Chapter 830: Katharina is very dramatic.
The revelation hadn’t exploded in the hall like a bomb.
It would have been easier if it had been like that. Bombs were simple. They exploded, destroyed something, and it was over.
That, on the other hand, kept happening.
The information remained alive in the air, swirling among the people, bouncing from one side to the other, returning with more force every time someone tried to organize the family tree in their head.
Sapphire and Sepphirothy were sisters.
Not just sisters.
Twins.
Literal twins, born from the same origin, separated by pride, war, magic, trauma, family denial, and an absurd amount of bad decisions that apparently no one found necessary to explain beforehand.
Katharina had been walking in circles around Sapphire for almost five minutes.
It wasn’t a calm circle. It was the kind of investigative circle made by someone trying to decide if their own mother was a criminal, an idiot, a victim of cosmic circumstances, or all of the above at the same time.
She analyzed Sapphire from top to bottom, then looked at Sepphirothy, then back to Sapphire, then to Sepphirothy again, as if the similar features on their faces had become offensive for having stayed hidden until now.
Ada was standing near Raphaeline, her mother, and both had the same expression of someone trying to put together a puzzle with pieces from five different boxes.
Roxanne and Stella, on the other hand, had decided that this level of drama required sugar and were sitting eating sweets like spectators of a particularly good play.
Katharina stopped in front of Sapphire with her hands on her hips.
"I just want to make it very clear that someone here owes me an extremely detailed explanation."
Sapphire, sitting in an armchair with a dangerously calm expression, looked at her daughter.
"Don’t start."
"Don’t start?" repeated Katharina, pointing at Sepphirothy. "Mom, I just found out she is my aunt."
’What an annoying girl,’ thought Sepphirothy, sitting with an irritating elegance on the other side of the hall, merely taking a sip of tea as if that mess had absolutely nothing to do with her.
The problem was that it had everything to do with her.
And that only made Katharina angrier.
"Technically," said Sepphirothy, "yes."
Katharina turned slowly to her.
"Don’t help."
Stella popped a sweet into her mouth and commented, without much haste:
"I think she’s helping. Just not the way you want."
Roxanne nodded, chewing calmly.
"It’s informative help."
"Are you two eating in a moment of family crisis?" asked Ada, still trying to process.
Roxanne looked at the sweet in her own hand and then at Ada.
"That’s exactly why we’re eating."
Raphaeline, next to her daughter, kept her hand on her chin, her eyes narrowed, analyzing Sapphire and Sepphirothy with an almost academic seriousness.
"Now that it’s been said, the resemblance is very obvious now that Sapphire’s face seems to have rejuvenated about fifteen years."
Ada looked at her, offended.
"Mom."
"What? It’s true, she looks much more like Sepphirothy."
"That doesn’t help."
"I didn’t say it helped. I said it was true."
Katharina ignored all of them and went back to circling Sapphire, faster now, as if walking in circles could speed up the digestion of the revelation.
"I grew up in this world seeing her. I saw Sepphirothy several times as my husband’s mother. I heard everyone talk about her as if she were a distant lunatic, an old acquaintance of mom’s, a dangerous woman, a figure from a complicated past. And no one, absolutely no one, thought to say: oh, by the way, she’s your mother’s twin sister."
Sapphire closed her eyes slowly.
"The situation was more complex than that."
"No, no, no." Katharina raised a finger. "Complex is infernal politics. Complex is a demonic marriage with several wives (Our case), magical contracts, and half a dozen ancient bloodlines. This right here is basic family information. A twin sister falls into the category of things you mention before dinner."
Sepphirothy set her teacup on the table.
"We weren’t exactly close, and I changed my face."
Katharina looked at her in disbelief.
"You are twins. That should come with some kind of twin thing."
Sapphire opened her eyes and stared at her daughter.
"I will repeat, I changed a lot of my appearance."
"Yes, and apparently you also changed the part of your memory where you tell your children that there’s a hidden aunt in the world."
Stella almost choked on her sweet trying to hold back her laughter.
Roxanne patted her back, but was also laughing quietly, which didn’t help much.
Ada, on the other hand, still seemed trapped in a silent mathematical crisis. She raised a hand, as if she were in a classroom.
"Wait. If Sepphirothy is Sapphire’s sister, and Vergil is Sepphirothy’s son."
Katharina stopped walking.
The entire hall seemed to realize too late the dangerous direction of that sentence.
Ada continued, already regretting it, but unable to stop.
"And Sapphire is married to Vergil."
Katharina slowly turned her head to Sapphire.
Sapphire glared at Ada as if she had just opened a portal to chaos out of pure irresponsibility.
Katharina pointed at her mother with an expression of exaggerated horror.
"Incest!"
