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"My mama always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get."
- Forrest Gump (Forrest Gump)
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<(Atem POV)>
"Did you just curse at me?" she asked, tilting her head. "Tsk. Such bad manners. Then again, you are my elder sister's spawn... So, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised you turned out this way."
She vanished in a wisp of mist—then reappeared directly in front of me, close enough for me to feel the chill radiating off her skeletal face. "Hmm... maybe I should give you a proper lesson in etiquette. I've got some time to spare. And I am your aunt, after all."
"...How did you—?"
"Find you? Or summon you here into my realm?" she interrupted smoothly. "A fair question." Her tone turned mocking, almost amused. "I've been looking for you forever—especially after I felt someone dabbling in the authority of life... stealing souls from right under me. Happens more often than you'd think, really. But usually? I am the one who allows it. I always collect what's owed eventually. Because cheating me comes with a price."
The mouth on her skull widened into what looked like a smile.
"But you? You've been doing it for free. Not even a courtesy call. No offering. No permission. No deal. You just took—as you owned me." She leaned in, placing a single cold finger against my armored chest. "If you weren't my nephew, I'd have turned you into a cute little undead toy already."
A chill mist seeped from her fingertip, slipping past the runic glow of my modified Destroyer armor, which lit up with a pale blue flare. My enchantments fought back, every defense I had pushing against the intrusion, but it was like trying to hold back a tsunami with a dam made for a river. The mist slithered through, brushing against my skin. "Perhaps, I still might."
I felt my body begin to shift—my flesh hardening, graying, cracking like old wood left to rot. My natural healing tried desperately to contain it, slow it down, reverse it—but fighting it was like fighting an inevitable ending. It didn't hurt... but there was an echoing emptiness building inside me, a cold spiral into a depth I knew I might never climb out of. My danger sense had already gone silent, as if it had given up completely. It probably didn't register this event as a danger, just an inevitability.
However, despite all this happening, I couldn't move. Not even an inch. Some invisible force was bleeding my strength away, drop by drop.
"You're surprisingly stubborn, my dear," she whispered, her voice sweet and seductive, yet starkly at odds with her lifeless face and the playful glint in her hollow sockets. "This amount of power is usually enough to wipe out entire galaxies. But you... wrapped in your Celestial-forged armor, laced with metal from my sister's own dimension, stacked with half a dozen types of immortality, with an absurdly stupid amount of vitality and divine energy flooding your veins... It's no wonder you're still standing." She giggled softly, utterly delighted. "You with your divinities are even harder to kill than the Celestials themselves."
Then, without any dramatic flourish, she removed her finger from my chest, just as the cracks were creeping up toward my neck. Instantly, my body kicked into overdrive, flooding every cell with divine energy. I could feel my strength returning as the damage slowly reversed itself, the fractures retreating until my body was whole again.
"Pant pant. That still doesn't answer my question," I said between breaths, wiping the cold sweat from my brow. "How did you bring me here?"
