Asha looked up at the suddenly motionless black clouds. Then, as branches extended from Raenka’s fingertips, Asha quickly pulled Evan away. The branch brushed past Evan harmlessly.
<Ho… w?>
Raenka’s eyes widened, the wrinkles in her aged cheeks becoming patterns in the wood grain. Her shaky gaze fixed on Evan in disbelief.
An unforgettable face was there. To be precise, his traces. His round auricles, his nose bridge, his mouth and jawline remained after such a long time.
<How… How, how, my daughter died… How can a descendant exist…>
Raenka couldn’t speak properly and muttered sobbingly. For the first time, it was a voice of sadness and confusion greater than hatred.
<I couldn’t find her! I couldn’t find her, so I kept searching, all that long time…!>
During the long years of not finding her daughter, she had no time to imagine her daughter’s child, or perhaps another child born to that child. She could never have imagined this day would come.
A woeful cry shook the atmosphere. The leaves wailed. Evan looked at the tree, so different from the one that had grown from the seed he had spat out, and at her, who was likely his blood relative.
The branches quivered and swayed, but they only trembled weakly near Evan. This time, Asha left the branch alone. The tip of the branch brushed against Evan’s eyes and hair.
<How much I missed her… How much I searched… How much I wanted to find even her shadow…>
The tree shed tears of longing.
<Where have you been all this time…>
If a heart were to be finely shattered, it would sound like this voice. Between the great elder and Evan, Asha bit her lip tightly.
‘If I had brought Evan here first, the elder wouldn’t have ended up like this…’
<Look at Prasti growing at such a fast pace. Even if you brought Evan as soon as you arrived here, Prasti would have germinated.>
Phoebe replied with something murmuring. Asha nodded with a vague expression, she noticed that Phoebe was pecking at the pavlova that had fallen on the floor. It looked like she was eating.
‘Phoebe! You can’t eat something that fell on the ground!’
<This should be enough, even if it’s a bit small!>
“What?”
Asha hurriedly picked up Phoebe, who was already holding the last blueberry in her beak. It was a blueberry that Asha had picked and prepared herself.
As Raenka shed tears looking at Evan, Phoebe swallowed the blueberry.
And then there was light.
━━━✦❘༻༺❘✦━━━
Asha opened her eyes wide. Her vision flashed white, and when it finally returned, she couldn’t see clearly.
It seemed as if fragments of a colorful mosaic were spread out before her eyes, but she realized a moment later that they were the long tail feathers of a large bird, layered one on top of the other.
The air was thick with darkness, and there was a sense of freshness in the air. The air, the people’s emotions, all of it, moved like a tidal wave with the gentle flapping of a large bird’s wings.
“Phoe… be?”
A gigantic bird, adorned with feathers that seemed to be made of brilliant light, tilted its head and looked down at Asha. The golden eyes with black rims seemed to smile a little, but when looking at the tree in front of it, it was relentless and strict.
<You are the one who caused his suffering, and yet you say such things.>
Asha’s eyes widened further. A majestic voice filled the space. Although it was a voice she had never heard before, she immediately recognized it as Phoebe’s true voice.
<These two saved that creature who was on the brink of death, caught in the war between the Noctis Elves and the empire.>
<War…>
The feathers of the enormous bird, too large to be seen in a single glance, shimmered with every slight movement, reflecting light. Its wings quietly enveloped Asha.
<You need not pity your descendant. Nothing has tormented him except the tragedy you created.>
<I… I…>
As Raenka’s voice cracked and crumbled, the giant bird looked down at her with stern eyes.
<My contractor, whom you tried to eliminate, became the family of your descendant.>
<I, I didn’t mean…>
<It was also my contractor who found your descendant, who was not searching for you. For the sake of your descendant.>
The edges of the black tree turned white and crumbled away. The giant bird looked at Raenka with a hint of sadness in its eyes.
<Why were you so obsessed with bloodlines? Must family always be connected by blood? You and he could have…>
Swallowing Prasti with the intention of having a child with him was the beginning of all this. The first step that opened the door to all tragedies.
The Noctis Elves leaving the child with humans and lying to her that it was a stillbirth was the second step.
The bandits attacking the human and the child was the third step.
But it was also Raenka who rushed towards the tragedy, even though the door to tragedy could have been closed.
<Why!>
Raenka’s voice, which had been shaking so far, suddenly soared. It was the same voice that threw her whole body into the tragedy.
<Why should I have to give up what everyone else, what every other couple, what every other lover has, just because we’re different?>
<Why do you think that is giving up? That is…>
<Not being able to have what others have, pretending not to want what I can’t have from the beginning, that is giving up!>
The voice was filled with resentment. The bird flapped its wings, bringing forth a strong wind. The withered leaves at the ends of the tree turned white, as if paint were spreading on a canvas. Raenka wailed in agony.
<Not being able to have a child that resembles me and him, just because we are different, how is that not giving up…>
<Not having something does not give you the right to hurt those who have it.>
The giant bird spoke with a voice filled with dignity. The air trembled painfully.
<Then who can hurt them?! What must one do to gain such a right?!>
“No one has the right to hurt someone.”
Asha pushed through Phoebe’s wings and dragged Evan back as if to protect him. Evan wanted to stand in front of Asha, but he was led to stand behind Asha by Asha’s gesture and Phoebe’s wings.
