I Am The Game's Villain Chapter 822: Blood Wedding [7]

The clamor that followed Celeste’s appearance rang through the air for a long minute before it slowly began to die down. Yet even after the voices softened, the effect of her presence remained. By appearing there before them, Celeste had already lifted the spirit of the people.

They had lost too much.

And after the Utopian War, things had only grown darker, worse still after the incident in the Fangorian Capital. Fear, grief, and exhaustion had loomed too strongly over Sancta Vedelia. But now, standing before them in white, Celeste seemed to offer something they had been desperate to cling to.

Hope.

The new Prophetess.

Claudia had held that position for so long that most of the living had never witnessed the rise of a new Prophetess with their own eyes. For many in that crowd, this was the first time they had ever seen such a figure not as a distant title, not as a story, but in living flesh before them.

"Prophetess."

Around her, the others near the front greeted her with the proper respect, but Celeste barely answered. Her silence was not coldness, nor arrogance. She simply seemed far away, as though some part of her remained trapped elsewhere, her lashes only barely stirring as she stood among them.

Harvey and Evan exchanged complicated looks but said nothing.

If it had been possible, neither of them would have wanted her to bear such a burden so soon after losing Melfina, and someone else far more personally important to her. But there were some things no family, no matter how powerful, could delay or deny.

She was the Prophetess.

Her status stood that high, perhaps even more in an era where the Saintess and the Priestess also existed alongside her. From this moment onward, she was expected to carry the hope of Sancta Vedelia, and its pain as well. The Holy Tree had chosen her. The Gods had chosen her. And because of that, she had no real choice in the matter, just as none of them did.

Nearby, Amelia and Cylien watched Celeste with quiet sadness.

Both of them wanted to speak to her, but this was not the time. Amelia had already tried before, and Celeste had barely been able to answer. The grief in her was too obvious, too fresh, too deep. She looked heartbroken.

And now, at only eighteen years old, she had been placed before the entire high court of Sancta Vedelia.

Amelia felt anger rise in her chest at the thought of it. She wanted to demand that they at least leave Celeste alone for more than a week, let her grieve in peace before turning her into a symbol for the whole continent. But things did not work that way. Not here. Not for someone chosen by the Tree.

"Should we begin already?" Tanya asked, doing a poor job of hiding the irritation in her voice.

This gathering of hypocrites was already wearing on her patience, and having to stand beside the liars of Central Vedelia only made it worse.

"There is still Alea—" Alector began.

But at that very moment, they arrived.

A ripple of whispers passed through the nobles gathered upon the stage as they parted to make way for Alea.

Behind her came her daughter, Christina. Yet it was not Christina who held everyone’s attention.

Every eye immediately fell upon the boy in the wheelchair she was guiding forward.

He looked no older than sixteen.

At once, the resemblance to his mother was obvious. He had the same delicate features, the same pale beauty, the same soft white hair, cut shorter but nearly identical in shade. Even his amber eyes carried an echo of hers.

Alector and the other Heads scanned him with open scrutiny.

He had only ’awakened’ a week ago, after all. He still struggled to walk properly, and his mind was, by all accounts, not yet fully settled. That was why he remained in the wheelchair for now, though everyone had heard he was recovering quickly.

But that was not why so many gazes were fixed on him.

Alector and the other Heads wanted to see him for themselves.

They wanted to compare this boy to the one Kleines had described, the ’possessed’ one, the ’evil’ one, the being who had worn his son’s face while bringing ruin upon Sancta Vedelia.

At first glance, the resemblance was obvious.

But looking more closely, the differences became just as clear.

This boy’s features were finer, more delicate. His skin was paler. His frame, though not weak, was leaner and more slender. He was toned, certainly, but without the heavier, harder presence the other Amael had carried. That one had always seemed to get always attention and he wasn’t even trying to hide it.

And then there was the gaze.

His amber eyes lifted and met theirs.

There was none of that old sharpness in them.

The gold in them seemed brighter somehow, clearer. There was a strange coolness in his stare, but also a softness, something restrained and unreadable at once. It was not an innocent gaze, nor a warm one, but neither was it cruel. If anything, that made it more strange. It revealed very little, and that very lack of revelation gave him an eerie feeling, as though no one present could quite decide what they were truly looking at.

But one thing was clear.

He was completely different from the Amael they had known.

It was not only his appearance, though even that felt strangely altered upon closer inspection. It was the way he looked at others, the way he carried himself, the way his gaze rested and moved. Everything about him felt painfully different to those who had known the other Amael.

And among them, none looked more shaken than those who had once been closest to him.

Levina most of all.

