Chapter 72| The Eight-Headed Truth
The transport ship carrying the American contingent toward Jenunl Island’s staging point cut steadily through dark, churning waters, three days of ocean crossing stretching ahead before they’d even reach the operation’s forward base. Allen spent most of the first day reviewing tactical briefings alongside Myria, but by the second evening, the ship’s quiet, rhythmic hum had settled into something almost meditative, and it was then, gathered in their shared cabin, that Myria finally broke a silence that had clearly been building for considerably longer than the crossing itself.
"There’s something we’ve never fully told you," she said, voice carrying unusual hesitation. "About how we actually became what we are now. I think, given what we’re sailing toward, you deserve the complete truth before we face it."
Allen set aside the tactical documents immediately, giving her his full, undivided attention. "I’m listening."
Myria glanced toward the others — Irene’s restless energy stilled into rare, solemn quiet, Everlyn’s expression carrying visible, old grief, Vivian’s composed stillness carrying an unmistakable weight beneath its surface.
"We told you, individually, about separate incidents," Myria began. "My containment breach. Irene’s sonic overload. Everlyn’s vocal resonance collapse. Vivian’s blinding ambush." She paused. "Those stories were true. But incomplete. All four of us were together, that day. We were already a party, long before any of us met you. The top four Hunters in the country, exactly as Reginald once described us with such contempt."
"You never mentioned that," Allen said quietly, though no accusation colored the observation.
"We weren’t ready to," Vivian admitted. "Even now, it’s not an easy thing to revisit."
Irene took a slow breath, uncharacteristically subdued, before continuing where Myria trailed off. "We were sent into what the Association classified as a routine S-rank dungeon," she said. "Standard clearance mission, nothing that should have challenged four Hunters at our level. Except the initial survey had gotten the classification catastrophically wrong. It wasn’t S-rank at all. It was SS+, misclassified through some administrative failure that, to this day, nobody’s ever properly explained."
"By the time anyone realized the mistake," Everlyn’s notepad continued, held up with visible, trembling effort, "the rift had already sealed behind us. Communications cut off entirely. No evacuation possible. We were trapped inside with whatever waited for us, regardless of how far beyond our actual capability that threat turned out to be."
Vivian picked up the account next, voice carrying quiet, measured weight despite the visible difficulty of the retelling. "The dungeon’s boss was a creature unlike anything any of us had faced before or since. An eight-headed dragon, each head possessing an entirely separate, devastating ability. Fire. Ice. Lightning. Poison. Illusion. Sound. Gravity distortion. Regeneration so aggressive it healed damage nearly as fast as we could inflict it."
"We fought for nearly eleven hours straight," Myria said. "No rest, no retreat possible, every single one of us pushing considerably beyond what our bodies were ever meant to endure." Her hand trembled slightly, an old, deeply buried memory surfacing despite her best efforts at composure. "We won. Barely. But winning cost every one of us something we could never get back."
"The gravity head crushed my spine just enough to sever proper nerve function to my legs, in the fight’s final moments," Myria continued. "A single, unavoidable strike, delivered just as the creature finally fell."
"The sound head’s final death throe released a resonance blast that permanently destroyed my hearing," Irene said. "Ironic, given how much noise I usually make."
"The illusion head’s collapse triggered a psychic feedback loop that burned out my vocal cords entirely," Everlyn’s notepad read, her hand unsteady as she held it up. "I haven’t spoken a word since that day."
"And the poison head’s final breath carried a toxin that permanently blinded me," Vivian finished quietly. "No cure, no antidote, nothing that could reverse the damage once it had fully set in."
The weight of the complete account settled heavily over the small cabin, and Allen felt something profound and aching shift in his chest, understanding now, with far greater completeness, exactly what his wives had actually survived before he’d ever entered their lives.
"An ordinary S-rank party would have died within the first hour," Myria said finally. "We survived only because we were, without exaggeration, the four most capable Hunters this country had ever produced at that time. Even then, survival cost each of us something permanent." She met Allen’s gaze directly, old vulnerability finally fully unguarded. "The Association’s response, once we recovered enough to return, was to quietly, efficiently determine we were no longer worth the investment our injuries represented. That’s when the marriage arrangement began taking shape."
"You were disowned for surviving something that should have killed you," Allen said, voice tight with fresh, protective anger on their behalf.
"We were discarded for becoming inconvenient," Myria corrected gently. "The same way you were, in your own way. I think that’s part of why none of us fully understood, that first day in the car, how to process someone else who’d survived exactly that particular kind of betrayal."
Allen reached for her hand, then Irene’s, then found himself gathering all four of them close, the cabin’s quiet, rhythmic hum filling the silence that followed as he simply held them, offering whatever comfort his presence alone could provide against a memory clearly still capable of considerable pain.
"Thank you," he said finally, "for trusting me with this. All of it."
"We should have told you sooner," Vivian admitted. "But some wounds take considerably longer to trust with words than others."
"You don’t owe me an apology for that," Allen said firmly. "You owed yourselves the time to decide when you were ready. That’s all this ever needed to be."
They sat together for a long while after that, the ship’s steady passage carrying them ever closer to an island that would test them in ways not entirely unlike the ordeal that had first shaped their shared, painful history, and Allen found himself more determined than ever to ensure that whatever waited on Jenunl Island’s shores, none of them would ever again be forced to pay quite so devastating a price for simple survival.