Beast Gacha System: All Mine

It slipped their minds, but the anger they had felt from Cecilia from Arkai’s initial rampage told them it never slipped her mind. No. Perhaps she hadn’t finished processing her feelings back then.

How could they forget?

Ruby had regressed to her child self, abandoning the throne of the Saintess and disappearing into the shadows to prepare for her own rise and return as the real Saintess.

She had vanished, only to return years later bonded with Nikolas Delanivis, the Arctic Werewolf Young Lord, a move that had prompted Arzhen to kill the fake Saintess, freeing himself from their bond and setting into motion everything that had followed.

But that was her second life. That was the timeline she had created by going back.

So what had happened in the original timeline? The world where Ruby hadn’t yet regressed? The world that should have been?

In that world, Ruby had never left the Saintess Coronation. She stayed and was crowned. And so Cecilia had never been forced to replace her.

There had been no fake Saintess, no unwanted political marriage to Arzhen, no bond that would eventually be severed by violence and betrayal.

Cecilia would have simply returned to the clinic, to Summer and the quiet life of a healer’s daughter in one of the ordinary small towns in the empire.

But what had happened next?

Cecilia had turned this question over in her mind a thousand times since the revelation about Ruby’s time travel, and the answer that kept surfacing was the same. In that world, she didn’t exist.

She knew, that if she had lived, she would have lived the same way. She would have tried to save people, predicted disasters and fought, even without the title of Saintess.

But in that world, Arkai still died in that volcano.

Oathran’s remains were still forged into mass-killing weapons.

If Cecilia had been alive, she would have found a way to stop them. Or at least, the trace of her trying would’ve remained in the way Ruby treated her.

Ruby wouldn’t dismiss her so easily. She would’ve taken her skill more seriously if she had lived in the timeline before her regression.

But the fact that those tragedies had happened anyway without intervention meant she had never been there to intervene.

She had died. She must have died.

But what had ceased her from existing?

Initially, she had assumed the official report of Summer’s death was accurate. That Summer had died alone in the forest, ripped apart by monsters while searching for medicinal herbs.

If that were true, Cecilia wouldn’t have died with her.

She would have been elsewhere. Safe, alive, perhaps sweeping the floor of the clinic or doing other chores. There must have been a different death, then. Perhaps earlier. Perhaps later.

But the document Arzhen had given her changed everything. It connected Sienna to the heat suppressant Summer had developed. Summer’s death wasn’t a random act of violence by questionably sentient monsters, but to protect Sienna’s unsuppressable heat from ever being cured.

Sienna had killed Summer.

And if Sienna had been willing to kill the mother, why would she have stopped there? Why would she have left the daughter alive?

Cecilia would be a daughter who might have known something. She might have witnessed something. Worse, she might have grown up to finish what her mother started.

"She would have killed you too..." Arkai whispered. His pupils trembled, his black eyes wide and wet and filling slowly with a horror that went beyond grief. "She would have killed you too—she would have... she must have..."

Cecilia sighed, and a cold smile spread across her face. "Now I finally know why the gods connected the three of us together."

Then she turned to Eastiel. Her eyes fixed on him with an intensity that made his blood run cold. "And perhaps we’ll soon find out what connected you to the three of us."

Eastiel paled. The color drained from his face completely.

That was it.

All this time, they had only uncovered how Arkai and Oathran would have died. Now they had somehow guessed how Cecilia had died. She could’ve been murdered by Sienna in a timeline that had been erased by Ruby’s regression.

That left only him.

He was the last one. The final death, the mystery that had not yet been solved. And the terror of what that death might be, of what connection might bind him to this web of tragedy, seized his heart like a fist.

Cecilia’s face suddenly twisted into a scowl, and she whirled on Arkai. "It’s your fault!" she screamed. "YOUR FAULT!"

Arkai stumbled back once more, his face engulfed in horror and guilt. But this time, something else rose up to meet it. Something that had been buried beneath the self-blame and the grief and the years of silent suffering.

Rage.

Disappointment.

"That’s not my fault!" Arkai suddenly roared, his voice tearing through the frozen cemetery like a clap of thunder. "It’s not me!"

Oathran and Eastiel flinched in shock. They had never heard Arkai raise his voice like this. Not at Cecilia. No, perhaps not at anyone.

The Black Wolf King was known for his control, his patience, his unshakeable calm. But that control...

"I didn’t—!" Arkai burst into tears, the sobs wrenching themselves from his chest. "It’s her! Not me!"

He fell to his knees. The snow crunched beneath his weight as he crawled forward, his hands reaching out, grasping Cecilia’s legs desperately like a drowning man clutching at a lifeline. "Why do you blame me?"

Arkai burned with wrath.

Wrath at everything. At the world, the gods. At the cruel tangle of fate that had bound him to this woman he loved more than his own life, only to reveal that his own sister had murdered her mother.

Why? Why was he born a Dawnoro? Why had his father remarried that bitch’s mother? Why had Sienna been brought into his life, into his home, into his sister, only to poison everything she touched?

Why was he connected to the woman he loved like this?!

Oathran came to his senses and moved forward, reaching out to kneel beside his brother, to pry him away from Cecilia before his sanity shattered again. What if he rampaged? What if the Dragon Tongue couldn’t hold him a second time? "Arkai—"

"THAT’S NOT MY FAULT! SHE KILLED YOU, NOT ME—!"

"THEN WHY DID YOU BLAME YOURSELF?!" Cecilia roared even louder, and the sound of it shut all three men up at once.

The cemetery went silent.

She ripped her leg from his grip and stumbled backward, her chest heaving, her face contorted with a grief that had compressed into something even hotter than sorrow.

She pointed at Arkai, her finger trembling, her eyes blazing. "YOU! Why—why did you blame YOURSELF?!"

Arkai looked up at her, fear dawning in his tear-streaked face.

"IF YOU KNOW IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT, WHY ARE YOU HURTING LIKE THIS? DON’T YOU KNOW YOU’RE HURTING ME TOO? I’M BLAMING YOU FOR MY—"

Cecilia couldn’t breathe. The words caught in her throat, and she swayed, lightheaded, the cold finally breaking through the barrier of her magic. Her telekinesis faltered and the warmth around her body dissipated.

The freezing air rushed in to take its place.

Eastiel caught her before she could fall, his arms wrapping around her waist, pulling her back against his chest. But the fear in his face was the same as the fear in Arkai’s. And so was Oathran’s. All three of them were staring at her with the same expression.

They had never truly seen their wife angry before. Not like this.

"Isn’t that what you wanted to say in the first place?" She looked at Arkai with scorn. "WHY DO YOU ACT LIKE YOU’RE BLAMING YOURSELF WHEN YOU’D JUST CLUTCH MY LEG AND SAY YOU DIDN’T DO IT?!"

"BUT I DIDN’T DO IT!" Arkai snapped, the words torn from him by the same wrath.

"THEN TELL ME!" Cecilia screamed.

It hurt more. Knowing the truth hurt, but more than that was discovering that the people she loved most couldn’t handle it.

It made her question everything. Was her love for them not apparent enough? Was her devotion not strong enough to make them believe she would never blame them for sins that were not theirs?

"The three of you—" She turned, her gaze sweeping across all three men. Arkai on his knees in the snow, Eastiel holding her upright, Oathran frozen mid-kneel. "You would rather leave, rampage, blame yourselves, or chase gods than FACE ME!"

She roared—"DO I NOT LOVE YOU ENOUGH?!"

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