"Katharina," said Sapphire, instantly.
"No, worse!" Katharina took a step back, holding her head with both hands. "Vergil is your nephew. If Vergil is your nephew and you are my mother, then Vergil is my... my..."
She froze, staring at the ceiling as if the gods had placed an impossible riddle above her head.
"My cousin? My stepdad? My political husband? My uncle by marriage? What is he to me now?" Katharina began to have a crisis.
Roxanne raised her hand, still seated.
"I vote we don’t try to answer that."
Stella agreed immediately.
"Me too. This family tree has thorns, and we’re all demons."
Raphaeline, who until then had been trying to maintain some composure, muttered:
"Yeah, kind of fuck it, right? As far as I know, you had a threesome with your mother the other day, Katharina, I don’t understand all this sudden concern."
Ada turned to her in despair.
"Mom, for the love of anything, don’t make it worse."
Raphaeline looked at her, "Do you want me to mention that you, Ada, and Katharina were having an orgy with Vergil a few days ago?"
Ada felt her face turn red.
Katharina pointed first at Sapphire, then at Sepphirothy, then at the empty space where Vergil should be, and her expression became increasingly dramatic.
"So you’re saying that all this time I was living in a family where my stepdad is the son of my secret aunt, my mother is his mother’s twin, my aunt is also my mother-in-law by some demonic logic, and no one thought this deserved a meeting?"
Sapphire stood up from the armchair.
"Katharina."
Katharina continued, completely ignoring the warning.
"No, because now everything makes sense. The whole family is too beautiful, too powerful, and too problematic. It was obvious there was some hidden genealogical crime."
"Katharina, shut up," said Sapphire.
The order came dry, direct, and in the exact tone that made ancient generals bow their heads.
Katharina, however, was her daughter, which meant she possessed the survival instinct of a wet spoon when it came to provoking her own mother.
She closed her mouth for two seconds.
Then she pointed at Sepphirothy.
"Aunt."
Sepphirothy raised an eyebrow.
Katharina pointed at Sapphire.
"Mom."
Sapphire narrowed her eyes.
Katharina pointed to the door.
"Vergil."
Roxanne whispered to Stella:
"She’s going to die."
Stella replied, also whispering:
"But she’ll die right."
Katharina took a deep breath, as if she were about to make a historical accusation.
"Cursed family."
Sapphire brought a hand to her face and massaged the bridge of her nose.
"I’ve fought gods, killed popes, survived ancient wars, been kidnapped by Deadly Sins, and yet this moment is managing to be the most exhausting of my week."
Sepphirothy, to everyone’s surprise, smiled.
"Was she always like this?"
Sapphire looked at her sister.
"She overthinks."
Katharina was indignant.
"I am trying to defend family morality."
Ada let out a nervous laugh.
"Katharina, there is no family morality here. There is a family tree on fire. And honestly, fuck it, right?"
Raphaeline nodded with a worrying calmness.
"Exactly, fuck it."
Roxanne finally put down her sweet and leaned forward, interested.
"The important question is: Does Vergil care about this? I don’t think so, in fact, I still think he’s going to stick his dick inside Sepphirothy at the first opportunity, and in Lilith right after."
Sapphire and Sepphirothy exchanged glances.
The silence answered for them.
Stella nodded, "Good point, and I agree."
It was at that moment that the door opened.
He stopped after two steps, observing the absurd layout of the room. Sapphire was standing, her patience visibly at its limit.
Sepphirothy looked far too calm, which was almost always a sign that she was silently amusing herself.
Ada was red, Raphaeline looked too innocent to be innocent, Stella and Roxanne were eating sweets, and Katharina was in the center of it all with the posture of a judge about to condemn half the family.
Vergil looked at one, then at another, and finally stared at Katharina. "What is going on here?"
Katharina turned to him slowly, as if she had just found the final piece of her trial. Her face lit up with renewed indignation, and Sapphire immediately realized that nothing good would come out of it. Her daughter pointed at Vergil with an almost tragic seriousness.
"Did you know that your mother and mine are sisters?"
The entire hall went silent.
Ada brought both hands to her face.
Roxanne stopped chewing.
Stella raised her eyebrows, clearly curious to see how Vergil would react.
Raphaeline tilted her head, interested.
Sapphire closed her eyes, like someone awaiting the inevitable impact of a small, annoying, and entirely avoidable catastrophe.
Vergil looked at Katharina for a few seconds.
Then he looked at Sepphirothy.
Then at Sapphire.
Then he looked back at Katharina, without showing any surprise.
"Yes?"
Katharina blinked.
Vergil frowned slightly, as if her question was much stranger than the information itself. "Like, it was kind of obvious, wasn’t it? Especially after Lilith called Sapphire ’daughter’."
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