I Am The Game's Villain Chapter 781: [The Rewritten Lost Past] [21]

Since the day he was born, Amael had barely known anything of Eden’s world.

He had been taken to the Garden Realm a handful of times, but never by choice. Each visit happened only because his father decided it would happen. Sometimes Nihil brought him there as if it were an obligation, not an invitation, dragging him into a realm that never felt as though it had been meant for him in the first place.

Belle, on the other hand, wanted the exact opposite. She wanted her son kept as far from Eden’s Realm as possible, and with good reason. Amael was the Vessel of their oldest enemy, a living danger by nature alone, whether he wished it or not. To her, Eden was not a place of wonder or belonging for him, but a place where too many eyes might look at him and see only what slept inside him. Nihil, however, seemed driven by another purpose entirely. He wanted Amael to know Eden’s side, to understand its powers, its rulers, its structure, its truths.

Anyone with sense could have wondered whether Nihil had been trying to shape his son’s mind from the very beginning, teaching him what to admire, what to fear, and what to obey. If Belle had not been there to counter him, he might very well have succeeded. That thought alone was enough to send a chill through Amael whenever he allowed himself to dwell on it for too long.

Still, even with all Nihil’s teachings, Amael’s knowledge of Eden remained incomplete. His father had told him stories, given him names, spoken of great figures as though reciting a map of powers that ruled the worlds, but hearing about them was not the same as standing before them. There were many he knew only through reputation, through warnings, or through the careful way Nihil pronounced their names.

He had never met Eden herself.

There were Guardians he had not encountered either, Lumen, Nox, and A-Nox, though the last of those was for reasons so obvious that Amael never questioned them. In truth, he was grateful for that much.

And beyond the Guardians, among the other great powers, there were none spoken of with as much weight as the Khaos Princesses. They were, by all accounts, the only beings whose standing could truly be placed beside that of the Ymir Kings. Yet of them all, Amael had met only one: Merithra. That single encounter had been enough to leave an impression he could not easily put into words.

He did understand regardless why the Khaos Princesses were treated like Princesses among Gods.

There were others, too, who remained absent from his life. Raphiel was one of them, or rather, someone both his parents had made sure stayed absent. Neither Nihil nor Belle had ever shown the slightest desire for Amael to cross paths with her. From what little he understood, Raphiel despised Samael, and by extension, anything touched by his legacy. Amael had never asked much more than that. Some silences were heavy enough to warn him not to pry.

Yet among all the figures he had never met, one absence weighed on him more than the others.

Laima, her godly name as Prophetic and Fate Goddess.

Or Nevia by her true name.

She was supposed to be close to him in the simplest sense of blood: his half-sister, born of the same father. But in every other sense, the word sister felt almost too small, too ordinary, too human for what she truly was. Their shared blood hardly seemed to matter when everything else about them stood worlds apart. Their status, their nature, their very divinity were separated by a distance so vast it nearly erased the relation altogether.

She was a Primordial Goddess, a being whose importance surpassed even Nihil’s in certain whispers, despite having come from him. It was said she had been born not only of Nihil and Aniha, but of fate itself. Amael had heard many impossible things in his life, but few names were wrapped in as much dread and reverence as hers. Laima was not merely powerful. She was the kind of being whose existence altered the meaning of power around her.

And perhaps that was exactly why Amael had always wanted to meet her.

As absurd as it might have sounded to anyone else, he often felt she was the only one truly connected to him. Not because they had spent time together, they had not. Not because she knew him, she did not. But because in a life shaped by forces older and greater than himself, by inheritance he had never chosen, the thought of someone else born into that same monstrous lineage had always stirred something in him. Curiosity, perhaps. Or loneliness. Maybe both.

Nihil had forbidden it completely.

Each time Amael had shown the slightest interest, his father had shut the subject down with chilling firmness. It was too dangerous, he said. She was too strong. Those were always his reasons. Nothing more, nothing less.

There were darker rumors, too. It was said that one did not even need to speak to Laima for her to destroy them. Merely approaching her could be enough. A mind could break in her presence. Thoughts could cease to belong to the one thinking them.

