Chapter 508: Her Decision
"All done!"
Lilyca withdrew her purifying beam, the golden light fading from her small palms as she rocked back on her heels. The eight-year-old Saintess looked immensely pleased with herself, her silver-white eyes bright with accomplishment.
But then she tilted her head, her expression shifting to something more thoughtful. "Wait! I think you should bathe in holy purifying water too. Also drink some. Also... drink more for the next twenty-four hours?"
Cecilia, who had been kneeling beside Oathran’s battered form, looked up with a frown. "Is his condition that severe?"
Lilyca shook her head, her dark braid bouncing with the motion. "No. Just that I feel some weird divine power in him. It’s a bit... icky?"
Cecilia’s mind flickered back to the black flame.
The first time she had seen it was at the dam, a dark, hungry fire that had consumed the rift core and left nothing behind. When she saw it again now, pouring from the leviathan’s wounds, she had finally made the connection.
It was the Dragon God’s flame. Isaiah’s flame.
"Icky... or disgusting?" she asked.
Lilyca shuddered, her whole small body wriggling in disgust. "It’s like Natto. Or Durian? No, Durian is delicious. This feels sticky, smelly, and... with the worst texture! This divine power is eueueueueueueh..."
Cecilia chuckled, bubbling up from somewhere she had thought was too tired to laugh. Then the chuckle grew, and she was laughing, shaking her shoulders and making her belly jiggle.
Oathran watched her from where he sat on the edge of a medical cot, his wounds still raw beneath the faint golden shimmer of Lilyca’s purification.
Seeing Cecilia like this, laughing, still capable of joy after everything, made something twist painfully in his chest. Guilt. Relief. Both.
He had left her, fled into the night like a coward, too consumed by his own fear to see what he was doing to her. And yet here she was, laughing at a child’s description of his Father God’s divine power, her eyes still red from crying but her smile stil—
"What did you learn from Isaiah?" Cecilia’s voice cut through his thoughts, sharp and pointed.
Oathran subtly made himself a bit smaller on the cot. "What?"
"Answer. Don’t inconvenience Lilyca." Cecilia glared, seemingly running out of patience.
This... something had changed.
Cecilia felt different now.
Was it because of the power that had awakened inside her, the pure human mana that had poured from her soul and caught him from the sky? Has it changed something fundamental?
Or perhaps it wasn’t the power. Perhaps it was simply that she had spent a month alone, carrying his child, even perhaps preparing to let that child go?
"It’s nothing. Just some flame lesson," Oathran answered, his voice coming out flatter than he intended.
Cecilia looked at him for a long moment, her expression unreadable. Then she turned back to Lilyca, who was still making faces as though she had tasted something deeply unpleasant.
"I wonder why such a mighty entity chose to nurture such power..." she muttered.
Ah.
Oathran got it now.
He was being treated like Eastiel.
Cecilia was treating him the way she treated Eastiel, the youngest of them.
She—
The man felt weird. Why did he feel upset, and yet turned on, and also happy? All at the same time?
He felt like being scolded!
So far, from the very beginning, from the moment they had lain together in that ditch, waiting to die, her hand in his, Cecilia had always called him "His Majesty." She had always treated him with just a little bit more respect than the other two.
She had glared at him in anger, yes. Glared at him in exasperation, yes. But never like this. Never like he was a bad kitty who had knocked something off the counter and was about to be told "no" in a firm voice.
Even when he had unfurled his wings behind her in front of the Cassian Princess, she hadn’t treated him like this.
Like he was... her age.
Her... age?
Oathran suddenly blushed hard.
Her age. He felt like he was her age.
Ah—
Could it be why he liked Eastiel just a bit more than he liked Arkai...?!
"Lilyca, the weird divine power you’re feeling is from the Dragon God. I think you can rest assured," Cecilia said gently, her hand coming to rest on the Saintess’s small shoulder.
"Hmm." Lilyca tilted her head, her silver-white eyes still slightly narrowed with distaste. "Slug adjacent...?"
"PFFF—" Cecilia clamped her hand over her mouth, her shoulders shaking with the effort of containing her laugh. "We should stop... commenting on the Dragon God’s power... behind his back..."
Lilyca had to leave right after. She was needed by the Association to sweep the city again, a final pass to ensure no corruption residue lingered in the sky, and no stray particles of the leviathan’s... body parts... had drifted down to contaminate the streets.
The eight-year-old Saintess waved at them with both hands, her silver-white eyes still slightly squinted from whatever slug-adjacent texture she had sensed in the Dragon God’s power.
And then she was gone, whisked away by priestess attendants who were already murmuring about atmospheric readings.
Cecilia sat on the folding chair beside the medical cot, exhaling a long, slow breath.
The glittering particles had stopped falling. The sky was clear, a deep indigo at the horizon. The city was slowly coming back to life. Sirens fading, evacuation orders lifting, the first cautious civilians emerging from shelters to blink at a world that had not ended after all.
Oathran didn’t know what the fuck he should say.
His brothers were nowhere to be seen.
Arkai had been pulled away to help coordinate the de-evacuation, his alpha presence needed to organize the chaos of a million people returning to their homes.
Eastiel had muttered something about returning the military helicopter that was "borrowed without explicit permission," apparently, and had vanished into the night with a speed that suggested he was fleeing more than just the authorities.
Oathran was now left alone with the woman he had disappointed.
He wanted to open his mouth. He wanted to say something, that he was weak, that he was wrong, that he had been a coward and a fool and every other thing she had every right to call him.
He was upset. He had been upset for a month, burning with fury and fear, but he also had been very, very wrong.
Because he wanted the baby too—
"I should’ve told you especially about this world’s scenario... and my position in it." Cecilia’s voice cut through his spiraling thoughts.
He looked at her. She was sitting with her hands folded in her lap, her head bowed, her blonde hair falling forward to hide her face. She looked smaller than she had with the gods, or when she caught him from the sky.
"At first, I didn’t know whose baby it was going to be. I even suspected it would be Arzhen’s." She paused, and her voice dropped even lower. "But then... I immediately realized it was yours... and... I decided to let us enter this world anyway..."
Oathran stared at her. The guilt in her voice was so thick he could almost taste it. She—
Of course she looked more guilty than him. Perhaps she felt even more so. That was so like her, to carry the weight of his choices on top of her own, and apologize for his fear as though she had caused it.
"I didn’t tell you," she said. "I was ready to accept your anger. I just knew this world was going to be very... very important. And after entering it, and after we had gone this far... it’s even more important than I initially thought."
She raised her eyes and met his gaze directly. Her eyes were still red from crying. For Momo, for the baby, for everything she had almost lost. But her gaze was steady.
"So I don’t regret choosing this world, Oathran. I... only regretted that I didn’t tell you about the baby..."
"Because you’re scared I will refuse," Oathran said. His voice came out rough, raw from screaming at the sky, raw from weeks of silence.
She nodded. "You will, right?"
"I will." The words were out before he could stop them, and he saw her flinch, saw the confirmation of her fear land like a blow. But he kept going, because she deserved the truth. "I’d refuse no matter what and stop us from entering this world no matter the cost."