-Chapter 10- End of the New Beginning

A man was sitting in front of a desk. In a corner of the room were millions of monitors, but this man didn’t have the time to observe the flickering screens. He had endless paper work to look through.

The accident which costed the lives of many young adults caused a lot of trouble for him.

He didn’t take care of these careless deities and something like that happened. He couldn’t just punish every single one of them either. This would cause complete chaos and more work for him, so it was hard for him to do anything.

“Sir Alastos, here is the next batch of reports”, a young man with red hair walked into the room with the next pile of papers.

Alastos let out a long sigh. “Thank you, Aarus.” The young man named Aarus bowed shortly and then left the way he came.

Every time Alastos read a new report a new problem was added to the list. He couldn’t even take a step outside of this room.

Most of the reports informed him about the off-balance caused by some of the reincarnated kids, who too strong. Some were too weak and were bound to their beds. It seems the ecosystem got affected by this mass reincarnation, too.

The creatures got more aggressive and attacked villages nearly every day resulting in unrest among the people.

Another thing which caused him headaches was the distribution of the souls. Most of the souls got put into human and demi-human bodies but nearly none of them were found in a celestial, elf and demon body.

Then there was that error in transferring of the souls. Some souls were put into bodies not meant for them and others were put into bodies made by the god who was in charge of them and then transferred to a different place the bodies should be reborn.

There were some cases were the transfer worked, but they were rare.  

His next concern was a boy whose soul was put inside a demons body. He was one of the victims of the transfer error. That boy had his pity. His precious life wasn’t what one could call lucky. He didn’t do anything wrong, but he still got the treatment of a criminal.

Alastos had asked the main god in charge of their previous world to give him the recordings of their life, to determine the best pairs for reincarnation. He was really carful while watching these, because these recordings are comparable to many points of views on the same subject.

Such an example was the situation between that unfortunate boy, Marcus, and the cause of his suffering, Kyle.

Out of other peoples’ point of view these two seemed like good friends, but out of the subjects view, Marcus, you could feel the animosity between them.

He didn’t watch Kyles recording as Helena insisted to watch it. He couldn’t read the report of this subject yet, but he knew something just had to have gone wrong and he was right.

He looked at the report on his table before letting out another sigh. This report confirmed his feeling. The boy which is now called Zeki was located at an unusual place and it seems his “friend”, who got reincarnated as a celestial, is with him. The report was informing him about a group of Celestials who were heading to that location, posing a danger for Zeki and the people surrounding him.

He stared at the report for some time. He couldn’t believe what he saw there. He even wrote a special note for the god in charge of the subject, Marcus.

He reached out to the intercom, which was placed on his table, put on a smile, contradicting his current state of mind, and spoke in a calm voice.

“Aarus, would you kindly send the gods in charge of the subject Marcus and Kyle, and Helena to me? Thank you.”

Letting his chin rest on his folded hands and a smile on his face, which did not convey any form of positive feelings, he waited for the three people.

This was the last drop. He felt like a father to a lot of unruly children or an Admin to a big internet group. He tried to fix a lot of incidents they coursed, but he couldn’t let them go on like this. He had to do something. Someone had to be punished.

“Sir, Brought Esere, Ione and Helena as you requested. “, Aarus shoved the three into the room before repeating the same procedure as before.

There was a long period of awkward silence before Alastos started to speak, at last.

“So you ignored my warning and did EXACTLY the opposite of it, didn’t you? “, he didn’t stop smiling.

The goddesses felt a chill down their spine. They knew they were in serious trouble. This smile meant they were doomed.

“I forgave a lot. I overlooked a lot, but this. This is the last drop. That was disobeying a direct order by me. You know that right? Especially Helena and Ione. Couldn’t you behave for once in your life? Don’t you dare thinking I don’t know about the devastating mistakes you committed.”

