Chapter 478: Found
In the real world, Cecilia had read papers from researchers discussing and speculating the existence of DNA. It was a lot of chemistry and only a few magic researchers had ever managed to sequence the difference between one living thing and another.
The work had started with a simple question. How to break creatures down to the smallest of the small, identifying every single atom, every invisible building block.
They thought, if every person had a completely unique fingerprint, then what more identifying things could be found deep within their body?
There must be something. Something akin to a biological instruction manual. A hereditary material no living organism could skip. A code written into the very fabric of flesh and blood.
But in her world, people who were able to even research these kinds of things were far and few between. And they were also rarely human.
Long-lived species, old beast scholars with centuries to dedicate to a single question, they were the ones pushing the boundaries of knowledge. Everyone else was too busy surviving.
Her world was still barely able to produce a working, accurate clock. So these researchers felt, always, that they were reaching too far in their speculation.
Even if they were able to use magic to enhance their vision, even if they could create a magical machine to prove without a sliver of doubt that something like DNA truly existed, which Cecilia had believed it did for a long time now, there was no practical, effective way to use it.
Just to describe how obscure this niche research was in her world, she had only ever heard one person other than herself use the words "deoxyribonucleic acid" in a sentence. Eastiel. And that man was as much, or even more of a nerd than she was.
They needed to pour money and time into so many other things first. Medicine, infrastructure, even magic, before they could dream of developing tools for this exact research. Perhaps in another two hundred years, someone would pick up where those early pioneers had left off. Perhaps.
Cecilia had read many things since she arrived in this world. Books and journals and online databases, confirming research and speculations from the world she came from.
She had been incredibly happy when finding some of them proven, and fascinated when a lot of them were contested or outright debunked.
To her, this world was a personal brand of paradise. A place where knowledge was abundant, where questions had answers, where the invisible could be made visible with machines and science and time.
Until now.
Until the knowledge she had absorbed in this paradise helped prove something her own world couldn’t. Here, in a world where technology defined the future, a single sheet of paper could tell her what centuries of magic could not.
She had sisters.
She was someone’s family...
...
...
...
BUT WHY THE CASSIANS?!
OH MY GODDDDDDDD THEY’RE SCARY AS FUUUUUUUCK—
She would rather be biological with a random normal person than these TWO LUNATICS.
Deep down, she actually had some hunch. When she was around fourteen, she had read the details about the case of the Cassian King and Queen. The Queen’s kidnapping, the gruesome discovery, the missing baby. The King’s alleged suicide.
She had calculated her own age against the timeline. She had read the descriptions of the parents, of the twin daughters left behind, and then she had looked in the mirror.
She had realized....
....She had buried the thought so deep underground she forgot about it until now.
"This... is abrupt, we know." Ivy stood up, smoothing her blue dress with hands that trembled almost imperceptibly. Isla rose beside her, the same motion, the same moment. "You can take your time."
"This is how you contact us directly." Isla pressed a card into Cecilia’s hand, her fingers lingering just a moment too long. "We will be..."
Cecilia flinched.
Both sisters had suddenly, genuinely choked up. Tears welled in two pairs of blue eyes at the exact same instant, spilling over at the exact same angle, and God, they were so creepily synchronized it was almost unbearable to witness.
"You can even contact us at three in the morning," Ivy said, dabbing at the thin layer of tears with her fingertip.
"Okay, we’ll go... suing a game company for taking away our 3D husband now..." Isla managed a sad, wobbling smile. "See you again soon."
What...?
This felt... a bit... anti-climactic...?
Cecilia watched the two women turn away, waving their hands wholesomely at her, their matching blue dresses swishing in unison.
Yet she was still bluescreening.
Her brain was still trying to process the DNA report, the revelation, the impossible reality of having sisters—Cassian sisters at that?!—and they were just... leaving? Were they trying not to pressure her? Were they just—
"WAIT!"
Cecilia abruptly stood up, her chair scraping against the stone floor.
The two women turned back, stopping in their tracks. Their teary eyes widened. Their hands dropped to their sides.
"Yes...?"
Cecilia froze.
