It was a beautiful day in Suisho no Kyuden, and for the first time in a while he wasn’t sure what to do with himself. He still couldn’t settle on whether that was a pleasant feeling or not, but he smiled nonetheless. There was still another week until the start of the next moon cycle, and his clergy and he had worked out a system so well that all preparations were on schedule with nothing for him to do for another day or two. He stretched his arms over his head, exhaling lightly when he felt his back crack, and for once wanted to settle down for a nap.

That was rare indeed, he hadn’t done such a thing since before his ascension, and that was many years ago. Perhaps life was finally starting to even out and he could move smoothly through his day to day. Revaliir had seen many ups and downs since The Voice had chosen him, and that day of standing in front of The Tree felt far away now. How many deities had risen? How many had fallen? He’d made new companions, but lost many as well. To him a friend had come back from the dead, and all of this came to…what?

Even as he flickered in a ray of light into his private chambers, he couldn’t help but feel a sense of, of something. His mother had always told him that people like them would never really find peace; there would always be some great adventure to undertake. She had never spoken of it fearfully; The Uharus were a tenacious family after all.

He looked around his bed chambers, the silence near deafening. With how many children he and Echo had brought into the world, silence in itself was all consuming. As he moved his vest off, he walked over to the golden egg that was nestled comfortably above Torinasu’s mounting. How many times had he opened it to relive the first cry of his daughter?

His eyes softened and he gently pulled down Kichona Kioku, letting his fingertips brush along the intricate carvings. He wondered what others saw when they opened theirs. What was the most cherished memory among the people of Revaliir that had been lucky enough to find one of these for themselves?

Being careful as always, he gently unclasped the seal around the middle of the egg, and opened it to look inside. Instantly he heard the high cry of his firstborn and his eyes welled with pride just as they had that night. She was getting so big now, her magick coming along splendidly, it was both beautiful and terrifying to think of how quickly time had gone by. He could see her in the shimmering light that poured out of the egg, but something was wrong. His eyebrows furrowed as the image began to blur and ripple.

What…? He pulled the egg closer and leaned in, blinking hard to try and clear the image, but it was barely a blur now. The image was different completely. How? His heart picked up in his chest and his fingers gripped tighter at the egg as a new face took hold. A young woman. Who was that woman? The second the memory of her eyes locked with his, his heart lurched. He didn’t know her. Yes, he did. Did he? She was smiling, laughing, and her words rung beautifully in his ears. Tears filled her eyes, golden as a setting sun, but despite all of this she kept on smiling; her cheeks pink from emotion.

His own eyes filled with tears and he found himself smiling with her, but deep seeded was this unrelenting stab of fear and regret. Why? She spoke in a language he’d never heard yet somehow knew fluently, accepting a proposal. A proposal. A proposal? All at once his head stung with blinding electricity and he fell back against the poster of his bed; the egg dropping with a harsh thud against the carpet.

His breathing grew ragged and he slowly fell to his knees, scratching at his forehead, blood pulling under his fingers as he scratched up into his hair-anything to escape this pain! Despite himself, a blood curdling scream echoed through his chambers, and every light within Suisho no Kyuden went out.

Echo-Rose was stubborn, to say the least. She was more like the harsher of the two parents. She was stern but flexible in her time. Her time management was on point even getting her children all on a schedule. They would have classes both of historical use and of magic practical use. Any back talk was normally met with a very feisty mother who just wanted the best for her children. “Just because your father is a god doesn’t make your life easy,” Echo repeated it frequently. Her life had never been easy and she didn’t think it would ever be. Even being the Lady of Light… she still had her many demons.

So when the lights went out and Echo heard that scream she got up rationally from the seat. “Momma, what is that?” The children asked her. They were getting big but also some were still small.

“I don’t know… Hibiki take your siblings and go to your room okay? Stay there until I come get you or send one of the temple help… Okay?” There was a small nod as the triplet got up and rounded up her siblings. They were all huddled into the large room now that belonged to her and Echo closed the door.

Echo was cool, calm, and collected as she grabbed her weapon. It was so dark now in Suisho. It had never been this dark and she had worried about her husband. First and foremost though she stayed calm. She gave words of peace to the temple help who were freaking out. Her calm demeanor made them calm and she made them go into his throne room until she knew everything was okay. “If I don’t come back soon go get the children from Hibiki’s room.” They bowed to her and left.

