CHAPTER 383: CHAPTER 372: DAUGHTER?

Atlas stared at the girl. The word still echoed in the air between them, a tremor that would not die.

"...von... Roxweld?" he muttered, the syllables tasting like ash and disbelief.

Wind dragged the scent of scorched earth and iron across his tongue. His heartbeat stuttered.

’What the fuck?’

His thoughts were jagged, raw. ’What the fuck was happening?’

Aurora’s face mirrored his confusion—eyes wide, mouth half-open, her features tightening with the same horror creeping through his veins.

She took a step forward, boots crunching through gravel and ash, and reached for the child’s shoulder.

"Eliana?" she said carefully, voice shaking. "Say that again. Your name."

The girl blinked, calm—too calm—golden eyes reflecting the dying light.

Aurora’s grip tightened. "You said you were the child of Dagon once, didn’t you? In the first descent, when I came to Hell alone.

And in the Mirror Realm, a week ago—you told me nothing like this." Her voice was rising, fear turning sharp. "Never this name. Never his name."

The title hung in the air like a curse: Roxweld.

Atlas felt it press against him like a weight. His name—his house, his blood. The name of a kingdom, his kingdom above.

"How?" he whispered. His throat ached. "How can you share it?"

Aurora turned to the child again. "What game are you playing?" she demanded. "Why speak a lie like that? What are you trying to do?"

Eliana wrenched free, her small frame trembling with something that was not fear. "It’s no lie," she said, voice soft yet carrying like a bell. "It’s the only truth I’ve spoken since I came to Hell."

The words slid through the air and lodged somewhere deep behind Atlas’s ribs. ’Before the worlds were sundered.’ The phrasing was ancient—older than any human tongue should know.

He stepped closer, every motion a test of the body that had barely survived battle.

The heat of the fires painted his skin gold and crimson. "If that’s true," he rasped, "then what are you? Some lost cousin? Some bastard child my father forgot to mention in court?"

For a moment, something flickered across the girl’s face—sorrow, maybe, or pity. Then her form shimmered.

The faint trace of demonic sigils that clung to her skin like smoke began to melt away. Flesh shifted. Light poured from her veins, and the illusion of otherness dissolved.

She became... human. Too human.

Her hair flared a deep, living blue, each strand gleaming like tempered glass. Her eyes—those impossible eyes—burned gold, mirrors of his own.

Atlas froze. The world narrowed to the space between their gazes.

’Lara.’ The thought came unbidden, cruel.

The same curve of the jaw. The same light behind the iris. The same look she’d given him the day she swore she would return.

He dropped to one knee without realizing it, drawn closer by the gravity of her face. His hand hovered near her cheek, trembling.

"No," he breathed. "It... can’t be."

The girl—Eliana—watched him, expression unreadable.

Before either could speak again, the ground shuddered. A deep, resonant boom rolled through the battlefield. Dust leapt from the earth. In the distance, something vast struck the ground—a shape tumbling from the bleeding sky.

Atlas turned. A head the size of a fortress lay in the crater beyond, black ichor spilling like tar. The creature Asmodeus had summoned from the Fourth Layer—the thing no mortal weapon could kill—was dead.

A hush spread across the field. Then, from the horizon, came the whisper of wings.

"Look!" someone shouted.

Raphael’s voice cracked in awe. Gabriel shielded his eyes. The fallens all turned upward.

Through the rifted clouds descended a blaze of light—pure, argent, endless.

Eight wings spread across the sky, casting shadows like cathedral glass.

Michael. The First.

And beside him, five figures drifted down on currents of light: Uriel, Eli, Lara, Claire, Merlin... faces half remembered, half dreamed.

Atlas’s breath caught. The exhaustion, the pain, the confusion—all fell away beneath a single, impossible joy.

He took a step forward, then another, the scorched soil breaking beneath his boots. His walk became a stagger, then a run.

They saw him, and their expressions changed—relief, disbelief, and love mingling in their eyes. Lara’s hands rose to her mouth. Eli’s tears caught the light.

When they met, it was wordless. Arms around him, warmth and heartbeat and salt tears. The air filled with the scent of sweat, steel, and rain.

For a moment, time forgot to move.

He felt whole then—fully whole, complete. He felt peace. Even as their embrace tightened, something warm and light uncoiled inside him.

’This is it. This is what I live for...’