What... what was she going to say? That she was sorry she was lost? That she was sorry their... their mother had died?
That she was sorry she had been stolen from a womb that had been ripped open, that she had lived while their mother had not, that she had grown up an orphan in another world entirely while they had spent decades searching for a baby—
Everything hit her at once.
Her real mother was murdered. Stomach torn open as she was stolen from the dying body. She was that child. She was that baby. Her real mother—
A woman she had never met and would never meet somehow blurred in her mind and took shape, joining with the image of Summer Silver.
The woman who had raised her. The woman who had loved her.
Both were murdered. Both were taken from her by violence she couldn’t stop.
Immediately, she blocked everything back. The walls slammed down—the same walls she had built in the real world, the same walls that had kept her standing through death and everything that had come after. She forced herself back into composure.
But she still couldn’t speak a single word.
"Lesser Goddess..." Ivy gently asked, tear-streaked. "Are you okay?"
Cecilia’s eyes faltered. What they had been through—was it all because of her?
Had her disappearance destroyed this family the way Summer’s death had destroyed her?
"Take a deep breath," Isla said, her voice soft and steady despite the tears still clinging to her lashes. "You can do it."
These two... why... why did they suddenly look so much like her? The shape of their eyes. The curve of their jaws. The way their brows furrowed with concern—
"Now, you can sit. Take it easy." Ivy couldn’t help herself—a small sob broke through her composure, and she pressed her hand to her mouth.
"Yeah, w-we’re sorry." Isla smoothed out the air around Cecilia’s cheek with her hands. "We’re really not good at these kinds of things. It’s our fault, alright...?"
Her eyes had gone glassy again, mirroring her sister’s, the tears spilling over.
Cecilia slowly nodded.
And then—
She moved.
She crossed the distance between them and wrapped her arms around both women at once, pulling them into an embrace. She held on like they might disappear if she let go.
They didn’t disappear.
They embraced her back. Tight. Instinctive.
Ivy’s arms wrapped around her shoulders. Isla’s wrapped around her waist—
"Iris—ohhh dear siste—" Ivy broke down completely, her composure shattering into open, ugly sobs.
"We finally found you—Iris—aahhh..." Isla rubbed Cecilia’s back with vigorous, circular motions, snorting and sobbing at the same time, her tears soaking into the shoulder of Cecilia’s blouse.
Iris...?
Was that... her name?
Her real name?
Eastiel stood with his lion tail wrapped around his own leg, his ears drooping with the weight of the moment. His throat bobbed as he swallowed hard, watching his girlfriend discover her family in the arms of two weeping strangers.
Damon had risen too, his arms crossed tightly over his chest, his jaw set, but his eyes were wet. He didn’t wipe them.
Anton, the old tiger, stood with his massive hands clasped before him, tears streaming openly down his face.
None of them spoke. There was nothing to say. The sunroof held only the sound of three sisters crying, and the men who had helped bring them together stood silent witness to the miracle.
Cecilia started to cry.
It began as a tremor in her shoulders, a hitch in her breath, and then it broke. A flood of tears she hadn’t known she’d been holding back.
For her real mother, whose face she would never see. For Summer Silver, whose necklace now hung warm against her collarbone.
For the years she had spent alone without knowing she had sisters. For the sisters who had spent those same years searching for a ghost.
"No big emotion, nothing too much is good!" Ivy’s voice cracked as she pulled back, her hands fluttering to Cecilia’s cheeks, wiping tears even as her own continued to fall.
"Good girl, good girl, good girl..." Isla chanted, rubbing Cecilia’s back in frantic, soothing circles, her nose running freely, her composure long since abandoned.
The three of them were a mess, tears and sniffs and trembling smiles, and none of them seemed willing to let go.
Then Cecilia, still hiccuping, still puffy-eyed, looked up at her sisters and asked...
"What 3D husband were you talking about...? Can I come along...?"
...
...
"IVY, PULL UP YOUR TABLET AND SHOW HER OUR BELOVED RAFAYEL—"
"WE ARE GOING TO HAVE THE BEST GAME NIGHT EVER—"
"I’M CALLING ANGELA, WE GOTTA DO THIS TOGETH—"
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