Chapter 445: What Comes Back

Chapter 445: Chapter 445: What Comes Back

The question came late enough that Arik almost missed the change in Liam’s voice.

Rain tapped softly against the bedroom windows, the spring storm turning Deira into blurred gold and black beyond the glass. They had gone to bed early for once, although neither had shown much interest in sleeping. Liam was stretched across Arik’s chest beneath the light covers, one knee resting over his thigh while an open book about early ether development in infants lay forgotten near the edge of the mattress.

Arik had been lazily running his fingers through Liam’s hair when Liam spoke.

"If we have children..."

Arik looked down.

Liam had been staring at nothing for several seconds.

"That is generally what we are attempting."

Liam pinched his side.

Arik laughed and caught his hand.

"I’m serious."

The humor disappeared immediately.

Arik loosened his grip and let Liam lace their fingers together instead.

"What is it?"

Liam hesitated.

That alone made Arik pay closer attention. Liam rarely struggled to ask something once he had decided the answer mattered.

His crimson eyes finally lifted.

"Could they be Silas and Lucien?"

Arik did not answer immediately.

Liam’s fingers tightened around his.

"Goliath’s children," he added quietly, though neither of them needed the clarification. "Could they come back through us?"

Arik stared toward the ceiling for a moment.

He had thought about many things since the Core completed what had begun long before his birth. Goliath’s memories no longer felt like something separate lodged inside him. They belonged to him now, absorbed so completely that some days he could remember an ancient hallway with the same strange familiarity as the bedroom where Gabriel had once tucked blankets around him as a child.

But Silas and Lucien were different.

Liam shifted slightly against him.

"You don’t think so."

"No."

The answer was gentle but certain.

Liam watched him.

Arik turned onto his side so they faced one another.

"The trial did not work that way."

Liam’s brows drew together. Even if he spent time in the Trial Room, there were always new things he learned from Arik rather than from his older version in there.

Arik reached up and brushed his thumb along the crease between them.

"Goliath was part of it. Enki was part of it. The souls bound into that trial were preserved differently because they had to remain capable of returning through the imperial line when the conditions existed again."

"And the children weren’t."

"No."

Arik knew that with the same certainty he knew the Core.

"Silas and Lucien never passed through the trial. Their souls were never bound to it."

Liam lowered his gaze toward their joined hands.

"So they were reborn normally."

"At least once by now."

That seemed to surprise him.

Arik smiled faintly.

"Decades behind the Gate feels enormous to us because we lived through the consequences of it. But the truth is that there has been plenty of time for them to return."

Liam was quiet for a while.

"And they wouldn’t remember?"

"No."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing that could be called memory."

Arik shifted closer, his hand settling against Liam’s waist beneath the covers.

"They would have lived as everyone else does. Born somewhere, grown into someone entirely new, died maybe, and returned again when their soul was ready. Different family. Different face. Different life."

Liam studied him.

"You sound certain."

"I am."

"How?"

Arik considered that.

Some answers came from knowledge the Core had restored. Others came from something older and harder to translate, rules Goliath had understood without having language precise enough to explain them.

"The trial preserved continuity," Arik said eventually. "That is the difference. It was designed so certain souls could return with the possibility of recovering who they had been. Without that bond, rebirth still happens, but the person begins clean."

"No waking up one day and realizing they were Goliath’s son?"

Arik’s mouth twitched.

"That would be particularly inconvenient if one of them happened to be eighty years old by the time I met him."

Liam laughed softly.

The sound loosened something in Arik’s chest.

He had not realized the question had unsettled him until then.

Liam traced one finger over Arik’s knuckles.

"So our children would be..."

"Ours."

Arik answered before he finished.

Liam looked up.

"Our children would be themselves."

There was something important in saying it aloud.

Arik understood why Liam had asked.

Their lives had already been shaped too often by people who existed before them. Goliath. Enki. Hugo. Felix. Amara. Seraphina. Names buried in history that had somehow reached forward through and touched people who had never asked to inherit any of it.

Liam did not want to look at a baby and wonder whether he was holding someone else’s child returned.

Arik did not want that either.

"The souls capable of returning through the imperial line because of the trial are limited to the ones who were actually part of it," he said. "Everyone else follows the ordinary cycle."

Liam’s expression softened with understanding.

"And even if Silas or Lucien were alive somewhere now..."

"They would not be Silas or Lucien anymore."

Arik paused.

"Not in the way you mean."

Liam nodded slowly.

"They would just be someone."

"Exactly."

"Someone with no idea they once had an emperor for a father."

"Probably happier for it."

Liam laughed again.

Arik smiled and pulled him closer until Liam’s forehead rested beneath his chin.

The rain had grown heavier outside, drumming steadily against the windows while warm ether-light from the city shimmered through the wet glass.

After a while, Liam spoke again.

"Do you ever wonder where they are?"

Arik’s hand slowed against his back.

"Yes."

That answer cost more than the others.

Liam did not press.

Arik appreciated him for that too.

"I hope they had good lives," Arik said eventually. "Whatever lives came afterward."

Liam curled closer.

"They probably did at least once."

Arik looked down at him.

"Statistically?"

"I’m trying to be optimistic."

"That is new."

Liam bit his shoulder through the thin sleep shirt.

Arik laughed and tightened his arms around him.

The difficult part of the conversation had passed.

What remained felt strangely peaceful.

Their future child would not arrive carrying the burden of an ancient prince.

No inherited memories.

No obligation to become someone dead.

Just a new soul entering a new life.

Arik kissed Liam’s hair.

"Ours," Liam murmured.

Arik closed his eyes.

"Ours."