The girl stood apart, watching them with that same unblinking calm. Her eyes glowed brighter, and the fires around them bent toward her light as she looked at Lara. Her lips trembled as she looked at her.

A memory stirred—his father’s voice echoing across the years, rough with smoke and command: "Our blood remembers, Eliana. Even when the world forgets..."

Atlas finally let them go, pulling himself back from Lara and everyone, tears ready to come out. But he controlled himself.

He looked at them again—so many things needed to be said—as Claire watched him with tears, unable to say anything.

Eli couldn’t help but keep holding his hand, not able to even leave him be, afraid he could go away again.

Lara, on the other hand, saw the girl, having the same hair as her—which was... strange.

"You..." she said. "Who are you?"

The child smiled, faint and sorrowful. "You will know... soon."

Aurora’s voice cut through his reverie. "...What is she saying?" But Aurora also looked at Lara and back to the child, her eyes opening wide in sudden realization. "Wait... don’t tell me... but... how?"

Atlas swallowed hard. "I don’t know. But I think—"

"The veil is thinning," Eliana said, voice resonant and vast. "The balance fractures... Find the key soon... you don’t have much time left..."

"Time...?" Aurora echoed, as she remembered a part of the vision Asmodeus showed her. It wasn’t making sense back then. But now... now it made sense.

’His loved ones will be his doom. His death by the girl raised by Dagon,’ Aurora thought.

Silence.

Atlas turned toward Eliana. "What do you mean, we don’t have time?"

She stepped closer, voice trembling now with something almost human. "In the future, when you bound the Law into your hands, when you defied the gods and took their power for yourself, you fractured the chain that held our world apart from theirs."

The words struck him harder than any blade. ’In the future?’

Her eyes burned brighter, and for a heartbeat he saw not a child, but a woman—ancient, radiant, terrible—wreathed in the memory of stars.

But Atlas couldn’t move. His gaze stayed on Eliana. A thousand questions warred behind his eyes—anger, fear, guilt. Somewhere beneath it all, a thread of recognition so deep it hurt.

’My name,’ he thought. ’My blood?’

He crouched, meeting her at eye level. "If what you say is true," he said softly, "then you really are mine... and you really are from the future...?"

Eliana’s lip quivered. "...Like fate, time is also watching..." she whispered.

"In the end, they’re coming for you. The gods, the Empresses—all of them. You broke the chain. You made yourself the hinge of every world.

...Father," she voiced, letting the final word out weaker than a whisper, so much so that only she could hear herself.

The gate of the Fourth Layer shook, its enormous door opening, Michael and Merlin and all the fallens pulling it open. The grating sound, the wind from the Fourth Layer howled toward them, sucking everyone in.

Eliana’s words were almost lost beneath the rising wind. Around them, the battlefield began to dissolve—the air rippling with unstable light, the taste of ozone thick on the tongue.

Aurora grabbed his arm, now knowing who this girl really was. "Stop talking! The more you talk with her, the cycle of time—"

He hesitated, still locked in the child’s gaze. "My... daughter—"

Eliana reached out and pressed a hand to his chest. A warmth spread through him, fierce and sorrowful. "Don’t die," she said. "Don’t let anyone die..."

Atlas reached for her, but it was too late. The wind from the Fourth Layer sucked them all in. Aurora called him, asking for help to stop the storm pulling them all, cursing Michael for why he had opened the damned gate.

Atlas turned to her. And before he knew it...

She was gone.

Atlas turned slowly, searching for any sign of the child, but there was nothing. Only the axe at his feet, humming faintly, the runes along its blade pulsing like a heartbeat.

Lara touched his shoulder. "She knew you," she said softly. "She said your name as if it were hers."

He didn’t answer. His gaze lingered on the horizon, where smoke and clouds met.

Behind him, Michael’s voice was low. "The gate is now open. It’s now or never."

Aurora glanced at Atlas. "He’s right. The gate won’t open twice... we need to go."

Atlas nodded, the words of his so-called daughter lingering in his mind.

He bent, picking up the axe. Its weight settled into his palm like fate itself.

He could still feel the warmth of Eliana’s hand against his chest.

The wind carried a faint whisper then, too soft for any of the others to hear.

Don’t die. Don’t let anyone die...

Atlas closed his eyes. For the first time since he entered Hell, he felt truly... truly afraid.