Chapter 687: Impossible Choices All Around
Alex descended the stairs leading down into the basement, his hair still wet from the shower, his mind too occupied to bother drying it. Seconds later, he entered the large garage space, lit by panels set into the ceiling, the room lined with rows of cars sitting in patient, gleaming silence.
"Hello, Alex." A melodious, sweet voice greeted him from his left. He turned and found a hazel-haired girl, her eyes bright and warm even with the worry sitting just beneath them.
"Saahira. Good to see you." Alex offered her a soft smile before adding, "Don’t worry too much. The matter is already handled." He walked toward the nearest car as he said it, the lie sitting easily enough on his tongue that no one in the room would have caught it.
Within minutes, they were all seated and moving, Venedikt beside Alex in the front, Andrei and Saahira settled into the back, the four of them pulling away from the guild house and cutting through the passing scenery as they made their way toward Alex’s home.
Saahira was quickly brought up to speed on everything that had happened, and soon enough, Alex revealed the harder truth as well: that Sophia’s pets, the disguised chaos spawns, and her connection to the Chaos legacy would need to be severed entirely for the second assimilation stage to proceed.
Opinions formed behind every set of eyes in the car. No one voiced them. The weight of what had just been said was enough to keep four people silent for the rest of the drive.
As the house drew closer, Alex exhaled a slow breath and braced himself to reveal something that had sat heavy on his chest for years.
"Ven. Andrei." His voice was even, deliberate. "There’s something important I need to share."
Both of them turned their attention toward him fully. Saahira did the same, sensing the shift in the air before either brother had said a word.
"Sir Slavik Makarov is alive," Alex said. "You already know that much, and also know that his current state is no different from a soulless machine, a specialized, powerful asset who carries out the dirty work for Magnus’s family."
"What’s the point of bringing him up?" Andrei’s voice came out rough, almost a growl. "My father is gone to us. Whatever that thing is, it has no real relation to me anymore." Saahira’s hand found his arm, holding on, her concern visible in the tightness of her grip.
"Silence," Venedikt hissed sharply. "Let Brother finish."
"I told you about his condition," Alex continued, his voice steady despite what it was carrying. "But I never told you that his memories could be restored. That his freedom could be bought. At a price."
The shock that moved through both his brothers’ eyes was immediate and total.
Alex had never revealed the full truth before. Magnus had demanded the heart of a Sin General in exchange for releasing Sir Slavik from his chains.
Alex had deliberately kept that detail buried for years because he had not wanted his brothers to spend those same years chasing an impossible price, throwing themselves at a goal that would have demanded everything from them, with no certainty of ever reaching it.
Killing a Sin General was not something either of them could have managed back then, or even now, for that matter.
Now Alex had the heart.
And he had no intention of waiting any longer to say so.
"I have the means to pay that price now," Alex said, after a silence heavy enough to feel physical. "What you choose to do with that is up to you. I’ll leave the decision entirely in your hands."
Andrei’s jaw tightened, the muscle working beneath his skin, his eyes locked on Alex’s face as though searching for some sign that this was a cruel joke.
Saahira’s grip on his arm hadn’t loosened. If anything, it had tightened, her own eyes wide, flicking between the two brothers like she understood, suddenly and completely, that whatever happened next would reshape the family she had chosen to marry into.
Venedikt said nothing for a long moment. His hands, folded calmly in his lap until now, had curled into something tighter, knuckles pale, his composed exterior cracking at exactly one point and nowhere else.
------
"In an unexpected turn of events, a fairly unknown member of the Shadow Oblivion Organization, possibly its leader, though that remains unconfirmed by any official source, intervened in what people have already started calling the Battle for the Human Continent."
The voice carried easily through the modest living room, the broadcast filling the space.
A man with cut, defined features and a light beard sat on the single sofa to the right, while two beautiful women occupied the larger seat in the middle, all three of them fully absorbed in the screen ahead.
The host, an energetic woman with short blonde hair and a thin but pleasant voice, walked through the recent events with the practiced cadence of someone narrating something that made anyone listen closely.
"As impossible as it sounds, he did not simply save the city. His organization’s members went further, ending the miserable existence of the demons who had taken five other cities." She paused, letting the gravity of the claim settle.
