Chương 34: Chapter 33: The Lies of Babylon

With trembling hands, Yuto turned to the next page. Some ink had spread on the paper. It almost looked like blood his father had spilled. In a world where he had no son, where Yuto did not exist, Luke Velkyne, the king of Velkyne, was not the loving father that Yuto remembered. He was just a pitiful man, consumed by a monster whose name was loneliness. The next page continued in an even more desperate handwriting. [This palace ceased to be home after my wife died. It now feels like an enormous coffin.] [With no wife and no heir, the only thing left to me is this kingdom itself. But how cruel a land Callisto is! The Constellations wage war based on their moods, and humans die out like toys trapped in their palms.] [Nothing is right. I cannot even say for sure where things began to go wrong. A younger me once believed he had understood the things that needed correction, that I would set everything right in the world. But I am powerless. And I have nobody left.] [If at least I'd had a child, that child could have become my reason to change the world. To keep striving. But there is no blood left that is my own in this world. So who should I be working to make the world a better place for?] [Oh, Velkyne. My Velkyne, my kingdom. My people... Is it for them that I should throw myself into the fire of passion, to be consumed as firewood, to correct the way things are? A past me would certainly have done so. But now... Now I'm...] [As someone who sits on the throne, I am surrounded by vassals. When I walk the streets, countless subjects come out to see me and call my name. Why, then, am I so lonely?] [Thousands of eyes watch me at any given moment, but I feel no warmth from any of them. Silence is my only companion in the bedroom.] [The death of my wife did something to me. This castle was suddenly too big, and I had lost my way. If only... If only I had an heir. A child to call me "Father." I could imagine their laughter filling these cold halls. And then, perhaps, the terrible solitude would not slowly drive me mad.] Yuto's eyes trembled with every turn of the page. Slowly, he flipped through the weight of loneliness that his father had left behind. Every page was packed with maddened agony. It broke Yuto's heart to pieces. [Ahh!] The handwriting changed. The despair and desolation suddenly changed, replaced by hope and joy. [It is the great guardian Constellation of Velkyne! He has recognized my seclusion!] [Callisto is only an arena that exists for the amusement of those beings in the sky who enjoy the pain of the mortals. But even in a world like this, salvation exists!] [Nothing is eternal in Callisto, but Babylon. Babylon is different!] Babylon? Yuto had never heard of such a place. Puzzled, he turned another page. [The Broken Star has whispered to me! Babylon is a paradise for the soul where only a few tormented souls from Callisto may go!] [Time does not pass in Babylon. There is no goodbye. No misfortune, only happiness. It is paradise for the soul, where everything one hopes for can come true.] [My wife waits for me there. We can even have a child, something never granted to us in Callisto!] Yuto's eyes trembled. His father in the previous life had made his roots firm in the real world thanks to his son. But in this world, the man had been driven out of his mind by the desire for a child he could never have, and by the loneliness. It was making him irrational.

[There, I will join my wife and our child in eternal rest.] [I wish to go there. I must! There is nothing left for me in this world. The Constellations are destroying it, but there is nothing I can do about it as a single individual.] [However... However... I am hesitant to end my own life. If nobody depended on me, I would do so without delay. But I am the king. I have so many subjects, subjects which might be compared to my children.] Each page was a new contradiction now.

Proof that Luke Velkyne was slowly and completely losing his mind. [How can I make my departure to Babylon free of regret? How can I save my people?] [The Broken Star has given me the answer to this problem that has burned in my mind for the longest time. The Broken Star is merciful, and promises to guide not only me, but every single subject of my kingdom to Babylon as well!] No... Yuto was unable to hide his shock. He expected a terrible end, one that he would never be able to accept.

But at the same time, he prayed desperately that his prediction was wrong. [Babylon is the ideal world, a place where only the soul may go after the body is abandoned on Callisto. In order to go there, one must first die here.] [As the king of Velkyne, I hold in my hands the lives of all my subjects. If I should give the order, every one of my people will be executed.] [Guiding the poor subjects who are being butchered at the whim of the Constellations to freedom in Babylon is surely the final act of mercy and grace that I can do for them.] This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"Please." Yuto bit his lip. His eyes were locked open, and bloody tears flowed from them. [I have decided to assume the role of a savior. As the king, I offer up the lives of the people. My subjects will be sent to paradise. This is perfection. There is no need for them to live in this world that can offer them only pain and despair. It is better for all of us to go to Babylon together. To forget the hardships of this world. To finally find happiness.] Yuto turned the page, bloody tears clinging to his eyes.

