Samael reclined with her head resting across Kivas’ thighs, one arm bent loosely over her midsection, the other draped across the grass. Her gaze was turned upward, fixed on the half-shadowed profile of the angel above her.
The branches above filtered sunlight in soft beams, tracing faint patterns across Kivas’ expression—equal parts tranquil and tired, touched with sothing peaceful she hadn’t worn since the distortion reset the world.
The lap beneath her was surprisingly comfortable.
Samael had worried her horns would complicate the arrangent, but they’d ford at such a modest angle that she simply needed to rest closer to the bend of Kivas’ knees.
Her neck arched slightly, but the view was worth it. From here, the world narrowed down to soft cloth, steady warmth, and Kivas’ quiet rhythm.
Also, Kivas’ thighs were plump enough to accommodate her.
"This whole ti-resetting thing," Samael murmured, her voice tinted with amusent, "still feels utterly insane." Her fingers brushed faintly against the fabric over Kivas’ leg, slow and idle. "I’ve thought about it. A lot...
"And I’m certain of it now. This isn’t a different Fathomi. This is our Fathomi. The sa layers, the sa cycles. Just... rewound. Not recreated anew or being thrown to a different tiline."
Kivas looked down at her, fingers gently combing through the twin-toned strands of Samael’s hair. "I was scared," she admitted softly. "The world flipped, the ground was gone, and you were dead. Then I woke up again like nothing ever happened. I kept asking if I was hallucinating...
"If everything was a dream." She paused, her touch pausing mid-stroke. "But when I saw your face again... it was like a switch flipped inside my chest. All that anxiety vanished. Just like that."
Samael’s lips curved slightly, and her gaze turned away, not toward the sky but toward the opposite side of the field, away from Kivas’ line of sight.
A faint heat blood across her cheekbones. Her hand began moving again, this ti tracing idle circles along Kivas’ thigh, fingers skimming in quiet patterns.
"You feel different today," Samael said, eyes half-lidded. "There’s sothing in your face, your aura. Sothing warm. And tingly... You sll different, too."
Kivas tilted her head, brows quirking slightly. "Different, huh? What do I sll like?"
Samael inhaled softly, almost imperceptibly, her nose brushing lightly against the skin just above Kivas’ outer thigh. "You sll... floral. Like petals caught in the spring wind. But there’s sothing else beneath it."
"Sothing else beneath?"
Samael blinked once. "Milk."
Kivas narrowed her eyes in confusion. "Milk?"
Samael’s gaze shifted down to Kivas’ chest. Her eyes lingered for a mont, then widened slightly.
Kivas followed her gaze. Then her expression shifted with realization. She cleared her throat.
They saw a certain sothing leaking, a rather embarrassing thing to perceive.
Kivas didn’t really know what to do since it happened so suddenly, but she thought that Samael was not any normal human who cared for such a thing.
Samael was a forr Voidling, an Endless Dragon at that. Just because she looked like a human at this mont, doesn’t an that she would possess the sa kind of perversion.
"Right, so," she said quickly, lifting her voice half a pitch to redirect the subject, not putting any focus on things that didn’t matter. "I got two new skills."
Samael didn’t lift her head. Her cheek remained pressed comfortably against Kivas’ thigh, raising slightly up just so that her horn didn’t poke Kivas’ skin. "You don’t have to tell details about your Well of the Soul, there might be a future where we need to fight and you need to win against at all cost."
Kivas chuckled. "I don’t care. It’s more important that you know. If I hold everything back just to optimize for so unknown scenario, then what’s the point of us being together in the first place?"
Samael’s hand paused in its tracing. "You know the consequence. If you reveal more than I’ve already experienced about your Soul. Your stats will lose so of their actualization when facing , especially in conflicting layers."
"I know," Kivas replied. "But if you let give you hints, will that bypass the limitation?"
"It can, in a way," Samael said slowly. "Don’t give the direct nas. Keep the explanations vague. Let guess the skills without uttering it fully. That way, the Soul doesn’t register it as knowledge."
Kivas exhaled, letting her fingers fall into the rhythm of brushing once more. "The first skill ca to right after I woke up again. I think it’s tied to... a certain important deity from a certain civilization of the past."
Samael closed her eyes briefly, considering. "Does the skill description say how you embodied a certain trait of that deity?"
Kivas nodded. "Sothing like that."
Samael’s lashes lifted. "Ah. Then it’s probably part of the Rembrance series." She let the silence rest for a mont, then added, "Those types of skills pull from historic, religious, or mythic references—regardless of which reality they originated from...