"Folks, most impossible of all, he killed a Sin General in one-on-one combat. A feat that, until today, no one believed was even theoretically possible."
The images behind her shifted, the footage cycling through fragments of the battle that had already been replayed millions of times across every feed on the planet.
"It was truly a momentous event, one that will be remembered in history," she continued. "And let’s not forget what he claimed at the end of it all. We only have his word to go on at this point, but we have not seen any major demon activity since the announcement, so it is likely true."
The host continued, her voice settling into the smooth, practiced cadence of someone who had done thousands of these segments and knew exactly how to keep an audience leaning forward.
She next focused on the details of every other individual involved, going through them one by one, her expert opinion delivered with the brisk confidence of someone who had clearly spent the last several hours building this exact segment, cross-referencing footage, consulting whatever sources she had access to, and arriving at conclusions she seemed genuinely eager to share.
"Thank goodness this disaster was avoided," said the woman with piercing gray eyes, her voice heavy with the particular relief of someone who had spent the last several hours genuinely afraid. "I’m so worried for the boys."
"I am too," The woman beside her said, her wavy black hair catching the light from the screen as she leaned slightly into the words. "But our boys are strong. They’ll be fine."
"Kath, you are right, but we still need to make sure they are truly fine," the man said somberly, taking a sip of his tea before continuing. "After all, war changes a soul like nothing else can."
"It’s always a terrible reality to live through, and sure, it’s technically a virtual one, but as we all know, our children, and most of the world for that matter, stopped seeing it as ’just virtual’ a long time ago."
"It’s the second reality," he said calmly, then added with a faint sigh, "and that’s exactly why no one gets to run from it. We only ever experienced little pieces of that world as occasional adventurers, while our boys grew up inside it. They have faced things that would scare the life out of any of us."
"So while I am confident the boys will be fine, I think they need a reason to remember Earth. Something more than just us waiting here for them." That drew a soft chuckle from both women.
"Like we haven’t tried," Kathleen said, her expression settling into something defeated. "Finding those boys good partners is a topic we bring up every single time we are all together, and they simply don’t listen."
"I sometimes wonder if it’s our own nagging that’s pushed them toward living in that game for whole months at a time, only coming back to visit for a single day," she added, a quiet sadness slipping into her voice.
"Sister Kathleen, the year deadline they gave us ends today," Lady Irina said, her tone lifting with something close to jubilation. "So they won’t have much of an excuse left."
"Well, that young man did say a full-scale war is coming," Kathleen grunted. "Which means the boys will have plenty of new excuses to stay buried in the Ancient World indefinitely."
Both women sighed at nearly the same moment.
Then Kathleen’s head snapped up, her eyes lighting with something distinctly mischievous.
"This might be the perfect chance for us," she said, and at Irina’s puzzled look, she pressed on. "We don’t know when those two workaholic sons of ours will ever give us the joy of a daughter-in-law. But we do have Andrei."
"Andrei and Saahira have been dodging us long enough. Now that this war is going to spread across the Ancient World anyway, we might as well use it. We can finally get those two lovebirds to tie the knot and get married." Her smile turned almost devious.
"And maybe, before things truly get heated, convince them to start on a baby," she added, and Irina couldn’t help but exhale, half laugh, half sigh.
"That would be a dream come true for me."
"Yeah, for me too."
"Mom... Aunt..."
A sweet, sleep-thick voice cut through from the staircase on the left, drawing every eye in the room. A young girl stood there, round-eyed, thin-faced, pretty in the unguarded way of someone still quite young, black hair falling loose over one shoulder, her tired features carrying an innocence that hadn’t yet caught up with the conversation she had just walked into.
"What devious little plan are you two cooking up now?"
"Young lady, mind your tongue," Kathleen said, frowning before the frown melted into a smile she couldn’t hold back. "We were just discussing how to turn you into an aunt."
"Ohh?" Surprise flickered across her face before she half-ran, half-stumbled down the stairs and climbed onto the sofa in one hurried motion, nearly losing her footing in the process. "Tell me, what role do I get to play in this?"