After the mention of their names the two goddesses flinched and looked to the floor. They thought their mistakes won’t come to light or they wouldn’t get punished for them. They were gods after all and thought they couldn’t be replaced. That was a false assumption.

“And Esere. I told you many times not to let your emotions control you, right? That this will cause trouble, right?”, His voice became more forceful with every sentence he spoke.

“Yes but-“, “No buts! As punishment I will send you and Ione to that world. Of course without your power. Experience what you did by yourself and fix this problem!

And you, Helena. You will go to Hell. You have to learn to be a bit more responsible and respectful. Oh yeah, keep count of how often you felt like dying. They are holding a study down there.”, his smile disappeared from his face and turned into a deadly serious expression.

His eyes, which didn’t have a consistent colour, were fixated on the three. “But you can’t just repl-“, “You really think so, Helena? Don’t think too highly of yourself. Your causality count is the highest. I thought about replacing you for a long time now. I just couldn’t decide who will take your place. There are a lot of able and willing replacements for you.”

With a snip of his finger Ione and Esere disappeared though a hole in the ground, similar to the way Marcus entered the world.

Helena got “escorted” by other hell guards, Alastos asked to come here.

“You can’t just-, Hey stop that! You know how important I am?! Leave me alone! “, She struggled a lot but she couldn’t free herself from the grip of the guards. With a last shriek she got dragged out of the room.

“Maybe this will set an example for the rest of them….”, Alastos sighed one last time before continuing to read through the reports.

“….Probably not.”

Welcome back to Zeki’s tragic story.

Are you still feeling comfortable? It’s okay? That’s good, I guess.

Okay, let’s continue the story. That’s you were waiting for right?

….You just want to do your job? Well, you don’t have any more say in this. You came to me, remember?

So where was I? I already introduced Cheia, right? I was at that point I see. I’m not sure if you will enjoy this though.

….Hey, no need to look at me like this. I’ll start so don’t do anything stupid okay.

I was still overwhelmed by the information Cheia left behind before she disappeared. I kind of guessed my parents were someone important, but I didn’t think it would be the royal family. Then I will leave the temple by the next day. The temple in which I spend most of my time and made so many friends in. How could I leave? All the memories. Who would leave?

Who am I kidding? I was overflowing with happiness over the fact I could leave that god forsaken temple. Oh wait maybe it would have been better if it was god forsaken.

The god’s weren’t any better anyway.

I thought about taking Alycia and Lilika with me. I even considered Lycus. He wasn’t a bad guy after all. Just annoying.

Before I even noticed I had moved from the place I was standing on I reached the temple again. I let out a sigh after looking at it. The white building didn’t change from the day I first saw it.

Still drenched in an unlucky white.

Walking into the main building, entering the entrance hall and moving in the direction of Lilika’s room, I heard some muffled voices from the dining hall.

I never really entered the dining hall as I always ate in Lilika’s room together with her, but I knew where it was and I knew it wasn’t frequented to this time.

Most children would be outside, some priestesses would look after them and the others had one hour of leisure time.

I moved closer to eavesdrop. Even if I would leave the day after that, I still wanted to know what was discussed without my knowledge. Humans are a lead by curiosity after all. Even if I am not considered as part of the human race anymore.

“-id you understand? You all have to be really good kids! We get really important visitors tomorrow, so you have to behave the best. I think you all know that.”

It was the voice of the high priestess. These guests, which she talked about, wouldn’t be of my concern, I thought at least.

Thinking that I moved away from the room from which mumbling form children could be heard. I couldn’t distinguish them as they sounded pretty much the same, so I didn’t even bother trying to find out if I was the only one who didn’t attend to this senseless gathering.

I walked straight to Lilika’s room even if I couldn’t really do anything there. Sleeping was impossible, because it wasn’t that late already and the sun was still shining a bit. Inspecting this room one more time wouldn’t make sense either since I already saw every nook and cranny of this room.

