Chapter 18 – Witness me
"By all means, Goddess."
The moment those words left his mouth, Cassius consciously let go of the mental barrier he kept around his mind, and around his memories.
The effect was immediate.
He lost consciousness instantly, his mind travelling to a place no one could name. But in return, Ananke was staring at the sight before her in both awe and shock.
She now had access to Cassius’s mind, witnessing the magnificent canvas of two completely different sets of memories working together in a way she had no words to describe.
’What... is this? Two lives? Two people?’
Even as she questioned it, the Goddess instinctively reached toward the twin bulbs of memories, unequivocally connected.
And the moment her divine consciousness brushed against them...
The world around folded upon itself like oiled cloth, and everything turned dark.
Darkness.
...
Light.
"Take care there, Noah, my handsome boy, alright?" A gentle voice carried through a home riddled with children’s toys scattered across the floor.
Golden rays of sun peaked through a slightly open door, landing on a mother correcting the clothes of her son.
Ananke narrowed her nonexistent eyes, looked down at her own form and saw nothing but a small ball of silver light.
Her confusion deepened as she turned to look at the strange yet vaguely familiar environment.
’A new world?’ She immediately guessed by the weird feeling.
"Don’t worry, mom." The boy said joyfully, pulling Ananke’s gaze back to the scene.
A young boy — caramel skin, innocent black eyes — talking to a white-skinned woman smiling fondly at him.
"You better not cause any trouble for your uncle!" She warned, ruffling his hair playfully.
"I will not, mom!" The boy shook his head in protest. "I already said this!"
"Fine. Fine. Now go get your backpack. Your father is waiting outside to drive you to your cousin’s house."
That was all the boy needed. He yelped in happiness, twisted his small feet and ran upstairs two steps at a time.
Instinctively, Ananke followed him, feeling a familiar sensation she couldn’t quite place. It didn’t take long for her to understand why.
’Cassius...?’ She wondered, growing more puzzled by the second.
Following the boy, who looked no more than six, Ananke noticed another child. A young toddler. A girl.
"B-Brother!" The girl stuttered the moment she saw the boy. She was sitting on the floor beside a doorway, a collection of girlish toys spread in front of her.
Yet the moment she saw Noah, she forgot all of them, spread her arms wide and looked up at him with clear intention.
"No, Stella!" Noah shook his head firmly, walking past her and into his room. "Not today! Father is waiting for me!"
"B-Brother!!!" Stella immediately burst into tears, eyes bawling as though she would soon run dry.
Noah didn’t even flinch. He was used to this.
He took his backpack, gave his crying sister a small kiss on her head, then shuffled back downstairs to find his mother. He kissed and hugged her too.
"We’ll go to the park in the meantime, Noah! Do you want anything along the way?" His mother called after him as he ran for the door.
"No! Enjoy!"
His small voice carried on the wind. His mother smiled.
That was the last time Noah saw his sister. The last time he saw his mother.
The last time he saw his father.
Ah, no...
Ananke realised as the memories began to accelerate. That was not quite the last time.
The next time he would see them...
It would be when all three were buried six feet underground, killed in a car accident.
Noah’s life changed completely from that day.
...
The Boy of the Grave.
That was the name the people who worked in the graveyard gave Noah, for he was there every single day.
The young child would finish school and run immediately to that dreadful place where the thick scent of sorrow and pain hung over everything like unmoving clouds.
Each time, he would bring all the pictures he had with his family.
He would sit in front of their graves on dusty ground covered in withered flowers, and begin commenting on each photo aloud; as if speaking would somehow coax his dead family into answering from their new home.
He did it every time, eyes blurring, heart so heavy it felt ready to drop from his chest.
Yet he continued. Without knowing why, he continued.
After a while, the people of the graveyard took a liking to him and began to bring him food, to talk to him.
One old man in particular gifted him novels freely, telling him it was a good way to clear one’s mind of the fog that was life.
But there was one peculiarity about every novel that snarky old man gave him.
In all of them, for some strange reason, the villains of the story always had one thing in common...
Their unwavering love for their family. A love that made them act in ways that defied whatever morality their world had imposed on them.
Their actions were not always pretty to witness. But the young Noah began to see himself in those characters.
And slowly, steadily...
The Boy of the Grave became fond of Villains.
...
Ananke fell silent, witnessing the growth of Noah.
From the young boy who lost his parents to life’s unpredictability, to the Boy of the Grave surrounded by people who witnessed death every single day, to a handsome young man with an obsessive love for Villains.
The transformation was gradual. Yet it was clearly inevitable.
And Ananke saw more than the surface of it.
She looked at the flirting Noah not as a young man unable to keep his emotions in check...but as someone searching for something he had lost long ago, desperate to find it again.
The particular care of a loved one.
So he tried. And with his looks, his ability to connect with people, and an orphaned past that made others instinctively soft toward him, Noah was unstoppable.
But soon enough, he grew used to it. He began to love hearing others say they loved him more than he loved himself.
Steadily, Noah began to change. He was no longer quite himself. He began to perform in front of others the way an actor performs on a stage.
All to gather attention. All to fill a void that could not be filled by the artifice he surrounded himself with.
He learned that only later. And he learned it through the one who would become his best friend.
Kaden Lightbringer. A man whose surname made him a target for bullies. Yet the red-eyed young man never wavered.
He carried an air of steadiness that drew people in, as if to say that nothing in this world was worthy of his worry.
That was the man who stretched out a sincere hand when Noah was drowning without knowing he was drowning.
He saved him, showed him a different way of seeing. One Noah had already known, somewhere deep down.
But Kaden had this particular ability to make the most complicated things look simple.
So Noah changed and became something more. The admirer of villains. The lover of dangerous women after a special encounter with a woman.
Arriving at that point — as if hitting a certain limit — the world around Ananke fractured like glass thrown against the ground.
Another world emerged from its destruction. One the Goddess knew very well.
Especially when she looked around and found a small, beautiful white-haired boy with crimson eyes, crouching in front of a crying girl, her legs wounded and bleeding.
"Don’t cry." Young Cassius whispered, studying the wound with worry. "Come, let me bring you to my mother. She can heal wounds."
"C-Cassius..." the girl whimpered, her silver eyes brimming with tears, clutching his hand tightly.
Cassius smiled reassuringly. "It will be fine, Keisha. And if you cannot walk I will carry you!"
"Will... will you be alright?"
"Don’t underestimate me. I am Desdemona. I am strong!"
He flexed his nonexistent muscles. Keisha laughed, forgetting her wound for a moment. "Yes! Cassius is the best!"
At her words, the young boy’s face went red. He snapped his head to the side, muttering with embarrassment.
"Come, let’s go, Keisha."
Ananke watched the young Cassius carry a wounded, blushing girl, and finally began to understand the full picture.
"Noah... Cassius... Two worlds..."
The world around paused; then accelerated exponentially, flashing through the events of Cassius’s life like the summary of a book.
From the innocent child with no evil inside — best friend of Keisha, rival of Klaus, the one Natalia had a crush on — to the last born of Desdemona, a young man grown accustomed to darkness.
Then the world of memories fractured, and Ananke whispered her last words before returning to the present.
"Noah and Cassius... are... different... and the same?"
—End of Chapter 18—