CHAPTER 122

  THE TRUTH AND DECEPTION

  Leaving Clandor was harder than breaking into it. Hans had known patience once—before the truth, before the betrayals—but whatever measure of it remained had long been scraped thin.

  So he abandoned subtlety.

  He didn’t slip past the border; he broke it open. Evasion and evasion. He used what was taught to him by none other than the queen herself. And when Reina finally heard, he was already a ghost in the Sleeping-Giant mountains, out of Clandorian’s restriction.

  He spoke the word aloud, voice cutting the silence like a blade.

  “INGRESS”

  The light pillar sucked him in and he appeared in familiar snowy plains, the temple of OSIRIS. Once again, he stood in the forbidden lands of Parv—Frostspire.

  As he took the first step to enter. With a whizz, the doors slid open. Lights blinked alive one by one along the corridor ahead, humming softly—too soft, too eager. As if welcoming him.

  Man, this doesn’t get old.

  Hans stepped inside, boots trailing snow and mud. The walls shimmered with a cold, synthetic glow, pulsing faintly beneath old words.

  "Still theatrical," he muttered, almost to himself. "So where is our dear goddess?”

  The halls twisted, reshaped themselves as he moved. He didn’t look back. Memory did the guiding now.

  The central room, which Aadya called the command centre and lies behind the left doors, was Samson’s corpse, breathing inside the cylindrical glass.

  He opened that door, inside, the air was thick with sterilised cold and the steady hiss of life support. The glass cylinder stood at the heart of it all, ringed by faint glyphs, humming with preserved breath.

  Father

  He approached slowly. Pressed his palm against the glass, gently.

  Inside, the corpse floated in suspension—untouched by decay, untouched by time. And still breathing. Barely. If you could call it that.

  A bubble appeared as if a response came from the dead.

  A ripple stirred across the surface of the tank, as though the glass itself were answering.

  Hans exhaled.

  “Tell me the truth,” he whispered. “Please.”

  His reflection stared back—drawn, eyes ringed with exhaustion. Behind it, Samson’s face remained unchanged. Serene. Sleeping.

  Hans pressed his forehead to the glass.

  “Was it you?” The words came slowly, bitter. “How is she the one birth me, Arat lied, everyone lied, did you force her—oh god no, please no.”

  His voice cracked. He swallowed it down.

  “No… no, you wouldn’t. You aren’t that kind of person.”

  A pause.

  “Right?”

  The hum of the machines didn’t waver. The air stayed still. But the question—of everything—hung between them.

  Hans stayed like that for a long time. The warmth of his breath fogged the glass, then vanished.

  “So, you found out.” A voice he wanted to confront came from behind.

  Hans turned, slowly. Of course it was her—arms crossed, half-shadowed in the doorway like a spectre too proud to haunt but too vain to vanish.

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  Aadya. The so-called goddess. The architect of all of this.

  He didn’t answer her. Not right away.

  His voice came low. Raw.

  “Is it true?”

  “Yes.” She answered.

  It landed harder than a confession ever should. No defence. No lies. No attempt to soften it.

  Hans clenched his jaw. Closed his eyes.

  Damn it.

  Aadya stepped into the room, her boots silent against the stone and steel.

  “I sent you there to find out,” she said, her tone maddeningly calm. “So I’m not surprised you did. Now you understand why I stopped you. Why I sent Bernard to stop you from killing her back in Deadlands.”

  Hans’s laugh came sharp, bitter.

  “You stopped me?” His voice rose. “You think Bernard stopped me? She came to kill me. She knew who I was and still she did. I heard it from her mother’s own damn mouth—”

  “Yet she didn’t bring her blessed sword.” Aadya reasoned.

  The interruption was quiet, but it froze Hans mid-sentence.

  Aadya tilted her head toward the blade at his hip—ornate, dangerous, and deeply familiar.

  “The sword you’re carrying now. Her blessed blade. She left it behind, why?”

  She walked closer, her expression unreadable, though her voice softened into something almost... melancholic.

  “She went easy on you. You think that fight meant something, but if she wanted to kill you back then. It was easy for her. Even when she wasn’t capable. An ambush there, and you’d be a goner.”