She made her way up the long staircase, sword in hand. She knew where the scream had come from. Pushing the door open slowly she looked to see her husband. “Naota?” Still, she was cautious as she came in and looked around. Jogging towards him now she fell to her knees and pulled him into her. “What the hell have you done to yourself?” She shushed him down as she cradled him in her arms. “Snap the hell out of it. You are scaring the children,” her voice was stern but there was fear. She didn’t want to say she was scared as well. It was her eyes that spoke the most. That screams ‘What’s wrong?’ but she couldn’t get them to come out.

A rush of names awoke in his head, all of them screaming to be heard in a desperation that could only be compared to those trying to escape death. As if hearing their voices would save them. He shook his head quickly, his back arching harshly against the edge of his mattress, though his feet shifted on the soft carpet trying to make purchase. It wouldn’t stop, and the harder he fought it, the more those names dug.

Some of them he recognized, some he didn’t, though all of them he felt he should have. How could he know so many seemingly random names? He hadn’t even met that many people! But with each name there was a flicker of a face. Some were bolder, vivid, others were gray and dull but still there. Amidst them all he heard an undercurrent of his sister’s voice. He’d barely interacted with her since their reunion, how were there so many conversations in his head? So many memories? Memories. That’s what these were.

Shining green eyes, eyes like his, eyes like Hiromi’s, flashed quickly. Somehow he knew without knowing that they were his father’sd, but he’d never met him…never even seen a picture of him. Not his birth father. Another set took their place, soft and brown, and like his birth father he knew these were his birth mother’s. It was all too much and he feared he’d pass out soon, but he couldn’t allow it, something like that would leave the temple too vulnerable.

And then there were arms, warm and waif like, wrapping around him. His eyes opened and sweat worried his brow as the emerald of his eyes sought out Echo-Rose’s familiar amber. They were there, constant as ever, but laced with undeniable fear. He shakily rose a hand up and held the side of her face, making sure she was real and there with him. She seemed different somehow, impossibly younger, or was he just older?

The children. Children? His eyes tore away from her face and searched the room, though he made no motion to move from her arms. It was dark, so dark. Even while they slumbered it was never so claustrophobically dark. The only light in the room came from the dim glow of his eyes, but they were hardly their usual emerald and were slowly fading to gray, though the light never left them completely.

“Ch-Children…?” His eyes met hers again and his fingers sifted back into her hair, feeling the strands slowly as if checking that they too were real. He knew her, he knew this face, knew the scent of her skin and how her hair would tangle around his fingers, or how her body melded with his…but right now it felt more like déjà vu. “What is this place…?”

She was a bit freaked out as he touched her face. It was sweet and yet there was a fear dwelling deep within his eyes. “Yes… Children.” She grabbed her sword from behind her on instinct. “You’re home Naota… Don’t you remember?” After a moment or two. “I’m sorry but… You need to sleep.” She smacked him hard enough with the sword’s blunt end to make him sleep.

Putting him in bed she ran out of the temple grabbed Angela and pulled her back. “I think he broke Angela… He is being so weird.” She talked with the mother in a panic as the goddess came in.

“How weird can he be?” Angela came in and sat by Naota. She put her hand on his forehead. “Naota… Naota wake up. I SAID WAKE UP.” She used her magic to get him awake and looked him over. “What the hell did you do? Hit him as hard as you could?”

Without missing a beat Echo blushed, “I panicked… I didn’t mean to hit him so hard. Did I break him more?”

The Mother started to laugh and looked Naota over. “Look at me, please. Be calm your heart is going out of control.” She held him in her arms and look over. “Aside from the bump on your head from your wife beating you,” she shot Echo a look. “Physically you are alright. Honestly… Echo did you have to hit him so hard?”

“How hard do you have to hit a fucking God?” Echo made Angela speechless for a moment before the elder goddess was laughing out of control.

“Really Echo?”

“Really. I thought I had to hit him that hard. I didn’t want him spazzing out, possibly stripping, and running around the temple in all his glory.” Echo was clearly letting her imagination go wild. “He’s being weird.”

“…You are something else… She is your wife Naota.”

Home? This wasn’t home, he didn’t have a home. For centuries he’d lived out of a back pack, no place was home. And yet he had memories here, remembered creating it, walking through the high grass towards the great tree, hearing The Voice. He remembered his firstborn’s cry, the snap of flesh before seeing Echo’s arm tossed from her body. How could all of that exist? He started to shake his head, and then everything went black.

It was here in his slumber that he conversed with The Voice once more, felt his soul shift and twist with new meaning. There was a new path laid before him, and he moved smoothly towards this fork in the road. Along with The Voice’s guidance he heard a resounding chuckle, a woman it seemed, but like before it was a memory. It was her doing that had brought him here, to Revaliir. A new name surfaced, in a tongue he knew but wasn’t sure how. DaeLuin.

