Half an hour later, when the lab’s clocks ticked past the promised ti, Azzy returned to the analysis chamber. The robot was already standing by the terminal, the screen behind it flickering with completed data lines. As Azzy approached, the robot held out a printed docunt.
"Lord Azrael," it said, "the results are ready. Despite the differences in appearance, color, composition, and spiritual density, the genetic sequences align perfectly. They belong to the sa individual. Conclusion: It’s a 100% match."
Azzy stared at the sheet quietly.
Gold ichor. Mortal blood.
Two substances that could not be more different—yet the core genetic signature was identical. No deviation. No mutation. No divergence at all.
That just ans one truth.
He and Azrael were indeed the sa person, with the sa sets of parents and ancestors. Exactly the sa.
Azzy exhaled slowly. He didn’t need more interpretation. This result alone confird everything he suspected.
He was born in a different tiline.
If so, then the deviation must have happened sowhere else.
He thought of Barbara.
How she raised Azrael... how she beca "his aunt"... how she was twenty-seven years older...
But Barbara never had the ti manipulation ability. Neither did Azrael. So where did that age gap co from? How did she travel to the past and stay there?
With questions still not solved, Azzy folded the report, pocketed it, and left the laboratory.
This mystery had to be confronted at its source.
*
Back in the Pocket Dinsion
Azzy returned to the clan, stepped through the hidden barrier, and re-entered the silent pocket dinsion where Azrael still hung suspended with divine spears pointing at him from all sides, ready to pierce at the slightest twitch.
Azrael—exhausted, wary, and barely conscious—lifted his head weakly when Azzy appeared.
Azzy snapped his fingers.
The divine spears vanished like smoke, and Azrael dropped to the ground with a heavy thud, coughing and cursing under his breath. His arms trembled from the strain of having been suspended so long.
Azzy didn’t wait for him to recover fully. He stepped forward and extended the folded paper.
Azrael eyed it suspiciously, then snatched it, unfolding it with shaking hands. Confusion flickered across his face as he scanned the analysis.
Azzy spoke calmly. "I ran DNA testing for both of us. And the results say the sa thing—they match exactly. We’re indeed the sa person."
Azrael’s eyes snapped upward. His voice trembled. "What... what do you an?"
Azzy t his gaze steadily. "It ans basically we both have the sa parents and were born in the sa clan. I know which clan you were born into."
Azrael swallowed, unable to speak for a mont. Then, with a stiff voice, he asked, "Who?"
Azzy straightened, his tone formal for the first ti in a long while.
"Let properly introduce myself. In this reality and tiline, I am the 64th leader of the Death Clan, son of Vesyrn Garcia and Izora Crescent. My full na is Azrael Crescent Garcia. And that is also your true identity, in your reality too. You are the heir of the Death Clan."
Silence.
An utter silence t Azzy.
Azrael stared at him with wide eyes, not breathing, not blinking. Then his expression twisted—shock blending into disbelief, disbelief curling into rage.
"You—" his voice cracked, then rose into a roar, "you are the leader of the Death Clan?"
Azzy didn’t flinch.
Azrael’s body shook with fury. "Now I understand!" he scread, veins bulging in his neck. "You’re lying! You must be lying! You—you’re the one who killed my family! And now, you’re trying to fool with so made-up story for the sake of power inside my body—"
He launched forward, with his eyes burning with hatred. "I’ll kill you—YOU BASTARD!"
But he forgot that his power was sealed.
Azrael barely managed two steps before Azzy moved in a blur.
A single chop to the back of the neck made Azrael collapse instantly, unconscious before he hit the ground.
Azzy stood over him quietly, staring at him in pity instead of anger. "What to do with you... sigh..."
Azzy confird Azrael’s identity...
But he still had to uncover the truth behind Barbara’s age, the deviated tiline... why Barbara raised him instead of Oakley, and why another version of him grew up in such a way.
Azzy stood over the unconscious Azrael for a long mont, watching over himself. Azrael lay motionless, chest rising and falling unevenly, still breathing heavy from rage and exhaustion.
Azzy exhaled quietly.
He crouched beside Azrael, studying the faint traces of demonic residue clinging to the boy’s aura. Even though he had sealed Azrael’s soul energy and also his attribute energy along, the devil’s essence inside him—Satan’s essence—was fused so deeply with Azrael’s soul that attempting to remove it would tear Azrael apart from the inside.
Azzy didn’t show it, but he understood the danger perfectly.
"If the devil wants to," he whispered, "he can break my seal and take your body."
That alone made letting Azrael roam free an impossible option. One whisper from the devil—and the seal would break. Satan would rise. The reason why Satan wasn’t doing that is out of his mind. He didn’t know what the devil was planning, but was only currently cooperating with him.
Azzy stood slowly.
"Letting him go is the last thing I want to do," he muttered to himself. He folded his arms, thinking through the problem again.
He could imprison Azrael permanently. But that wasn’t a solution—it was cruel. It felt like trapping himself. Another possibility was sending Azrael back to his own tiline... but that tiline was destroyed.
Sending him back was no different from killing him.
Azzy frowned. Sothing tugged at his mory. Even if the ti deviation occurred by Znuvo, the ti beast, or whatever, the fact is that the tiline collapses only when the wielder of the Reaper dies. Usually, it would be his future counterpart who would kill his versions to erase the tiline.
But this guy isn’t a wielder. He is the sa as everyone else in the destroyed tilines.
He looked down at him again, his expression softening with reluctant understanding.
"He and I can basically coexist. The tiline he ca from is gone, but he isn’t bound to it anymore."
He straightened fully, hands behind his back, posture firming with new resolve.
"So if I can erase his hatred toward the clan, I can let him inside the clan and help him... And to help him..." he murmured, "I need soone he trusts. Soone he considers dearest."
Soone whose voice could reach him where logic couldn’t.
Soone who could break through the hatred lodged deep in his soul.
And the image of Barbara ca to his head.
He closed his eyes.
"I need Dr. Mac’s help first. To suppress him safely... and suppress the devil. First," he murmured, "I will restrain him properly. Then I’ll chase the answers."
His hand hovered above Azrael once more, sealing him lightly so he wouldn’t wake prematurely.
"And then... I’ll go to your tiline and find Barbara, bringing her here." He stepped away, aura rising in a soft ripple.
"Because if you’re ..." Azzy whispered, "Then I owe you at least that much. And maybe, that will also reduce my guilt of killing my Barbara..."
With that, he vanished—heading straight back to Dr. Mac.
Reviews
All reviews (0)