Chapter 345: Norx Tried To Let Go Of His Resentment
Julian closed his eyes for a single second, letting out a slow, steady breath. The anger in his chest settled into a profound, heavy quiet. When he opened his eyes again, the specs of gold and white in his blue gaze shone with the absolute clarity of the deity.
"So, it is my suffering you wish to see?" Julian asked quietly.
Norx didn’t respond, his bloody eyes locking onto the Saint.
"For thousands of years, you have made me go through one tragic cycle after another," Julian continued, and it was entirely Alias speaking now, the ancient voice resonating through the dark void. "Is that not enough? I have had to watch them both die. I have watched my other half and my lover die a tragic death in every single lifetime, never getting to simply love each other in peace. Never getting to see their hairs turn grey. I have watched them bleed, and I have ached."
Alias took a step forward, his golden robes of memory overlapping with Julian’s blue ones.
"Do you think I am not resentful right now because I am incapable of feeling resentment? No, Norx. Even now, after all of this... I do not hate you. I do not blame you. I have taken all of this agony as my punishment."
His heart ached as he said those words, and a single tear fell from his eye, gleaming with a pure, liquid gold as it vanished into the darkness.
"I have taken all your hatred and your curses, and I have done nothing to stop them because it is my atonement. My atonement for being blind. For not seeing you when you were standing right by my side. For not seeing your feelings." Alias’s voice remained soft, carrying a heartbreaking weight. "But I love Theo. You know this. And instead of truly laughing and rejoicing at our tragic ends over and over, I know the truth, Norx. I know that you are actually suffering harder than any of us when you see us reunite in a new lifetime."
"Shut up!" Norx hissed, his hands fisting against his sides, his shadow flaring violently.
"In each life, you force yourself to watch," Alias continued, refusing to break eye contact. "You get to see me hold the man I love. You watch me kiss him, embrace him, and smile at him with a warmth that will never belong to you. You watch our happiness, and though you anticipate the tragedy you authored, that part still hurts you. It haunts you. That is why your hatred has to be refueled in each lifetime, and that is why you can never truly let go of your resentment!"
"I said shut up!"
With a raw, animalistic roar, Norx tackled Julian down to the floor of the void. He drove his fist downward, missing Julian’s head and punching the nothingness of the dark floor, the shockwave vibrating through the pocket realm.
He hated to admit it, but the words clawed at his throat because they were entirely, brutally right.
Norx trembled, his hands pressing into the void as he hovered over Julian. He looked down into the scholar’s blue eyes, staring directly into Alias’s soul with red, bloody, teary eyes.
"You have... no idea what I’ve been through." He gasped out, his body and voice trembling in rage.
But when he spoke again, his voice was cracked, broken, and completely stripped of its divine arrogance.
"All I ever wanted... was for you to love me," Norx confessed, the words ripping out of him like a mortal wound. "Why did you... Why did you love everyone else but me? Alias... do you even understand my resentment? Do you understand how I feel?"
Julian looked up into the bleeding eyes of the fallen god, and for the first time across a thousand years, he saw something he had completely missed when he watched the slide of his past lives glowing in Norx’s gaze.
Norx had walked the earth. In every single cycle, he hadn’t just been a distant spectator in the abyss. He had crawled out of the darkness despite being cast as a fallen god who could never ascend back to the heavens; he had taken human form and approached Alias’s soul under dozens of different guises.
He had tried to be his best friend. His childhood companion. His betrothed. An admirer in the shadows. A savior in a time of crisis. He had professed his love over and over, trying in every single lifetime just to have one cycle where he could feel loved by Alias. He felt, if he approached first, if he spoke up, unlike the silence he had retained back when they were together in the heavens, something might change.
But each time, without fail, Theo’s soul would enter the picture. And every single time, Alias’s eyes were instantly averted from Norx, drawn toward his true partner by an invisible, cosmic thread.
It had repeated itself over and over, breaking Norx’s spirit until nothing was left but rot.
"It didn’t matter how many times I tried to let go of my resentment," Norx whispered, a bloody tear falling from his cheek. "It didn’t matter how many times I tried to let go of my hatred and start over... I was never the one. I was never your one and only, Alias. You never picked me!"
Julian felt the cold drop of the bloody tear hit his own cheek. The revelation sent a profound ache through his core.
"That..." Julian whispered, his mortal identity anchoring his voice as he looked at the weeping god. "Isn’t that because you cursed us to repeat this tragedy?"
Norx let out a broken, ragged breath, his head dropping as the final confession left his lips.
"I never cursed you," Norx sobbed, the truth echoing through the empty void. "It is your fate, written in the stars, to fall in love with him over and over. All I did was engineer your tragedies. I thought... I thought if I broke the world, I could change that fate. But... I never could."
Julian went silent. The realization that Norx had tried—that he had actually tried to let go of his resentment and start over multiple times across these thousand years—touched his heart deeply. And it touched Alias’s soul as well.
In the end, this catastrophic, world-ending god was simply suffering because of love.
Julian slowly lifted his arms and wrapped them around Norx’s trembling shoulders. He hugged the fallen god tight, even though he knew a simple embrace would do no good, and he knew it would be cruel to simply tell a broken being to move on after a millennium of agony. A thousand years was no small time when it was spent crawling around this barren world in search of warmth.
"Norx," Julian called, speaking entirely of his own mortal will now, and not as the ancient deity Alias. "Will you... Join my family?"
Norx’s entire body froze. His tear-stained eyes widened in absolute shock.
What?
