Chapter 5931: Sisters!

Just as Noah was deciding where to plant first, his attention was pulled away again.

Away from the battle, this time.

Many Gigaparsecs from the clash of lotuses and grey glass, in a stretch of the Gaps his authority had reached minutes ago, something had appeared.

He felt it through the soil. Through the roots. Through the slow tide of Nascent Nightmare Essence that kept rising out of that region and drifting home to him.

The forests there had grown strangely.

Snow still fell there, soft and endless, the residue of THE Long Night refusing to leave. And out of the snowy obsidian soil had risen plum trees. Hundreds of them. Thousands. Dark-barked and gold-veined, their branches heavy with blosoms of obsidian and gold, petals drifting down through the falling snow like slow embers.

It was beautiful.

And two figures stood in the middle of it at this time!

Noah turned the piece of his attention there and looked.

It was...twins?

Two women, identical at a glance, standing side by side beneath a blooming plum tree with snow settling in their hair.

They were tall and very straight, with the kind of stillness that comes from a lifetime of others moving aside for them. Their bodies were wholly human, and wholly beautiful, but their skin was carved with light. Thin bright channels ran across their arms and throats and faces, winding and branching like rivers seen from very high above, and through them flowed Immensity itself, slow and glittering, stellar blue and white.

Their hair fell long and straight to their waists, silver as moonlight on snow. And from either side of their heads, just above the ears, rose a pair of small sharp wings of silver feathers, swept back like the crest of some proud bird, catching the light every time they turned.

Behind them, their true wings spread.

Silver. Vast. Each feather a blade, long and sharp-edged and gleaming, the whole span stretching out behind them across the snowy plum forest for light years, so wide that the falling snow had to find its way around them.

They wore gowns of deep black silk, simple and fitted, one trimmed with gold at the collar and cuffs, the other with crimson. Over each brow sat a thin circlet of pale gold.

And their eyes...

Clear and cold and very old. Silver-grey, with the same faint rivers of light running through the irises as ran across their skin.

The snow behind them made way as they moved. Flakes curved aside before they could touch those gowns. The plum trees nearest them had bent, very slightly, every blossom turned toward the two women, as his own forests turned toward him. Even his soil seemed to recognize them as something it ought to bow to!

What held him was how they looked at things.

They stood in his forest and gazed out across the snow and the plum trees and the distant dark as if all of it was theirs. Something they already owned, rather than something they wanted.

He had seen that look before. It had been a long time since he had seen it this pure.

Rulership. Arrogance. Power so settled into itself it had stopped needing to be shown long ago.

He turned his Shinjitsu on them.

|?????|

|?????|

|?????|

...!

Question marks. Only question marks.

He kept looking.

Slowly, very slowly, the first lines began to fizzle and clear, like frost burning off glass.

|Phaedra Arcanthe.|

|Thessaly Arcanthe.|

|?????|

|?????|

...!

Phaedra and Thessaly!

Names. That was all. Everything else stayed hidden behind the question marks, and his Shinjitsu pressed against them and slid off, gently, like a hand against a locked door.

For him to see this little meant they had Shinjitsu of their own. And power to match. A great deal of it!

Where exactly did these two sit?

And seriously, was his Narrative this grand of a magnet? In the span of a few days, he had drawn an army from THE Iron Psalm, a monster out of the Fallow, a King’s Legion, and now this. Every time he blinked, something terrifying showed up in his backyard!

If this kept up...

Phaedra, the one with gold at her collar, sighed.

"They fight and fight," she said, looking out toward the distant glow of the battle, "without even knowing what they are fighting for."

Her voice was calm and clear.

"I thought those listed near our father on the Narrative of Kings would be... grand. And yet here they are, throwing themselves at a Nightmare from THE Fallow of Existence. I do not see the wisdom in it."

She tilted her head slightly.

"Even if they win, they will not win. And here..." Her silver eyes narrowed at the far grey glow. "They will not win against one of the Pillars of the Fallow."

...!

Noah raised his eyebrows.

Pillars of the Fallow?

Those listed near our father?

Just who were these two? Bigwigs? And what father was she talking about?

If their father sat near the Shepherd on the banner, he could be anywhere in the high twenties. Or higher. Much higher. How she had said "near" sounded less like a neighbor and more like someone glancing down a staircase.

Thessaly, the one with crimson, had her eyes elsewhere entirely. She was looking at the plum trees. At the obsidian soil beneath the snow. At the rivers of light winding between the roots.

"I understand the snow of THE Long Night," she said slowly. "That is old. But this..."

She reached up and let a falling plum blossom land on her palm, and studied it. "What Narrative has sprung up to cause all of this in this region? It feels related to the Fallow. And with how intricately it is weaving itself into existence..."

The rivers of Immensity on her wrist brightened faintly. "It seems almost on the same level as THE Long Night itself. Just in a more confined space."

The small silver wings at her temples twitched.

...!

Noah smiled.

His giving to existence, and existence giving back, compared to THE Long Night?

Hah!

He leaned in, listening with open delight now!

Phaedra glanced at her sister and the blossom in her hand.

"No matter," she said. "We stopped here because you were curious. Now let us go pick up our resurrected sister."

She turned, and the snow parted around her, and her great silver wings stirred.

"She has stayed in the same place in THE Chrysalis this whole time, that fool. Even though we have so many enemies..."

...!

BOOM!

The words landed in Noah heavily!

Their father, on the ranking.

Daughters.

A resurrected sister.

In THE Chrysalis.

Staying in the same place the whole time.

Noah blinked.

No way, right?

There was no way they were talking about a particular someone in THE Maze of Destiny in THE Chrysalis.

Right?

Below, Phaedra was already walking, her wings opening wider behind her.

"Father was always eccentric," she said, almost fondly. "He went around producing many progeny back when he held IT. But a Gu for a stepmother..."

She shook her head, and the small wings at her temples flicked. "I always found that unique."

"Our little sister would be the weakest among us," Thessaly said, dropping the plum blossom into the snow. "She has been dead this whole time, after all."

She tilted her head, considering.

"Maybe," she said. "Let’s go see."

Their silver wings swept forward once, light years of blades moving together, and the snow and the plum blossoms whirled up around them.

Then they were gone.

...!

Noah stared at the empty place beneath the plum tree.

Held IT.

A Gu for a stepmother.

A little sister who had been dead this whole time.

Oh, for fuck’s sake!