Souls Online: Mythic Ascension

With that revelation, Adam reluctantly followed Phanmorra, the phantom's shifting outline folding around him until both of them vanished like a ship swallowed by heavy fog. The oppressive silence that followed left only Leo and Discordia in the chamber.

The Goddess of Discord had not moved from her perch. She stood tall on the table, the black blindfold draped over her eyes, the dark cloth shifting faintly as if stirred by an unseen wind. Her grin lingered, sharp and knowing.

Leo tilted his head back, his jaw tight, irritation radiating off him in waves. He had no patience for her games, not now. "Enough. What do you want?" His voice cut the air like a blade, raw and demanding.

Discordia tilted her head at the sharpness, the smile never leaving her lips. "What do I want?" she echoed, her usual lilting cadence carrying that too-perfect warmth, the kind that always felt like it was hiding something. She crouched slightly, leaning forward as though peering at him through the blindfold.

Then, almost imperceptibly, the facade cracked. Her words came slower, quieter, and for the first time they didn't sound like a performance.

"What I want is for you to be safe. Believe it or not, I was entrusted to protect you… and I owe them that much."

The difference was startling. There was no sugary tilt to her tone, no over-bright lilt. Just simple, unvarnished sincerity. The kind of voice that made it clear she wasn't teasing him, wasn't baiting him and most of all, she wasn't lying.

For a fleeting moment, Discordia felt less like a suspicious deity wrapped in shadows and more like someone carrying a truth too heavy to share.

Even still, Leo wad skeptical at best. How could he truly trust her, especially after finding the page inside of the dungeon. He was about to say something when Discordia interrupted his line of thought.

"I even sacrificed my eyes for them. Though I guess I now have children of my own as a result."

Leo froze, his mind stuttering over her words. His jaw slackened slightly, and he blinked, unsure of how to respond. Children? His thoughts raced, every possible interpretation colliding and failing to make sense.

After a few moments, when the silence became unbearable, he finally managed to ask, his voice low and cautious, "Children… what do you mean by that?"

Discordia tilted her head, the black blindfold shifting with the motion, her smile calm, almost tender. "My children have been with you from almost the very first moment you entered this world," she said, her tone deceptively gentle, like revealing a secret to a child. "In fact… you were the one who named them."

Leo's eyes went wide, his hands instinctively reaching toward his wrists. The realization hit him like a thunderclap. Discordia was talking about the Egos in his Bracelets: Astra and Mors. The same companions who resided in his bracelets. They had always felt more than just fragments of power. They had been alive, in a sense, all along.

His mind whirled as he looked back at Discordia, searching her blindfolded face for any sign of mockery or trickery. None came. Only the faint tilt of her head and the quiet weight of truth in her words remained.

For the first time, Leo felt the staggering breadth of what had been hidden from him. The tools he had relied on, the voices he had trusted, had roots in something far older and far more personal than he could have imagined.

She or someone she was close to had used her own eyes as materials to forge the weapon that Leo constantly relied on and it made sense in a way. The ability to change your inherent element was supposed to be like changing your own inherent nature.

However, if it was the power of a god at work, that made a lot more sense.

Leo's hands fell away from his wrists, trembling slightly, as he struggled to absorb the truth. The bracelets he had worn for so long, the companions he had relied on without question, were no longer just tools. They were living extensions of a god's sacrifice, forged from Discordia herself.

His mind raced, piecing it together. The ability to shift his inherent element, the power to bend the world in ways that should have been impossible—it all made sense now. Not as a random gift, not as a clever system quirk, but as the deliberate work of a deity who had chosen to place a part of herself into him.

A shiver ran down his spine, a mix of awe and unease. He had always known Discordia's power was immense, but he had never considered the personal cost, the intimate depth of her investment in him. That the blindfolded goddess before him had literally given herself to craft the tools he now wielded… it was almost too much to comprehend.

The chamber was quiet again, save for the faint whisper of the blindfold shifting against her skin. Discordia did not move from her perch on the table. She waited, patient and still, as if letting him come to terms with the truth on his own.

Leo finally found his voice, low and almost breathless. "You… you did all that for me?"

Her head tilted slightly, the blindfolded gaze fixed on him. "For you," she said simply. "Because someone had to ensure you could stand against what was coming. You were never meant to face it unarmed."

Her smile faded, replaced by a slight melancholy as she remarked

"My eyes are a small price to pay for what I did in the past."

She tilted her head again in the opposite direction with an awkward smile as she then leaned back a little.

"I know you have seen the page of my old diary. If you could gather the fragments you find, I will be able to provide you with a reward in kind."

Leo's eyes narrowed, and a frown tugged at his jaw. "Why… why didn't you ask me that in front of the others? Why not tell me this when everyone was here?"

For the first time, Discordia's blindfolded face betrayed something human. A faint blush spread beneath the dark cloth, subtle but undeniable. Her usual calm, teasing composure faltered for a fraction of a second.

"I… I didn't do that because it would have been… embarrassing," she admitted, her voice quiet, almost hesitant, and carrying a hint of genuine vulnerability.

Leo froze, his mouth slightly open, dumbfounded. Embarrassed? A literal goddess, the one who could manipulate reality itself, the one who had forged living power from her own eyes, was embarrassed that someone could see her diary? Even knowing that those pages could potentially destroy the world?!

He just couldn't understand it at all. He let out a heavy sigh. He didn't know how or why but he felt like either the whole world was going crazy or he was.