Chapter 695: Something Doesn’t Add Up |
The revelation was soul-crushing. Alex sat with it for exactly as long as he could afford to, which was not long at all, and then he reasoned through it, from the outside in, stripping away the emotion until the shape of the problem became clear enough to work with.
The Ancestral Realm Ruler was a cosmic entity. That much was beyond dispute, and in the hierarchy of power that governed the Ancient World, she sat at a height that most beings never came close to even comprehending, let alone reaching.
And yet, it was also true that she was caged. Her domain, vast as it felt from within, was small by any meaningful standard. A single realm, comparable to a large world in scale.
A realm also only capable of producing Tenth Rank Ascendants at its ceiling, which was remarkable by any measure but also entirely unremarkable by the measure of what actually existed within the universe.
A frog inside a well.
Lady Enigma was something else entirely.
Behind her stood a cosmic power that did not measure its reach in realms or worlds but in countless galaxies. The resources available to that empire were effectively without limit.
And Lady Enigma, whatever her motives and however carefully Alex intended to watch them, moved with the backing of that weight behind her every promise.
If the Realm Ruler had looked at Sophie’s connection to the Chaos Queen’s legacy and said it cannot be severed, that was the honest answer only limited to her, not the final truth.
Alex held faith in that distinction, but he didn’t trust her blindly, since the question of motive was a real one, considering a Chaos Queen was a rare, rare individual even for them. However, he still trusted them to help Sophie, because he himself was equally valuable to them, or perhaps more so.
He exhaled slowly, quietly, and let the cold of the realization settle somewhere he could return to later, and turned his full attention back to his sister.
"Sophie." His hand moved gently against her hair. "Take a deep breath, and listen to me."
She looked up at him, her eyes still wet, still carrying the exhaustion of someone who had been holding something alone for far too long.
"The Malefis Domain is special," he said. "It is connected to powers that exist far beyond the Ancient World, and they have promised to help you." She was very still.
"You will be safe again," Alex said, and his voice carried no performance, no careful construction, just the plain weight of someone saying something they meant with everything they had. "I promise you that I will rid you of the madness plaguing you. And once it is gone, you will have your normal life back. All of it."
Sophie looked at him for a long moment.
"You are not lying," she said, not quite to him, more to herself, as if confirming something her own instincts had already told her.
Alex smiled.
"Why would I lie to you?" A small sound left her, not quite a laugh, but something in that direction, fragile and genuine.
"Just trust in your big brother," he said softly. "And I will solve everything."
She nodded, once, and buried her face against his chest, her arms tightening around him, and he held her there without moving, without rushing her, until the trembling in her shoulders finally, slowly, stilled.
When she had found her footing again, not fully, but enough, Alex began to ask questions.
He asked about the grade of wish she had used with the Realm Ruler. He asked when the madness had first begun to make itself felt. He asked how long she could hold before the pressure became something she could no longer contain, whether staying away from the Ancient World lengthened that window, and, if so, by how much.
He asked about everything.
The answers were worse than he had hoped for, but much better than he had feared, especially given what he had witnessed during the rampage against the Sin Generals, the scale of what she had been capable of in that state.
Sophie had used the highest-grade wish available and had even offered multiple, leaving no doubt that the Realm Ruler couldn’t help her.
The only thing the Realm Ruler had been able to offer was a small help. A blade that was uniquely suited to her legacy, which would suppress the madness, extend the window, give her more time between the moments when the chaos nature demanded its release.
Sorrow. The same blade Alex had retrieved from beneath Vykan Zeld’s palace, and the same blade the Dark Ancient had forged with his own hands, for his sister, who was also the first and original Chaos Queen.
Sophie had received it four months ago by Earth’s count. Four years, by the stretched time of the Ancestral Realm.
Given to her by Alex himself, after seeing the blade respond to her more than it did to him and also after confirming she was a good individual and not as her nature painted her.
It all happened before she began showing signs of madness.
The last and most important thing Sophie told him was the time of buildup, which was three months, before it reached a level she could no longer hold back, before the madness demanded its release in the only language it understood.
And that was if she stayed entirely away from the Ancient World. If she visited the realm regularly, that window halved.
Dying inside the Ancestral Realm or the Ancient World offered no relief. The only genuine release of her power was through sustained and prolonged battles that drained the buildup enough to matter.