For that reason, only Nihil and A-Nihil were allowed near her. Only they knew where she was kept. No one else was trusted with that knowledge.

Many had tried to find her. Zeus most of all had searched, pried, and pushed, but Nihil never yielded a single word. He gave nothing away, not her location, not the conditions of her confinement, not even the smallest clue of how or where she lived.

Most believed the real Nevia was simply hidden somewhere in secret, concealed from the world while Nihil visited her from time to time.

Amael knew however.

One of the few times his father had ever spoken honestly about her had happened during a violent argument with Belle. She had discovered the truth of how Nevia was kept, less like a daughter, more like a prisoner, confined and used for her prophetic abilities. Belle had been furious in a way Amael rarely saw, and for once Nihil had not responded with one of his usual evasions, manipulations, or cold half-truths.

He had simply said he was protecting her.

Protecting his daughter from the eyes that would covet her, from the hands that would seize her, from the endless greed of those who would use what she was. His voice, in that moment, had something rare, something close to sincerity. It had been one of the only times Amael had ever seen Nihil lose that perfect, frightening composure of his. And it had been one of the only times Belle herself had fallen silent, if only for a moment.

Nevia was as priceless as she was dangerous.

For all his father’s might, there was a reason even he treated her with a caution that bordered on fear. In the wrong hands, someone like Nevia would not simply become a weapon. She would become a disaster.

The situation was, in many ways, not so different from his own.

Perhaps that was part of why Amael had always wanted to meet Nevia. It was not only because she was his half-sister, nor simply because she was one of the most mysterious beings tied to his father’s bloodline. It was also because of her gift, if gift was even the right word for something so dangerous. Her prophetic abilities interested him. So much power, so much fear surrounding one single person... it felt painfully familiar.

He had asked before.

More than once.

He had asked Nihil, and the answer had been no.

He had asked Aniha, and the answer had always been the same.

That was why, when Aniha finally agreed, the shock nearly outweighed his suspicion.

"It’s not a trap, is it?" Amael asked, staring at her where she stood before him.

They didn’t even allow him to meet the illusion version of Nevia in Eden’s Realm so it was quite shocking that he was allowed to meet the real one.

"No," Aniha replied.

Her pale white eyes gave away nothing. As always, her face remained unreadable, carved into that same calm stillness that made speaking to her feel like speaking into frozen air.

"I mean it," Amael pressed. "You’re taking me to the real Nevia, aren’t you?"

There was reason enough for him to ask.

In Eden’s Realm, there was also a Nevia, the one most people knew as Laima. She too was hidden away, heavily guarded, sealed behind restrictions that made her prison appear absolute. To anyone ignorant of the truth, it looked real. The confinement, the security, the isolation, everything about it was convincing. But it was only a carefully constructed illusion, a false version maintained for the sake of prophecy and appearances. A semblance of imprisonment designed to satisfy those who asked too many questions and mislead those who looked too closely.

Some knew it was false. Zeus knew. Michael knew. There were likely others as well. But knowledge did not mean power, and knowing the truth changed nothing if one could do nothing against Nihil.

Even Eden himself had accepted the arrangement.

The illusion remained in Eden’s Realm, serving its purpose while the true Nevia was hidden elsewhere, locked away in a far more secure and secret dimension. Through that false self, prophecies were still delivered. Through that puppet, the world was fed what it needed to hear, or what Nihil allowed it to hear. More often than not, A-Nihil altered those prophecies before they ever reached others. And despite all those layers of distance, manipulation, and containment, even the illusion was watched constantly.

That was how dangerous Nevia was believed to be.

Even her shadow had to be guarded.

"Listen," Amael said, his tone sharpening, "I know you don’t think I’m a bad person. I know you think I only want peace, and I do. So you really have nothing to fear from me, which means you can stop—"

"Do you want to see her or not?" Aniha cut in coldly.

"Yes," Amael answered at once. "Immediately."

Aniha said nothing more. She simply placed a hand on his shoulder.

At once, his vision lurched.

The world around him blurred as though the ground had vanished beneath him for a single, nauseating instant. His sight swam, colors dissolved, and then everything shifted. He blinked several times, forcing his eyes to refocus, only to find himself standing inside a corridor so white it was almost painful to look at.

