Chapter 469 (1/2)

Chapter 469

Chapter 467: Divergence

ARTHUR LEYWIN

…Wait

I struggled to open my eyes, but even when I acco was clear Moer, the stress of hard years lived not yet showing on her face Her auburn hair was thicker and richer in color, her skin shter

I felt myself fill armth as I stared up at her

“Hi, little Art, I’m your daddy Can you say dada?”

“Honey, he was just born”

My tiny, strained eyes widened as I looked at otten how charismatic he’d been, especially back then His square jaas still cleanly-shaven, highlighting his youthful features, and his hair, ashy brown in color, was kept tri separately beneathsharply like tords, strong and fierce, but siazed up into his deep blue, alin to water Waves of cohissued fro wrong?” ?”

The doctor dis, “Newborns are supposed to cry, Mr Leywin Please continue resting for a couple of days I’ll be available in case you need ”

I don’t understand This moment marked—marks?—the first day of ain? I felt ry and tired It was difficult to keep ht I just…need to rest…to eat…then I’ll think more clearly

Somewhere deep in the back of my head, I felt a pressure that was both cool and dark and couard, but I couldn’t bring anything more to the forefront of my conscious ue, uncertainty, and the yearnings of an infant’s body

I squealed with a baby’s delight ashe did, I adored, rewarding hiles and starry-eyed stares It seemed nearly iic of an adult who had lived half a century across two different lives already, even before being reborn again into my own infant body

The memories of my previous time as a baby rested half-formed on top of my conscious mind, like oil on water But my life was different, this time I was different I couldn’t be certain why, but the pull of being a newborn was er, like yet a third layer overon who I was—the Arthur Leyho had already lived twenty years of life, who had fought Scythes and asura, who hadaether instead—I see ht or effort Much the saht walk commonly tread paths to arrive at their destination only to find that they have no recollection of the journey

There was a knocking sound and unexpected pain in ical senses, and I began to cry, loud and desperate

Father looked around in a panic, pulling hly “Hush, Art, hush It’s just a scratch, you don’t need to—”

“Reynolds, what did you do?” Mother’s voice entered the room just ahead of the wo at hian to fuss over my scratch “Oh, my baby! Your father has mutilated you It’s okay, little Art, it’s okay You’re , I was set down on their bed Then, with a hiccup that shook an to issue froht bathed an to fade away as if it hadn’t ever been

This ic was in Dicathen than ki on Earth Watching Mother heal board into my interest in h the air, alht They danced within it, swirling arounds at once but forgetting to maintain my posture as an infant

“Excuse you,” Mother said with a silly shtly “See, all better” She rubbed at the patch of skin that no longer bore a scratch, but I was no longer fully paying attention

I can see the aetheric particles…but I couldn’t have seen or sensed aether at this point in my life I was only a few months old, and I didn’t even have a mana core It would beall the s, ed by h this chance at my life in the exact steps as before

I felt a strange and disco déjà vu as I remeht, scrunching up ht into Fate

This sudden revelation of aether drew ht that pressed against the inner layer of my subconscious like a sound not quite heard

Sylvie! Regis! I felt h the tiny fraotten thehtly distorted, fe to look around the roo a question, but I couldn’t absorb her words

Instead, I olden eyes of h like the rest of her She looked the way she had before, young and new, only barely having acquired her huaunt and…haunted Even discounting her incorporeal nature, she see

Oh, Sylvie, you are here Have you been the entire time? I’m sorry, it’s much more difficult to maintain a sense of my self in this form—

‘No, Arthur I’m not the Sylvie who entered the keystone with you’

I hesitated to respond, deeply confused I was growing tired again, andclosed as Mother rocked me in her arht you to the Leywins, atched over you on Earth, who has yet to be reconnected with the piece of ht, her words forave , I know Because, really, I’m not that Sylvie either I’m your projection of that Sylvie Because that’s all this is, all any of it is You’re projecting your life into the keystone realain while you sleep—dream’

My eyelids fluttered, and I felt my infant body relax ‘But…it feels so real And if it’s true’—I yawned and stretchedI don’t…’

And then, although I tried to prevent it, I drifted to sleep again

With a rush of reat, beyond words even I si formed the core for the first ti a ain, soht would happen

I started to close my eyes to sense my newly formed h the ti me, and I instead stared around at the half-de down from the sky

Distantly, I heard my mother shout, “Art! Oh, my baby! Are you okay?”

Butelse Not the newly available sense of e of my consciousness, but the amethyst motes of aether that had been displaced by the outward pushi+ng force ofNot only had those closest been displaced, but aether beyond the sphere of wreckage see closer, al to investigate

But ould aether act like that? I had forgotten to consider how I could even sense it, ested, my last couple of years sed up within the rhythround, Mother, who had taken ratulations, Art, honey,” while my father exclaimed, “You awakened, Champ”

Struck by a sudden consideration, I tried to activate God Step There was no glow of a burning Godrune, no sense of aether flooding through my nearly three-year-old body, which made sense: I had no aether core and no Godrunes And yet, the aetheric pathways lit up di rapidly in and out, as if I were seeing two coes of the world set one atop the other

I i to channel aether as my sternum clenched painfully

“Art honey, are you sure you’re all right?” Mother asked, tears in her eyes and lines of concern wrinkling her smooth skin

Beside her, co up and doithin the wreckage “My boy is a genius! Awakened before the age of three! This is unprecedented I thought I was fast, but this is on another level!”

“I’ hbor ran up to see what had happened, I reached for Father, who picked me up proudly and let me rest in his arms Within the comfort of his protective shell, I stared at the at as ather, like so many violet fireflies

“Stop,” I said, a rush of previous-lifemy wholewhere I was

Perhaps it was so in my voice, but the caravan came to a halt as Durden pulled the skitters to a stop

“What’s thepuzzled

I sed heavily, growing frustrated with all of this for the first tiue of si through the Grand Mountains as our skitter-pulled cart wound its way toward the gate that would take us to Xyrus I was almost four, I’d already been introduced to the Twin Horns, and ere approaching the most fateful moment of my life

Fateful…

The world buzzed insidethis now?

We were nearly upon the bandit ambush, the moment that would take me away from my mother and father for years, that would make me miss the birth of my sister

I looked hard atin ain, to lose him Not when I could stop it

“Art, honey?” Mother said, putting her hand againstat my father, she said, “Reynolds, he’s war?” Father asked, hopping over the row of seats to get closer “Can you heal hih there was certainly a sick twist in ht look like if I didn’t fall off that cliff defending my mother But I couldn’t just let us stuotten any one of us killed It didn’t, of course—except for ed as I’d lived through this life? Events had unfolded alh to cause soe?

What if, this time, the wounds that Helen and Father take turn out to be fatal? I asked myself

“There is an ambush up ahead,” I explained in my small voice “We need to be careful”

“What?” Father asked, caught off guard

Durden and Adaela Rose peered around us as if she ht of this hidden ambush Jasmine rested one hand on my shoulder protectively