"They’re powerful, to the point that it might transform you depending on the origin and source material of the rembrance."
"You’ve had one?" Kivas asked. "Seeing how knowledgeable you are, I’m assuming you have this kind of skill."
"I’ve collected around 32 of them," Samael replied casually. "So of them are fairly high-leveled, too. Before I was... now."
"Show off."
"You’re the one asking if I have one."
"True, but still, what a show off~"
"I don’t mind if it’s you. I can laid everything bare if you want it."
"Now, you’re making this whole thing suggestive." Kivas chuckled. "As for the second skill. This one’s tied to a promise. To explain it as simply and vaguely as possible, I can’t equip as many spiritual artifacts now as I wanted now."
Samael tapped her fingers against Kivas’ leg, rhythm picking up slightly. "So you’re restricted to fewer soul-bound items. But I’m guessing the ones you can equip get amplified?"
Kivas nodded. "Exactly. It feels like... the fewer I carry, the stronger each becos. Sothing along the line."
"Ah, that skill. I knew that."
"I guess my explanation is barely vague in a sense."
"At level one," Samael began, "you’ll likely be allowed three. Maybe two, depending on your core’s temperant. But those equipped will be doubled in effect. At level five, you’ll probably drop to just one." She turned her head again to et Kivas’ gaze. "But the boost becos exponential, and scales indefinitely, if you sohow find a way to level it up."
"That’s... kind of incredible," Kivas said, eyes widening slightly. "Honestly, managing too many items was getting exhausting anyway."
"It’s not just convenience," Samael added. "It’s just a perfect state of being. Relying on your own strength is quite the cathartic experience, you know?"
"Did you have this one too?" Kivas asked.
"I did," Samael replied.
Kivas chuckled, raising one eyebrow. "On top of that skill that lets you gain the traits and abilities of Curio items you eat?"
Samael’s lips curled into a sharp, smug grin. "Naturally."
"Shows off~"
"More like soone prodded it without doing anything."
Their eyes t for a quiet second, the air between them lighter now—less haunted by the weight of their reunion, steadied by the rhythm of shared knowledge, shared history, and that small, wordless feeling of moving forward together again.
Samael’s fingers then paused in their tracing.
Her brows twitched slightly. She blinked once, slowly, her gaze narrowing as sothing unfamiliar pulsed beneath her skin. She sat up without a word, lifting herself off Kivas’ lap with asured ease, her eyes focused sowhere invisible in the middle distance.
Kivas blinked and tilted her head. "What’s wrong?"
Samael didn’t respond at first. Her hand hovered in the air, palm half-closed as if trying to grasp sothing unseen.
Then her voice ca, soft but edged with a curiosity that ran deep. "It seems I’ve just gained a new skill."
That caught Kivas’ full attention. She sat upright, leaning forward slightly. "Out of nowhere?"
"Yes," Samael murmured. "It’s... unusual. Nothing in my current state should have triggered this unless..." She trailed off, gaze sharpening as her fingers flexed once. "Unless it’s directly linked to the Genesis Core you forced into when we first t."
"’Forced into you’ makes it sound so aggressive," Kivas muttered under her breath, but her curiosity overrode the sarcasm. "What kind of skill are we talking about?"
Samael stood in full, eyes still tracking sothing unseen as if reading across layers of script floating in space. "One I haven’t seen before."
She reached upward, palm now fully extended.
Energy crackled faintly, barely visible—subtle distortions, like heat bending the air in a soft shimr.
It gathered with the rhythm of breath, then with the gravity of will. Crimson hues began to pool at her fingertips, laced with undertones of black—familiar colors, worn in the sa palette as her soul.
And then it shifted.
The shimr solidified, condensing in mid-air into a rough silhouette—an incomplete humanoid shape carved from swirling fragnts of colored essence.
It mirrored Samael’s form loosely: sa long limbs, sa crown of twin horns, sa draconic presence bleeding through the lines.
But it was hazy. Unrefined.
Kivas rose slowly to her feet, her breath caught sowhere behind her ribs.
The conjuration pulsed, fluctuated, then compacted into a more stable form.
Where once there was just haze, now there stood a figure—a being of black dusts and crumbling void, smaller than Samael by a head or two, with texture like a statue carved from scorched ash.
Its skin cracked visibly across joints and shoulders, exposing swirling void within. One horn curved upward from the left side of its head. The right side was broken, jagged, like it had shattered long ago and never reford.
Its body didn’t breathe or beat a pulse. It simply existed, held together by will and definition.
The apparition tilted its head toward Kivas.
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