No, the thing I wanted to do was think. I couldn’t do it anywhere better as in Lilika’s room.

I rested my body on the familiar bed and stared at the ceiling. I had to think about a way to tell Lilika about my trip away from here. I wondered if I could persuade her to come with me together with Alycia. Teacher S would be a great asset as bodyguard, too.

Cheia could have been just a fraud after all, you see? Even if she had her perks didn’t mean she was a trustworthy person. Pretty people tend to lie more often after all.

This way Lycus would have to come with us even if he didn’t want to. Teacher S didn’t look like a person who would someone else bring up her child.

I felt like a small eternity passed by. No one came into the room for a long time and before I knew it, it had grown late.

I slowly slipped into a gentle sleep. This was one of the rare nights were I could sleep without to worry much. I had happy thoughts.

I was greeted by the black realm again. No weird dreams, no goddess messing with my head. Just an endless black Void.

I got woken up rather forcefully though. Someone shook me awake. At least they didn’t kick me to the floor like a certain someone did.

“Jus…jus five moa minits …”, I was unwilling to let go of my yarned for void realm, but I jumped right up when I heard the voice speaking.

“You have to get up Zeki! Where were you? Ah, not that! We don’t have much time! You’re in danger! Come on…”

It was Lilika, who else?

“What? Danger? What happened?” Danger for me meant a nuisance to my “escape plan”. I didn’t need that. Really how unlucky can one person get? Annoying isn’t it?

My Luck state would be at -9000 or something if this was a game.

“You can’t stay here Zeki! If the Celestials see you, it’s over. Come, hurry and wear this.” She gave me a beige shirt and another pair of brown pants. There were some too big looking boots next to the bed and over the chair at the other end of the room hung a brown-black cape with a hood.

“Celestials?! Why are they here? Wait… why would they dangerous to me?” obviously I knew why, but I wanted to confirm if Lilika knew about my identity.

“You think they would let a demon child be? If they find a demon here they would destroy the whole place not caring if they hurt innocent people.” This confirmed my suspicions. Lilika knew. Well, it wasn’t hard not to know. Or would you say I look like anything else?

I put on the clothes before Lilika took my hand and dragged me to the library. Adella, Teacher S and Lycus were waiting there.

All of their heads turned at the same time as the two of us came in. It was kind of creepy at what speed they turned their heads.

“There you are, Zeki! Hurry up! I heard the Celestials will arrive at any minute. I will show you the back door of the library. Adora, be careful. I know you like to be reckless, but this time it’s not only your life you are risking here!” Adella was grabbing my shoulders and looked me into my eyes before looking to Teacher S.

“I know that Adella.” For the first time I saw a serious expression her face. The usual relaxed smile was gone. The situation was just that dire.

Lycus was standing next to his mother without uttering a word.

We started walking with a faster pace past some shelves and tables before reaching a small inconspicuous door. If I knew this door existed, I would have had a much easier time dealing with the kids following me day after day some years ago.

While Adella was opening the door Lilika was squeezing my hand. She was scared. Her expression looked anxious. I didn’t get why she would be that anxious. I thought she would run away with us.

The door opened and a faint wind blew inside. It was already midday and I slept all that time. If it was a good thing or a bad thing couldn’t be disclosed.

The first ones going through the door were Teacher S and Lycus then Lilika walked with me towards the door, but stopped shortly before the door.

She crouched down put her hands on my shoulders and looked me in the eyes. It was a different look from Adella. It wasn’t the look of someone just favouring you. It was the gaze of a worried mother.

“Zeki, listen to me. Please be a good child and behave well, don’t course trouble for Adora, okay? And if you can try to find your real parents…. Even if they abandoned you…. Don’t listen to others telling you you’re evil and you shouldn’t exist, you hear? You are the most adorable and smartest boy I have ever seen and…. Even if I’m not your real mother or sister… you are my precious child, Zeki.” She wore a faint smile on her face even though she looked like she was about to cry, she didn’t.

