CHAPTER 32: CHAPTER 32 - THE TRUTH

The creak of the old door was the first familiar sound in what felt like a lifetime. The sun was already visible peeking out from the edge of the horizon.

Mikail’s house was quiet. Too quiet. It was as if the commotion, battle, and near-death experience they experienced earlier were just an illusion

Grandma moved through the entryway with Mikail in her arms, his body still limp, though his breathing had settled into a slow, steady cadence. She placed him gently on the couch, wrapping him in a thick blanket as if it could shield him from more than just the cold.

Moona followed silently behind, her steps small, her thoughts louder than words.

Melisa was already there.

She sat on the floor, propped against the wall near the kitchen, her eyes hollow but alert. She had regained consciousness not long after they escaped the Zone, but her mind still reeled from the echoes of what she’d seen.

What she felt.

The house hummed with the soft whirring of appliances, but the tension between the three women made the air feel heavier than the Zero Zone had.

No one spoke at first.

Grandma lit the fireplace with a flick of her hand, a quiet glow of silver light that sparked and caught like a whisper. She sat across from them, the lines of her face carved deep with a hundred unsaid things.

Moona sat on the arm of a nearby chair, while Melisa leaned forward, her fingers trembling ever so slightly as she looked at Mikail, then back to the woman she once thought was just an old, gentle grandmother.

Melisa was the first to speak.

"...You knew." Her voice was hoarse, cracked from exhaustion, not accusatory, just broken. "All this time... You know what we all are. What he is"

Grandma didn’t flinch. Her expression remained calm, but her eyes flickered with something, regret, maybe. Or sorrow buried so deep it had hardened into resolve.

"I knew what he could be," She answered quietly.

Melisa’s hands clenched at her sides. "And you said nothing," she whispered. "You let him suffer. You let us suffer"

Grandma’s voice came steady, though a quiet tremor echoed beneath the words.

"He was safer in ignorance"

She paused, her gaze lowering. "If I had told him... If I had trained him... The Shadows would have found him sooner. And I couldn’t risk that. I’ve already lost too many"

Her eyes briefly closed, as if replaying ghosts only she could see. Then, slowly, her gaze shifted, to Mikail, her grandson.

She looked at him not with fear, but with a deep, aching tenderness.

"...And I don’t want to lose the last thing I have"

For a moment, no one spoke. The weight of Grandma’s words hung in the air like thick mist, unmoving, suffocating.

Then, quietly, Moona stepped forward. Her voice trembled slightly, not from fear, but from the weight of what she was about to ask.

"Then... Do you also know what happened to Mikail’s parents?"

She said softly. Then a pause.

"... To your husband, grandma?"

She hesitated, eyes searching Grandma’s face for any hint of how deep those scars might go. Her question wasn’t meant to accuse, it was a whisper in the dark, careful and uncertain, as if afraid the answer might reopen wounds that time had only just managed to scab over.

After all, Moona knew better than anyone what it felt like to lose the person she loved most.

Time alone never truly healed that kind of wound.

It only dulled the edge of the pain, it never erased it.

Grandma didn’t answer immediately. Her lips parted as if the words were there, but something stopped them. Only the faint quiver in her breath betrayed the storm stirring behind her silence.

The past was not gone.

It lingered... Alive, raw, and aching to be named.

Finally, her voice came, fragile, like it had been buried under years of silence.

"...I..." She began, then swallowed hard. "I’m the one who knows more than anyone what fate had befallen them"

Her eyes shimmered, but no tears fell.

"I know exactly what happened... and yet..." She looked down, fists clenched at her sides. "I couldn’t do anything. I was hopeless. Powerless in the face of Fate"

Her voice cracked like dry wood under pressure.

"Even with everything I knew... I still couldn’t save them"

And in that moment, the strength she had always carried, the calm, the resolve, the unshakable presence, flickered. Not gone, but exposed. Beneath it, all was just a woman who had already lost too much... And feared losing more.

--------

Within the quiet of the room, as firelight flickered across the walls and the air grew still, Mikail drifted deeper into unconsciousness.

But his mind was not silent.

He fell.

Not through space, but through memory, emotion, and something far older, deeper than himself.

