Although the answers he managed to pry from his mother were vague, they were deeply satisfying.
Through their brief discussion, Morca had finally begun to grasp a broader, more terrifying truth about Evoslon—and perhaps even the real reason why his father had sabotaged his awakening.
Earlier, Morca had shared a carefully curated version of his evening with his mother. He recounted his time on the mountain cliff, his observations of the night sky, the moment his trauma had flared up, and a few other superficial details before his mind had slipped into that bizarre nightmare.
However, he deliberately chose not to reveal a single thing about the Infinity Nihility System, keeping strictly to his plan. The reasoning was simple: if he brought it up, he would be forced to explain how he had nearly plunged to his death off the cliff edge, how the system had branded him a Descendant of Nothingness, and the prerequisites that followed.
Sharing that would only trigger Allina's suffocating overprotectiveness. He knew her too well. Given how clingy she could be when it came to his health, she would dissect every single detail without restraint. At that point, any hope of extracting information from her would evaporate; she would be the one conducting the interrogation.
Instead, his strategy to query her about the origin of the Sin Purging Ceremony proved to be the perfect trojan horse to unlock secrets from her.
As if sensing a subtle shift in the air, Allina glanced at Morca before quickly averting her dreamy grey eyes. She stood up from the dining table, stacked their used plates, and walked toward the kitchen. Morca recognized his opening. Gathering the remaining silverware, he followed closely on her heels.
"Momma… don't you think it's time I knew the truth?" Morca asked, his voice cracking with practiced vulnerability. "How much longer do I even have left to live…? I can't keep living in the dark like this. I… I just can't take it anymore."
Morca weaponized the one tool he knew would shatter her defenses: his own raw emotion. He let a wave of despair slip through his voice. Real tears began to trace down his dry, peeling skin, leaving faint, glistening lines across his pale face. He took no pleasure in manipulating her like this, but if a feigned breakdown was the price required to pry the truth from his mother, he would gladly pay it.
Click.
Hearing his trembling voice, Allina's shoulders stiffened. The ceramic plate in her hand let out a sharp, fragile click against the counter. She set it down slowly on the wooden surface.
"Morca, my son…" Allina began, her voice dropping to a whisper. She turned around, her eyes glassy. "I never wanted you to experience the cruel reality of this world. Your father and I had tried everything to give you a life entirely free from the crushing burdens of Evoslon's darker truths. At one point, we even considered making you a Sacred Proclaimer, just to ensure you would be protected."
Her voice softened, thick with regret.
"But… it seems our desperate attempts to shield you have only caused you more harm than good."
Stepping forward, she closed the distance between them and pulled Morca into a tight embrace, gently patting his back. The tears she had been desperately holding back finally broke free, spilling down her smooth cheeks.
After a long moment of quiet comfort, Allina led Morca back into the sitting room, the heavy silence of the cottage finally lifting. Seated together, she began to unravel the forgotten history of Evoslon's pathbearers, reaching back long before the inception of the modern Sin Purging Ceremony.
"Your father used to tell me something that always stuck with me," Allina murmured, staring into the cold fireplace. "He said that the present always has a tragic way of repeating the past."
She took a deep breath, organizing centuries of hidden history in her mind.
"It is recorded that Evoslon was once a beautifully prosperous world, teeming with ancient clans, vast religions, kingdoms, and empires. Humanity thrived by cultivating the Primal Origin Source—a pure, potent form of spiritual energy that permeated the entire atmosphere, birthed directly from the core of the world's root. Those rare individuals who could resonate with it were revered as Primal Ascendants."
"But everything shattered when monstrous creatures invaded Evoslon. A sudden, apocalyptic crisis tore through civilization, rapidly devolving into a brutal war of attrition between outsiders and mortals that nearly pushed humanity to absolute extinction."
"Driven to the brink of collapse, when human race stood on the precipice of total annihilation, a final glimmer of hope emerged. A clandestine faction of researchers—heretics whom the mainstream authorities labeled as completely insane—began studying ancient, forbidden records. They achieved a catastrophic breakthrough. One that, within a few decades, fundamentally turned the tide of the apocalypse."