And the conditions for that release were not simple.
She needed someone capable of bearing the full brunt of her madness, someone who could also inflict damage beyond reason upon her as well, because the alternative was to be consumed by madness and go on a rampage, which would not subside even at the death of millions and half a dozen cities.
He sat with all of it for a moment, then he leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his sister’s forehead. When he pulled back, the smile he gave her was easy and genuine, not performed, not constructed, just real.
"Big Brother will make everything alright," he said. "So forget your worries for now, and enjoy your life the way you want to." A small pause. "We will talk about the future when the time is right. And no more keeping secrets from me. Not any."
Sophie looked at him and nodded with a small smile, and something in her face- the cold that had settled into her eyes over the course of the conversation- softened at its edges.
"Now," Alex said, rising from the bed and straightening, "If you’ll excuse me, I need to go and bring back the long-lost prince of our dear aunt."
Sophie laughed, a real one, small and sudden, the cheerful warmth of it more present and more genuine than anything she had managed since he had walked through her door.
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The car moved through the wind, New York rising and falling outside the windows, the city indifferent to the weight of what sat inside the vehicle cutting through it.
"Is Sophie fine?" Venedikt asked. His voice was composed, but the concern beneath it was present and unhidden, the particular concern of someone who had noticed more than he had been told and had chosen, for now, to ask only what he felt he had the right to.
"As I said," Alex replied evenly. "She is perfectly fine with abandoning the Chaos Queen’s legacy. And the companions she made among the chaos spawns."
A beat of quiet.
"Are you fine?" Venedikt followed. The concern was still there, but something else had joined it, a quiet edge, steady and uninsistent, that said simply: I am here, if there is something you need me for.
"Yeah," Alex replied after a short pause. "Just thinking about the upcoming war." It was a lie. A clean one, delivered without hesitation, the kind that didn’t ask to be examined.
Venedikt knew it was a lie, but he didn’t press and simply turned his gaze back to the window, and the silence settled back into place, and that was the end of it. If Alex had decided there was something he didn’t need to know right now, then Ven was content with that decision.
That was the particular trust they had built over years, and it didn’t require explanation.
Now, what was moving through Alex’s mind had nothing to do with the war.
’I had realised Sophie could be the Chaos Queen approximately four months ago,’ he turned the thought over again, what was likely the thenth time. ’When she summoned the red chaos spawn. I knew then. So why didn’t I act on it?’
He had dealt with the Chaos Queen on multiple occasions inside the realm. He understood what she was and he understood the danger she represented, so he would never take any matter related to her lightly, let alone when she turned out to be his little sister.
’The last two and a half months can be attributed to me going mad and losing control, but I discovered about her four months ago,’ Alex cleared, and the reality came crashing down on him.
’After seeing what happened at Harntel,’ His eyes darkened slightly, the shift subtle enough that neither of his brothers would have caught it. ’I would never delay. Not by a single day. Let alone a month and a half.’
Alex had no memory of it, but he could for a moment believe that he didn’t confront her because he was afraid and worried for her and was just waiting for the right time.
But that would explain a delay of a few days, a week or two at most, but not a month and a half.
His own madness, the episode that had consumed him, had preceded the Harntel incident by more than two years of Realm’s time, so there was no possible reason why he wouldn’t find his sister and confirm the truth.
’Accounts of the Harntel disaster were attributing it to mutants as well,’ he conceded, pulling at the memory carefully. ’But the evidence pointed to it being the work of chaos entities.’
Even this small excuse was no reason for him not to confront his sister, and even if the incident had nothing to do with her, Sophie’s mere connection to the Chaos Queen legacy would make him drop everything and understand her situation.
Yet Alex had not acted.
Alex knew himself. He knew how he operated, and if anything, the moment he even got the first clue, he should have acted and reached the bottom of it, yet he had not.
Something didn’t add up, about him, about his own memories, his own choices, the version of himself that had existed in those months and had done something, or failed to do something, that the Alex sitting in this car could not reconcile with any version of himself he recognized.
’There is something seriously wrong,’ he concluded, the certainty settling into him quietly, without drama. ’Something was certainly wrong about my past, about what I remember, and about what I did and did not do and why.’