My son.
The appearance of a father he had never seen.
Though he couldn’t see properly, just the wavering form made rage boil up inside Cairens. Suppressing the urge to rush at him right now, he obediently held his position.
—You’ve suffered much. But that too is the trial and fate a hero must bear. Yes, now the time has come. The moment for you to be reborn as a true hero, my son…… I have prepared seven labors for you. All of this will make you into a true hero.
“A true hero……”
He was dumbfounded by the absurd words. Henelion still seemed unaware that the gods, including himself, were the root cause of everything he had experienced.
What exactly was the true hero he spoke of? Did it mean that helping people until now didn’t count as a hero’s actions? Then what was he, who had helped people and become their hero until now?
In the end, it meant that a true hero in their words was one who helped achieve what the gods wanted, and they were telling him to become a card convenient for the gods to use and discard.
To them, that was the reason for Cairens’s existence.
—My son. Find your brother, the great god of the earth.
At those words, Cairens’s shoulders, which had maintained composure, trembled slightly. His pupils dilated and fragments of the past replayed once more in his mind. He still couldn’t forget Seianes’s cold gaze.
And his anger toward him was the same.
“Yes, gladly. For you.”
However, instead of rashly bursting with anger and raising objections, Cairens bowed his head with a reverent attitude.
Cairens was still insufficient to draw his sword against them.
The gods who regarded humans as beings worth less than ants, yet the attitude of bestowing favor and mercy upon them was so detestable that he felt like vomiting, but Cairens endured.
Because now was not the time.
Meanwhile, the priests watching this scene held their breath.
The sight of Cairens quietly bowing his head with a reverent attitude toward Henelion’s form appeared sacred from the outside.
With deeply overwhelming feelings rising in their chests, they felt proud of themselves for vividly witnessing this miraculous scene with their own eyes.
Perhaps this scene would spread widely through the minstrels.
And to future generations, the birth and growth of the hero, and now the tales of valor needed for the hero’s story would be passed down.
Not knowing what that ending would be.
