Jaenor just stared at the both of them, confusion written all over his face.

He muttered, "Magdalyna?"

Odessa's eyes turned sharper, and her origin power flared up abruptly.

"What?" Jaenor gasped, turning to stare at Odessa—at the woman he thought he knew—with eyes wide with shock and dawning comprehension.

"What are you talking about?"

The red-skinned creature's laughter intensified, his burning gaze flicking between the two of them with obvious delight at the confusion and pain he was causing.

"Oh, you don't know a thing about her, do you, boy?" His voice dripped with malicious amusement.

"How delightfully naive."

He turned his attention back to Odessa, his expression shifting to one of theatrical disappointment.

"Will you tell him, my lady? Or shall I have the pleasure of enlightening this poor, deluded child about exactly who has been... educating him?"

"My lady?" Jaenor repeated, the pieces of some vast puzzle beginning to shift in his mind even as he struggled to reject the implications.

The woman who had been his teacher, his guide, his lover—who was she really?

"Shut up, you wastrel!" Odessa snarled, her composed mask finally cracking to reveal something far more ancient and powerful beneath.

Her Origin power pulsed with each word, sending visible shockwaves through the air.

A shockwave spread in every direction.

The creature's response was another peal of that terrible laughter.

"Now, what are you doing with the boy?" He asked with false concern, gesturing toward Jaenor as if he were some curious pet.

"Playing house with him? I must admit, I am quite surprised that you have awakened. I wasn't even aware you had stirred from your long slumber—you really did do an excellent job of hiding your presence."

His burning gaze fixed on Odessa with something approaching respect.

"Though I suppose that's to be expected from one of the ancient bloodlines. Still, I find myself curious about your... motivations. Surely this can't simply be sentiment?"

Odessa's shoulders loosened, though the faint flicker of her Origin energy still pulsed around her—quiet, restrained, yet undeniably present.

She let out a quiet sigh, her head tilting downward as if the entire situation were a tiresome burden she had no patience for. There was a weary detachment in her posture, like someone forced to entertain a game far beneath her.

Then, with slow deliberation, she raised her head and locked eyes with him.

The moment their gazes met, a sharp chill ran down his spine.

His breath caught.

The air around him grew heavier and thicker, pressing in like an invisible weight. Her presence bore down on him with a suffocating intensity, and something primal within him recoiled.

It was more than power—it was the sense of standing on the edge of something vast and unknowable. Looking into her eyes felt like staring into the abyss itself: silent, endless, and merciless.

"Draelusa!" she said, her voice cracked like a whip, laced with fury.

"You've done the one thing you shouldn't have."

Jaenor's face fell when he heard her, realizing that creature may be right.

Their eyes locked, and the air between them turned volatile.

"Did you really think I wouldn't see through your tricks? That pathetic lich… this entire web of lies and misdirection. You think I don't know why you're doing this?"

A bitter scoff followed, venom dripping from every word.

"You insignificant, worthless piece of demon filth!"

Draelusa flinched, his expression twisting into something dark and wounded. Rage boiled to the surface, warping his features into a mask of fury. His breath caught, chest heaving, hands trembling—not with fear, but with the sheer effort of holding himself together.

He couldn't take it.

What happened next would have been impossible for mortal minds to fully comprehend, had any been present to witness it.

The creature—Draelusa, Sin of Pride, one of the seven lords who had ruled the infernal realms since before the first stars learned to burn—moved with speed that turned him into little more than a crimson blur.

His form expanded as he attacked, reality warping around him to accommodate his true nature. No longer merely tall, he became a towering figure of incarnate arrogance, his horns growing into a crown of bone and shadow while his skin blazed with the light of dying suns. Claws that could rend the fabric of existence itself extended from his fingertips as he lunged toward Odessa with killing intent.

"Enough games, Magdalyna!" he roared, his voice now carrying the weight of cosmic authority. "Face me as you truly are, or watch your precious little boy burn in the fires of my—"

Odessa's response was almost casual in its devastating efficiency.

She flicked her wrist.

"You dare call me by my name, lowly demon!"

The gesture was so simple, so understated, that for a moment it seemed she had done nothing at all.

But the wave of pure Origin power that erupted from that small movement struck Draelusa with the force of a collapsing mountain.

The Sin Lord's massive form was hurled backward through the air like a child's discarded toy, his body carving a path of destruction through three city blocks before finally coming to rest in the smoking ruins of what had once been town hall.

"You always were a tedious creature," Odessa said, her voice carrying an authority that made the very stones beneath their feet tremble in recognition.

As she spoke, her own transformation began—not the violent expansion that had marked Draelusa's revelation, but something far more profound.

Her black hair was streaked with the silver of the stars, while her mortal features sharpened into something that belonged in the throne rooms of gods. Her simple robes dissolved, replaced by garments that seemed to be woven from the aurora itself—shifting patterns of light and color that hurt to look at directly. But it was her eyes that truly marked the change: no longer merely dark, they now held the depth of eternity itself, ancient beyond mortal comprehension.

This was no witch playing at power—this was one of the First, the beings who had walked between worlds when reality was young and malleable.

Jaenor just stared at her, and he couldn't believe what he was watching. He could feel and sense the energy building around them, and the power radiating from her made him flinch.

At that time, she looked back towards Jaenor, her eyes softening and her gaze turning to something of what might have been regret. "I should have told you, Jaenor. Sooner than I should have."

"But no matter, I will always be the woman who cared for you and the woman who took care of you, your Odessa."

A laughter made her turn her head towards the place where Draelusa was thrown off to.

Draelusa pulled himself from the hall's wreckage with a loud, continued laughter.

"Still hiding behind that pitiful mortal facade, I see!" he snarled, his form beginning to regenerate the damage from her casual dismissal.

"How long will you pretend to be something you're not?"

But even as he spoke, his burning gaze kept drifting toward Jaenor, who stood frozen in shock as the truth of his situation finally began to dawn on him.

The Sin Lord's grin widened as he sensed the young man's confusion and growing despair.

"Tell me, boy," Draelusa called out, his voice carrying clearly across the devastated square, "did you truly believe that one such as she, would lower herself to... intimate relations with a mere mortal? Did you think your fumbling affections meant anything to a being who has watched civilizations rise and fall like waves upon the shore?"

"SILENCE!" Odessa commanded, but Draelusa's laughter only grew louder.

"Oh, but this is delicious!" he continued, his malevolent joy at causing emotional pain clear in every word.

"Playing house, or pretending to be your something. Tell me, did she ever once show you her true face? Or were you content to couple with a lie?"

Jaenor's world seemed to tilt beneath his feet as the implications crashed over him like a tsunami of revelation. Every moment they had shared, every gentle touch, every whispered word of affection—had all of it been a facade?

Was he nothing more than some cosmic joke to beings whose existence spanned eons?

"That's enough!" Odessa's voice cracked like thunder, her Origin power exploding outward in visible waves that turned sand to glass and stone to dust.

But Draelusa was no longer where her attack struck—he had vanished and reappeared behind Jaenor, one clawed hand reaching for the young man's throat.

"Perhaps a demonstration of your true nature would be educational," the Sin Lord purred.

"Show him what you really are, Magdalyna. Show him the power that—"

He never finished the sentence.

Odessa's hand closed around his throat with speed that transcended mortal perception, her fingers blazing with energies that made his infernal flesh smoke and sizzle.

"You will not touch him," she said, her voice carrying harmonics that seemed to resonate in dimensions that existed beyond normal space-time.

"You will not speak to him. You will not so much as look upon him, or I will remind you why even the other Sins fear to challenge me directly."

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