Chapter 119: The Regent
Lucy remained frozen in shock. Her feet felt unbearably heavy, and all she wanted was to collapse and wake up from this nightmare.
"You mean... mother? You, and Sirius? How is that even possible?"
Neither Sirius nor Iris could give her an explanation. They simply shared what they felt.
"You’ve experienced it before, during the Awakening. You had to relive your entire life on repeat, to the point of nearly going insane."
Lucy nodded, recalling the ordeal.
Sirius continued.
"Well... the oldest memory I ever glimpsed was my own birth. There was a doctor, and a woman holding Iris and me in her arms. She had just given birth, and a man was standing behind her, but his image no longer comes back to me."
He paused.
"That woman looked exactly like the Regent, just as we met her today."
Lucy felt like she was about to faint, then a thought flickered in her mind.
"Wait. You’re saying the Regent is your mother, but she doesn’t look older than twenty-five. Are you telling me she had you when she was, what, eleven? It’s not biologically impossible, but it’s completely insane!"
Sirius shook his head. There was something even more unlikely.
"No. She looked exactly the same as she does now. The woman I saw was around twenty-five."
Lucy began counting on her fingers, adding and subtracting numbers.
"Twenty-five plus sixteen... that makes forty-one. But how old is she actually?"
Sirius added, his voice filled with confusion,
"It sounds absurd. You must be thinking we’re mistaken, that maybe she’s a sister, an aunt, or some other relative."
Then, placing a hand over his chest, he continued,
"But I have no doubt. When I saw her, something inside me vibrated. Everything tells me she’s the one who gave us life, as insane as that may sound."
Lucy couldn’t say anything more. Rare were the moments when she saw Sirius display so much emotion, looking so vulnerable.
She glanced at Iris, but she seemed even more shaken than her brother.
Unable to remain standing, Lucy sat down on the floor. Her neurons were firing at full speed, spinning one wild theory after another, until she finally said,
"What if she’s not an ordinary human, but a Master... or even a Transcendent? There must be a Resonance that can halt aging. After all, Resonances exist in every possible form, right?"
This time, Iris spoke.
"No. She’s not an Awakened. I didn’t see the amount of ether one would expect from an Awakened."
Lucy blinked, a far more terrifying image forming in her mind.
"You mean... a Calamity? A Calamity within the Order?"
Sirius looked at her, afraid that it might be the only plausible explanation.
However, Iris rejected the idea.
"No. If that were the case, my Soul’s Eyes would have seen no trace of ether in her soul. But although she has very little, she does possess some. Everything about her was as normal as any ordinary human."
"Wait. She’s not Awakened, she’s not a Calamity, and she’s just as ordinary a human as they come... So what? She holds the secret to eternal youth?"
Lucy was at her limit. She felt madness creeping closer and, for a moment, feared she might start resembling Sirius.
Iris lifted her eyes toward the ceiling and murmured,
"I need answers. I can’t live without them. Who is she really? Why is she here? And above all..."
An extremely dark killing intent began to seep out of Iris.
"A reason not to kill her in the cruelest way possible."
Lucy, despite being accustomed to death, shuddered.
It was normal for Sirius to occasionally let such urges surface, but Iris usually showed nothing at all.
When she glanced at Sirius, she saw that he didn’t react to his sister’s murderous intent.
Fear gripped her.
It wasn’t the first time the twins had shown such coldness.
The last time had been at the orphanage and the orphanage she once believed invincible had ended up collapsing.
One thing became certain for Lucy: if Sirius and Iris had no good reason to stop, they would go all the way.
("They’re really going to kill the Regent. No matter the cost, even if they have to face the Directors.")
Lucy remembered the orphanage. She had stood by their side then. But would she still support them if it meant shaking the Order itself, and through it, throwing all of humanity into chaos?
Praying she wouldn’t have to make such a choice, she stood up, raising her phone toward the sky as if it were the solution to all their problems.
"The internet! If we want answers, the first reflex is to search online. As enforcers, we have access to tons of data we might as well use it."
Lucy waited for the two of them to stand before she began typing on her smartphone, using several keywords such as Regent, Diane, Homo Nova, the Order.
On regular sites, she found very little information about the Regent, aside from the fact that she was supposed to coordinate the actions of the five bureaus.
It was only after accessing the Order’s database that she found something, in the enforcer’s memento. On a page dedicated to her, it read:
"The Regent’s role is to coordinate the five bureaus of the Order. As such, she holds a status higher than a Director and just below the Absolutes.
Since the creation of the Order, the Regency has been a hereditary and matriarchal position.
The heiress of the Nova family is automatically appointed Regent upon reaching adulthood, and the prefix Homo is added to her name, a living symbol of equality between the Awakened and the non-Awakened.
The Regent is required to remain an ordinary human and is forbidden to awake.
The current Regent is named Diane Homo Nova and is the twelfth Regent of the Order."
After Lucy finished reading, Sirius asked if there was more, but the enforcer’s memento said nothing else.
Just as all hope seemed lost, Lucy remembered what had been said during the ceremony and exclaimed,
"Of course! How did I not think of it sooner?"
She began scratching her head and spinning around as if possessed, piquing Iris and Sirius’s curiosity as they asked what she had forgotten.
"Oh right! You don’t remember anything that was said during the ceremony?"
Sirius and Iris looked at each other before shaking their heads.
"Well, after the Regent’s entrance and once all the new recruits had received their coats and badges, there was an explanation of the different sections of HQ. And before they showed us the dormitories, they mentioned that there was an archive room containing the entire history of the Order, for those who were interested."
Sirius and Iris’s eyes lit up, but doubt quickly followed.
"That kind of information must be classified and censored. There’s no way it would be accessible to mere initiates."
Lucy gave a sly smile, as if correcting Sirius brought her genuine pleasure.
"Which bureau do you belong to?"
"Archive and Exploration," Sirius replied.
Lucy puffed out her chest.
"The plan is simple and ingenious. If, at the end of your one-year training, you’re assigned to the archive room, you’ll be able while doing your job to research the Regent."
Sirius vaguely grasped the idea, but one term confused him.
"One-year training? Assignment?"
Lucy tapped her forehead.
"So you didn’t hear anything at all!"
The twins shook their heads, forcing Lucy to recount everything that had happened that day, as well as their schedule for their first year as enforcers.
---
Meanwhile, while the twins were lost in their own world, at the Regent’s apartments, Diane had just returned from the ceremony.
She sat down at her piano as usual, her two butlers preparing tea for her.
However, as soon as she began to play, fragments of the ceremony flooded her thoughts, preventing her from continuing.
Sensing her distress, one of the butlers approached her.
"Your Grace?"
Diane took a moment to react before speaking.
"Summon Gramm and Rioken. I have a personal request to make of them urgently."