“I said wake up!”

His eyes opened and he breathed in quickly, the voices in the room muffled against his ears and the room all but spinning even though he was laid down. Someone else was holding him now, and he listened to the two women speak back and forth: one scolding but not harsh, the other panicked. Echo. He couldn’t see her, but when he looked up he saw a blaze of red hair. He knew that hair, knew that face.

“Angela Rose.” his voice was different than before, somehow deeper but only from its newfound concerned timbre. He knew her, yes, but not as The Mother he’d grown close to since being in Revaliir. No, hers was a face from another world…A woman he’d seen etched in stone and heard whispers of during prayer. He’d never crossed her path there, but…Kai. His eyes widened and his heart lurched. All this time he’d been connected to The Rosenites from a world beyond, and hadn’t even known it. But that meant…

When he spoke again it was not in the common tongue of Revaliir, but instead it flowed naturally into the common language of DaeLuin. After all, it had been his main language for hundreds of years, “W-Where is it? We have to go!” He tried to sit up quickly, his eyes wider with panic of his own. He couldn’t accept it, he would not accept that the world was gone, not when one of its deities was sitting here with his head in her lap!

Angela tilted her head. “That’s me.” The elder goddess gave him a smirk.

Once the common language of DaeLuin appeared she tilted her head at him. “ANGELA HE IS BROKEN I TOLD YOU!” Panic started to set in.

“Echo, leave us.”

“But Angela…”

“GO.” Her voice was stern and even shook the realm a little as Echo scurried out. Her green eyes turned back to Naota. “When did you start to remember?” She spoke that language just as fluently. “I was hoping you would never remember DaeLuin. This isn’t that place. It’s been dead for a long time… Everyone who isn’t here is dead.”

There was a sad look on her face. “I’m both the Angela from there and the Angela from here… Just like you are now. Echo-Rose is confused because she doesn’t know… She never met her other half. I would hope to the other Gods that you wouldn’t tell her what I know about her and her life from before. I’ll help you Naota since you are confused… but I must ask… what is it that you want to know? About yourself here? This place? Who you are? I would have Echo help you but I run the risk of her hitting you again thinking it might fix you… Girl is trouble…”

His eyes flickered back and forth between Angela and his wife, but he felt instant relief once she had left the room. Even with all of this happening, he didn’t want anymore stress to come to her than was necessary. Everyone had their breaking point, and right now he couldn’t tell whether or not he was losing his mind. How could Angela be sitting here so calmly?!

His lips parted, unsure of how to answer that question. It was only just now that he’d started to remember, but what had caused it was still lying on the floor. The golden egg had closed by now, but he feared what would happen if he looked into it again. Her next words caught him off guard though. Everyone was dead, that couldn’t be true. He refused to believe it even though all the way to the pit of his stomach he knew it was true.

Without realizing it, his eyes brimmed with unshed tears as he shook his head. They couldn’t be dead. How had any of them survived? “What happened…? Why didn’t everyone come here?” There were people he had met here that he didn’t know from DaeLuin, which made him wonder how few of them had come to Revaliir. Did they all come in the same way? Angela appeared to be lucid to the situation, yet his mind had been locked tight. He remembered growing up here as a child, the people he’d met, the foes he’d killed, the hours of training.

“Did everyone from your family make it…?” There were so many Roses after all, it’d be easy to believe, especially since Angela was a deity there just as she was here. Maybe she’d had the power…And then he remembered that room of dedication in her temple and knew that not all of the gods and avatars had been so lucky.

“Because not everyone was strong enough,” Angela answered heavily. She had lost friends and some family as well. “No, lots people died Naota. Not even Echo had survived the sundering of DaeLuin. The few who remember are those who were strong enough to pass through. However, I wouldn’t worry about that for now. Many of us have had time to heal. Echo doesn’t know about DaeLuin and I’m never going to tell her… At least that she existed.”

Angela spent time telling him of everything that had happened and what led to the downfall of DaeLuin. She told him about Timedeath and the Void Beast. “It’s very possible that the World Eater we’ve been so afraid of… could have been a cause as well.”

The door popped open and a little set of amber eyes like Echo’s looked in. “Hibiki if you are going to go in please don’t block the door.” It was Echo’s voice but Hibiki was staring at Naota with interest. She had a basket of bread big enough for her to carry while Echo had a tray of food and a drink and their youngest on her hip. “Sorry she got it in her head she was coming.”