She stood there staring at him in silence, her small frame tense, her crimson eyes fixed on the boy seated in the wheelchair. When he finally glanced toward her, noticing her stare, Levina nearly lost what little composure she had left.

Even when he had lost his memories before, even when he had not remembered her after she had saved him from the sea, there had still been something familiar in the way he looked at her. Some instinctive fondness, some warmth buried deeper than memory, as though his heart had known her even when his mind did not. But now...

Now she stood before someone who resembled the man who had been a father, the man she had first seen when she had opened her eyes to the world, and yet he looked at her like a stranger.

There was no recognition.

No warmth.

No trace of what had once existed between them.

Unable to bear it, Levina turned and walked away without another look.

"Vina—"

Alicia instinctively reached out a hand toward her, but Levina was already leaving. And as Alicia watched her go, she herself felt something inside her weaken. Fear, grief, confusion, everything she had spent the last days trying to keep buried rose all at once.

Still, with hesitation, almost fear, she turned her gaze back toward Amael.

He sat there in the wheelchair, quietly observing everyone. His eyes moved from face to face, narrowing ever so slightly at times, as though trying to match the people standing before him with images preserved somewhere in childhood memory, trying to place present faces over the younger ones he had once known in Sancta Vedelia.

Then his gaze settled on Alicia.

She froze.

For the briefest instant, hope flared inside her.

A tiny, desperate hope.

Maybe it really was him. Maybe he had not died. Maybe this was some deception, some concealment after everything he had done. Maybe he was only pretending, hiding himself behind another face, another silence.

But the look he gave her shattered that hope almost at once.

It was the gaze of someone who did not know her.

Utterly indifferent.

Not the smile she had grown used to seeing on Amael’s face every time he looked at her, that annoying familiar smile with which he had always treated her like a junior, a smile she had once disliked and later, without realizing when, had begun to expect. Had begun to miss. Had even grown to love. Even his eyes had once held something intimate when they rested on her, something teasing, knowing, almost familiar.

But in those amber eyes now, there was nothing.

Nothing at all.

A lump rose in her throat as she stared at him, and he simply blinked back at her with quiet incomprehension.

She had tried to mourn him.

She truly had.

But how was she supposed to do that? How was she supposed to let him go when someone wearing his face still sat there before her? How was she meant to bury her grief when the shape of him remained in the world, emptied of everything that had made him himself?

Unable to endure it, Alicia turned and walked away at once.

"Alicia—"

Leora tried to go after her, but James caught her gently by the arm and gave a small shake of his head.

Alicia kept walking.

She left stage toward the memorial building to follow after Levina, moving quickly through the corridors of the building until, on the way out, she saw someone standing apart from the crowd, leaning silently against the wall with his arms crossed.

Victor.

When she lifted her tear-blurred gaze and saw him there, he immediately uncrossed his arms and straightened, his expression tightening with pain.

"Alicia..."

That was enough.

She could not hold herself together any longer.

Tears spilled freely from her red eyes.

"W—why... why..." She sobbed, lifting trembling hands to wipe them away, but they only kept falling.

Victor crossed the distance between them at once and pulled her into his arms, wrapping her tightly against him as her whole body shook.

"I’m sorry," he said. "I’m really sorry. I wish... I wish I could have done something..."

For Cyril.

For Sirius.

And for Amael.

He had not been there when it mattered most. While he had been elsewhere, fighting another monster, struggling to save people trapped beneath the Blood Moon Spell, everything had unfolded without him. And then, wounded, exhausted, doing all he could in another corner of the disaster, he had learned that while he was occupied, two of his brothers and one of his dearest friends had died.

There were no words for that kind of failure.

No words for the guilt that came with it.

Especially when it came to Alicia.

He had been afraid to face her, afraid of what he would see in her eyes, afraid of how little comfort he had any right to offer. But he also could not bear to stand aside while his little sister broke down like this.

Alicia, meanwhile, could only weep against his chest, clutching at him as though afraid she too might collapse if she let go. Her sobs came without restraint now, endlessly, all the grief she had tried to contain finally spilling out at once.

Victor held her and said nothing more.

What comfort could words possibly offer?

In moments like this, being an Apostle meant nothing.

A title had no value if he was still this weak.

When he had faced Leon, he had understood it more clearly than ever. He had felt the distance between them, the humiliating difference in strength. Even the Apostle of Lumen had seemed stronger than he was. And if he was this weak, then how was he supposed to protect the people he loved?

That night he had lost two brothers and one friend.

Because he was too weak.

And yet he still had people left.

The women he loved. His family. His mother, whom he had only just regained.

So as he held Alicia against him, gently stroking her blond hair, Victor made a silent vow.

He would not allow such a tragedy to happen again.