Arella barely heard the Foreverwatcher’s words through the ringing in her ears. Her body was wracked with tremors that caused her breath to shallow out and beco uneven. The weight of her countless lives pressed down on her, their mories flickering in and out of her mind, reminiscent of ghosts she would love to bury down in her mind.
She clenched her hands into fists, digging her nails into her palms in a desperate attempt to ground herself.
She was Arella, daughter of Camael and Lailah, sister of Castiel, an angel of water. Everything else was unimportant.
The thought repeated in her mind like a chant, but it was flimsy, weak in front of the weight of the feelings that threated to overwhelm her. The truth that she had been forced to witness made her want to lash out, to demand to know what it was he had done to her.
Why did it hurt so terribly?
Why did it feel more painful than having a knife stabbed through her stomach?
However, even that question felt like it would be too difficult to ask. It was already so hard for her to move even one muscle in her body. Her body ached as though it had been stretched thin, as if she were only half there, teetering between past and the present, between her borrowed form, and the endless of fragnts of souls that now whispered in her ears.
"Sir," Haniel spoke up beside Arella.
He had not looked up from the mont that Arella had been caught by the chains. In fact, he had been so quiet that Arella had forgotten he existed for a small mont.
"I do not think that she will be able to withstand the pain of her lives." Haniel’s entire body was radiating worry that rolled off of him in waves and his posture was stiff with tension.
The Foreverwatcher listened to his words but did not look away from Arella, "You might be right, child." He still looked at her with an unreadable gaze, his eyes peering through the halo that covered Arella’s eyes, as if he could see right through it.
Arella’s stomach twisted. "You seem to think you are separate from those you have seen in your mind." He cocked his head slightly. "But are you?"
Arella’s stomach twisted, and bile rose up her throat.
What was he asking? Or worse, what was he implying?
"I am Arella." She said, forcing strength into her voice. The words felt more like a plea than a statent,
The Foreverwatcher’s gaze remained unblinking, as he studied her in a way that made her feel like she was being dissected, like her very essence was an open book for him to read. Then, without warning, he lifted his hand once more.
Arella flinched, expecting another assault on her soul.
However, this ti, when he touched her, it only made the halo that hovered above her eyes to disappear into the back of Kratel’s head.
The mont the halo vanished, Arella’s vision blurred, her surroundings shifting as though the very fabric of the Hall of Eternity had been montarily pulled apart. The weight pressing down on her chest lightened—just barely—but it was enough for her to suck in a deep, shuddering breath.
Her own holy power, the one that filled Haniel’s veins, Haniel’s holy power, flowed through her body much easier now, and it felt almost, liberating. As if it was what she had been requiring this entire ti
And then she saw.
Not with her own eyes, not with the borrowed sight of Kratel’s body, but with sothing deeper. Sothing more ancient.
The Hall was no longer just a place of divine power and unshakable law. It was alive. The walls pulsed faintly, woven with threads of golden light, as if fate itself had been etched into them. The floating eye that lood above them now seed less like an artifact and more like a living thing, watching—always watching.
And the Foreverwatcher...
For the first ti, she saw him **truly.**
His form flickered, no longer bound to a single mont in ti. He existed in layers, countless reflections of himself overlapping, so younger, so older, so wearing armor and wielding weapons of celestial light, others draped in robes so grand they seed to be woven from the heavens themselves.
But they were all him.
They were all here.
The realization sent a tremor through Arella’s spine.
The Foreverwatcher was not just one being.
He was every version of himself that had ever existed and ever would exist, converging in a single, incomprehensible mont.
A divine constant.
Unchanging. Eternal.
"Your eyes have finally opened." The Foreverwatcher said. "I wondered for a mont why your sight was still closed despite you having seen all your lives." His voice echoed through the hall, ;ole hundreds of people were speaking at once, "In the world where you co from, I, the Foreverwatcher am just a fignt of history, one that existed eons before your birth." His voices, though they echoed and wove over and into each other, were undeniably one person’s voice.
"Just because I do not have a physical form there, does not an that I do not exist." He continued to speak, "but, I do now understand why that child brought your soul here."
The chains that had wound around Arella loosened slightly, "You hold just as much power as he does, and have just as much power as he does, because just as you are him, he is you, as much as you two are not the sa being."
"What... does that an?" Arella was already having a hard ti keeping up with the layers over layers of voices that spoke, and it was made harder by the fact that she was still slightly overwheld by the sheer holy presence of the Foreverwatcher.
His head tilted again, the movent so slight that it might have gone unnoticed if Arella was not currently so hyperaware of his every movent.
"It ans that with these mories, you can do everything that Kratel could do, you can do everything that your other selves could do. You are, quite literally, the best version of yourself at this mont."
Arella shook her head, "That is impossible."
"Of course it is." His voices continued to echo, to overlap, "You are too weak to actually do sothing of that sort. Your body cannot take the strain that it will have on you in the long run, and you will, without a doubt, die."
Arella swallowed thickly, trying to truly comprehend what he was telling her. He had dumbed it down for her of course, but it was still quite unbelievable, the fact that she would die just because of having knowledge of her past lives.
However, as dubious as it sounded, it still made sense. The pain that she had been feeling, would not be easy for her to go through every day of her life. She would not survive.
"It is almost ti for you to return."
Arella stiffened. "Return...?"
The Foreverwatcher inclined his head, his infinite reflections shifting ever so slightly. "Did you believe you would remain here indefinitely? No, child. This place does not belong to you. Everyone has a fate, and yours may have been intertwined with this one, but it s not where your fate will co to an end."
The chains coiled around her wrists slackened further, their weight diminishing until they felt no heavier than threads of silk. The sensation of law binding her in place—of being pinned beneath the weight of sothing far greater than herself—began to lift.
But it was not relief she felt.
It was dread.
If she left now, what would she take with her?
Would she rember all that she had seen? All that she had learned? Or would it slip from her fingers like water, vanishing the mont she stepped back into the world she had co from?
The thought made her chest tighten.
"I don’t understand," Arella said, her voice barely above a whisper. "Why show all of this if I cannot use it? Why tell I hold the sa power as Kratel, only to say I will die if I wield it?"
For the first ti, since the Foreverwatcher appeared, he gave Arella a smile, "I never said that, but you will understand what I an when you leave. "Knowledge is not the sa as understanding," he said simply. "And power is not the sa as wisdom."
The 𝘮ost uptodat𝑒 novels are pub𝙡ished on fre(e)webno(v)el.𝒸𝑜𝘮
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