I have a child?
The words fell like a teor from the heavens, smashing into Vieya’s still heart-lake and sending up waves that threatened to swallow her whole.
Th-this is impossible!
Vieya’s mind quaked. In her ears thundered the echoes of that torrential rain from three years ago, dizziness battering her like waves.
Why did Flaviel never say a single word to back then?! Why? Why? Why!
“Oh... seems you’ve realized sothing.”
Anna, possessed by the evil god, looked at Vieya’s paling face and smiled lightly as she added:
“It’s a girl with half human blood and half monster blood. Hehe, she’s very cute, very well-behaved, and she’s inherited your and Flaviel’s resilience and gentleness...”
The evil god smiled, but its tone shifted into sorrow, like a clown crying behind a mask:
“But you know, hybrids like her will never be accepted by either humans or demons. Oh, that little one is so pitiful, like a little cabbage abandoned by both father and mother. Hehe, how does that human lullaby go again?”
The god pulled a pained face, thinking for a long while, then suddenly grinned at Vieya’s ever-paler expression.
“Little cabbage~ yellow in the field, two or three years old~ already without a mother~. Speaking of which, your daughter seems to be just over three years old now. Oh, and you know a certain Demon King was recently overthrown, don’t you? Need to remind you? Fufufu...”
“Enough...”
If not for the Authority of [Equilibrium] holding her bodily functions in balance, Vieya might already have collapsed into a formless sli on the ground.
Why didn’t you tell ... If only she had known this earlier... Vieya felt her heart dripping blood.
She recalled ❀ Nоvеlігht ❀ (Don’t copy, read here) a docuntary about the wave of “Arasian” children searching for their fathers after the Vietnam War.
During the war, many Arican soldiers fathered children with Vietnase won, then withdrew. Afterward, those mixed children, discriminated against and deprived of family recognition, grew up with gaping holes in their childhoods.
Like those who spend a lifeti healing from the wounds of youth.
So, as adults, searched for their fathers through aid groups, hoping to nd that void.
One daughter, at age fifty, finally found her father overseas by DNA test. The father, upon learning this, wrote a letter of confession: “You are the guilt and the redemption of my life.”
Heh.
Back then, Vieya only sneered when she saw that news, mocking those fathers harshly in her heart.
Now you regret it? Where the hell were you before!
How ironic.
The bullet fired long ago had once again struck squarely between her brows.
Pain gnawed inside Vieya, like a hedgehog lodged in her chest. A regret she had never before tasted sprouted in the cracks of her heart.
If only this were a lie told by the evil god.
If only it were a lie...
“You... you were lying to just now, weren’t you?”
Vieya’s head snapped up, glaring at Anna in her possessed state, like a beast ready to devour without reason.
Anna only laughed indifferently, raising both hands in a gesture of surrender, as if she wouldn’t resist.
Vieya’s grip on the evil soul tightened. It felt as though if she crushed it, she could dismiss all this as a lie and continue to crawl along in her tiny world.
But after a few seconds of pressure, her hands loosened. She realized she was acting like a childish brat, willful and self-absorbed.
Too bad that brat had forever lost the one person who would forgive her tantrums.
What reason would the other have to lie about this?
Besides, she and her wife had not done that only once. They had the certificate of marriage back then...
What’s more, before the final battle, Flaviel had asked her several tis about children, her smile strained and eyes dim with loneliness.
“After this war, let’s go ho, find a quiet, warm little town in the south, just the two of us...”
Idiot!
Vieya wanted nothing more than to go back and scream at her past self.
Damn it, how could I have been so stupidly sweet back then?!
All brain full of grinding levels and “main-character of another world” fantasy plots, thinking she was the world’s protagonist who could end all wars. Utterly foolish!
And no one curses her as brutally as she curses herself.
“Why don’t you deny it?”
Vieya’s voice shrank, leaking out like air from a punctured ball: “Why don’t you deny it...”
“If not for my careless promise to an old friend, do you think I would have co to you?”
The evil god sounded exasperated. At least it considered itself a “three-good” neutral chaos god, not yet rotted enough to lie for amusent. “Do you think there’s great profit in this for ? Lying here would only earn your hatred. Young one, think before you act!”
“I... I... I’m sorry.”
Sorry.
I truly regret it...
Vieya’s hands shook. In her retinas still lingered the smile of her wife cooking for her the last ti, but the evil god’s words shattered mory and reality alike.
It turned out what she should have mourned as a husband was not only her wife’s death, but also a fatherhood buried beneath lies.
“Your child, your daughter, has inherited Flaviel’s Demon King throne...”
The evil god sighed, no longer tornting the weary, crumbling Vieya, and fulfilled its promise to Flaviel: After I die, the first ti you find him, tell him—he has a daughter.
“Then, where is my daughter now? Is she doing well?” Vieya asked.
“I don’t know.” The god spread its hands. “Don’t be angry, but I do know this: in a demon society where only strength is respected, she’s certainly not doing well. Over 98% of the ti she’s locked in a little dark cell.”
“She inherited the Demon King throne, didn’t she...” Vieya’s throat closed, her chest tight.
The god let out a long sigh. “But she’s only three years old. No full inheritance of power, no knowledge passed down—just a hybrid child.”
“...” Vieya’s lips moved with difficulty. “Then... my daughter is still alive, right?”
“Well, at least she was yesterday.” A gift from the abyss does not break so easily. The god’s tone was calm, though it didn’t voice that last thought.
“That’s enough.”
Vieya spun around at once, racing for the sewer exit without a glance back at the strange altar.
Her mind was filled with only one thing—find her daughter.
Quickly!
Faster!
“Authority, Fourth Form—Godspeed of the Hare.”
Like a breeze, the small white figure vanished in the blink of an eye.
Beneath the altar, the evil god slipped free from Anna’s body.
“Awaken.”
Dong!
The ancient bell resounded again from the altar’s center.
Anna slowly ca to, her black eyes returning to clear blue.
“I... what happened to ?” She stood amidst the mist, utterly bewildered, with no mory of what had transpired.
Suddenly—
A voice as old and deep as a great bell rang out from the fog, piercing through her confusion like a blade:
“Hey, Anna, you’re not a dal. You can’t just keep hanging on my neck. This isn’t where you belong—go to the mortal world and earn your bread...”
And so.
Anna was sent back to the surface, dazed and lost.
Had she just been personally dismissed by the evil god?
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