Chapter 195: The Mother’s Regret
"Yuri."
The name left her lips like a breath, fragile and trembling, barely audible above the soft whisper of the night wind.
It carried across the balcony, floated over the edge, and dissolved into the darkness of the city below.
No one heard it.
No one but the moon, cold and distant, indifferent to the grief of a queen who had never learned how to be a mother.
Erza’s eyes widened.
Her hand, which had been reaching toward the figure, stopped mid-air.
Her fingers trembled.
Her heart pounded against her ribs with a force that made it hard to breathe.
It was her son.
Yuri.
The one she had hated the most in Atlantis. The one she had blamed for every misfortune that had befallen her, every opportunity she had lost, every dream that had turned to ash in her mouth.
His face, those violet eyes, that black hair, that small, solemn mouth, was burned into her memory, not with love, but with something far uglier.
"Yuri?" she whispered again, disbelieving.
"How?"
Her voice cracked on the word.
She could not hide her shock, could not mask it with the cold composure she had worn for centuries.
This was not an enemy she could freeze.
This was not a threat she could crush.
This was her son, standing on her balcony, watching her with eyes that held neither anger nor forgiveness.
Her mind raced, trying to make sense of what she was seeing.
It was impossible.
Yuri was in Atlantis, across dimensions, across worlds, across the vast, uncrossable distance that separated her mortal life from her immortal one.
He could not be here. He should not be here.
And yet the figure stood before her, small and still, his black hair stirring in the night breeze, his violet eyes reflecting the moonlight like twin pools of frozen light.
Then she saw it.
The figure was made of ice.
Not flesh nor bone. Not even blood.
Ice, crystalline and pale, gleaming like polished glass, catching the moonlight and scattering it into fragments.
The edges were sharp, the details precise, but there was no warmth in him, no breath, no heartbeat.
He was a statue.
A sculpture.
A creation of her own power, formed without her knowledge, shaped by the guilt she had been trying to bury for years.
Her own magic.
Her own ice.
She had created him without realizing it, her power leaking out as her mind drifted to thoughts she had locked away in the deepest chambers of her heart.
She had been looking at the moon, thinking of Yuuta, remembering the hope in his red eyes. But somewhere beneath that, deeper and darker, in the place where her regrets lived, she had been thinking of Yuri.
The son she had rejected.
The son she had treated worse than she had ever treated anyone.
The son whose only crime was being born from her womb.
And her magic had responded.
It only happened when she was consumed by great regret.
When the walls she had built around her heart crumbled, and the guilt she had suppressed for years came flooding back like water through a broken dam. She had not meant to create him. She had not even realized she was doing it.
Her power had simply... escaped, shaping itself into the image of the child she had failed.
But there he stood.
A statue of ice. A monument to her failure as a mother.
A reminder of everything she had done wrong and could never undo.
She sighed, her breath fogging in the cold air.
It was just an accident.
Just her power slipping through cracks in her control. She should destroy it. Erase it. Melt it back into nothing before Yuuta or Elena saw, before questions were asked, before the fragile peace of her small family was shattered.
She stepped toward the statue, raising her hand.
Ready to erase him.
but before she do, befroe she destroy him,
Her eyes filled with tears.
She remembered.
She remembered how badly she had been treated him. From the moment of his birth, from the moment she had first held him in her arms and seen his father’s face staring back at her, she had blamed him for everything.
For the Sexual assault.
For the loss of her chance to becoming God.
For the shame that had followed her like a shadow, whispering that she was weak, that she was broken, that she would never be whole again.
She had looked at his face, so like Yuuta’s, so like the man who had taken something precious from her, and she had seen only sin.
Only violation.
Only pain.
She had not seen a child.
She had not seen her son.
She had seen a punishment.
And she had treated him accordingly.
She had been so terrible to him. Terrible in ways she could never undo, never apologize for, never make right. She had looked into his violet eyes, her eyes, her mother’s eyes, her grandmother’s eyes, and felt nothing but cold, bitter resentment.
Her hand lowered.
She could not destroy him.
Not even a statue.
Not even ice.
She knelt before him, her knees pressing against the cold stone of the balcony. The impact sent a jolt through her legs, but she did not feel it. She felt nothing except the weight of her guilt, pressing down on her shoulders like a physical thing.
Her tears fell freely now, rolling down her cheeks, dripping onto the ice at her feet. They made small, soft sounds, tap, tap, tap, like the ticking of a clock counting down the seconds she had wasted.
She reached out and touched his hair.
The ice was cold, colder than the air around her, cold enough to burn if she held on too long. But she did not pull away.
She let her fingers rest against the frozen strands, imagining that they were soft, imagining that he was real, imagining that she could go back in time and be the mother she should have been.
"Yuri," she whispered, her voice breaking. "My son."
