The Extra's Rise

Chapter 625 - 625: Divine Beast (5)

'Why did this have to happen?'

'Why?'

'Why?'

'Why??'

The questions tore through my consciousness like shards of broken glass as Arthur's body collapsed onto the starlight marble, his mana circuits overloading from the contradiction I had created within him. Around us, chaos erupted as Alastor barked orders, Rachel screamed in panic, and Reika and Kali rushed toward his fallen form with desperate urgency.

'Why was my existence like this?'

'Why was I born like this?'

'Why wasn't I born as a pure qilin?'

'Why was I born special?'

'Why?'

I clung to Arthur's unconscious body, my small hands trembling as I felt the magical balance within him beginning to shatter. The Deepdark was overwhelming his Purelight, consuming him from the inside out like a poison I had unknowingly fed him for years. Every breath he struggled to take was my fault. Every convulsion that wracked his frame was because of what I was.

'An abomination like me should have never been born.'

The truth of it hit me with crushing finality as I watched the person I cared about most suffer because of my very existence. I was supposed to protect him, guide him, help him become stronger. Instead, I was destroying him simply by being what I was—something that shouldn't exist, something that violated the fundamental laws governing magical affinities.

'When was the last time I wept?'

The thought came unbidden as I felt moisture gathering in my golden eyes. Tears. I was actually crying, something I hadn't done since... since Julius. Since the moment his connection with me had severed and I hadn't even been able to witness his death with my own eyes, leaving me alone in a void of guilt and grief that had defined my existence for decades.

'And now I'm crying again.'

'Again.'

'Why am I so useless?'

The memories of Tiamat's words echoed mockingly in my mind. 'Special,' she had called me when I was born. The most powerful dragon in existence had sung my praises, declared me unique among all qilins, a creature destined for greatness beyond anything the world had seen.

'So why am I like this?'

'Why am I so pathetic?'

'Why do I only bring suffering to those I care about?'

Suddenly, pain exploded through my scalp as someone yanked my hair upward with merciless force. I found myself staring into cold sapphire eyes flecked with gold—eyes that looked like Rachel's but carried an ancient weight that made my breath catch in my throat.

'Isolde Creighton.'

I had met her before, briefly, when Arthur had visited the Creighton estate years ago. Even then, she had unsettled me in ways I couldn't explain—the way her gaze seemed to pierce through illusions I didn't even know I was maintaining, the subtle wrongness of her presence that made my instincts scream warnings I couldn't interpret.

But this... this was different. Where before she had been merely disconcerting, now she radiated an authority that made my very existence feel insignificant. The Queen of the Creighton family, the woman everyone whispered had gone insane from the burden of her Gift, stood before me with eyes that suggested the madness was just another layer of deception in a game far more complex than anyone understood.

And she was a seer. Someone whose sight could pierce veils I couldn't even perceive.

"A qilin is crying so pathetically while her contractor is dying," she said, her voice carrying no malice but somehow cutting deeper than the cruelest insult. Each word sank into my heart like a blade, precise and devastating in its accuracy.

'Right.'

'Pathetic.'

'That was my existence.'

"Do you want him to die?" she asked me, her tone conversational despite the gravity of the question.

'Did I want Arthur to die?'

"Of course not!" I screamed, the words tearing from my throat with desperate fury. "How could you even ask that?! He's everything to me!"

"Then why didn't you warn him?" she continued relentlessly, though I could see in her eyes that she already knew the answer—an answer that terrified me because it made no sense even to myself.

'Why didn't I warn him?'

The question should have been simple. I had access to future sight, though that failed when it came to Arthur. More than that, I had intimate knowledge of Arthur's magical development, his dual affinities, and the fundamental contradiction they represented. I should have realized the danger of attempting a Divine Beast bonding with such an unstable foundation.

I should have warned him about the incompatibility between Deepdark and Purelight affinities.

I should have explained why my granting him access to both was inherently dangerous.

I should have told him the truth about my own nature—why a qilin could possess affinities that qilins weren't supposed to have.

But when I reached into my memories,

The instructions were clear, terrible, and absolutely necessary.

And they would change everything.