Not merely bright.

White.

The walls, the floor, the ceiling, everything around him was drowned in such pure, unbroken whiteness that it felt less like architecture and more like he had been dropped into an endless void stripped of all color, all shadow, all sense of depth. For a moment, the space seemed to stretch infinitely in every direction, and he had to fight the strange sensation that if he stared too long, he might lose his balance and fall into it.

Aniha paid no attention to his reaction. She simply turned and began to walk ahead.

"This place is guarded and protected by countless Edenic Circles from the greatest orders," she said as she moved. "No one is allowed inside without my consent or Nihil’s."

"And I’m guessing no one gets out without both of you either," Amael replied dryly.

Aniha answered him with silence.

Their footsteps echoed sharply through the corridor, the sound unnaturally crisp against the sterile stillness. The longer they walked, the more the place began to unsettle him. There was nothing to anchor the eye, nothing to break the endless white, and the sameness of it all slowly worked its way into his head until it left him faintly dizzy. He found himself focusing on Aniha’s figure ahead simply to keep steady, using her presence as the only point of reference in that blank, oppressive space.

And beneath the emptiness, he could feel it.

Even if he could not see every layer clearly, Amael sensed the Edenic Circles all around him. They saturated the dimension so completely that it was as if every inch of space had been carved over with holy seals. Their power pressed against his senses from all sides, dense and immense, enough to make the air itself feel structured and locked.

All of this for one woman.

Or perhaps not to protect her at all.

Perhaps only to imprison her.

Amael could not decide which possibility was worse.

They continued on, and after a while he sensed movement around them, subtle shifts in the walls, hidden mechanisms awakening and folding into one another beyond his line of sight. At several points, Aniha lifted a hand and made a small motion, and he felt barriers parting, layers of sealed power withdrawing just enough to let them pass. The process was so swift, so perfect, that it only deepened his unease.

For one passing moment, he even wondered whether Aniha was doing something to him on purpose, something to keep him from memorizing the path, something meant to scramble the sequence in his mind so he could never retrace it.

Maybe she was.

But that was not why he had come.

He had not come here to rescue Nevia or attempting anything mad.

He had come because he had been given one chance to see her, and he was not going to waste it. Not now. Not with that strange, dark feeling lingering in him, that quiet sense of approaching disaster he had been unable to shake.

After what felt like five minutes, or perhaps ten; in that place, time became difficult to measure, Aniha finally stopped.

She stood before what at first looked like another white wall. Then Amael saw it.

Something pulsed across its surface.

An Edenic Circle had been embedded into it.

Amael stared.

He had seen Edenic Circles before, but never one like this. This one was built in countless overlapping rings and symbols, woven together with such complexity that his eyes struggled to follow it. Some markings were familiar. Others were completely foreign. He could not fully read them, could not even begin to understand all their functions, but he knew at once that this was no ordinary seal.

This was a boundary meant to deny gods.

"You’re coming with me?" Amael asked as Aniha reached toward it.

For a brief moment the Edenic Circle flickered, its layers shuddering like light moving across water. Then, with a soft pulse, it vanished and revealed a path into a chamber beyond.

Aniha did not bother answering.

Amael had half-hoped she might leave him alone with Nevia, even if only for a moment. That hope disappeared as soon as she stepped forward beside him. Of course she was coming. She was not here merely to guide him. She was here to watch him, and to protect him, if necessary, from whatever Nevia might do.

He crossed the threshold.

The chamber beyond was just as white as the corridor, but unlike the hall outside, it felt quieter, heavier, as though the silence in here had substance. And there, on the white floor, lay a woman.

Amael stopped.

She was resting on her side as though asleep, wrapped in a pure white gown that spilled around her in soft folds. Her hair long and polished and pure white, spread over the floor and blended so completely with the pale ground that it seemed to dissolve into the chamber itself. For a moment she looked less like a prisoner than like some sacred figure laid inside a shrine, untouched by time, untouched by anything.

"Strengthen your mind," Aniha warned quietly beside him. "As long as you do not let her in, she should not be able to reach you."