Chapter 100
Her laughter, bright and unburdened, filled the air, far louder than any diesel engine roar in the world.
He saw himself, a younger version, lighter, with shoulders not yet bearing the weight of command and eyes not yet haunted by the shadows of Holy Beings.
He was perhaps only twenty-two years old, a time when the world still felt like a place to be explored, not a fortress to be defended.
In that memory, he was running—not chasing enemies, but chasing his own child's laughter.
Miara, the little troublemaker, deliberately snatched her father's hat—a simple field cap—and ran circles around the mango tree, dangling it like bait.
"Come catch me, Dad!" she shouted, her voice like a silver bell.
And Shaqar, the father, pretended to be angry while hiding a smile, chasing her with long strides deliberately slowed so the little one would feel as if she were on a grand adventure.
They ran in circles, laughing, the world narrowing into nothing more than the ring of trees, green grass, and the pure bond between father and child.
"I can't really sleep, Apathy.
Not because of the engine, and not because of this journey."
Huuuuuhh!
"Since I accepted the position in Team Xirkushkartum, there has been a price to pay—and part of it has never been fully settled.
I knew the consequences from the start.
My relationship with my family grew distant, one by one drifting away, as if I had chosen the battlefield over home."
Bruuuk!
"And the heaviest burden is the look in my own child's eyes."
Hhhh!
"In her eyes, I am no longer the father who comes home with a smile, but a man obsessed only with chasing ego, titles, and achievements.
That isn't something you can escape simply by closing your eyes."
That reality bit deep.
Apathy's words hung in the stifling air of the cabin, an offer of compassion that instead tore open an old wound that had never truly dried.
Behind his closed eyelids, Shaqar did not see peaceful darkness, but the panorama of his distant home yard, from a life he had left behind as one leaves a worn-out garment.
He saw himself.
Not as a feared captain, but as a stranger standing at the doorway, the black Xirkushkartum uniform clinging to his body like the scent of a dragon, while the gaze of his little daughter, Miara, had shifted from longing to the coldness of river stone.
His acceptance into that elite team, once believed to be the pinnacle of achievement, turned out to be a sledgehammer that shattered the foundations of his other world.
Every mission, every badge, every acknowledgment from the High Officials was paid for in cash with widening distance at the dinner table and a lethal silence in the family room.
The constant engine vibrations felt like an endless repetition of his own guilty heartbeat.
He could not sleep not because of the jolting road or the engine's roar, but because the burden itself had become his pillow.
The fatigue he felt was not physical exhaustion from a long journey, but a weariness of the soul walking a looping path of memories that ended in regret.
The images came uninvited.
Miara's smile fading year by year, slowly turning into a crease of confusion on her small brow, then freezing into an empty, accusatory stare.
He had chosen a cold altar of devotion, an altar that demanded offerings in the form of his presence as a father, a husband, and a part of a greater family.
Titles and achievements in the dark world of Xirkushkartum proved hollow when exchanged for the title of "father," forcibly stripped from him.
Behind his closed eyes, he saw the exact moment everything cracked.
Not an explosion on the battlefield, but silence in the living room.
He returned home carrying the alien scent of bloodshed and darkness, while Miara, with a child's instinctive wisdom, had learned to recognize and despise that smell.
She looked at Shaqar no longer as a protector, but as a monster that devoured everything gentle and good.
The climax came when those bitter words were finally spoken, a sentence more wounding than any sharp weapon.
A man who only knows how to consume ego, titles, and achievements.
That became the gravestone of their relationship.
And now, inside a vehicle racing toward another abyss of existential battle, that gravestone felt heavier than all the weaponry they carried.
"It would have been better if you hadn't rushed to leave, Captain."
With both hands firmly gripping the cold iron steering wheel, Apathy's eyes stared straight into the stretch of darkness ahead, occasionally slashed by distant headlights.
His voice, almost blending into the engine's hum, drifted backward through the thin partition separating him from Shaqar.
He said that Shaqar's decision to turn around and leave at that moment, on the threshold of a home he had not entered in a long time, was a mistake whose scent still lingered to this day.
The chance to mend things, to explain with words that might have stumbled and faltered, vanished, swallowed by those hurried retreating steps.
That door, which might have opened slightly for a difficult conversation, slammed shut again by Shaqar's own fear—the fear of facing the judgment he dreaded most, from his own child's eyes.
Apathy realized that the captain's true courage had not collapsed before holy beings, but before the little girl who once looked at him as a hero.
Shaqar's breathing in the back seat grew heavier, as if every word from Apathy was a hammer striking the gravestone of his regret.
Apathy continued, his voice flat yet piercing, that moment had been a crossroads.
On one side lay the chaos of the Xirkushkartum world, with its bloody missions and complex loyalties, and on the other, the fragile remnants of a normal life that asked only for presence and honesty.
By choosing to flee, Shaqar had decisively chosen the first path, burying the hope for the second even deeper.
He left Miara and Absyumura not only with an empty space before the door, but with confirmation of all their worst assumptions.
That the father and grandfather were no longer the family's, but belonged to the order—where blood and secrets were valued higher than spoken love or pleas for forgiveness.
Apathy, who also lived within that same world, understood its pull, yet clearly saw the cost that had to be paid, a cost now written in every line of exhaustion on Shaqar's face.
Apathy's gaze remained fixed on the road, as if he could see ghosts of the past standing on the asphalt.
He stated that Shaqar's decision to flee might have felt like a momentary self-rescue from unbearable pain.
In truth, it only prolonged the suffering and turned a wound that might have been stitched into an infection that gnawed at the soul.
The affection Shaqar wanted to convey, the admission that his family still mattered to him amid all the darkness, was all trapped behind walls of fear and misplaced pride.
Now, inside the steel cabin hurtling toward yet another battlefield, that affection remained imprisoned, transforming into poison that slowly eroded him from within.
He carried the burden of the High Officials' mission, but the burden truly destroying him was the sentences he never managed to speak at the doorstep of those he loved most.
"I'm sorry, my friend. I shouldn't have dragged you into such an awkward situation.
I asked you to come along to speak on my behalf, because I know my tongue is often stiffer than a sword.
But in the end, I ran away—even before Miara and Absyumura opened the door.
That wasn't fair to you."
To be continued…