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Arthur stood as the silent, terrifying arbiter between the estranged mother and daughter.
Ur looked at the young woman who had just launched a devastating magical attack on her new home, utterly bewildered by the claim of motherhood.
Ultear glared back, her expression a toxic mix of hatred, grief, and betrayal.
"You call me mother,"
Ur spoke, her voice thick with confusion, her Ice-Make Magic momentarily forgotten in the face of this impossible accusation.
"That can't be possible. My daughter is already dead."
The genuine conviction in her tone was heartbreakingly clear.
Ultear's fury spiked, seeing her mother's denial as further proof of her abandonment.
Tears finally shed, not of physical pain, but of decades of accumulated emotional trauma.
"So to you, your daughter is already dead... but you have two new sons! Gray and Lyon! You replaced me with those boys!"
Ultear was too blinded by her own manufactured suffering to see the agonizing sincerity in Ur's face—the fact that Ur truly believed her child was gone forever.
Ur was even more confused, her gaze flickering to Arthur, the one person in the room who seemed to know the whole, terrible truth.
"Alright, this drama ends here today,"
Arthur stated, stepping between them. He radiated a calm, absolute authority.
"I won't allow decades of tragedy to continue defining the future of my guild members."
Arthur raised his hand, not to fight, but to project.
He used his conceptual control over time, but instead of altering the world, he performed a subtle, non-invasive mental projection.
He gave them a shared conceptual vision of the true past—a movie of truth streamed directly into their minds.
Ur watched in horror as she saw her daughter, Ultear, taken from her.
She saw the insidious Bureau of Magical Development performing cruel experiments on the child, and then the final, callous lie being delivered to her—that her daughter was stillborn.
Ur's soul fractured as she realized she had been deceived, dedicating her life to mourning a child who was actually suffering.
Ultear, a time mage herself, was forced to witness her own past from the outside.
She saw the same wicked mages approaching Ur, saw the deep, genuine grief as Ur was told her daughter was dead, and watched Ur's lifelong torment.
The undeniable truth of the vision—a truth that resonated with the conceptual purity of her own Arc of Time magic—could not be denied.
The spell ended. The immense weight of those shared, devastating moments settled upon them both.
Ultear, her face streaked with tears, collapsed to her knees, the rage instantly converting into profound, heart-wrenching agony.
"Y—you,"
She stammered, the words barely audible.
"They told you that I was dead..."
Ultear understood everything in that single, crushing moment.
Her mother never abandoned her; she was the victim of a conspiracy.
All her dark magic, her manipulation, her dedication to the twisted goals of Zeref, her hatred of the world—all of it had been built upon a monstrous lie.
The pain was overwhelming, but the sight of her mother, standing there alive, gave her relief.
Ultear looked up at Ur, her mother's expression was now a terrifying mask of fury—the fury of a mother who saw her daughter suffer.
"Where are they! I am going to kill them! The Bureau of Magical Development! The people who lied to us! Where are they now?!"
Ur roared, the sheer, protective rage of a mother overriding everything.
Ultear, seeing that unadulterated, desperate maternal fury, knew instantly that her mother wasn't faking it.
She really wanted vengeance for their shared suffering.
"All this time... I just foolishly thought that you hated me and abandoned me..."
UItear whispered, her own tears beginning to fall—not of sorrow, but of release and immediate regret for the lost years.
Ur didn't hesitate. She didn't speak. She took a swift step forward and pulled her long-lost daughter into a fierce, tight hug.
The contact was warm, solid, and real—something Ur had believed was stolen from her forever.
"I am sorry, Ul... It is my fault for believing in their words! I should have searched! I should never have stopped looking!"
Ur sobbed, holding her daughter close.
Ultear, the woman who manipulated time and commanded dark plots, instantly melted.
She missed this warmth, this primal, familial connection that had been denied to her for decades.
She hugged her mother back with desperate strength and began to cry like a helpless child, releasing years of bottled-up pain and vengeance.
Arthur nodded in quiet satisfaction.
The decades of pointless drama had ended in minutes.
The mother and daughter had successfully reunited.
Arthur waited until the emotional torrent subsided. He then addressed the tearful, newly reunited duo.
"The Bureau of Magical Development is long gone, Ur,"
Arthur said simply.
"But its remnants—the people who pulled the strings—still exist. They are part of the larger conflict that the Celestial Forge is here to resolve."
He offered his final, critical proposition.
"You are powerful, Ultear. And now you have the truth. You don't need to destroy the world; you need to change it for the better. Join your mother and join the Celestial Forge. Here, you can use your Arc of Time to genuinely heal the past's wounds, not just fight them. You can work with your mother, secure in the knowledge that you are fighting the forces that hurt you both."
Ur, still holding her daughter, looked at Arthur and then nodded her assent.
"She's coming, Arthur. We are staying together."
Ultear, though still emotionally drained, felt a profound shift in her life's purpose.
She had her mother back. She had a new, powerful guild—one capable of taking on anyone.
And she had a clear target for her vengeance: the dark forces that manipulated the world.
She looked at Arthur, a new form of respect and fear in her eyes.
"I accept, Master Arthur. I will join the Celestial Forge. My power is yours to command."