Echo helped Hibiki put it on the nightstand and the mother leaned over and kissed Naota on the forehead. Watching her mother soon Hibiki was on the bed and kissing her father too. “I love you Daddy and whatever is wrong Mama will fix it. Nothing is scarier than Mama and she chases away all the demons and keeps us safe. Okay? You get better. I love you.” She jumped off the bed and Echo smirked a bit at Naota before leaving with her.

“You’ve got a lot here Naota. It would be best to take time and think about everything… Echo and the children really need you to keep it together… Even if it means putting on a brave face if you cannot. While it is true that Echo went toe to toe with Minase and beat him… She’s had many children at this point. Though if anything it’s made her agiler.” Angela smirked at him and applied healing magic to his head.

Even Echo had perished in DaeLuin? It made his heart heavy to realize that they had existed in the same place, in a sense, and he’d never known her. Not even her name. Her soul had crossed over to Revaliir, but it wasn’t the same…To know that she’d still had to die. Had it happened when DaeLuin had crumbled? Or was her death unrelated? Had she already left that plane before the great cataclysm? Was there even a chance that he would have learned who she was…? The only interaction he had with The Rosenites was with Kai, and he felt deep down that not even his soul had made the crossover. His eyes warmed despite himself and he turned them away.

He knew that his crossover had been different. He could only remember it faintly, but he needed to find Natsumi. After all, the being she answered to was the one responsible for he and his sister making it through before DaeLuin had plummeted. Natsumi, for all of her secrets, was probably bound to never relinquish such privy information, but it was at least worth a try. That would come at another time. As of now there were a million loose ends to his former life that he’d never be able to have closure on. Every person he’d ever known, for centuries, was gone in an instant. It was enough to pit his stomach and double him over from grief, but he stayed how he was with The Mother.

“That thing could be here? Threatening this world?” he asked, still using the DaeLuin tongue. The stakes were already so high, but now? No. That wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right! It couldn’t have another world destroyed and more lives to ruin. He’d been lucky last time, but he had also been mortal. This time he could at least help fight it back should the time come. And if not? At least he could die knowing he’d had all possible power within himself to prevent anything from happening; to die alongside those that fought for the same goal. That wasn’t going to happen.

He was about to reply, to let her know that he wouldn’t let on any of this information to Echo-Rose regarding her past life, but before he could the door opened. He looked quickly, eyes quickly sinking to pitch black, but his lips parted when he saw a child. That wasn’t what he’d expected. “Hibiki if you are going to go in please don’t block the door.”

Echo had been the one to speak, but his gaze was transfixed on the young girl; his heart pounding. Their eyes were locked and she stared at him with the same studious determination. He nearly drew back when she approached the bed; fear birthed the urge, but resolve kept him from actually pulling away from her. There was no mocking voice in his head. Only now did he realize the silence, that Minasé was gone. But after over one thousand years of having him be a part of himself, and only a few decades with him being gone, it was something to get used to. The comparison was so great now.

Angela kissed his forehead, but he showed no reaction, and hadn’t even noticed the even younger child being carried by Echo. No, he could not pull his eyes away from this girl as she rested food down, crawled onto the bed, kissed him in the same way The Mother had. Over one thousand years of never thinking he would have children, that any that came from him would be cursed to the same fate…this would be harder to comprehend than having Minasé be gone. He wanted to touch her, to be sure that she was in fact real and safe, that nothing dwelled within her, but he couldn’t bring himself to return any touch and only watched on with awestruck eyes now brimmed with tears.

She spoke and her tiny bell voice sent him exhaling a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding; tears fell with it. He watched in silence, unable to give her a proper reply, even as she left with her mother and the door was safely closed behind them. Angela spoke of Minasé, of how this woman that was his wife had met him in combat, and his stomach tightened in horror. Yes she was safe, but that did nothing to quell his fear. Only when Angela began to heal his head did he feel any relief from the mental stress that fact put on him.

But she was right: he needed to be strong. The time spent here was but a blink in comparison to the rest of his life. When he was honest with himself he wasn’t sure how he was going to be able to handle it. He needed to though, for them. He swallowed down hard, eyes closing as his heart began to burn,

“S-Something is happening Angela…” He could feel it passed his core, through his soul. The sound around them began to slowly dampen to a deafening silence. “P-People need to leave. The temple is coming undone.” He wasn’t quite sure how he knew it, he just did. After all, this temple existed in accordance with him, which meant that when he changed…it did too.