Chương 197: Equals to the Gods

Vale stared down at the worn, ancient book, eyes wide but unfocused, as though the words had struck somewhere deeper than thought. He didn't move for several long moments. What he had just read lingered in his mind with a strange, oppressive weight, less like information, more like something he was unable to truly believe. It felt wrong to know it. Wrong to even hold it in memory. Slowly, almost mechanically, his gaze lifted from the page and drifted toward his arm. To Zellion.

The metal gleamed faintly beneath the dim library light, its surface reflecting warped fragments of shelves and shadow. Vale studied it in silence, his expression tightening as unease crept in. The arm looked unchanged, still, inert, obedient. And yet, now that he knew what it was… that stillness felt deceptive.

"Why… do you serve me?" he asked at last, his voice low, strained by something he couldn't quite steady. There was no response. Of course there wasn't. Still, he kept staring, as if expecting the metal to shift or answer in some way that defied reason. His thoughts spiraled, pulling fragments of memory to the surface, Zellion's voice, calm and absolute, explaining that his master liked Vale. Liked him. Even now, that word sat wrong. His chest tightened slightly as the implication settled deeper.

'Your master… was that my enigma?' The idea wasn't new, but it felt sharper now, more defined. Zellion had been created, of that, there was no doubt. And Vale himself had been controlled once, overtaken by something that moved through him with effortless authority, wearing his body like a vessel rather than inhabiting it. If that presence was real, if it was his enigma, then the connection wasn't distant. It was immediate. Which made the next question unavoidable. Why would something like that serve him?

Vale exhaled quietly, the tension pulling at his expression before he forced himself to look away. If answers existed, they wouldn't come from staring at his own arm. They would be here, somewhere in the text, buried beneath whatever had been left behind. He flipped back through the pages, returning to the beginning of the Eidolon section, and began reading again, this time aloud, his voice echoing faintly through the empty library.

"An Eidolon is the manifestation of a concept." He paused briefly, eyes scanning ahead before continuing.

"They are identical to gods, yet different in every way. Where gods were created to guard reality, Eidolons were created to destroy whatever threatens it. Like gods, they embody concepts completely, possessing the full extent of the power tied to what they represent." His grip tightened slightly along the edge of the page.

"An Eidolon cannot be born, only created." The words slowed there, his voice trailing as his eyes reached the next line.

"Eidolons were originally created by-" Nothing followed. Vale frowned, leaning in slightly as if proximity might reveal what absence concealed. The space where a name should have been was simply… empty. Not faded with time. Not damaged or obscured. Removed.

"Why…?" he murmured, more to himself than the room. Who created them? Who created Zellion and Xerax? And why did Zellion, the firstborn, serve him? Vale straightened slightly, exhaling through his nose as the questions began to stack faster than he could stabilize them. The imbalance between himself and Zellion only made it worse. Even diminished, Zellion existed on a level Vale couldn't match. And yet he followed, without hesitation, without condition. That wasn't loyalty. It was design.

'What if I'm connected to his master somehow?' The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. The thought formed quietly, but it didn't dissolve. It lingered, expanding. Not observed. Not chosen. Connected. His jaw tightened. Or worse, what if it wasn't connection at all? What if it was something simpler? Amusement. Vale let out a slow breath, the idea settling into place with uncomfortable ease. He was an anomaly. Ali had confirmed that much.

Something without precedent, without clear origin or structure. It wasn't unreasonable to assume that beings beyond gods, beyond Eidolons, might take interest in something like that. Might interfere. Might create. The next thought followed naturally, and struck far deeper.

"What if I'm an experiment…?" he whispered. The words barely carried, but the implication hit with force. Created, shaped, tested, and when the result failed expectations, discarded. His soul split into fragments, scattered like components of a design that hadn't worked. Vale bit down hard on his lip, the sharp sting pulling him back from the spiral as he leaned against the shelf behind him. Slowly, he slid down until he was sitting, the wood pressing cold against the back of his head.

His gaze drifted upward, unfocused.

"How would I even know?" he asked quietly. The library offered no answer. Only silence. There were no records. No references. Nothing on the old gods, nothing on Zellion's master, nothing on what existed before the systems described in the book. If that knowledge had ever been recorded, it hadn't simply been lost. It had been erased. The distinction between the two mattered. Vale sat there for a while longer, letting the weight settle, not fully processed, but contained nontheless.

