Chapter 225 THE TRUTH.

Chapter 225 THE TRUTH.


AXEL’S POV:

"Daddy…"

A voice—faint, like a whisper caught in the wind—tugged at me.

It belonged to Sea.

I blinked. My chest rose with difficulty, breath shallow, muscles groaning with each motion. I didn’t know where I was, but her voice was real. It had to be.

"Sea!" I rasped, pushing myself up.

Pain clawed through my body, but I ignored it. My legs carried me forward, uneven, unstable, but driven. The walls around me warped and stretched, colors bleeding into each other like a dream slipping into a nightmare.

Then I saw it.

A door.

Slightly open, golden light spilling from the edges—warm, unnatural. I reached for it, my fingers trembling as they met the cold brass handle.

I pushed it open fully—and the brightness exploded.

A flash, like the sun itself had burst in front of me.

I flinched, covering my face with my arms.

"Sea!" I called out again, but the moment my foot crossed the threshold, it felt like falling.

I hit the ground hard, my palm slapping stone.

The light dimmed, and suddenly I was there.

In that temple.

Chaos spun around us like a violent wind. Candles trembled. The flames flared in impossible directions. Avery was crumpled on the ground, her body stiff, skin pale—but her eyes burned with fury. And near her, Akira knelt, chanting something under her breath, too fast to understand.

Everything inside me screamed. I couldn’t move fast enough.

“You mean you’ve been lying to me all this while?” Avery's voice shattered.

Akira paused, her head snapping slightly to the side, but she didn’t answer.

“You said you were my grandmother. My father's mother,” Avery went on, her tone almost taunting. “But you… you're just a manipulative witch.”

Akira’s jaw twitched. Her lips parted, but no sound came.

I saw it. Avery had struck something real.

“You played the part well. Kind, mysterious. The grieving old woman. I almost pitied you. But you know what hurts most?” Avery’s voice lowered. “That I let myself trust you. I let you touch me. Touch my child. You’re sick.”

“Silence,” Akira hissed, finally snapping.

Avery only lifted her chin.

“You want to kill me? Might as well strangle me now. At least you’d be doing something honest for once. Because if I get to you first, I'll kill you."

The atmosphere was reacting to Akira’s unraveling.

Her hands clenched into fists. Her veil slipped slightly from her hair.

“You think you know pain?” Akira whispered, her voice trembling with barely contained rage. “You think you have suffered betrayal?”

She stood and took a step forward.

“You don’t know a damn thing about who I am.”

“I know you’re not my grandmother,” Avery spat.

Akira’s eyes widened, wild and burning. Her body shaking as her control slipped.

“No,” she breathed. “She was your grandmother. Kore.”

There was a sudden stillness. Even the wind seemed to pause.

“What?” Avery rasped.

Akira began to pace, unblinking, as if decades of secrets were unraveling from her lips at last.

“Kore was my twin,” she said bitterly. “My sister. My reflection in the flesh. We were born under the same moon, in the same breath… but never seen as equals.”

The words poured like acid.

“She had the touch,” she went on. “The visions, the strength, the beauty… and the favor. Our people worshipped her like she was the moon itself. And me?” Akira smiled bitterly, teeth clenched. “I was the mistake. The shadow that came with her light because I didn’t have the same gift as her.”

She stopped pacing, her gaze fixed on the flames.

“I tried to ignore it. Tried to live in the quiet, in the dark. I went up into the mountains to meditate… to forget how unwanted I felt. That’s when I met him.”

Her voice softened. Just barely.

“Oman.”

Avery’s breath caught. My fists clenched instinctively.

Akira’s face changed—briefly tender. Almost human.

“He stole my breath the moment I saw him. And I gave him everything. We married. We laughed. We dreamed of children. He wanted a complete family more than anything else in this world.”

She paused. The softness twisted into something bitter.

“But years passed. I couldn’t bear him a child. I tried… and tried. But nothing grew inside me.”

A beat.

“He said he didn’t care. He said he loved me anyway.”

Tears streamed down her cheeks.

“But slowly… I saw him changing. Pulling away. Smiling less. Sleeping in silence. He wouldn’t touch me anymore. He’d disappear for days.”

She turned toward Avery now, the firelight carving harsh shadows on her face.

“And one day… I followed him. I saw him standing in the garden, holding Kore’s hand.”

A sound escaped her lips—something like a laugh, but it was soaked in hurt.

“He’d fallen in love with her. The perfect sister. The blessed one. And within months, she gave him what I couldn’t—a child.”

Avery’s breath became shallower now.

Akira’s body sagged.

“That child… was your father.”

The world tilted again.

“I watched my sister raise the family I was supposed to have. I watched her hold the man I married in her arms, raising his child in the house I built with him. And the worst part?” Akira’s voice shook. “She never apologized. Never even looked back.”

She inhaled, quivering.

“So don’t talk to me about betrayal. About pain. Because your existence, Avery, is a wound I’ve never stopped bleeding from.”

I saw Avery’s lips part. Her hands curled into fists. But she said nothing.

The flames went higher again.

And Akira smiled…terrifying.

“Now tell me, do you still think she's a saint?”

Akira’s voice shook now—not with fear, but with the kind of madness that comes from years of silent grief finally boiling over.

She was pacing again, but slower now, her long gown dragging like a shadow behind her as the candlelight bled gold over her face. Her eyes moved from me to Avery, her hands shaking at her sides.

“I ran,” she said, almost dreamily. “Deep into the mountains. Crying. Screaming to the heavens—begging for just one child. I bled for it. Starved. Meditated. Prayed to the moon, to the ancestors, to the wind, to the stars… to anything that would hear me.”

Her voice broke.

“But nothing… answered.”

She was once an ignored person desperate for love and attention.

“I came back broken,” she mumbled. “My eyes sunken. My spirit shattered. But nothing—nothing—prepared me for what I saw when I returned.”

She paused. Her gaze burned into me.

“Oman had married Kore. It was no longer an affair. They became a family."

Avery’s breath hitched. I could hear it even from where I lay, half-dazed on the stone floor. My heart thumped with hers.

“He married her in my garden. The one I tended for years. He wore the robe I sewed. The bracelets I carved. And Kore—she didn’t even consider my feelings. Didn’t spare me one look as she stepped into the life that should have been mine.”

Akira’s voice turned vicious.

“And then he sent me away. Like a beggar. No home. No child. No name.”

She exhaled through her teeth.

"Not everything I told you was a lie. Axel did kill your parents and what was left of your clan."