Her shoulders were trembling, but she didn’t let go of my shoulders until she was finished. I then realized she wouldn’t come with us.

“Why aren’t you coming, too? You’ll just suffer here…” I looked perfectly calm. Worrying her wasn’t the best option here.

“I… I can’t. It’s my duty. Who will help the other kids and the ones that may come here in the future?...And… Don’t take me for weak. I’m tougher than you think I am, hehe.” While she said that she stood up and lightly pushed me out of the door.

“What abou-“

My sentence got disrupted by a loud explosion followed by screams and shouts.

“Tch. We’re too late… Zeki! What are you doing there? We have to run!” Teacher S shouted at me, but I didn’t move.

I said I wouldn’t care what would happen to the temple and I still hold true to that, but there was one thing I didn’t want to lose.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

Alycia was still among the kids. She was the only thing I ever protected. I couldn’t just let her die here, but I was weak and I wouldn’t be able to save her.

I fought with myself this lead to me not moving from that spot.

“ZEKI!” This was the first time I heard Lycus shout. His normally lazy expression was now serious.

“What’s with you? You want to die?” Hearing that from someone so reckless and absentminded was irritating. It snapped me out of my trance like state.

“Alycia … She’s still… I can’t, but…” I couldn’t even say a whole sentence pathetic, right? This whole worrying about people wasn’t good for your personality. It will cause only trouble.

Lycus took my hand after that and ran in the direction of the explosion. He was an idiot after all. The thing which took me a lot of thinking, he does so naturally.

What we witnessed at the place was indescribable.

The day before they were told to behave and treat the guests well.

They were told Celestials would come to visit them.

They finally would get to see the real thing.

They only saw them in books.

Now they were waiting for the guests impatiently. Alycia was among them.

She stood there. Waiting. She missed Zeki. She didn’t want to be alone here. She was afraid.

Lycus and his mother were missing, too. She wondered where they were.

Cealius and Sheila stood a bit farther away from her. Kyle had some smile on his face.

She remembered the day she feared for her life.

It was the same smile. The dark eyes from that day began to return, too.

She didn’t want to be here.

She wondered how long they had to wait. When will the guests come?

Did they have an accident? She hoped for it.

She didn’t want to see any more of these winged people.

She saw a lot of them once.

It was the day she lost her save place.

They arrived. The High priestess went forward to great them.

There were 6 of them. All of them wore the same clothes.

Some kind of short cape with a golden border ant the edge of it. Under it they wore a leather chest guard out of grey leather. The undershirt was black and stuffed into white pants.

They all looked the same to her. Terrifying.

She couldn’t stop trembling. She couldn’t run nor cry now.

She couldn’t hear what the adults were talking about and she didn’t care. She wanted them to leave.

The Celestials asked every Priestess something to which they shook their heads.

Next they asked the other kids one by one.

They didn’t move their heads at all. Their expression looked weird, too. They said something, which made the tariffing men make a surprised face.

They continued asking every child until they reached the last one, Alycia.

“Did you see a demon around here? Their trait marks re their horns. Do you maybe know if the priestesses hide one here? Maybe someone who hides their forehead?” Alycia froze. She couldn’t speak and looked like she would stare into a monsters eyes.

The words of denial she wanted to speak never left her mouth and stuck in her throat.

The Celestial took that as an answer.

He walked back to the other visitors and informed them about the testimonies of the children.

Then without a warning they started to shoot fire magic at the temple.

The children started to scream. The priestesses tried to talk to the Celestials which they answered with hits.

They started firing wind magic at some of the children who wanted to run away.

Alycia was still frozen at that place. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t scream. She couldn’t think. Memories were flashing in front of her eyes.

Her parents were in the city with her. It was a demon city. She held hands with her parents. It was cold, but she was happy. Her parents were happy, too. Then fire started to rain from the sky. Everything turned red. She couldn’t see her parents. She cried for help. A winged man came. His eyes didn’t show emotions. It was cold. It was hot. It was scary.