Darkness enveloped him at first, not cold or cruel like the shadows he’d faced, but vast, ancient, and waiting. Then, slowly, light bled into the void. A warm radiance. Gentle. Peaceful.

He landed softly, barefoot, on a field of golden grass beneath an endless sky painted in hues of rose and amber. There was no sun, yet light touched everything. A breeze passed through, carrying scents he couldn’t name but somehow recognized. Lavender, perhaps. Or maybe something from a time before names.

A figure stood atop a gentle hill, bathed in light, not blinding, but comforting. He turned as Mikail approached, his smile kind, his eyes ageless.

"You’ve come far," The man said.

Mikail didn’t answer immediately. His heart was pounding, not from fear but from recognition. Something in his blood stirred, ancient and undeniable.

"...Who are you?" Mikail asked, though a part of him already knew.

"I am Baldur," the man replied gently. "Son of Odin. God of light, of peace... Of innocence"

He paused, voice softening.

"And your ancestor"

Mikail blinked, his brows furrowing as he tried to make sense of what he’d just heard.

"...My ancestor?" He echoed, disbelief creeping into his voice.

"But didn’t the Æsir hate humans? Isn’t that why they stripped Mana from us in the first place?"

He took a step forward, confusion swirling with a tinge of frustration.

"So why do you, a god, have human descendants?"

His voice wasn’t angry, just lost. Like a child staring at the shattered pieces of a story, he thought he understood, only to realize it was never whole, to begin with.

Baldur slowly shook his head, the motion filled with quiet sorrow rather than dismissal.

"...We don’t hate humans," He said softly. "In truth... We loved them"

He looked toward the distant sky as if searching for a memory only the gods could see.

"That’s why we granted them access to Mana in the first place. It was a gift... An invitation to rise above their limits"

A pause. Then his gaze returned to Mikail, steadier now.

"But power reveals what lies beneath. And what we saw..." His voice lowered. "...Was greed. Pride. Bloodshed. Humans turned their gift into a weapon, against each other, and against Midgard itself"

A bitter silence followed, filled only by the wind brushing across the broken stone.

"Midgard is a special realm," Baldur continued, voice thick with something like mourning. "It is meant to be a cradle of balance, a place where the mortal and the divine could coexist. But we saw it teetering on the edge of ruin... And so, we took Mana away"

His words weren’t an excuse, they were an explanation. One forged from pain, not superiority.

But Mikail wasn’t satisfied.

He stepped forward, fists tightening at his sides.

"...But didn’t humans regain their right to Mana?" he pressed. "Even if it’s only a few, those actions... Those awakenings are impossible to go unnoticed by the Æsir"

His voice grew firmer, conviction taking shape behind the confusion.

"And Midg- Earth isn’t exactly thriving right now, is it? If you truly loved humans... Then why didn’t you act? Why not step in and stop the Shadows from spreading?"

He wasn’t just questioning Baldur, he was challenging the silence of the gods themselves.

"You say you took Mana away to protect us from ourselves... But what about now?" His eyes burned, not with anger, but with desperate need for an answer. "Are we just supposed to be tested? Watched from afar while the world falls apart again?"

There was a silence.

Baldur did not answer immediately. His gaze fell to the ground, and for the first time, even the god looked... conflicted.

"... Humanity’s regained connection to Mana did not escape our notice," He said at last, his voice quieter now, edged with unease. "However... That resurgence didn’t happen naturally. It was given, forced open by a being we cannot control"

He lifted his eyes to meet Mikail’s again, and something in them had changed, wary, guarded.

"The one who reconnected humans to Mana is... T@(#(6," The name itself glitching through reality like a tear in existence, "A being beyond reason. Not Æsir. Not Vanir. But Something else"

Baldur’s jaw clenched.

"We didn’t stop him... Because we can’t"

"We’re not strong enough to oppose him, not without risking the collapse of everything"

A heavy pause followed, and then his voice dropped further.

"And the Shadow Realm... It’s not new. It’s been festering for a long time, growing stronger in the cracks of neglected realms"

"We wanted to contain it. But right now... The situation in Asgard is not that good either; the All-Father isn’t in Yggdrasil. He’s... Gone"

Those final words fell like thunder in the still air. Not missing. Not dead.

Gone.

....

...

..

.