"Time is running out," declared the owl, its golden eyes fixed on both of them like a silent hourglass about to turn. Its voice carried no urgency, yet there was something final in its tone—almost fatalistic.
Elian and Arthur, until then immersed in a conversation that seemed suspended outside of time, turned briefly toward it—as if awakening from an ancient dream on the verge of dissolving.
Elian still felt the weight in his body, as if each revelation had dragged him one centimeter deeper into pain. But a question, which until that moment had remained in the background, suddenly surfaced like a sharp crack of awareness.
"By the way..." he said, staring at Arthur. "What are you doing here?"
His voice came out low, yet steady. The question sounded simple—too simple. But beneath it lay something deeper—a lingering unease that had pulsed inside him ever since he heard the whistle in the forest.
In truth, Elian realized only now that he had never actually questioned it. The first time he came to this place had been after his own death, when Rodrigo had finally dissolved into the shadows. But this time, he had been pulled in after fainting. A lapse of consciousness. A rupture.
Or... was it?
He thought of the dream he'd had days earlier, at Elise's house—the owl, the omen, the screams. He recalled the feeling that this place between worlds could also be accessed before death, as if it were a corridor between planes. Until now, he had assumed this visit to be just another vision.
But Arthur being here...
That changed everything.
Arthur averted his eyes for a moment. His expression hardened, and there was pain in the deep lines etched into his weary face. The way he held his arms, the way he breathed between pauses, spoke more than words ever could.
"How can I say this..." he began, voice hoarse, a sad and hesitant smile trying to mask the devastation gnawing at him from within. "I can't quite find the right words to explain what happened. But... well... I think I died."
The words struck Elian like a thunderclap.
Reality closed in around him in an instant.
The thin air of that nowhere-place seemed to freeze, and the body he barely felt was pierced by a coldness that rose from within—a cold made of regret.
Elian froze.
But soon the stillness gave way to eruption.
"It was my fault!" he screamed, and the cry tore through the silence like an open wound. His voice trembled, echoing not into the space but deep within himself. It was the sound of a heart being crushed. "I did this! I brought harm to you... to Mom... to Manu... to Anthony...!"
He didn't cry. Tears wouldn't come—because there were no eyes. No body.
Yet through the cracks of the face he still felt was his, thick pitch leaked where golden eyes once gleamed. A black, sticky substance that wasn't made of flesh or blood, but of guilt. Of pain. Of everything he had never been able to forgive in himself.
Arthur watched him in silence.
In the figure standing before him, he saw the face of the son he had raised. And at the same time... he didn't.
That wasn't the five-year-old boy he had cradled in his arms, who stumbled over his words, who chased chickens in the yard. That wasn't the curious child who asked questions about the stars or curled up in Maria's lap when thunder shook the skies.
It was a man.
A man with hardened features, marked by invisible scars. A man of twenty-seven years—the age he had never known beside them. The age of someone who carried lives on his back, and death in his hands.
But even so... the eyes.
Even replaced by the pitch of sorrow, Arthur knew. Those eyes were his. They were the golden eyes Elian had inherited. And he would recognize them anywhere—stained or buried under guilt.
And then, Arthur understood.
He understood the revulsion he had felt—and tried to suppress.
He understood the compassion that urged him to embrace a man he didn't know—and yet was still his son.
He understood what lay behind the visceral bond between Elian and Maria. And why that boy clung to Emanuelle as if she were more than a sister: as if she were redemption. As if she were healing.
Because now he knew what had been lost. And he understood how hard Elian was fighting not to lose it all again.
Arthur drew a breath, as if searching for strength in the void around them, and only silence answered.
But it was no longer the same silence as before.
Now... it was a silence that listened.
"No, Elian. It's not your fault," Arthur said, his voice steady and warm, like a man trying to smother a fire with his own hands. "You are not to blame for what happened to me."
But the words had no effect.
Elian remained where he was, staring into the void with slumped shoulders, as if he were carrying a world of corpses on his back. He shook his head slowly, and a bitter whisper escaped his lips:
"How could it not be? If I hadn't been reborn... If I had just moved on, wherever souls as filthy as mine are supposed to go... none of this would've happened."
He looked down at his hand—or what had once been a hand. Now, it was merely the specter of a human shape, outlined in shadow and coated in that dark, viscous pitch, alive as if regret itself pulsed beneath the surface.
"I've killed so many people," he continued, his voice growing quieter, as if each word fell into a bottomless pit. "At first, I told myself it was justice. That I was cleansing the world. But... later..."
His hands clenched involuntarily. And as they did, thick spurts of pitch splattered around him, staining the floorless dark.
"...I started to enjoy it. To feel pleasure. And I kept going. I kept going until nothing of me was left."
Then he raised his face to the heavens. His long neck, empty eyes, mouth parted in pain.
"So... I died. And that was fine. I accepted it. I thought it was right. The end."
Arthur remained still.
What could a father say to a son who confessed, with such raw honesty, his taste for the abyss? What could be said to someone who had known hell from the inside—by choice?
He said nothing.
And yet his silence wasn't neglect. It was presence. It was reverence. Arthur simply let Elian speak, without fear of being cast away.
"It was then... that I saw Luciana," Elian said, his voice broken, fragile. A name spoken like a flower laid on an old grave. "I got to see her one more time. I thought... I thought it was a gift. A miracle I didn't deserve."
The mention of his sister from the former life softened Elian's expression. The silence between his words grew heavier, swollen with longing. Arthur noticed. He noticed how Elian's features became gentler when he spoke her name. And he understood.
He understood that Luciana and Emanuelle didn't share the same blood... but they shared the same space in Elian's heart. Without jealousy. Without rivalry. Because true love always has room for one more.