  Hans said nothing. The silence between them felt heavier than shouting. He remembered that fight. How hard he had pushed himself. How close it had felt. How much of himself he’d poured into surviving.

  And now Aadya stood here, telling him it hadn’t been a real fight at all.

  Just a performance.

  A mercy.

  “If she hadn’t gone herself,” Aadya continued, “Martys would’ve gone in her place.”

  That name hit him harder than a blade. Because this too was what he had heard from the former queen’s mouth.

  “And you know how that would’ve ended. No hesitation. No mercy. She protected you knowing who you were. Her objective was to make sure you wouldn’t get involved with Clandor, but you forced your way in.”

  She wasn’t lecturing him. She didn’t need to. The words did it on their own.

  Hans turned away from her. Back to the tank. Back to the man who was the origin of all, and said nothing.

  His voice came rough now, frayed around the edges.

  “How long?” he asked. Not to her. To the figure behind the glass. “How long are you all going to keep playing these games with me?”

  He pressed his palm flat to the glass again.

  “You. Her. Reina. All of you. Just leave me out of it. Leave me alone.”

  Aadya’s voice followed behind him like a shadow.

  “I can’t.”

  There was no triumph in it. No cruelty.

  Only the tired resignation of someone who had already walked this road.

  “You’ve been in the game since the moment you were born. This isn’t a choice, Hans.”

  A pause.

  “It’s a compulsion. You are the story, whether you want to be or not.”

  Hans didn’t look at her. Didn’t speak for a while.

  It came low and quiet. “Why did he do that? Just so I can be born again—”

  “Yes, it was not his choice either—being born a Parvian, you have a duty. A responsibility. To use our talents, your time, your emotions in the service of your people. Even if they don’t appreciate it… you have to do what’s best for those beneath you. Whether they deserve it or not.”

  She paused.

  “And you being born is the highest service Samson could offer, and he gladly paid the price for it.”

  She flicked her hand. A screen hissed down from the ceiling—dustless, seamless, humming with faint light.

  “Look.”

  Hans turned, almost against his will.

  The image was still. Then it moved.

  “Look at him,” she said, pointing.

  There, on the screen, was a man—tired, worn. A man who looked like him, a bit aged, but the features were the same. “Father.” Hans murmured.

  He was smiling.

  Even with a sword buried in his chest.

  Even as blood spilled from his lips.

  Even with Reina gripping the hilt like she meant to drive it deeper, her face twisted in betrayal, hatred... and grief.

  Hans whispered, barely audible.

  “Father.”

  The recording played on.

  “May my death end my sin. May you find happiness.”

  “May this world never need a person like me again.”

  “Forgive this friend. Forget… and move on.”

  The smile never faltered. The light in his eyes faded.

  Hans’s breath caught.

  “Damn it,” he muttered, shaking his head. “Why… why go this far, Father?”

  Aadya didn’t comfort. She didn’t console. She only answered.

  “Because the war you fought in—the Elven Civil War—it was the event that would have happened years ago. Reina would have lost the crown to Martys, Eleanor would’ve died protecting her escape, and Samson would’ve offered her refuge. That’s how it was supposed to happen.”

  “Then why’s everything like this—”

  “Because it wasn’t the happy ending for any of you. Taking himself out of the equation was the only solution Samson found. Without him… Reina kept the throne. Eleanor survived. Martys never rose. And you—” she gestured to him, “you grew up with two parents who didn’t hate each other. You were spared the fire.”

  Hans couldn’t answer. Couldn’t speak.

  The weight of it—the lie he’d been born into—settled like stone across his shoulders.

  “Wasn’t it a good life?” she asked, almost gently.

  He didn’t respond.

  Not with words.

  He turned away from the screen, from her, from the truth.

  The temple let him go without protest.

  Outside, the sky was the colour of blue. Wind howled through the cliffs. Snow gathered at his feet.

  Hans stumbled forward until he couldn’t anymore. Then he fell—face-first into the snowdrift, arms limp, heart hollowed.

  The cold bit deep.

  But the tears were warm, even as they vanished into the frost.

  He whispered to no one.

  “Being Parvian is hard, Father. I don’t think I can sacrifice that much.”

  The mountain made no reply.

  Only the wind, moving endlessly across the bones of the old world.