“NOOOOO-“, a kid was running past her. She didn’t know the kid, but it brought her back to reality. Some liquid splashed on her face. She didn’t know from where it came or what it was.

She saw chaos. The priestesses tried to fight back. The kids tried to hide. Everything felt far away to Alycia.

She couldn’t see Cealius or Sheila. She wanted Zeki to be here. She wanted Adella to be here. She was alone. No one could save her.

She saw parts of her memory again.

The man came closer. He rose his hand. Alycia was helpless, but then she felt someone pushing her. A shout. “RUN ALIYCIA QUICK”. A flash. She ran. She ran as far as she could. She was alone. It was cold. It was so very cold.

“N-no…”, Alycia felt so cold. She felt so hot. Her legs were trembling. She knew she should run away, but her legs were too weak. She fell.

…………………

…..

She only heard her own sobbing.

Then a hand grabbing her.

“-ciA”

“ALYCIA”, she heard a boy’s voice.

She knew the voice. She wanted to hear that voice.

It was Zeki. He tried to make her stand up but it was harder than he first thought. Another boy, Lycus, helped him.

“We have to get out here! Come on, you can do it!” Zeki tried to motivate her, but she still felt weak and dizzy.

“T-the others….”

What about the others? She thought. Won’t they be saved?

“Forget the others. They aren’t important. Come already” Zeki got impatient.

In that moment a ball of fire exploded near them and threw them, Alycia, Zeki and Lycus, to the ground.

“Fuck…” Zeki was the first one to stand up followed by Lycus. This time they just grabbed each one of Alycia’s arms and proceeded to help her walk. They ran as fast as they could in the direction of the forest.

We finally were able to get Alycia out of the danger zone, but that didn’t mean these winged men called Celestials would stop firing everything they hand at us.

Talking about shooting sparrows with cannons.

Alycia seemed to be severely traumatised. Well, who wouldn’t if suddenly a massacre started before them?

I couldn’t hold my food inside me, too, when we arrived at the scene. There were many dead bodies. Some burned, some pierced.

Not only the adults, no, children, too. The blood on Alycia’s face was of one of the kids. The kid lay in front of her.

The smell of blood was very prominent. We had luck to find Alycia in that mess and considering my state of mind. I couldn’t read into Lycus expression, which didn’t seem to change much.

I tried to act tough in front of Alycia, but I was probably just as scared as her.

I always lived far away from war. War was just another report on the news. This wasn’t even war. This was just a senseless massacre.

We reached the forest, which was our meeting place. Teacher S was just arriving.

“Do you IDIOTS even fear DEATH? Did you really think just RUNNING OFF would be a great IDEA?! HUH?!” she shouted at us and gave each of us a hit to the head.

Then she noticed Alycia. “At least you saved someone. Don’t you think about doing that again, you hear me?” I saw a lot of different expressions on her face. She wasn’t fazed by the corpses on the ground or the injured trying to get away.

From further away we heard footsteps. They weren’t the heavy footsteps of an adult, they belonged to a child.

It came closer and closer to our direction before stopping at the other side of some trees, which separated us.

“Fuck, did they have to destroy everything? Couldn’t they have taken that fucking Zeki and these stupid women? Tch. Now I have to start all over again. Why did they start shooting when they said there was a demon? Fucking shit…”

It was Cealius. We heard every single word.

Yes he was the reason for this. He caused a massacre and was still able to say things like that.

I am by no means a good person neither am I completely evil, but I never thought about killing just for the sake of killing. I thought even Kyle had some inhibitions to killing.

I was so wrong.

I got angry. At myself. At the world.

I ran towards him and finally did what I should have done from the very beginning. I punched him. Right in the face. If I had a weapon I would have probably used that without any second thought.

