The moment I left the portal, it felt like something reached out… across the dimensions to stroke my cheek… It was an eerie yet gentle feeling before the hand seemed to slip into my body and caress my heart…
I saw everyone who had finished fighting as the gate began to crumble looking at me…
Yet I couldn’t move…
“I’ve found you~ I will come soon… Rai….Rai…Rai…. wait for me, okay?”
Her voice began to repeat my name, like a record or song that was broken and played the same thing repeatedly as the hand was like a shadow and never stopped moving… before drawing a strange figure… or symbol on my heart and chest…
“I’ve marked you with my name~ fufufu. Thank you for naming me.”
“I am coming.” Her voice whispered before it faded from my body… and yet… the mark remained… like a tattoo on my chest, it was a strange symbol like a sun and moon intertwining…
I didn’t know what it was… nor what it meant…
After all, I just said she looked like Haruka, so why did it end up like this… freeweɓnvel.com
“Rai? It’s you, right? Are you okay?” Midori asked me with a worried expression, as everyone was exhausted, and the goblins had either run, been massacred, or returned when the gate crumbled.
I wasn’t in the right state of mind to respond as the hand grasped my second heart.. this time, it wasn’t a name or rune… something… she injected something into it…
A sudden intense pain began to fill my body, as one by one, my veins and arteries began to spread this black… volatile energy across my body… even in my werewolf state… I dropped to the ground, unable to hold back the pain…
“Rai!?” Midori yelled my name as Kana and Cassandra ran over to me, my body convulsing as my golden fur began to turn black…
It felt like I was burning from the inside out… my heart… it was going to burst…
“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” I screamed and howled to the sky as the women who knew me well watched in horror and despair… something was changed… while the burning pain as if someone poured lava and salt into my body… the nature of my transformation and heart changed…
I felt… something had been stolen… but something greater was given in return…
The mark on my body began to burn before it changed into a black wolf howling at a strange moon shrouded in darkness and a golden wolf howling at the sun intertwining…
“Fufufu… I am coming~ Rai….” The voice laughed with a seductive tone… her voice echoing in my mind before she finally faded… the pain began to ease, and my transformation faded… but my heart was different…
The human heart had been replaced by a black… a powerful black heart that used an energy different to mana… to Anima…
“Rai!” Aki yelled my name and hugged me, tears running down her cheeks as my heart was still thumping—the golden blood that Lupera gave me… now… shared my veins with black blood that sparkled with silver dots like small stars… honestly it felt like it symbolised the sun and moon.
Before I could reply… I fell into darkness, and she was waiting for me…
****
? Aki/Eternium POV
Why does my beloved brother have that disgusting taint inside his body… I watched as the strange changes in him faded.
Thankfully, in his normal form, the handsome blonde brother returned, but as the gate began to collapse, everyone ran away… Only those women who had met their brother rushed to his aid… the man who saved everyone, and they have no idea…
If he didn’t fight so hard and help us all recover so fast… right now, the damage would have been far worse…
Sister Athena… Lupera… all of their hosts now enter the dungeon daily to fight, train and retain their divinity because brother pathed that way for us… Once again, we are just using his kindness and efforts…
That’s why me and Eternia are fighting in secret… so he doesn’t know so one day we can tell big brother Rai… he doesn’t have to fight alone anymore!
I tried to remove the darkness from my brother’s body…
“What is this…!?” I called out as Lupera also pushed forward and placed her hand on his chest… there was a feeling of despair as I saw the tears of big sister Lupera for the first time… she crumbled into a ball and kept saying…
“Someone has changed it… our bond is twisted… someone had made our love dirty…”
What do I do at times like these, big sister Athena… please guide me…
Sister Lupera is the most fragile one… she loved her brother so much that her entire divinity was twisted to suit him, her name, and her existence more than any other sister…
Now that bond and her entire life’s work before she died…
“Wait…don’t move him right now. He is really tired, and I’ll take him home once the people leave.”
I had to settle the situation.
There were women I didn’t know… but the eyes that this older woman gave my brother were more affectionate and concerned than a normal stranger’s.
Sniff!
Ah… this woman has showered, but her body stinks of brother… all over her and inside her is filled with brother… she must be his newest woman?
