Chapter 483: What If It's All Been Fate?
Everywhere suddenly grew cold; the level of coldness Shin was experiencing before now was child's play to this one.
It was so intense that the cold seeped into his muscles and as far as his bone.
The air became compressed, and at that moment, Shin felt like he was standing at the top of a very high mountain, where the air was quite scant and tense.
There was an additional feeling of fear creeping into his heart, like the roof... no, the entire reality above him, even the sky, was going to come crashing down on him.
All this was a matter of seconds since the last word was uttered, and in such a short time, pearls of sweat had formed over Shin's face.
Northern belatedly looked at his father and quickly steadied his mind and breath at the same time. As he did, the Void Aura slowly calmed down, lessening its effect on the space.
It was still there but suppressed by Northern himself. That one moment, he had unintentionally let go of the hold he had on it, causing the entire room to drown in the horror of the Void Aura.
It was a curse that now accompanied him as he grew stronger. And perhaps, in some situations, it would be a blessing.
Northern clenched his teeth painfully, shut his eyes, and looked away for a moment.
"I'm sorry," he said to Shin.
Who was now breathing heavily like he had just run a two-day marathon without stopping, his shoulders rising and falling.
"It's fine..." Shin spoke in a foggy tone and dealt with his breath at the same time. He slowly sat on the stool and breathed in and out several times till he got steady. Northern watched him from a sitting position. He had been sitting for a while now. After a while, when his father had calmed down, his voice rang out emotionlessly. "Did you look for her?"
Shin frowned; the tone behind his question was so obvious.
"You think I didn't?"
"And why are you here? Why have you not found her? What has your family done to her?"
Northern's tone was growing intense. He didn't know why, but there was a pile of hot flames that were burning at the base of his lungs, and anytime he spoke, it was like they were rising to burst out of him.
He tried to stop talking immediately.
Shin scowled, but it was not towards Northern; his face was falling on the ground. After a few moments of silence, Northern heard his shaky voice.
"I have searched. They weren't the ones. If they were the ones, I would have known already. But they really weren't the ones."
As much as Northern was trying to stop himself from getting angry, Shin's response was like adding fuel to the seething flame beneath him.
He glared at his father with a cold intensity etched in the depths of his eyes.
"So?"
Shin, regardless of the way Northern's response sounded to his ears, kept his head down, gritting his teeth and rubbing his hands together.
He is as pained about this as Northern is. He had even had to carry this pain for so much longer. His son, his wife, his unborn child-which would probably be born by now, all suddenly disappeared from his life.
It felt like everything he had worked so hard to build for himself, the life he had struggled so much to live, all suddenly became nothing in the blink of an eye.
He felt nothing but darkness and misery consume his daily life. Utterly useless!
"There is only one thing I keep thinking about. And it has to do with your mother's secret and the origin of her race."
'That's right. He referred to her race before as if she wasn't human.' Northern glanced at his father, as he realized there was something more to their story with this.
Shin, with a bit of hesitation, continued to speak.
"Eisha is not originally from this world."
Northern raised a brow. Shin continued, oblivious of his son's expression.
"I know this would sound so unbelievable. But while we were being truthful to each other, Eisha had told me that she comes from a world that was torn off from ours. She was running away from her father. And her arrival in this world was an accident. She called herself a being of the ancient wood. An Elf."
Northern's eyes widened at that moment.
From the moment Shin started talking about another world, a single possibility had occurred to Northern.
The underworld.
It was a place he knew very little about. But at the very least, he knew it was a world that stood below Trael as a whole. And it had people living in it too.
So when Shin mentioned another world, his mind quickly wandered off to the experience he had with Sura and Cal.
"Are they characterized by long ears?" Remembering how Cal looked, Northern muttered.
Shin looked at him, a small hint of confusion appearing in his eyes.
"How did you know? That was her true form, but she could use an ancient art called magic to hide her ears and make them human ears."
Northern stood up, so many thoughts running around his mind as he washed down on his face with his palm.
He stood frozen in thought for a couple of seconds before turning to Shin, who was looking at him with concern.
Northern was essentially shocked at how interconnected all of this suddenly became. As much as he wanted to believe this was a coincidence and nothing more, his intuition was hinting at
something else.
The reason why Eisha was kidnapped all of a sudden might have had nothing to do with it. But his senses tickled; all these events, now that he thought about them, began to feel like someone was weaving him into something.
'Someone... fate?'
Northern had not held a strong philosophy on fate and its doings. He never really gave it a
deep thought. He had never had a reason to before now.
But right now, this realization suddenly triggered his sense to question everything he had experienced until this point.
From the way he was born, to the event of his death, his parents, adopted mother who happens to be an elf, his awakening and its failure, being sent to the rift, his encounter with the Vestige of the Chaos Prince, his annoying nemesis relationship with Koll, meeting Caladhel and Sura, learning about their world and his intuition somehow told that there was
more coming.
And the more that was coming would intertwine Eisha's unborn, perhaps now born, child.
Northern didn't know why at first, but he suddenly felt a need overwhelm him.
He turned to Shin and said with a deep, calm gaze.
"We need to find mother as soon as we can."