Chapter 512
He paused for a moment, turning toward Lilith, who sat in the front row with both of her eyes open. One eye stared straight ahead, while the other remained wet with tears she had never truly possessed, as though he were seeking confirmation.
Without taking her eyes off Theo, Lilith simply gave a slight nod, a nod that was enough to say that she agreed, that she would not stand in the way, and that whatever happened next, she would accept it, because acceptance was the only way to keep herself from sinking even deeper.
Apollyon looked back at Theo, and when he spoke again, his voice was no longer as cold as metal. Instead, it carried something far more complicated, something akin to the caution born from thousands of years of being betrayed by their own mother, something resembling a demand that could not be negotiated, because what was at stake was not merely their lives, but the very essence of who they were.
"But before we truly move forward," Apollyon continued, his words falling one after another like stones cast into what had once been a still pond, creating ripples that no one could stop, "we want to know, we have the right to know, what will we gain after becoming an extension of your will? After our essence merges with your RWIA: Resolve, Will, Intention, and Ambition. What awaits us on the other side of this decision? What do you offer in exchange for the souls that were nearly swallowed into oblivion by the very nothingness of our own mother?"
Deep within Theo's heart, in the innermost place where murmurs never became voices yet continued to echo within him like a song that never ceased, something stirred.
It was neither nervousness nor doubt, but understanding. An understanding that Apollyon's question had not been born out of greed or blind suspicion, but from wounds, wounds that still remained open because the Nothingness had never explained why it allowed its own children to perish one by one without ever once looking back.
He let out a breath, a breath that did not come from his lungs but from his resolve. A resolve to speak the truth, even if that truth would not make anything easier. A resolve to offer everything he had, even though all he possessed was nothing more than a blank sheet of paper waiting to be written upon by hands that had only just learned how to hold a pen.
"In other words..." Theo murmured inwardly, his thoughts flowing like an underground river that had never seen the sun, yet continued onward simply because it knew no other way.
"They're not rejecting my offer. They just... they simply want to know what they'll receive. They no longer want to be children abandoned by their own mother without reason. They want something certain, something they can hold onto, something that won't disappear the moment the Nothingness blinks and decides they no longer need to exist."
Within Theo's heart, in the darkest place untouched by either doubt or false conviction, something spoke.
It was not a voice that escaped his lips, but a vibration that traveled through his ribs and rose into his skull like an underground hymn never meant to be heard by human ears.
"Apollyon," he murmured, and within that whisper lay genuine admiration, admiration born from the realization that amidst the storm of an identity crisis shaking the very foundations of their existence, there was still someone capable of asking such a question with calm composure, someone still able to demand clarity even as their voice trembled with wounds that had yet to heal.
He admired that intelligence, not the cold, calculating kind of strategic brilliance, but the intelligence born from an unwillingness to become a victim ever again. An intelligence that declared they would never again allow anyone, not even their savior, to take something from them without an explanation.
Yet that admiration lasted only for a fraction of a second, because at that very moment, from the fractured circle before him, the voices began to rise once more.
Not screams like before, but something far worse, deeper, and more alarming: long moans emerging from nine different throats, yet merging into a single lament that could not be ignored. They no longer cried out for help from the outside world, but from themselves, from the remnants of their own identities, and even, in the purest and most shameful depths of despair, to the dirt beneath their feet, to the dust between their fingers, to anything that was still willing to listen.
"There's no time," Theo whispered inwardly, and that voice hardened like a hammer striking red-hot steel, forging a decision that could no longer be bargained with or delayed. They could not wait any longer.
"If I don't act now, they'll be destroyed, not by the Nothingness, but by the questions within themselves that will never find their answers."
He turned toward Aldraya.
Not with the slow movement he usually made, but with a firm turn of his head, as resolute as someone who had already made a decision and would allow no one, not even himself, to question it.
Aldraya stood where she was, her silvery-white hair flowing like a river beneath a light that came from nowhere. Her expression remained as emotionless as ever, yet within her eyes, within those dark irises that had once reflected nothing but boredom and emptiness, there was now something new, something resembling vigilance, vigilance born from experience, from memories of the cave, Ilux's filthy hands, and the darkness that had nearly swallowed her whole.
"Aldraya," Theo called, and her name emerged not as an ordinary call, but as a plea wrapped in command, an acknowledgment that he could not do this alone, that he needed someone who believed in him not because of logic, but because of the same wounds, the same crisis, and the same determination never to surrender when the world, or the Nothingness, decided they no longer deserved to exist.
Aldraya did not answer with words.
She simply nodded, a single, almost imperceptible nod, yet enough to say that she had heard him, that she was ready, and that she would do whatever was necessary because Theo had once done the very same for her back in that cave, when she had possessed nothing but a trembling body, torn clothes, and questions that never ceased.
"I will synchronize the essence and identities of the Fourteen Disturbers," Theo said, his voice quiet yet unwavering, as solid as an oath spoken before witnesses who could never deny what they had seen, "so that they become part of RWIA: Resolve, Will, Intention, and Ambition. They will become an extension of us, of everything we have built from the ruins of our own identities. But I cannot do this alone. A synchronization of this magnitude, involving fourteen entities at once, with five of them already standing on the threshold between life and death... I need your help. I need you to maintain stability on the other side, to ensure that not a single one of them loses their way between the cracks of reality while this process unfolds."
To be continued...