Beast Gacha System: All Mine

Chapter 293: One More Time

"I miss you."

Eliam was helpless.

He stood in the glowing sand, his son’s arms around him, his son’s face pressed against his shoulder, and he did not know what to do.

Something was wrong. Perhaps terribly wrong. But what was a father to do when his son did not want to tell him what was wrong?

Eastiel had changed. That was the first thing. He had come back from that school a different person, had insisted on marrying a girl that two other boys were also marrying, had taken over the family’s military like they were preparing for the end of the world.

He worked with a focus that was almost frightening, trained soldiers, planned strategies, built defenses for threats that no one else could see.

And he treated Eliam... he treated his father like he was already gone.

Eliam was not dumb. Eastiel’s intelligence was inherited from both him and Harriet, sharpened by years of study, honed by the particular intensity that ran through their bloodline.

This sudden change, this urgency, this grief that his son carried with him everywhere... something was happening. Or something was going to happen. Something that Eastiel knew about and was preparing for and could not, for some reason, tell him.

He just did not know that it had already happened.

That in another world, another life, another time that existed parallel to this one, he was already dead.

Eastiel had watched him die and buried him, had spent years learning to live without him, and had only now, in this impossible place, been given the chance to hold him again.

"I’m right here, Eastiel." His hand came up to cradle the back of his son’s head. "Why do you miss me so much?"

Eastiel did not answer. His arms tightened. His face pressed deeper into his father’s shoulder.

"But what if you’re no longer here?" He asked.

Eliam’s hand moved, stroking his son’s hair. "Where could I be, other than here?"

"Somewhere else."

Eastiel had seen somewhere else, had lived somewhere else. And he was carrying that somewhere else inside him like a wound that would not heal.

Eliam hummed. "Well, let’s say I die. " He tapped his son’s back, gently, a signal to walk.

He felt Eastiel flinch just a little.

He hid his smile. So that was it. Death. His son was afraid of his death. But Eliam had thought about death many times and had never, not once, been afraid of it.

He stopped looking at his son. Giving him space. He kept walking, kept his eyes on the glowing sand, on the waves that curled and broke and slid back into the sea.

"If I die, then there’s still your mother. And your brother." He paused. "And you."

"Our family. Our world..." He looked out at the dark water, at the moon that hung low and heavy over the horizon. "With you and the rest, it will be safe."

"But you won’t be there."

Eliam’s chest tightened. How could he sound so certain yet so small?

"I won’t." He stopped walking. Turned to face Eastiel. His son was looking at the ground, at the sand that glowed between his feet, at anything but his father’s face. "But the fact that I was here..." Eliam tilted his head, trying to catch his son’s eyes. "That should be enough, right?"

Eastiel did not answer.

"Are you so greedy," Eliam said, and his hand found his son’s shoulder, "that you’d want to drag me back to life? You’d do that, even when I am already supposed to die?"

He knew his father did not understand. Could not understand. Did not know why he was acting like this, why he was holding him too tight, why he had run across the sand like a child, why he had done things he wouldn’t have done normally.

His father did not know about the other world, the other life.

But he wanted to.

He wanted to be his son again. His father’s son.

"Do you know what I hate the most about you?" Eastiel asked.

Eliam chuckled. "What? That I’m more handsome than you?"

Eastiel smiled. The smile flickered, faded. "Also that." His voice dropped. "And... that after you died, you left no one for me to destroy for revenge."

Eliam’s eyes faltered.

"You died only after you cleaned everything up." Eastiel was looking at the sky now, at the moon that hung low and heavy over the water, at the stars that were just beginning to show themselves.

Eastiel had thought about this for a very long time and had not, in all those years, found a way to let it go. "You gave me nothing but your glory. Nothing I could burn down and write your name with the ashes."

Again.

Eliam felt the fear.

This son of his had changed. He was no longer the young man Eliam had raised, the son he had taught to fight and to lead and to carry himself with the grace of their bloodline.

He was something more. Something that had seen things Eliam could not imagine, had carried things that would have broken a lesser man, had learned to want things that should not be wanted.

"What happened to your enemies?" Eastiel turned to look at him, and his eyes were burning, cold and bright, the son who had spent his life looking for something to fight and had found, again and again, that there was nothing left.

"You took pleasure in annihilating them yourself. You gave me and my brother no flesh to tear and no blood to drain." He hissed. "Father... Father, how cruel of you."

This hatred. This hunger. The need to burn, to tear, to punish—it was not something Eliam had taught him.

It was something Eastiel had learned, somewhere else. Perhaps in a world where his father had died and left him with nothing but the imperfect peace he had built and the grief of living in it.

"If only you had torn them limb from limb." Eastiel said softly, almost wondering. "I and Elias would not have minded. But you gave them mercy. Easy deaths. Early deaths." He looked at his father.

"What should I do then? Desecrate their tombs? Steal their bones for the pigs?"