The surprised Cealius landed on the ground before he even had the chance to dodge. I wanted to continue letting out nearly 28 years of frustration on him, but he rolled out of the way.

“H-he’s INSANE HELP!”, he tried to get away, but there was no one to help him. If I just touched him long enough I could prevent him from invoking his magic. I just had to catch him and it would be over for him.

“Kyle… You really exceeded yourself….. Now you won’t even stop before mass murder huh? Fits you perfectly.” My voice was strangely calm. My face probably looked pretty distorted.

Kyle stared into my eyes and I felt Mana move around him and trying to penetrate me. As soon as it was in my vicinity it imploded.

“That won’t work on me, Fucker.” I came closer and closer to him before I saw a rock flying in my direction.

It came out of Alycia’s direction. I avoided it and the hits she tried to land were no problem for me to evade, but it caused stress on her body. She was already exhausted and she was now forced to fight.

While I was seemingly distracted with Alycia, Cealius tried to flee. That was the moment I turned my back to Alycia and jumped on him.

“You motherfucker….You… You”, I pressed these words though my teeth. All the aggression I had closed off somewhere within me broke free from its restraints.

I turned him on the back and pressed my hands around his throat. I gradually increased my strength in my grip.

Alycia fell to the ground as soon as I could touch Cealius. I saw Cealius twitching and fighting against his imminent demise before he finally lost consciousness. I didn’t let go even though I knew he couldn’t fight anymore.

But before I could finish someone pulled me back. It was Lycus.

“Calm down Zeki! Do you really want to end it that quick for him?” when I compared Kyles quick end though  murdering him and the long painful years he made me suffer with no rescue in sight it calmed me down. He didn’t deserve a quick death.

“Did you calm down kid?” Teacher S was holding Alycia and checked for wounds.

“Y-yes…” I can’t say I was completely calm. I still felt the sensation of my hands warped around Cealius’ throat.

“Hey, Zeki, do you remember what we talked about yesterday? The enhancing of objects?” I did vaguely remember, but I couldn’t find a connection between this and the current situation.

Lycus through some kind of iron choker towards me. There were various runes engraved in it.

“Put your mana in there and give it to me. This will be enough to restrain him.” Lycus started mumbling to himself.

I understood his logic and all, but I never actually tried to put my anti magic into something. I couldn’t even control it, but I tried doing this nonetheless.

As I poured my Mana into it the runes began to glow one after another. After all of them glowed I gave it back to Lycus.

I looked at Cealius lying there. Without any protection. Completely helpless.

I kicked him one last time before walking to Alycia. Lycus put the choker on Cealius, locked it and came to us.

“Here’s the key. Do with it whatever you want. Throw it away, keep it, shove it up someone’s ass or whatever.” Lycus sounded pretty matter of fact and distant. That scene took its toll on him, too. There is no one not affected by such a scene, right?

So… This was the end of my time in that temple. It was more dramatic than I wanted it to be. I just wanted to simply leave with no such incidents, but I wouldn’t be Zeki if not such things would happen.

It did make me nearly kill Cealius though.

Well, I guess I will leave it at that for now.

You should get a good night’s sleep too. This was a lot of information in a short amount of time after all. I told you, it wouldn’t be enjoyable for neither of us.

Well, see you.

Authors note:

Hey there

Sorry for the late chapter. I seem to not be able to hold a schedule …. Well this marks the end of Zekis time in the temple and just for your information Lilika and Adella aren’t dead.

Oookay, now, as always, if you find grammatical or writing errors please write it into the comments. If you have suggestions for the story you can write them into the comments, too. I always search for new ideas. If you just liked the story you can inform me about that, too! My ego would appreciate it TwT.

Oh yeah before I forget it. I plan on making a character list with information about the characters and art work. Maybe I add a map for orientation purpose and some important terms, too.

So do you need something like this or is it unnecessary?

Anyway

See ya people in the next chapter

Thank you so much for reading!