The ssage lingered in the air like smoke, curling around his thoughts and clouding them with silent weight.
Alex stared at the projection, frozen. His fists clenched at his sides, but not in rage—confusion. Deep, gnawing confusion sat like a stone in his stomach.
The mind of a villain...?
Why would she say that?
The silence grew longer, heavier, until the video shifted again. His mother was still there—her figure slightly glitching as the recorded hologram continued. She didn’t acknowledge the pause, but it was as if she’d expected his thoughts, his turmoil.
"I know you’ll understand better later," she said softly, her voice almost soothing now. "So I won’t dwell too much on it."
She exhaled deeply, a slow, grounding breath. The kind you take when about to let go of sothing heavy. Her fingers brushed back a stray strand of hair, tucking it behind her ear with that sa habitual grace Alex rembered from his childhood.
Then her expression shifted.
Gone was the sorrowful, trembling mother.
What remained was a woman trying her best to be strong for the one she couldn’t protect anymore.
Her face beca the center of the fra—closer now, intimate. No escape from the truth that was coming.
"I’m sure you’re already wondering..." she said, her gaze steady, as if she could see right through him. "...why the Higher Clans are truly trying to destroy us."
The edges of her lips twitched—not in a smile, but in the strain of soone holding back layers of exhaustion and bitterness.
"Even after all I’ve said so far, it still doesn’t make sense, does it? Destroying our clan would do more harm than good to them. Strategically. Economically. Politically. It’s reckless, shortsighted... stupid."
Her eyes shimred again—not with tears this ti, but with sothing deeper. A kind of resignation.
"So let say it now."
She blinked slowly, as if bracing herself against the words she’d held in her chest for far too long.
"Because you should hear it from now... than stumble into it too late."
A pause.
The flickering light of the hologram pulsed once behind her like a heartbeat.
Then her lips parted.
"The reason we’re in this ss to begin with..."
She hesitated. Not out of doubt—but out of sorrow.
"...is because of you, darling."
The words ca out softer than they should have—but they struck like a thunderclap.
Her voice cracked slightly at the end; she looked truly powerless and, for the first ti in the entire recording, defeated—not ashad—helpless.
Like a mother watching the tide swallow her child from the shore.
She looked straight into the cara now—her eyes hollow with an emotion too deep to na.
"You didn’t ask for it. You didn’t cause it. But your existence... changed everything."
Alex’s breath caught in his throat.
His face drained of color, pale as if the very life had been siphoned from him. The words echoed in his mind like a bell tolling at the edge of a grave.
"Because of you, darling."
He stared at the hologram, unmoving, his jaw slightly slack. Every muscle in his body went still—not from fear, but from disbelief.
How...?
How could I be the cause?
His thoughts clashed violently, scrambling for logic, for mory, for sothing that made sense. But there was nothing. Nothing but that sentence, burning itself into his skull.
Even Nyxara, who had remained quietly curled near the wall throughout the ssage, lifted her head now. Her ears twitched. Golden eyes widened, glinting with silent disbelief.
She stared at the projection, then at Alex.
"...Alex?" Her voice, though soft, trembled—half disbelief, half caution.
But the hologram was already shifting.
His mother’s image steadied, wiping the flicker of helplessness from her face like a queen adjusting her crown before a speech.
"Before you start thinking—before your mind runs wild with guilt or anger or confusion—let first explain everything better."
The screen dimd slightly, her face preparing to fade... just before the truth would begin.
Her voice ca steady, but beneath it was the unmistakable tremor of pain.
"In the early stage... after the Higher clans took over their respective continents-or, more truthfully, after they conquered part of their continents—things didn’t calm down the way people hoped they would."
She leaned forward slightly, her face now more illuminated by the soft white glow of the screen. Shadows gathered under her eyes, accentuating the weight of what she was about to say.
"The war with the beasts didn’t end. It simply evolved. We managed to forge fragile agreents with the Legend-rank beasts, but it wasn’t peace—it was survival. A ceasefire made of necessity and threat."
Her fingers curled together in her lap, knuckles briefly white.
"They promised not to wage full-scale wars, but unlike us... Beasts multiply fast. Too fast. With their numbers growing at terrifying rates, they needed a way to cull their own before they destroyed everything."
Her lips tightened.
"So ca the beast tides. Weekly. Monthly. A wave of blood and teeth, crashing against our walls again and again. And because of that, every clan needed warriors. Not just soldiers... champions. People they could trust with everything. People worth pouring our rarest resources into."
A beat passed. She looked away from the cara, just for a second.
"But finding them... finding true talent... that was the real war."
She looked back, and the bitterness in her eyes made Alex’s breath hitch.
"They tried everything—testing children, gambling on family nas. But it was chaos. They couldn’t afford to waste their ti or supplies on diocrity, but they had no way of knowing who was truly gifted. Even the master blacksmiths and runesmiths—of the thousands that existed, only fifty... fifty could craft artifacts capable of asuring soone’s potential."
Her voice cracked for the first ti.
"Millions... were overlooked. Millions of lives that could’ve changed the world were ignored because they weren’t born in the right ho or didn’t shout loud enough. While the weak, the well-connected, and the lucky drained what little we had left."
She looked into the screen again, her eyes locking with his, even through the veil of ti.
"So I stepped in."
The flickering light softened against her cheek as she exhaled.
"I gathered the brightest runesmiths—those who hadn’t been bought or broken—and we worked in secret. Weeks turned into months. We combined what they knew of runes... with what I understood of tech, of neural interfaces and quantum reading. We poured everything into a single creation."
There it was—the smallest, most bittersweet smile.
"And that’s how the Orb of Truth was born."
The image froze for a mont. Just her face—haunted by brilliance, by cost, by consequence.
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