Chapter 434: _The One Never Came

Host.

Host?

Wait...

Ambrose gawked hard at the giant, immediately coming to a realisation.

This guy could sense the system in him. No—not just that. He’d asked if she’d finally found ’another one’. He was questioning Aura like she was a peer he’s known for awhile.

’Do you know this guy?’

[If I did, don’t you think I would’ve mentioned something?]

Her tone was distant, like she was thinking. Not running calculations or browsing through data.

Thinking.

[I know I remember him... from somewhere. Aeons ago most likely.]

Two system screens flashed before his eyes again, this time flickering with the odd figures they’ve been seeing all around the tomb.

Then those two split into multiple.

All through this, the giant just sat there, watching in silence.

Soon all the screens sizzled into specks of blue light. All but one.

[... Mikaelion.]

Ambrose frowned at the single word interpreted into English.

That looked like it could be a name. But whose?

"Mine."

A deep, resounding voice that boomed through the tomb interrupted his thinking. He jolted, bringing his entire focus back to the giant.

The head facing him had a knowing smile on its face. "Who is like the One?" He added, tone lighter this time. "That is my name."

Rose blinked a few times.

Of course the mysterious giant could read his damn thoughts.

[First Borns.] Another screen popped up with new information. [Also called ’the Luminary’. The last traces of their presence date back to ten billion years ago.]

"Very good, Aura," Mikaelion nodded, the movement alone sending Tremors that made dust rain from the infinitely high ceiling. "Despite the resets, I knew you’d be able to remember enough eventually."

His eyes gleamed with a golden light.

[Physical manifestation loading...]

Without Ambrose’s command, Aura’s physical form appeared beside him, her head immediately arching toward the giant.

Her expression was almost unreadable.

"Are you..." She paused. "My first Host?"

The SS-Rank looked between the two of them, unable to hide the way his eyes bulged.

"What the fuck do you mean by that?" He asked before he could stop himself. "Aura, what are you remembering? What are the two of you talking about?"

"Has the mortal always been this loud?" Mikaelion sounded amused. "Curious specimen. So much boldness, yet his species are probably close to the very bottom of any current multiversal races."

Now Ambrose was equally lost and offended.

Did he just call him weak?

"I’m confused," Aura spoke again, stepping forward. "Why can’t I remember everything? Are... are you my creator then? Is that it?"

"Oh, no." The First Born shook his head hastily as though that was a blasphemous thought to have. "We share the same creator, you and I. The One."

He stared Ambrose in a way that made him feel tinier than he already was. Then he went on.

"Shortly before the First Spark, the creator shaped me and my brethren. The First Borns. Beholders of his power and will, our sole purpose was to serve him and guard whatever he created next." He raised his chin. "You, Aura, were one of those creations. Created alongside the First Spark which brought forth the multiverse."

Ambrose’s jaw fell.

No. Fucking. Way.

For the longest time, he’d had different theories on Aura’s origins. The leading one was a race outside creation, just like Future Ambrose theorised.

Before that, he once considered the possibility of higher aliens who’d probably come find him one day if he ever survived the Archons.

Or maybe Aura herself was a goddess or something close attaching herself to a host out of boredom.

But this?

The Creator himself.

The Creator himself. The very being Ambrose had spent two lifetimes doubting even existed... was also directly behind the creation of an AI of cosmic importance?

"You were gifted to me, Aura," Mikaelion once again broke his thoughts. "A symbol of the Creator’s grace. A bridge of communication between himself and his First Borns."

"Some of my brethren went out into the multiverse, manipulating the elements and shaping some of the first ancestors of life. Others chose to watch existence grow naturally without interference. This balance stayed for aeons... until they came."

Aura and Ambrose exchanged a glance.

They both suspected who exactly he meant by ’they’.

"They called themselves Archons," Mikaelion reminisced. "False rulers who’ve existed long before the multiverse and the First Borns. They roam through the void, searching for creations to claim as theirs."