"They discovered that humanity's potential was not strictly limited to cultivating the Primal Origin Source. There was something else hidden inside our biology… something shocking. An energy source explicitly tied to humanity's greatest flaw, yet harboring a terrifyingly immense potential."
Allina paused, exhaling deeply to let the gravity of the historical revelation sink into Morca's mind.
Humanity's greatest flaw… yet harboring immense potential.
The phrase echoed in Morca's mind, but he maintained a perfectly stoic, listening face.
"…Sin," Allina finally uttered.
"Sin?" Morca repeated, his voice carried the perfect blend of confusion and disbelief.
"Yes—sin," Allina confirmed, nodding slowly. "The researchers identified humanity's greatest genetic flaw during that existential war. That flaw is sin itself."
She waited for him to process the concept before continuing.
"It was through the meticulous dissection of the very monsters they slaughtered that they began to understand their true genetic structure." A trace of murderous intent briefly radiated from her when she reached the point of the dissection, which she quickly masked before continuing. "Long before the breakthrough, these scientists had mapped strange, anomalous traces of this genetic flaw within the human anatomy using a sacred, primordial script they later termed the Blasphemy Slate. Though they couldn't fully comprehend its dark syntax at the time, they archived the data and pushed forward."
"Later, when they analyzed the genes of the invading creatures, they made a horrifying discovery. Those entities were biologically perfect, possessing terrifying, godlike evolutionary traits. But the most disturbing realization was their growth mechanism—they grew exponentially stronger after consuming human flesh."
"The researchers systematically mapped their genes, their cellular structures, and their life essence. Countless hypotheses were tested; thousands of horrific experiments were conducted in the dark. And after an eternity of failures, they finally grasped the cosmic punchline behind humanity's flaw."
She leaned in slightly, her voice dropping to a gravelly seriousness."Humans could actively convert the latent sin within their own bodies into raw, world-bending power."
She paused, letting the silence stretch before introducing the caveat.
"But then came the ultimate hurdle… how could they artificially replicate a monster's evolutionary process to force a human body to convert sin into strength?"
As his mother spoke, Morca felt his breath quicken. Pieces of the puzzle clicked together in his mind, and the answer spilled from his lips before he could stop it: "They found a catalyst… and that catalyst was the invention of the Sin Purging Ceremony?"
"Exactly. By forcing a human body to absorb the harvested essence of those slaughtered creatures, they could forcefully trigger and awaken an individual's specific Lineage Flaw," Allina replied, a ghost of pride in her voice at his quick wit. "Over centuries, this radical practice gave rise to humanity's first seven godlike beings, spanning across seven distinct epochs. Through their absolute authority, a unified global system was established."
"But peace is fleeting in Evoslon. A secondary, cataclysmic war broke out, bringing an end to the Era of Godly Days. The last of those seven primordial deities vanished from the face of the earth."
"The unified system they had constructed was completely shattered across the subsequent epochs. Throughout the three bloody eras of chaos that followed, a desperate humanity cobbled together a new, fragmented system—one rooted strictly in ancestral genetic traits and inherited legacies."
"And that is how the modern Awakened came to be," Allina explained, her eyes tracking the moonlight on the floor. "The modern Sin Purging Ceremony was standardized. By submerging youths who exhibit the volatile symptoms of an awakening into a highly concentrated, divine elixir known as the Sin Constitutive Divine Awakening Pool, the elixir forces the latent flaw embedded deep within their bloodline to bloom. If they survive the process, they gain extraordinary power and ascend as a Pathbearer."
Morca felt a heavy, physical weight settle over his consciousness. Throughout his entire upbringing, the public records and tutors had always preached that humanity suffered chronic illnesses and mortality because of the moral sins inherited from their first ancestors. Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined that this tragic "sin" was a tangible, biological fuel tank—an engineered miracle weapon forged by a group of borderline-insane scientists to fight off cosmic horrors.
Those researchers weren't just geniuses, Morca realized, a chill running down his spine. They were absolute monsters.
As if reading the sudden tension in his posture, Allina spoke softly, "Son, never forget this—everything that exists in this reality has its flaws. But a flaw is not inherently a weakness. Today, the human entire race thrives solely because they learned to weaponize their defects. And currently, civilization has mapped three primary evolutionary pathways to harness it: the Ascendant, the Dominator, and the Spinal Reaper."