Father was about to attack him ..
A man who had now reached SSS rank.
But he froze completely, When the Engineer spoke words sharper than any sword on this world:
"The child Anna Starlight carries .. "
"Is your child. One of the family you have searched for so desperately, for so long."
"That child... is ****."
Hearing those words,
I watched my father collapse to the ground, broken.
His face twisted in an expression I could not even begin to understand.
The child they wanted him to kill ..
Was his son.
His long-lost family.
"Those words… destroyed me more than anything else ever could."
He was happy ..
So, so happy, because he had found one of us.
He had found his family, Right there, so close all along.
But now ..
He was thrust into an unbearable choice.
"Choose, Abraham Starlight."
Let the child live ..
And the mother would die.
Save your old family .. And kill your new one.
Or let the child die .. And save the mother.
Save your new family .. And kill the old.
"Your answer… will decide their fates."
The Engineer was truly cruel.
A master manipulator.
No ..
He had been manipulating us all along.
From the very beginning.
I clenched my fists so hard my nails dug into my palms, Feeling a fraction of the agony my father must have endured.
Forced to choose between his family.
My father...
The strongest man alive, A man who could destroy the very planet if he wished ...
Yet his sword could not save him now.
Someone... had to die.
"It broke me completely... to the point I felt myself being torn into pieces."
Father sobbed ... Broken beyond repair.
"Can't you just... take me instead?"
he begged.
"Sacrifice me... let them both live instead..."
But fate ..
Fate showed no mercy.
And this was the cruel reality.
The guilt my father bore that day ..
I cannot even begin to imagine it.
No strength could carry him through it.
"That day... I decided to tell her everything."
I was stunned by his decision.
He went to Anna Starlight ... And he told her everything.
Everything from the very beginning.
Every truth.
Every burden.
He laid it all bare before her.
He told her everything.
His old family, the system, the Engineer, the reincarnation ..
How he was a man from the past, How he had been forced into an impossible choice...Between her and his own son.
He expected her to call him a liar.
He expected her to curse him, to hate him,
To tear him down with her words.
In his eyes, He deserved it.
But Anna Starlight… She did none of that.
Instead, she responded with a single word ...
"I understand."
She believed him.
Smiling softly, she placed her hand over her womb ... Over the fragile life growing inside her.
"There's no need to hesitate. The answer is clear."
Even until the end, Abraham Starlight could not understand ..
How she managed to smile through it all.
"The child... our child, must live."
She had been ready to sacrifice herself from the very start.
"Maybe you see him as someone else,"
"But even if he carries memories from another life... this child is our son. He is a piece of both of us."
"Anna..."
"He will live, not as some reincarnated soul..."
"He will live as Frey Starlight."
My father was stunned.
"Frey."
"That will be his name."
That child ...
"Frey Starlight."
Just like that.
On that day, Abraham Starlight made his choice.
He chose his son.
...
...
...
Thus, the days passed.
"Your birth coincided with the war between us and the Ultras ... the War of Light."
A brutal conflict that claimed countless lives.
"Back then, whenever I returned home from the battlefield... I would find him waiting for me."
The Engineer.
That entity Abraham once could never find,
Now hovered near him every day.
The Engineer stayed close.
Always close.
"He's different from you,"
"Different from all of you."
That's what the Engineer told him.
His son's reincarnation ..
Was different from Abraham's own.
"What do you mean?"
Abraham tried to ask, tried to understand ..
But the Engineer refused to say more.
He only said one thing:
His son's arrival would be monumental.
And that his son was unlike anything this world had ever seen.
"His words made me wonder, over and over again... just what are you, my son? How did you write the events of this world with such precision?"
It was a mystery, One that made no sense no matter how deeply he thought about it.
"Son... sometimes I wonder—what exactly are you?"
What kind of being would make an entity like the Engineer treat his arrival with such gravity?
As the war raged, The world itself began to change.
The world... Was preparing.
Preparing for his coming.
"The closer the time drew near, the chattier the Engineer became."
Even that mechanical, cold being started to display something akin to emotion.
"He was completely mad... but I could only play along."
"For the sake of meeting you... my son."
When the time came .. He would finally have all the answers.
The Engineer lingered nearby, never straying far.
As the due date approached, He even coordinated with Abraham to evacuate the entire Starlight estate.
And instead, He filled it with strange things.
"I still remember the day he brought those strange creatures into the palace..."
Statues.
Some massive, others disguised as members of the Starlight family.
"What caught my attention most were three statues standing at the front."
One wore a laughing face,
Another wore a face of sorrow,
And the last ...
A face of pure rage.
All of them unleashed a terrifying pressure.
Especially the one with the angry mask.
He was something far beyond even Maekar Valerion himself.
These beings had come and surrounded Anna Starlight's manor, trembling in anticipation of the moment they had awaited for so long.
"At that time... I couldn't help but wonder if the child about to be born was truly my son."
The world had been turned upside down so much that Abraham Starlight could no longer make sense of anything.
Time kept moving forward, and the closer the moment approached, the more insane the Engineer became.
To the point where he would often mutter incoherently while waiting.
A madness reflected even by the ancient statues he had brought with him.
"What exactly was happening?"
Days and months passed, until finally, the long-awaited day arrived.
On that day, the entire world trembled... even the flow of aura itself shifted.
The aura became denser ... stronger.
As if the world itself was preparing.
On that day... Frey Starlight was born.
His birth changed everything.