Chapter 301: Fatality Will Come... She Always Does (2)

"Babyboy," Akashi said as they walked out of the base of the Golden Apple Tree.

A long path stretched out from beneath the canopy ahead of them.

Overhead, golden leaves brushed and rustled softly.

Along the edges of the woods, flowers pressed in thick clusters, releasing a sweet, crushed scent that mingled with the warm smell of bark.

Through small breaks in the branches, the void revealed thick, winding threads of light, their glow faintly tinting Luna’s hair.

Luna kept to the right side of Akasha, Akashi walked on the left, and Yume drifted along Akashi’s far side.

For a stretch, Akashi let her words linger, and the only sounds were their feet and the quiet give of the path.

"When you walk into Pantheos," she said, "what are you actually walking toward?"

While she could easily see for herself, much like Luna and Yume, she didn’t want to look into his mind every single moment.

He let the question linger in the air.

Luna studied the side of his face, noticing a calmness that made her lips twitch into the faintest smile, as if he’d already made up his mind long ago and was only now taking the time to voice it.

Akasha had always known what he wanted for himself—it was the foundation of every dream he carried, the root of all his desires.

"Peace," he said at last. "Family."

As they walked, a leaf lightly tapped his shoulder before sliding away.

Now that Akasha understood his origins—how his uncles had been the cause of his loneliness and neglect—he still held a grudge against them.

Yet, it wasn’t a matter that weighed heavily on him because, in the end, just as they had perhaps intended, it had shaped him into someone who longed for peace and the warmth of those he considered family.

Dream Land, or more accurately the Divine Domain, had always been destined to stand as a beacon for his family and his peace.

His Gacha system was meant to keep him at the top of his game whenever he felt cornered—or simply whenever he felt like it.

Still, Akasha had never envisioned himself conquering all of existence, nor did he wish to build a world full of strangers with no ties to him.

What he truly desired was a family, where everyone he welcomed into his Domain shared a connection with him, rather than being random people he happened to save.

Despite this, his life since birth had been dedicated to cleansing the Orin Star System and laying the foundations of his home.

But now, with those tasks behind him, he could finally live as he wished—as the Lord of Dreams, free to explore and bask in absolute peace whenever he pleased.

And for the moments when darkness emerged, the world would come to know the Lord of Nightmares.

"Once I finish the final touches to Dream Land... I’ll spend my days in peace, enjoying everything Pantheos has to offer," he said at last, his voice trailing off as the canopy opened, the last of his words still hanging in the air.

The peak’s oasis spread before them, water and grass beneath the void.

The path to the right wound its way toward the back of the mountain, where serene ponds and mirrored pools lay scattered in the distance.

To the left, the trail dipped down the slope, disappearing into the lower reaches.

Straight ahead, the Garden of Herbs spread its patchwork of orderly rows and untamed growth, the scent of crushed leaves drifting through the air even from this far away.

Akashi took the view, then turned her head.

"Well, my son," She said softly, "As much as I would like that for you... things won’t be so simple."

In that moment, the easy, casual demeanor vanished from Akasha as he came to a slow stop. Akashi chuckled, realizing that even after all this time, his cautious nature had never left him.

She had spent countless hours watching him overthink situations and sometimes prepare far more than was necessary.

"You know, destroying my minor existence doesn’t come without consequences," she continued, "consequences that even I can’t stop."

Hearing this, Akasha facepalmed and dragged his hand down his face.

"Right," he sighed, "I know... I caused an incursion to happen, but is it really that serious?"

With his Hub of Knowledge, he was well aware of the Anchors’ existence, yet in his anger, he did not attempt to save the Anchor of the universe.

That single choice triggered countless incursions across the cosmos.

And incursions... they were unpredictable—some people could be thrown through the timeline, brought to the point where their destiny burned brightest, or even cast into entirely different cosmologies.

Such events could never truly be mapped.

"Indeed," Akashi agreed, the sound of her voice almost a laugh.

"But... the incursion is only a fraction of what happened."

In that moment, Akasha looked at his mother for a long time without uttering a word.

"Mother," he finally said, "please... stop dragging this out."

When it came to the unknown and his safety, Akasha had no patience for dancing around the truth or speaking in riddles.

If danger lay ahead or he needed to prepare for something, he wanted to hear it plainly.

"As you say~," Akashi replied with a teasing tone, making Yume and Luna giggle.

She tugged him back into motion, and the four of them stepped out onto the flat of the peak.

As the oasis opened up before them, the water and grass ran on in wide, open sheets around the flat peak.

Their reflections broke and reformed as they passed each basin.

"Well, as you know, you won’t have to carry the karmic weight of your actions," Akashi said as they walked.

Thanks to Akasha’s Domain, the moment he returned, any lingering karmic weight was completely erased.

Still, it was something not even the Domain could deal with—nothing from Pantheos could remove it.

"That leaves you with two problems worth losing sleep over."

Akasha glanced at her without speaking, letting her get to the point.

"The first is Fatality..." Akashi spoke the name, finding it oddly familiar. "One of my mothers, and a Creation entity of Pantheos."

She went on to explain that Fatality symbolized the absolute end of all things, though she preferred to concern herself with matters of Fate, Karma, and Destiny.

Before she could continue, Yume’s attention shifted, her head turning as she latched onto something else that had been said.

"One of your mothers?" she asked cautiously.

The memories of Akasha within her told a different story, one where Akashi’s origin was tied to the Akashic Records.

"I thought your mother... was the Akashic Records."

At those words, Akashi let out a short, fond chuckle, feeling no trace of disrespect since Yume wasn’t wrong in the slightest.

"Well, my birth mother is the Akashic Records," she said, meeting Yume’s gaze, "but I quite literally have hundreds of thousands of mothers."

The statement made everyone’s eyes widen in disbelief—it didn’t even sound remotely realistic—but instead of questioning it, they kept moving.

Akasha’s focus, however, drifted swiftly back to what truly mattered.

’Fatality, huh?’ he mused inwardly. ’So, I’m guessing the Creators who’ve been watching me... are my grandparents?’

The peak shifted restlessly beneath his feet, yet his mind had already begun assembling the fragments of understanding.

The only conclusion he could reach was that his origins, along with the intricate structure of the clan tied to his mother, were unfolding in a way he had not anticipated.

’Ah... family drama,’ he mused inwardly.

"Son," Akashi’s voice cut in.

"I’ll be brief. When you destroyed the universe, you also obliterated countless Fate Locks—events that were destined to occur."

She went on to explain that, in comparison, the incursions would seem insignificant, for destroying Fate Locks carried far greater consequences, given that an incursion did not always result in death.

Destroying Fate Locks was like taking on a heavy load of Karmic debt, because every one that existed—and every one he broke—clung to him, binding itself to his own destiny.

Akasha absorbed the revelation in utter silence, while the wind brushed his pale hair aside, revealing the purple mark beneath his eye.

Then her next words stopped him cold.

"So, for the next fifty thousand years," she said, "you’ll carry the weight of the universe you just erased."

By then, they had reached one of the ponds, and he stood frozen at its edge.

The water reflected him: light-brown skin, white-gray hair, the infinity mark beneath his left eye, Luna’s pink-and-white hair spilling over his shoulder, Akasha standing on his other side, and Yume a step beyond her.

He stared at that reflection for a long time, without uttering a single word.