The pages were soggy and wrinkled. The handwriting was so unsteady that it was difficult to read the letters, and there were traces of tears everywhere. [It was all a lie.] The joyful celebration that had been in his father's words had disappeared. [Purple fog has filled the city. Lightning roils in the skies.] [The Broken Star has spoken. Babylon is no heaven. The spirits of the subjects who will die today will not ascend. They will not be taken to some amazing paradise. Instead, they will be bound to this land, to be pained for all eternity.] [My people cannot be saved. The Broken Star laughs in my face. Everyone will die tonight. Velkyne is over.] [Humans produce the purest of ether at the moment of their death. The more miserable, painful, and sudden that death is, the more ether there is to be had.] [The bodies, the husks, will remain on this earth and poison the land as a toxic curse. The souls will not be granted rest after their death and will cry out in pain for all eternity. They will forever be residents of this place.] [My beloved people, my children, have been trapped in an eternal hell. And I am the cause.] [Oh, my dear wife! Where are you? Tell me! Is Babylon real? I cannot go there. Neither can my people. What a fool of a king I am. I have destroyed my kingdom with my own hands!] [The Broken Star laughs at my desolation. He has turned my kingdom into a sacrifice by tricking me. He will collect the rewards tonight.] [I am no savior. I am a butcher, the man who has doomed everyone here to hell. I have no king, either. I am the lunatic who has given up his entire kingdom to be hacked apart and devoured. Food for the Constellations' feast.] Yuto had now reached the final page. It had been all but torn to pieces, and it was difficult to recognize the writing at all. There, Yuto found the last confession, one that only worsened his despair. [If only I'd had a son, a single son. Someone like that bright little child I once saw in a dream.] [If only I had had a single family member who would have grabbed my clothing and driven away the madness and loneliness that was nudging me toward lunacy? Why have I made the choices that I've made?] [Oh, why have I not been granted a single son?]"No... No, no, no..." The golden diary fell from Yuto's hands. He sank to the floor, clutching his chest.

The destruction of the kingdom, the everlasting pain of his people, the tragedy that had turned his benevolent father into a lunatic, could all be traced to the lack of a son. Because no Yuto existed in this world, his father had been lonely, and that loneliness had driven him mad. The whispers of the Constellation had blinded him, and without thinking, he had put his entire kingdom on the altar.

The warm touch of his father's hand, which he remembered from his past life, had morphed into the cruelest blade and doomed an entire country. Is it my fault? Mine? Because I wasn't here? Am I the one to blame for all this? His eyes blackened again, like the abyss. He hadn't wanted to return like this. It was unreasonable to say that all of this was his fault. Such detached, logical thought was something he wasn't capable of at the moment, however. Yuto gasped for breath and continued to grab his chest.

Guilt reverberated with the spirits in his core. It expanded inside him almost like an explosion in his soul.

"Noooo!" he screamed. The Void's darkness plumed from Yuto's body. It swelled, filling the air of the entire room, swallowing everything it touched. Dozens of Void Hands shot up from the floor. They grabbed him. It was almost as if they were trying to stop him from losing control. He fell to his knees.

"Y-Yuto?!" Rivian, who was watching from a distance, screamed at him in terror. Flokai panicked and ran toward him, but the darkness of the Void formed a hard wall that he could not breach. Beastly groans burst from Yuto's lips. The Void Hands that reached out from the floor at his feet still bound his arms and legs. My father fell apart because he did not have me to stop him. Because I did not exist, Velkyne was cut to pieces. My absence completed his hell. The terrible chain of causality ripped his heart apart.

His mind refused to accept that the miracle of reincarnation had in truth been the cruelest catalyst for the destruction of his kingdom.

"Yuto! Wake up! Please!" Rivian cried through the wall of darkness, but her voice was fading away.

"Yuto! Yuto! What is happening to you?" Flokai shouted, but his voice was becoming muted too. Yuto's vision flashed red, then slowly settled into darkness. An icy chill spread deep inside him, and soon his consciousness had fallen so deep into the abyss that he could not even scream.

"You poor soul," said a voice that sounded close by, unlike all the others. It was the girl, the representative of the Void. She was standing a slight distance away from him now, alone in the darkness. She slowly walked up to him.

"No... No, no..." Yuto moaned, hunched over on the floor, hands on his chest. He managed to look up at her with great effort. She came closer. She kneeled and made eye contact with him. As before, her eyes were unreadable. They seemed to contain no emotion whatsoever. But when her hand touched his cheek, there was an odd sense of cold, a cold that was gentle.

"This is not your fault. None of it is," she whispered.

"You did not exist, and that was not by choice. It wasn't the fact that you weren't here that drove your father mad. It was the cruelty of the Constellations who mocked the solitude of a human being and used it for their enjoyment."

"But if I... If I had been beside my father..."

"Yuto, open your eyes. Do not let the guilt that the ghosts of the past gave you consume you. Don't let it erase who you are. You did not exist at first in this world. That is for certain. But you are now inside this world." The hand lowered, and she put her hand over Yuto's hands.

"What is inside your heart? What brought you back?"

"I... I..." he stammered.

"Punishing yourself is not what you should be doing. Try to remember what you had resolved to do to those who made a mockery of your kingdom, destroyed your father, and burned your life to the ground." Yuto felt the guilt and gloom that weighed him down suddenly scatter. There was a deep, hard determination coiled in his soul. He could finally see it again, and remember.

"Revenge..." he said, balling his fists.