He forced his mouth open, but no sound came out. Only large, rhythmic gulps of blood welled up from deep in his throat, overflowing from the corners of his mouth and quickly staining his jaw and chest.
His vision darkened rapidly in the excruciating pain. The cold hilt of the sword protruded from his body, trembling slightly as his frame convulsed.
He could clearly feel the strange sensation of metal churning within his heart. He felt the warm blood surging out frantically along the fuller, soaking his shirt and the ground beneath him.
Vitality ebbed away along with the blood, taking his body heat and consciousness with it.
‘Am I going to die? Just like this… is it over?’
‘It’s fine… if the bloodline doesn’t respond, if all of this really was a mistake…’
However, before the thought could settle, a brilliant golden light erupted from his chest. It felt as though two forces were battling within him.
One was the instinctual power of his bloodline — overbearing, searingly hot, and focused on rejection and healing. The other was his self-imposed, chaotic will — a mixture of paranoia, doubt, a desire for destruction, and an extreme urge for atonement.
They were not in harmony. There was no gentle resonance born of the warmth and protection from his predecessor life and current existence; there was only violent conflict and tearing.
Laurence felt his body being constantly torn apart and stretched by this Braveblood force, only to be healed at extreme speeds. Over and over again, it continued without pause.
When the familiar power finally surged through his heart, the intense stinging and tearing sensations receded like a tide. A flash of despair and helplessness crossed Laurence’s Golden Eyes.
He had succeeded.
The Braveblood had truly awakened. It responded to this extreme method of activation in a way that was far more overbearing and unquestionable than the memories of his predecessor life.
This proved… that the memories were real.
The protection from his predecessor life, the warm light, the blessings in disguise… they were all real. Therefore, by extension, everything shown by the current Aurelia — even with its subtle changes — was also real…
She had never truly changed. Everything was nothing more than a masquerade designed to destroy the world. It was a lie, a performance staged specifically to deceive a ridiculous and foolish Brave like him.
“Haha… Hahahaha — !!!”
Laurence, collapsed amidst bloodstains and rotting leaves, suddenly burst into hysterical laughter.
At first, it was a low chuckle, then it grew louder until it became an uncontrollable, almost frantic, raspy roar of laughter.
His body shook as he laughed, straining the gruesome wound on his chest. Blood seeped out once more, staining the new flesh that had just begun to heal.
Yet he seemed unable to feel the pain, simply staring up at the sky, which was sliced into countless tiny fragments by the branches of ancient trees, laughing recklessly.
There wasn’t a hint of joy in that laughter. There was only endless absurdity, cold despair, and a suffocating sense of relief now that the dust had settled.
Tears slid from the corners of his eyes without warning, mixing with the blood and grime on his face to leave two warm, wet streaks.
He continued to laugh even as the tears poured down. All his struggles, doubts, and pain seemed so ridiculous at this moment. He had tried to find contradictions between memory and reality, tried to find an excuse that he ‘might be wrong’ for his coldness that night, but the response from his bloodline — this resonance from the depths of his soul — once again crushed those fragile illusions of weakness.
“I was right… I was right…” Laurence muttered to himself. His Golden Eyes looked vacantly at the sky, as if he were thinking, or perhaps as if he had given up on thought entirely, wanting only to fade away.
“I was right. I was right all along…”
He repeated the words mechanically, his eyes unfocused, tears falling uncontrollably down his cheeks.
What a perfect closed loop.
In his predecessor life, his bloodline awakened because he protected her. In this life, it awakened because he tried to eliminate her. Destiny had used the most ironic chains to lock him firmly onto this path.
“Aurelia… the Disaster Source…”
He whispered the name once more. This time, there was no painful struggle or hysterical madness. Instead, there was an emotion deeper than insanity.
He accepted his fate.
He accepted that his memories were correct, that his judgment was the only truth, and that he was destined in this life to fight until the death against the phantom named Aurelia and the Disaster Source hidden beneath her.
He clenched his right fist. It was still stained with his own heart’s blood — a vivid, brilliant red that even carried a hint of… the supernatural.
New power burned through the veins of his entire body. An unshakeable sense of wrongness surged from the depths of his soul, overtaxing his current state.
***
Just as he tried to steady himself and clear his mind, an overwhelming sense of exhaustion made it impossible for him to keep his eyes open.
Three days of restless, frantic searching, extreme emotional fluctuations, a self-inflicted fatal wound, and the soul-tearing conflict and pain of the bloodline awakening… All of it culminated in an irresistible backlash.
Before his vision went completely dark, a boundless shadow seemed to surge from all directions, threatening to swallow him whole. Yet, in the instant before his consciousness sank into that dark abyss —
“Captain! Laurence…!”
A familiar female voice, now distorted by extreme horror, pierced through his fading hearing.
Laurence used the last of his strength to turn his head slightly. Through his unfocused Golden Eyes, he saw Vera’s face. It was pale, devoid of blood, and filled with disbelief and terror.
Her gaze locked onto the hilt of the sword thrust into his chest and the blood-soaked fabric of his shirt. Then, her eyes snapped up to meet his hollow stare.
He wanted to tell her there was no need to panic — he had succeeded. He wanted to show the one person who might understand the bloody answer he had obtained.
But he could no longer respond. He could only manage a faint whisper: “Vera… I… proved it…”
Before the words could fully leave his lips, Laurence’s world fell into complete darkness and silence.
Only Vera’s distorted cry, sounding as if it came from a vast distance, remained as the last sound of reality he captured before losing consciousness.
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