The holographic screen faded to black. Its last glimmer flickering like dying embers before dissolving into the dim bunker light. Silence followed, thick and suffocating. No one understood what to say. The mess of what they had just seen hung in their mind like an iron shroud.
Grace's pale face trembled. Rosario's eyes darted toward the wall, trying not to look at anyone. Vera, quiet as ever, leaned against the table with folded arms, his gaze fixed on the darkened projector. It was Tom—Tom who couldn't move. His body was still, yet inside, his thoughts were burning.
The story hadn't just ended for him. It had entered him.
He sat there, elbows on his knees, hands clasped before his face. His reflection in the blank screen stared back. The eyes were half-dead, brows furrowed. Inside that silence, his mind whispered, "Ghira.… I thought she isn't evil...." He remembered the warmth in her smile, her quiet words in the earlier chaos. The strange sadness in her tone that he never understood until now. She had lived through millennia, carried guilt older than mountains. It was sure for now, that Ghira is at least five thousand years old.
His stomach turned. That kind of grief.… it wasn't something anyone could survive without breaking.
Yet, what made his chest ache the most was the realization that he had already fought his legacy. The three-headed lion he had slain in Carna Forest. The one whose roar still remained in his nightmares wasn't just a beast. It was the Cerberus, the last piece of purity born from Jack's death and her guilt. A guardian turned into a victim.
His knuckles whitened. He thought of its dying eyes staring at him when he struck the final blow. The golden blood.
Tom's jaw clenched, his throat ached. He didn't let the others see. Didn't let them hear his internal thoughts. The truth felt cruel that everything they had fought, everything they'd survived was tied to pain crueler than any of them could imagine.
He leaned back, staring at the ceiling. "How much have we all been repeating their sins?" he thought.
Elior's hand pressed against his chin, his gaze fixed on the glow lingering where the holographic story had vanished. His expression was sharper now, less grief and more calculation. His mind cutting through layers of memory like blades through fog.
"That charm…." he murmured, his voice low, strained with realization. "The one the sect buried in the garden, it wasn't a blessing. It was a Miracle."
Tom frowned. "Miracle?"
Elior nodded slowly, his golden eyes darkened by thought. "Not the kind that saves. The Overseer's Miracle, his way of rooting himself into mortal soil. It's how they descends without destroying the land instantly. By harnessing corpses by making them his conductors." His tone grew heavier with each word. "Every corpse in that garden.… every death after that charm was buried. It was feeding him. Preparing the soil for his descent."
Grace shuddered, clutching her blanket tighter around her shoulders. "So the Overseer's presence was…. already there? From that time?"
Elior nodded again, his eyes reflecting distant horror. "Long before we ever came to this world. There are countless Overseers across the sky."
Rosario leaned forward, his usual composure cracking for a brief second. "Then what about the Hive? The Crescent Aurora Hive and that forest. They share a name, a pattern. You think they're connected?"
Elior exhaled through his nose, fingers drumming lightly against the table. "That's the part I don't understand yet. The Hive was known for birthing symbiotic logics and purity. Entities that could survive between realities. Carna Forest was a graveyard of broken divinities. The two shouldn't coexist…. unless—" He stopped. His eyes widened slightly. "Unless one was feeding the other."
Tom's eyes darted to him. "You mean—?"
Elior nodded grimly. "The Hive might've been born from the forest itself. The remains of those divine corpses, their essence, their decay could've gathered and formed a sentient nest. The Crescent Aurora Hive wasn't natural…. it was an evolution of corruption."
Vera, who had been silent until now, crossed her arms. "So everything circles back to that one seed, the Miracle buried under that soil."
Elior looked at her, then at everyone around. "Yes. That's where it all began. The birth of corruption, the Overseer's foothold, and the infection that spread through eras. Every empire's fall.… every distorted legend…. traces back to that garden."
A cold silence settled again. The word "garden" now felt like a curse.
Tom leaned back, eyes distant. "Then maybe," he muttered, voice low and bitter, "the first sin of this world was made by humans.… but planted by gods."
Grace's voice came into the chatter that had settled over the bunker. Her tone was soft, yet there was a trembling curiosity beneath it. A question she had held onto for long but not sure for a clear answer.
"Elior," she said, eyes drifting toward Rosario, "that Sect you mentioned earlier the one Rosario's master was part of.… what was their Sect's name again?"
Rosario looked up, his usually calm expression stiffening. "Acurus Tiama," he answered. "That was the name carved on every prayer sigil, every relic, even the tattoos my master bore. They called it the Mimic of Dawn."
Grace tilted her head slightly. "And what…. did Acurus Tiama pray to? Every sect prays to something higher, don't they?"
Rosario's lips parted, but no words came. Elior turned his gaze to Tom, glint in Tom's eyes said he already knew something but full of doubts.
Tom swallowed hard. "I've heard that name before," he murmured, his tone low, disturbed. "Not from books. From Rhea's mind when I peeked in her memories."
Everyone's attention shifted toward him immediately.
"When I read her thoughts," Tom continued, "she wasn't praying to Acurus Tiama. She was being questioned by it . Acurus Tiama.… wasn't a Sect itself. It was a Cult, a voice that prays to something else."
Rosario clenched his fists. "To what?"
Tom looked up, eyes sharp and haunted, like he was recalling something that wasn't supposed to exist. "To the Sun Presence," he whispered. "A being which was formed spend ago."
Grace froze, her sickly face going pale. "The Sun…. Presence?"
Elior leaned forward, his voice steady but grim. "Then the sect wasn't serving a deity," he said. "They were serving the core of illumination itself. The thing that burns realities."
Rosario lowered his gaze. "My master prayed to it every morning."
Elior's breath grew shallow as pieces began to connect one after another, like falling stones building a terrible tower of truth.
He spoke slowly, the words forming themselves as if drawn from instinct rather than knowledge.
"The Sect.… the charm buried in Carna Forest…. the Miracle that harnesses corpses…. and now the Sun Presence." His voice broke for a second. "It's all the letters of a line. The Overseer we saw…. the one preparing to descend tonight in Durkan," He exhaled, disbelief trembling in his tone. "It's The Sun Presence. Although, it is doubtful, cause its not possible for a Sect to worship an Overseer instead of God."
Grace's hand shook around the fabric of her sleeve. Rosario blinked rapidly, unable to process it. Even Vera, usually calm looked at Elior with stunned silence.
Tom just stared at Elior's face, murmuring through his mind.
The Sun Presence.
His thoughts spiraled inward very sharp, endless, uncontainable.
So that's it…. The light that burned above the Carna trees wasn't dawn. It was a gaze. A sun that sees. And all this time, we thought we were fighting fragments, avatars, puppets but those were just statues turned rough as days passed.…
He clenched his fists, a faint tremor in his wrist. The Overseer descending here isn't one of them. It's the source. The true radiance. The one that other Overseers mirror.
He thought of the broken moon, the crimson sky, the smell of static in the air. The sense of being watched from every direction.
Countless Overseers…. across the infinite layers of space, across all possible realities, he realized. Each a fragment of a single core consciousness, the same light refracted through infinite mirrors.
His breath caught. Then what are we? Characters trapped beneath its gaze? Or fragments of its dream?
Elior looked toward Tom, uncertain, doubtful always but both of them knew.
Tonight, Durkan would no longer face an Overseer.
It would face the Sun itself.