"I was kneeling there, buried in my sins, crying like a lost child. And Luciana... she came to me. She embraced me. She welcomed me. She didn't hate me."
A faint, sorrowful smile crept onto his adult face. There was no light in it—only memory.
"And then... I was reborn. As your son. As Maria's son."
The pause that followed said more than any sentence could. Elian was trying to convince himself—maybe for the hundredth time—that he deserved this second life.
"At first, I resisted. I kept asking if it was real. If it was punishment or a hallucination. If I truly deserved any of you. Maybe... maybe I accepted Manu as my sister faster than I did Anthony. Maybe because of Luciana." He tilted his head slightly, as if apologizing for it. "But over time... you all became my family. Truly."
Arthur felt his chest tighten with every word.
Then Elian let out a breath, barely audible:
"I blamed myself for so long. I kept wondering... shouldn't it have been Luciana who was reborn instead of me? Shouldn't that second chance have been hers... not mine? Because if the universe is just, then what am I doing here? If there's any balance, it's broken—and I'm the mistake that shattered it."
It was in that moment Arthur's breathing changed.
A harsh sigh escaped his nostrils. His expression hardened. And then, like thunder tearing across a clear sky, he shouted:
"Silence, Elian! Stop! And don't you dare say that again!"
Elian's eyes widened.
Never—never—had Arthur raised his voice to his children. Not even when he'd heard Elian's confessions. Not even after learning he'd been a killer. And now... why?
Why that cry?
He turned, confused, the pitch still pouring from his sockets, and stared at his father with a look of silent questioning. His heart raced. There was fear, yes—but more than that, there was bewilderment.
Arthur stepped forward.
With slow, firm steps, he came to stand before his son and placed a hand on his shadow-covered shoulder. The touch was warm. Real. And there was tenderness in it.
"Don't speak like that. Don't you dare belittle the worth of your life by comparing it to someone else's. Not even Luciana's. Do you understand me?"
His tone was stern, but not angry. It carried pain. And love. A love that refused to watch his son destroy himself again.
"You are who you are. You carry mistakes. You carry sins. But you also carry love. You carry courage. You carry redemption. And if Luciana gave you this second chance... then honor what she saw in you. Because she saw you whole. Even after everything."
Elian couldn't answer right away.
He just breathed in deeply—or tried to.
And for the first time in that place between worlds, the darkness seemed to pull back, ever so slightly—as if Arthur's words had forced the shadows to take a step back.
Only then did Elian understand—with the cruel clarity of someone who sees their own sin reflected in another's mirror—that he was spitting on Luciana's final wish. He needed to hear it from someone else, from someone not covered in the same tar of guilt, from someone whose eyes could still see what his own, so stained, no longer could.
Arthur spoke again, his voice trembling like a man who knew that words alone were never enough.
"I know nothing I say can erase the guilt you carry... but you have to move forward. You have to stop blaming yourself. For me. For Luciana. For your other parents, back in that other life. And maybe... maybe even for the deaths you caused. And those that are still to come."
A silence followed, and within it, Arthur turned inward. He knew he couldn't change the past, nor the scars carved into the bones of the boy before him. And he knew, too, how hypocritical it was to tell Elian to forgive himself—he, a man who once wished that Elian had never been born.
How, then, could he say such things?
The answer was simple: because he meant them. Because they weren't empty promises or hollow comforts. They were words ripped from the depths of a heart where love still lived, a love even death couldn't silence. They didn't offer the relief of the living—but the raw honesty of a man who, even dead, still loved.
Elian stared at him, eyes drowning in despair, and his voice came out as a whispered scream:
"How? How can I move on... while this guilt is eating me from the inside?"
There was a pause, but his words kept coming.
"I sleep and wake with it. With this weight crushing my chest. I breathe... and guilt breathes with me."
The owl, who had until then remained silently watching, slowly raised its wings.
At that very moment, the air trembled—not with sound, but with a shift in the very essence of the place.
Elian felt the ground dissolve beneath him, the air vibrate like a veil being torn. When he blinked, they were no longer in the same space.
He recognized that place.
It was the same from his dream—the one where he first saw the Trees of Sephiroth and Qliphoth intertwined like corrupted mirrors. A temple of living stone, roofless, with columns stretching into infinity. But unlike the last time, there were no thrones, no judges, no proclamations. Only the trees. The two of them.
The Tree of Sephiroth still fed the Qliphoth, like a pure heart pouring blood into a starving abyss.
Arthur, who had been beside Elian, blinked... and reappeared on the other side, near the owl.
"It's time for your judgment," the owl declared, its golden eyes locked on Elian.
From the stone-and-shadow floor, roots began to emerge. They slithered like living serpents, wrapping firmly around his legs. Elian felt a familiar chill run through his absent body—it was the same sensation as before. A silent recognition. A memory etched beyond the flesh.
"What's happening to my son?" Arthur asked, turning to the owl, his voice thick with anguish.
The bird didn't answer directly. Instead, it returned the question with another, its gaze as sharp as a blade.
"What have you noticed consumes your son's heart the most?"
Arthur didn't hesitate. He already knew. He had seen it from the very beginning—the shadow growing behind the golden eyes of the boy.
But before he could speak it aloud, the owl continued:
"Guilt."
Her gaze returned to Elian, firm as a sentence.
"From this point forward, Elian... you will walk the Tunnels of Qliphoth."
The words echoed endlessly.
"Tunnels of Qliphoth?" Elian thought, his gaze fixed on the dark tree before him. A shiver ran down his spectral spine.
The tree seemed to pulse. And for the first time... it looked back at him.