Kallen's words cast a heavy, suffocating silence over the entire laboratory.
Theresa, in particular, looked at Kallen with wide, desperate eyes, her gaze trembling with an unbearable mix of anxiety and dread.
"I have been dead for five hundred years, so why am I standing here now?" Kallen's voice was hauntingly calm, as if she were discussing soone else's life entirely.
"It's because soone spent a lifeti chasing a phantom—a shadow nad Kallen that lived only in his mories. He exhausted every thod, paid a staggering price, and finally found a way to bring back."
As she spoke, her gaze drifted downward, a flicker of indescribable weight and agony passing through her eyes.
"But what he resurrected... was not a whole version of ."
"No..." Yae Sakura shook her head, her expression frantic and earnest. "I can feel it, Kallen. You are you. You aren't any different from the person I knew five hundred years ago."
"Sakura... thank you for saying that." Kallen looked up, the corners of her mouth twitching into a faint, ghost of a smile, yet the gloom in her sapphire eyes didn't lift for even a second.
"But my mories are fractured. Most of my senses are broken, too. I only rember you because... he was the one who told about us. Even though my heart tells you are precious to , our past, our eting, the way we loved each other... I know none of it."
As those words hung in the air, the color drained from Yae Sakura's face until she was deathly pale.
The realization hit her like a physical blow: the person standing before her had truly forgotten her.
The only reason Kallen was even speaking to her now was because of a lingering thread of longing—a tiny fragnt of the deep love she once felt, still echoing within this vessel.
Finally, a tear escaped the corner of Sakura's eye and traced a lonely path down her cheek.
Wow, I'm really twisting the knife here!
Kallen felt like she was leaning dangerously close to becoming a total troll.
"It's okay!" Kiana piped up, still radiating her signature high-energy optimism. "As long as you're together again, you can make new mories! As for the old stuff, we'll find a way to get it back later!"
"She's right, Kallen... I will tell you everything," Yae Sakura whispered. Her voice shook, but she forced herself to stay composed even as the tears continued to fall. "Bit by bit, I'll tell you every single thing that happened."
"Exactly." Fu Hua nodded solemnly, her eyes focused. "The man who brought you back must have intended for that. You've simply... forgotten, is all."
"No." Kallen shook her head slowly, her faint smile vanishing. "The man who resurrected was just... using to keep chasing that ghost in his mind."
A hint of bitterness crept into her tone before she turned her attention to Theresa.
"And I was just a tool he used to convince himself that it wasn't all an illusion. There was another one just like —she was manufactured, too. Since tools don't need nas, she only had a serial number."
Theresa's pupils shrank. She already knew what Kallen was about to say.
"The other one was A-872. I was the one who gave her the na Theresa. She was a puppet created by Otto, using the power of the Key of Corruption fused with Vishnu cells."
"Vishnu?"
Theresa's gaze turned frantic. She knew she was born from an experint, but... but Grandpa had never used the Key of Corruption on her!
Is this... a parallel world? A different tiline with a different outco?
"So... what happened to her?" Theresa asked, her voice trembling with a growing sense of unease.
Kallen watched her, a profound sadness washing over her features.
"She could inject bacterial Honkai Beasts into others through a bite. Within forty-eight hours, the victim would be transford into a half-human, half-Honkai creature. And those infected..."
Kallen paused for a mont, her eyes filling with a mix of resignation and self-mockery. "The infected lose most of their senses. Their mories blur, and they develop the sa bloodlust as A-872."
As Kallen laid out the details piece by piece, a horrifying image began to form in everyone's minds—a creature famous in urban legends.
A Vampire.
And worse, it was the kind of monster that would never vanish so long as the original host lived; it would only keep multiplying.
"The first day I t Theresa, I made a vow." Kallen stared at Theresa's face, her gaze heavy with grief. "If the day ever ca where that girl walked toward her own destruction, I would be the one to hunt her down."
"I would pay her back with my own fake life. After all... neither of us were ant to exist in this world in the first place."
Suddenly, it all clicked. Everyone finally understood why Kallen had drawn her guns and opened fire the mont she saw Theresa.
"The other... ," Theresa murmured under her breath. "She escaped, didn't she? And she... she bit a lot of people?"
"Yes. But it's all because of . I was the one who took her out of there. Her inability to control that hunger... that is my original sin."
Kallen took a deep breath, her gaze finally steadying into a cold calm.
"So, I hunted her without rest. And in the end... I finished her with my own hands. I expected to die right after that, but instead, the world went dark for a mont, and I woke up here."
"Then that ans your theory was wrong!" Kiana shouted, her eyes blazing with conviction as she looked at Kallen. "The infected don't actually die just because the original host is killed!"
The mont the words left Kiana's mouth, Kallen's eyes widened, her expression becoming incredibly complex.
Nice one, Kiana!
If the real 'Original Sin' Kallen were here, you would have just broken her entire world with that one sentence!
Just you wait! Once this transformation wears off, I'm going to pull a stunt where I claim I'm only alive because of so 'interdinsional anomaly,' and then I'll drop dead right in front of you the mont I have to leave!
"It seems... my hunt is far from over," Kallen said with a bitter, pained smile. "How do I get back? How did I even get to your world?" Her voice took on an edge of desperation.
Theresa took a deep breath, struggling to process everything she had just heard. She looked at Kallen with a serious, determined expression.
"Kallen, you'll likely be in our world for seven days. Once those seven days are up... you can go back."
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