Eventually, he exhaled and pushed himself back to his feet, dragging a hand across his face as he forced his focus back into something usable.

"…Alright," he muttered.

"Where was I?" He returned to the book, turning the pages more carefully now, reading with a sharper eye, not just for what was written, but for what wasn't. Eidolons resembled gods in structure, but not in nature. Where gods operated with fluidity, aligned with the harmonic flow of Atum, maintaining balance across systems, Eidolons were rigid, almost mechanical. Purpose-bound. Where gods preserved, Eidolons removed. They did not guide or stabilize. They purged.

And whatever had created them, whatever stood behind both gods and Eidolons alike, had been struck clean from existence, leaving only the result behind. They destroyed what grew too powerful, spawn that threatened balance, anomalies that tipped existence too far in any direction. Eidolons were not caretakers, not guardians. They were annihilators, precise and absolute in their purpose.

And yet, every time Vale tried to follow that purpose back to its origin, every time he searched for mention of their creation, their master, the force that stood above them, the text simply… failed. Entire sections were missing. Not damaged, not worn away by time, but erased with an intent so clean it felt deliberate. The deeper he read, the more that absence pressed against him, turning curiosity into something far more unsettling. Who created the Eidolons? Who created the gods?

And why did every trace of those creators vanish the moment he got close? The pattern was too consistent to ignore. This wasn't decay. It wasn't coincidence. It was removal, systematic, controlled, and thorough enough that even the records of it had been stripped away. And that raised a more troubling question: who had the authority to erase something like that? His thoughts shifted, drawn inevitably toward figures that already felt out of place within everything he had learned. The Father of Flaws. Leo Lionheart.

Names that carried weight, but no context. He hadn't found a single reference to either of them. Not in passing, not in footnotes, not even in fragmented records. Nothing. And that absence felt wrong, especially given what he knew. If information on them existed, Ali would have preserved it. Which meant one of two things. Either those records never existed, Or they weren't allowed to. Vale closed the book slowly, his grip tightening just enough to betray the frustration he'd been holding back.

One conclusion rose above the rest, impossible to ignore now. Even the gods had creators. And those creators, like the old gods themselves, had been erased or concealed so completely that history no longer acknowledged them. The Father of Flaws… might belong to that same category. Not lost, but removed. Vale leaned back against the shelf, letting his head rest against the wood as he stared up at the ceiling. The dim light above barely shifted, casting long, unmoving shadows across the library.

"So many questions," he murmured under his breath. A quiet pause followed.

"And so few answers." The silence that met him felt heavier now, less like absence and more like resistance. But even within that frustration, something else began to form, quieter, more speculative, but no less compelling.

"… Or maybe," he said slowly, the thought taking shape as he spoke it, "there aren't any answers yet." The idea lingered, unsettling in a different way. He turned it over carefully, examining it from every angle. If he was truly unique, if nothing like him had existed before, then there would be no records. No precedent. No explanation waiting to be discovered in some forgotten text. Maybe the knowledge wasn't forbidden. Maybe it simply hadn't been written.

Vale exhaled softly, some of the tension easing from his shoulders as the possibility settled in. It didn't solve anything, but it reframed the problem. Instead of searching for something hidden, he might be searching for something that didn't exist yet.

"Well," he muttered, a faint yawn slipping through as fatigue finally began to surface, "that would explain a lot." Still, he didn't stop. He returned to the book, scanning each page with renewed focus, not expecting answers anymore, but searching for patterns, for echoes, for anything that felt even remotely aligned with what he was. A name. A concept. A fragment that resonated too closely to be coincidence. He found nothing. No mention of him. No reference to the old gods.

Nothing about the creators of gods or Eidolons. Not a single trace of the Father of Flaws. Time passed without measure as page followed page, his movements gradually slowing, his focus dulling under the weight of exhaustion. The text offered knowledge, plenty of it, but never in the places he needed most. Eventually, he reached the final page. Vale closed the book with a soft, final thud and let out a long breath, his eyes heavy now, half-lidded as sleep began to pull at him.

He set the book aside with care, though the motion lacked its earlier precision.

"I should really get some sleep," he murmured. His gaze drifted, unfocused, to the last remaining book in the small pile beside him. The title blurred slightly at the edges, but he read it anyway, voice quiet and slow.

"Divine Beasts."