She paused, struggling to find the words. How could she apologize to a statue? How could she confess to ice? How could she make amends with a creation of her own guilt?
"You must hate your mother," she whispered to the stone statue.
The carved face offered no answer.
"You must hate me so much."
"There is no way you don’t hate me, After everything I’ve done."
Tears slid down her cheeks as she stared at the likeness of the son she had failed.
"I deserve it."
Her fingers trembled as they brushed against the cold stone.
"I am a terrible mother."
The words echoed through the empty chamber.
"From the moment you were born, I never gave you the love you deserved. I looked at your flaws before I looked at your heart. I judged you before I understood you."
A bitter laugh escaped her lips.
"What kind of mother does that?"
More tears fell.
"I treated you like a criminal. Like an enemy. Like something to be endured rather than a child who needed his mother’s love."
She lowered her head.
"You spent your life trying to earn affection that should have been yours from the very beginning."
Her voice broke.
"And I was too blind to see it."
The statue remained silent.
Erza smiled sadly.
"Even now, you won’t answer me."
She pressed a trembling hand against the cold stone.
"But if you truly hate me... I cannot blame you, Yuri."
The statue did not respond.
It could not.
But Erza kept speaking, because the words had been buried for too long, locked away behind walls of ice and pride and fear.
And now they were clawing their way out, demanding to be heard, demanding to be acknowledged.
She touched his chin, tilting his face toward hers. The ice was smooth beneath her fingers, cold and unyielding.
He looked exactly like Yuuta.
There was no doubt about it.
The same black hair, dark as ink, falling across his forehead in soft waves. The same shape of the jaw, the same stubborn set of the mouth, the same line of the nose.
She had hated this face. She had hated it so much that she had turned that hatred against her son, punishing him for the sins of his father.
But somewhere, in the depths of her cold heart, she had also loved it.
She had loved it in the quiet moments, when the hatred faded and only the loneliness remained. She had loved it when she thought no one was watching, when she held Elena and wondered what it would be like to hold Yuri the same way.
She rubbed his chin gently, her thumb tracing the line of his jaw.
"I remember," she whispered, "when you were three years old. You tried to call me ’Mama.’ Just like Elena does now."
Her voice broke.
"You reached up with your small hands, and you opened your mouth, and you said." She stopped, unable to continue.
The memory was sharp, painful, as fresh as if it had happened yesterday. She saw him standing before her throne, his small body trembling with the effort of standing still. She saw his lips part. She saw the hope in his violet eyes, hope that she, his mother, would look at him with something other than coldness.
But she had not.
"I slapped you," she said, her voice barely a whisper. "I told you to call me ’Mother.’ I said it coldly, ’Do not ever call me Mama. You were born by accident. You were a mistake.’"
She hugged the statue.
Her arms wrapped around the ice, cold seeping through her clothes, through her skin, through her bones. The chill was immediate and merciless, but she did not care. She held him as if he were real, as if he were the son she had failed, as if somehow the warmth of her regret could melt the years between them.
"You were never a mistake, my son," Erza whispered through her tears. "You were never a mistake."
She pressed her forehead against the frozen statue.
"I am sorry, Yuri," she sobbed into the ice.
"I am so sorry, my son. I was a terrible mother. I was cruel. I was cold. I blamed you for something that was not your fault."
The words poured out of her, unstoppable now, carried by guilt and grief and a love she had never allowed herself to feel.
She had blamed him for the sins of his father.
She had punished him for a crime he had not committed.
She had looked at his face and seen only pain, never seeing the child who just wanted his mother to love him.
Until now.
Until Yuuta had awakened something in her. Until love had cracked the ice around her heart. Until she had finally, finally realized how wrong she had been.
The statue did not move. It could not hug her back. It could not tell her that she was forgiven. It could not say the words she longed to hear, It’s okay, Mother. I understand. I forgive you.
But Erza held it anyway, kneeling on the cold balcony, weeping into the frozen shoulder of a son who was worlds away.
She pulled back, her hands cupping the statue’s face, her thumbs brushing the frozen cheeks.
"I blamed you because you reminded me of him. Because you had his hair, his face, his blood in your veins. Because every time I looked at you, I saw the night that ruined me, the night that took everything from me."
Her voice dropped to a whisper.
"But it was not your fault. None of it was your fault. You were just a child. You were just my son. And I should have loved you."
She pressed her forehead against the statue’s.
"I am sorry, Yuri."
Her voice trembled.
"I am so sorry."
The statue did not answer.
It never could.
Only then did Erza realize the cruelest part of all.
She had spent years refusing to hear her son.
Now, when she finally had the courage to speak, there was no one left to listen.
A broken sob escaped her lips.
The night was silent. The moon watched. The city slept.
And Erza knelt on the balcony, holding an ice statue of the son she had wronged, weeping for a love she had never given.
To be continued.
