Chapter 290: The Grandson of Creation (2)

Fifty eras had come and gone before Akashi finally found herself seated within her own universe.

She was no longer the girl who once stood at the golden overlook.

Time, with all it had taken and given, had shaped her into the likeness of someone in her mid-twenties.

Her light-brown skin still carried the same warmth, her long black-and-white hair still floated as though caught in a slow underwater drift, and beneath her left eye, the black infinity remained.

And now, in this moment, she sat cross-legged atop the egg.

"How should the start of your life be, my son?"

She asked herself, for the past decade she hadn’t moved forward with the actual creation of worlds and other celestial bodies; instead, she had wondered how she wanted Akasha to begin his life.

However, she knew the situation would be tricky because he was still more than 500 Eras away from being truly born, but even so, she wanted his life to be as glorious as possible.

"Do I start you as a True Unus?" She tipped her head, hair sliding over one shoulder.

"Or do I give you a system? Something that could give you anything you ask for...."

She honestly couldn’t decide what would be good for Akasha, partly because she could give him just about anything.

At one point, Akasha had believed his mother was the Akashic Records—for obvious reasons—but in this moment, what he was learning told a very different story.

As he watched the scenes of the past unfold, they weren’t just random memories without context.

Every time Akasha saw something that stirred questions within him, the answers seemed to arise naturally in his mind.

It became clear that his mother was not the Akashic Records at all—his grandmother was.

His mother, on the other hand, might have been something even more extraordinary in her own way.

She was the Unindexed Bestowal Unus, able to grant any gift she desired.

What set her apart from the Akashic Records was that every creation she made was one-of-a-kind, incapable of being duplicated, and forever beyond the possibility of being recorded in the annals of Pantheos.

So, she truly found herself stumped for a while until a faint smile grew on her face.

"Or I could just make you into the universe itself. Wouldn’t that be special?"

She pressed her palm flat against the shell, feeling warmth rise to meet her—not heat, exactly, but something like intention.

"My Akasha... all I want is for you to grow up surrounded by abundance, never haunted by anything eating away at you from within. No nights lying awake, counting what you don’t have."

Her eyes grew misty, the moisture giving way as they shifted into pure white hearts.

"No matter what, I’ll wait for you... until the day the space between us is nothing but a door, and I open it to find you there—whole."

After speaking, she let out a sigh, realizing she was still no closer to a decision. Her lips pressed into a thin line.

"Ugh, who knew this would be so hard?"

"Oh?" a voice sounded as two men appeared out of nowhere. "Little sister, I think all those options would be pretty boring, don’t you think?"

One moment, the darkness was empty except for mother and egg.

The next, the two men stood before her as though they had always been lingering just beyond the edge of her thoughts.

The first wore flowing black robes, accented with the familiar infinity symbol beneath his eye in black and deep purple.

His long black hair framed pitch-black eyes, and the mark under his left eye mirrored the same dark and purple hues.

The second looked as if he had stepped in from a beach that belonged to another world.

His short hair shimmered with shades of gold and red, and his reddish-gold eyes held a red infinity burning beneath the left.

Wearing a tank top, shorts, and flip-flops, he gave off an easygoing, laid-back vibe without even trying.

At the sound of the words, Akashi lifted her head, the hesitation in her expression vanishing as if a curtain had been pulled away.

A smile spread across her face.

"Big Brother Xeros and Quell," she greeted warmly, her tone calm and unsurprised. "It’s been a long time."

Xeros smiled as he spoke.

"Akashi." His voice was even, low, unhurried. "You’ve been well, I hope. And this..." A slight nod toward the vast shell.

"My nephew looks rather interesting as well. How has he been?"

While Xeros spoke, Quell didn’t have the same patience.

He suddenly appeared beside her and threw an arm around her shoulders in a sideways hug that nearly tipped her off balance on the egg’s curve. With shameless familiarity, his other hand mussed her hair.

"Haha, it hasn’t been that long," he chuckled. "You always make it sound like we left you to rot in a cave."

Akashi rolled her eyes, then gave a quick blink.

Before he realized it, Quell was back where he had first arrived—arm empty, fingers still half-curled around hair that was gone

Feeling the sudden displacement, He scratched the back of his head, smile crooked.

"I swear, this shit is not fair," He said with a shake of his head. "It seems like the younger our siblings... the more broken you all become."

"Well," Akashi said as she stuck her tongue out at him, "You can only blame daddy."

Then she turned to Xeros, the play still bright in her face, the egg steady as a sleeping cosmos beneath her.

"Brother," she said, and the word carried more than greeting now—an invitation, a confession waiting for someone old enough to hear it. "I was just trying to decide how to raise him."

"We have heard," Xeros said, inclining his head as he settled into the vast emptiness. Gradually, he drifted forward, coming to a halt before her, aligned with the egg’s unfathomable curvature.

A heartbeat later, Quell moved in close behind.

Xeros’s pitch-black eyes shifted from Akashi’s face to the shell, then back again, deliberate and measured.

"And... that’s exactly why we’ve come."

Quell tilted his chin toward the egg, gold-and-red hair glinting in a light that wasn’t really there.

"The older siblings got a bit bored," he said, voice easy and almost lazy. "So we decided to join in Father’s game."

At those words, Akashi’s brow lifted.

There was one word that seemed to snag her focus like a loose thread—partake.

It lingered between them, heavier than he meant it to be, carrying layers of meaning that only members of her clan would understand.

She knew her older siblings—nearly thirty in all—and their presence never meant a quiet moment.

"What do you mean," she asked, "by partake?"

Xeros folded his hands in his lap, black robes pooling around him like a second night.

"Nothing major," he said. "We just want a role in the origin stories."