JEWELED : A TALE OF SAPPHIRES AND RUBIES ( SHORT HIATUS)

20. The world tree and Athanasia.

"you're finally here, my sister." The voice sounded.

"Eh? Who is talking? What sister?"

Athanasia was being dragged along by lucas towards the world tree as she heard the voice.

"Sigh." Lucas sighed tiredly.

"You...what kind of response is this!?"

"Tree?"  Athanasia thought that the voice was coming from the tree and turned to ask in confusion.

The tree emitted golden sparkles as they condensed to form the figure of a teenager.

What shocked athanasia was that the teenager.....

....looked exactly like her.

"You can call me Arius. I've been waiting for thousands of years for you, sister."

The boy spoke.

"W-wait. You're the world tree? What sister are you talking about?!" Athanasia was completely bewildered.

Lucas, who was standing silently beside her finally spoke up,

"Aren't you just confusing her even more? I totally expected this from you." He mocked Arius.

"This annoying brat..." He murmured glaring at Lucas but then turned to Athanasia and said with a big smile on his face.

"Sis- Athanasia, This is unbelievable, but you are, no, were my sister. You died and reincarnated many times but I have not. Becoming the world tree I have always been stuck on one life."

Athanasia could not take in such absurdity and stood there blankly.

Arius sighed and gathered some mana in his hand as he said,

"You'll understand when you look at this." (Aoi: did you expect that she would believe the legendary tree saying he's her brother? Think again bro.)

He shot the mana upwards and it condensed into a screen like structure and started showing strange places as Arius explained.

"This 'warzone' you're seeing here was ironically called iremía¹. Thousands and thousands of years ago, the Gods created millions of worlds and divided them among themselves to manage. Coincidentally, this was a forgotten world. No god accepted it."

"Not Having any god's protection, this place was an easy targets of demons from alternate spaces. This world was unique, rich in mana,And all the people who lived here were living their first lives. Meaning they had never reincarnated before."

"So my first life was here?" Athanasia guessed where this was going and asked.

"Our first life was here. As siblings." Arius nodded.

"We were orphans. We couldn't stay at one place for too long, so we travelled. Far and wide, wherever we could go, wherever we could escape. We were powerful no doubt, but we were no match to a bunch of those horrendous creatures. We always stayed together."

The screen showed how people fled upon the arrival of the demons, how the people died, how they betrayed one another just for the sake of living a few more minutes, how some people were truly loyal to each other.

"Until, Athanasia- Athena got killed."

Arius grew silent and didn't continue talking.

Lucas took over.

"Athena was your name in your first life. You both siblings were cornered at that time, For the sake of giving Arius a few more minutes to live,You consumed all your mana at your last attack at the demons. And it worked. The demons were completely wiped out."

"After Arius came to his senses, all he could see was Athena's dead body. He couldn't take it and consumed by his sorrow and rage, his mana flared up. Drowning in his emotions, he actually absorbed the whole world's mana. Little by little, the life in this world was sucked by and concentrated on Arius."

"That was when the gods finally took notice of this world and immediately tried to stop the ridiculous action. But they were too late as Arius had already stolen more than half of this world's mana to revive Athena. Black magic didn't exist yet and revival was basically impossible. This was a gamble. Either Arius would be consumed or he would succeed. As a matter of fact, he was consumed by the mana itself. The concentrated mana condensed into the form of this tree." Lucas pointed towards the pure white world tree.

"The gods turned furious and cursed him, to not be able to contact his sister. They hit where it hurt. Arius realised that, all of what he did had been for nothing. He flew into rage yet couldn't do anything. He just lived there for hundreds and hundreds of years, never stopped trying to contact his sister, but everytime he did, he would face the hell's wrath. Every single time. Until one time, he realised the loophole in this curse."

"He couldn't contact Athena, but what if she contacted him? And that's how that sly tree contacted me. And the result? You're here." He concluded.

Immediately, Athanasia's eyes flashed as unfamiliar scenes started playing in her mind. An unfamiliar yet extremely familiar memory took its place.

Her eyes welled up with tears.

"So, it's true..." She murmured. She had doubts before but this memory was extremely familiar to her and she believed it was hers.

"Brother." She acknowledged.

Suddenly light emerged and connected both of their right hands as a form of their connection.

The curse had been broken.

"Sister!" Arius, like a lost little boy, rushed up to hug his only family, he had been waiting, waiting for hundreds of millenials. He finally found her and in the following lives, he could contact her again!

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(863 words.) Haha... ridiculous right?

I didn't know how to form a connection between these two, so I made them siblings.?

Whatever. Next would be a relaxed day with Arius.

Bye!

Btw, iremía means 'tranquility' in Greek.