"My brethren and I fought off the Archons in a fierce battle that shook creation, using the weapons granted to us by the One. After we expelled them, we sealed the multiverse with a failsafe. Outside entities could no longer breach it for long without getting expelled."

The First Born’s expression dimmed ever so slightly.

"The victory proved... fleeting."

His fingers tightened around the enormous sword resting before him, not from anger but from remembrance.

"After the Archons retreated, we expected the One to return as He always had. We waited without complaint. Days became centuries. Centuries became ages. Eventually... even time itself ceased to hold meaning."

His voice never rose, yet grief heavier than entire worlds settled over the chamber.

"The One never came."

Silence followed.

The silence of people who had already guessed the ending but still wished they were wrong.

"The power entrusted to my brethren was never truly our own," Mikaelion continued. "We were sustained by His presence, whether we understood it or not. Once that presence vanished, so too did our light."

He lowered one of his four heads.

"None of us perished in battle. We simply... diminished."

Ambrose found himself unable to speak.

Somehow that sounded infinitely crueller than dying in war.

"We watched stars we had nurtured burn out. We witnessed civilisations rise where there had once been only silence. One after another, my brethren felt the end approaching and returned here, to the place prepared long before the concept of our death became a possibility. They chose to await death together rather than fade alone beneath unfamiliar skies."

His gaze drifted toward the countless relics surrounding them.

"The weapons remained. The knowledge remained. But we did not."

Aura hadn’t moved.

For the first time since Ambrose had known her, there wasn’t a single system notification floating before him.

She simply stood there.

Thinking.

"So..." she asked quietly. "If you all knew you were dying... Why was I passed on?"

A gentle smile appeared across Mikaelion’s four faces.

"Because you were never ours to bury." He regarded her with unmistakable fondness. "You were the final inheritance the One entrusted to us. A bridge between His will and Creation itself. Allowing you to perish beside the First Born would’ve been the same as surrendering the last proof He had ever walked among us."

His enormous hand rested against his chest.

"So I entrusted you to another."

Aura’s pupils contracted. "Another host?"

"A child of this world."

Ambrose frowned. "You mean a Titan?"

Mikaelion nodded.

"The strongest among them had begun developing a soul of its own. I believed it capable of carrying the burden. Whether it remained here or eventually passed you onward... I never discovered. My strength no longer allowed me to leave this resting place."

Fragments of blue light suddenly flickered around Aura.

Not system windows.

Memories.

A gigantic hand placing her into another’s grasp.

Countless unfamiliar stars.

A battlefield swallowed by crimson light. A child’s laughter.

A dying voice whispering,

"Take her... farther than I ever could..."

Aura staggered.

"I..." She pressed a hand against her temple. "I remember... someone..." The words escaped her almost as a whisper. "Then someone else."

More fragments of faces, worlds and civilisations flashed through her mind.

Different voices calling her by different names.

"I’ve..." She looked down at her own hands as though seeing them for the first time. "...had other hosts."

Ambrose stared at her, speechless.

Every theory he’d ever had about the System had just collapsed beneath the weight of a truth neither of them could have imagined.

Mikaelion’s gaze settled upon him once more.

"I preserved the last of my consciousness with a single hope," he said softly. "For countless ages I believed I was waiting for the One to awaken my brethren."

His smile carried equal measures of sadness and relief.

"Perhaps... I misunderstood His design." He slowly lifted his hand, gesturing toward the countless divine weapons resting throughout the tomb. "Perhaps he intended for one worthy enough to inherit what we could no longer protect."

His eyes lingered on Ambrose.

"And today..."

His sentence abruptly stopped, the warmth vanishing from every one of his faces.

Aura stiffened beside Ambrose at precisely the same moment.

An ancient pressure forced its way against the sealed world like a hand pressing against thin glass.

It hadn’t entered yet.

But it was trying.

Mikaelion slowly rose from his throne for the first time in billions of years, his six wings unfurling with a thunderous rumble that shook the entirety of the tomb.

His expression became colder than the void between galaxies.

"Adonais."