Raenka’s branches trembled again at Evan’s actions, as if defining him as an enemy. Asha looked down at her hand. From her fingertips, white and transparent particles of light were rising and falling like sand.
She felt like she could bake a hundred cookies with this hand right now. It was definitely the influence of Phoebe having regained her true form. Looking up, she met Phoebe’s gaze, and Phoebe slowly nodded.
‘I’ll bake cookies when I get to the palace.’
Right now, there was something she needed to resolve with this power. Asha took a deep breath. Meanwhile, Raenka shouted.
<Then, who can compensate me for this injustice and resentment?!>
“It’s the resentment and sorrow you created yourself!”
Asha gave strength to her hand holding Evan’s hand and shouted. The tree branch born to Raenka cried.
“Your revenge should have ended with those who deceived you…”
There is a whip that only those who have suffered can wield. How far can that whip be swung? Should it be swung at all?
Asha did not want to say not to swing it, she did not want to say that. The depth of the sorrow of having a miraculous child but not being able to hold it, of despairing thinking the child was dead, was immeasurable.
But.
“What about the people who were sacrificed in the war, me, the other people who ate Prasti, the pain Evan went through? None of those people wronged you.”
Asha took a step forward. In everyone’s eyes, a particle of light was seen spreading along her steps.
“Who will compensate for their grievances? Did you do all this because you thought you could compensate for them? You created a battlefield where Evan bled and was wounded, and you tried to destroy the world where spirits and humans coexist, just because you couldn’t enjoy it…”
Asha reached out and grabbed the branch that had stretched out in front of her. As the light spread from her fingertips, the trembling of the branch, which had been shaking like a frightened person, subsided. Asha looked straight at Raenka, her grip tightening.
“Everyone is like that! Everyone has something they can’t do that others can. But no one thinks about destroying the world just because they feel resentful and unfair!”
Asha’s words echoed through the air. She took a deep breath and stepped forward again. Raenka looked like she wanted to step back. Asha placed her other hand on the branch she was holding.
“Your lover left a story about your love. He spent his life searching for the child you lost together. He adopted a child who had lost their parents and raised them as his own, telling them your story. In that story, your child was the protagonist. It was a bit sad, but they grew up safely, received love and attention, and finally found your trace, praying in front of it. That’s how the story ended.”
Why did one person leave a story about their child while the other tried to destroy the world?
<Aah… Aaaah…>
“But during that time, you tried to kill me, started a war to make everyone bleed, and spread Prasti to destroy the world.”
<Ah, aah…>
“You didn’t lose your child.”
Asha bit her lip hard. Sweat beaded on her forehead as she continued to pour her strength into the branch, just like when she had stroked Shunivalen after it had swallowed Prasti.
“You gave up on missing your child. You attacked others to avoid facing the fact that you had given up. Because that was much easier!”
She had wandered in the slim possibility that her lost child might still be alive somewhere, finding it too painful and difficult, and had become obsessed with destroying the world that prevented her from finding her child, with destroying the world where others enjoyed what she could not.
<No! No, no, that’s not true! I, I…!>
With Raenka’s thunderous cry, Phoebe protected Asha with a flap of her wings. Raenka cried out, but all she could say was “no.”
Asha, who had almost fallen backward, pushed through the feathers and glared at Raenka.
“Just once, try to be a proper grandmother! I brought Evan here to show you his face, and you’re still going to act like this?!”
Meanwhile, more leaves turned to ash and fell. Evan, who had been quietly standing by Asha’s side, stepped forward.
The tree branches trembled in surprise as they saw Evan approaching. And as Evan looked at the tree, he realized something. He had never felt the need to find or miss his family. Evan looked up at the tree and slowly opened his mouth.
“I… wasn’t lonely.”
<…>
Evan spoke calmly.
Although her daughter was already gone and only he, a descendant several generations removed, remained, Evan somehow knew what he needed to say. The leaves rustled. Tears streamed from Raenka’s eyes, half-buried in the tree trunk.
“I was not lonely. Because I have a family…”
It would be a lie to say he had never been in pain, but it was not a source of suffering.
He had been a slave in the north before his life was saved and he came to the capital. In the capital, he met Asha, and through her, he came to understand emotions he had never felt before. The desire to be helpful, the fear of being abandoned, the affection of caring for and protecting someone—he learned what all these meant.
“Perhaps you too…”
If someone had been by her side, things might have been different.
“I… I am happy. I am living happily with my family now. And I will strive to continue doing so in the future.”
Asha, who had hesitated for a moment, took Evan’s hand and placed her other hand on the branch. Up until now, she had been infusing the power of the great spirit, but now it was time to let Evan’s emotions flow through.
Raenka could not refuse the emotions that slowly seeped into her from Evan. Finally, when Asha let go of her hand, Raenka, her face contorted, slowly smiled. A grown tree cannot return to being a seed. A grown sin cannot be undone.
She had to pay the price.
And Raenka also knew this truth.
The black tree, which had stopped growing, began to collapse slowly from the ends. It looked as if the world was crumbling. The white, withered leaves and branches turned to ash and fell. The ash looked like snow, swirling in the wind like a blizzard.
<The Prasti…>
“What… what’s happening?”
<She… is annihilating the Prasti. With her own soul…>
Everyone silently watched the quiet annihilation until only ash remained where the tree had stood.
Evan slowly clasped his hands together in front of the ashes.
As if in prayer.