Let’s get to know her, and make sure she is good for brother…
***
? Rai/Iranos IX POV
The world was dark as if the sun had been devoured and the world was dead, empty of all life and the sky was black, filled with countless glistening silver dots like stars…
I felt a presence, a feeling that I was different.
A small girl was sitting on the edge of a broken planet… the core and land crumbling from her mere presence.
The universe wasn’t ready to accept her.
I knew who she was… as she turned around with a gentle smile, her silver hair blowing in the wind as her black eyes with red pupils stared at me, a sense of emptiness that began to fill with nothing but… my existence the moment our gazes locked together.
“Rai~ welcome to my domain.” Haruka’s voice echoed as she waved at me, but the planet continued to crumble, and the space began to warp and distort from her mere presence…
“Come, sit with me…”
Her voice was filled with sadness as she called out to me as if it was her last chance at conversing… I cannot deny there was a feeling of fear, but from the moment I saw her face trapped in that ice and the feeling of solitude that came from her body.
However… with that face, how could I refuse her? So I sat… on the cold, desolate ground of a dying planet, watching as black shadow monsters were destroying the entire universe before my eyes…
“Rai… this universe cannot accept my existence… I am being rejected and destroyed… Yet you alone… your gentle touch could accept me, the moment you touched that ice… you freed me from that lonely world of darkness and brought colour into my eyes…”
“For you, our meeting may have been moments ago… But Rai… for me who lives so far away, our meeting was aeons ago, and soon I will finally be there with you. The only existence that can accept my twisted nature.”
Ba-Dump…
My chest throbbed… there was something a memory that I had hidden even from the other sisters…
“Meeting in that dungeon, was it the first time or the second time?”
Somehow, time may have been distorted … was it her power, my divinity, or the unholy fusion the two energies caused?
“Hehe… it was the first, silly—the second time we met, though, you were different… a little angry and tried to kill me. But then… you remembered meeting me! Giving me a name…
and promised to make a place where we could meet once again and my energy would not destroy that place… so I am coming.”
“I cannot wait, hehe~ even if this is only a mere dream—I am happy to see you the moment I close my eyes—each time you sleep, I meet another Rai… sometimes you are a little boy, crying about his mother being sick, or working too hard… other’s you complain about how you are ugly… even though you are so beautiful….”
Her words hurt my mind… it was like she could pry open my hidden memories and secrets like a master key…
“Hey… do you know that when you said I looked identical to your first love, I was shocked…. hehe~ it was then I realised everything was fated… we were destined to meet and become like this…”
“Did you like my gift?”
Her gift?
My body trembled slightly as I remembered the burning feeling… as if lava and salt were poured into my body…
“It hurt…”
“I know~ it was painful for me too, but now you can protect yourself better… my power won’t cause your skin to melt, bubble and rot. I am coming, Rai, and we can be together forever.”
Haruka smiled at me… her hand reaching out and touching my face as she kissed my lips, and the planet she sat on completely collapsed into dust as the entire universe was destroyed…
“Hehe ~ my first kiss… finally, it’s time for everything to begin.” My consciousness waned as her words became soft and soothing. It was like she was gushing me to sleep.
****
“Whaaa!?” I lifted my body, soaked in cold and sticky sweat as the terror of that moment when the universe vanished… but my two hearts raced to feel the soft touch of her lips… like it was real.
Was it a dream? A nightmare?
Looking down at my chest, there was a mark, a tattoo on my chest of a black wolf howling at a strange moon and a golden wolf howling at the sun… intertwining… it was beautiful and filled with divinity…
“Big brother! You’re awake!” Aki hugged me tightly, her black hair flowing over my bare chest, her hands pressing against the tattoo… “Big brother, who did this?”
The moment she touched my hand, I felt a sense of rejection… but the feeling vanished after I took a deep breath… This energy in the memories of meeting her she called it Yoma… the opposite of Anima.
Now I am filled with both Yoma and Anima… each heart beating in sync with the bloodlines perfectly mixed, keeping it in balance or rather… I feel it’s changed my body to accept both naturally, like I’m immune to the effects of Yoma.
“Sorry, Aki… it seems your brother let his guard down, and a strange sister-in-law might turn up in the near future…”
“Eh?” She looked at me in confusion.