Through the blinding sheets of rain, Rovelt ran toward the sound. The downpour had thoroughly soaked through his clothes, and the heavy mist reduced his visibility to nearly nothing. He navigated the dark alleys purely by ear, tracking the desperate cries until he finally stumbled upon their source.
A woman was crouched on the wet concrete, clutching two newborns to her chest. She had just given birth to twins in the middle of the storm.
"Please save my children," she wept, her hands shooting out to grab desperately at his legs.
Rovelt slowly kneeled down into the mud. Maintaining his clinical detachment, he reached out and pressed his fingers against the infants' small wrists to check for a pulse.
There was nothing. They were soulless vessels, cold and completely empty.
"Don't worry," Rovelt said, his voice level and reassuring despite the reality. "They just seem to be a little out of breath. They will be all okay."
He lifted both of the infants into his arms. It was a cruel scene, but it was simply the nature of the world.
"Do you want to name them?" Rovelt asked.
There was no reply. The only sound left was the rhythmic drumming of the heavy rain. The woman had gone still. Without looking back, Rovelt turned and moved forward into the dark.
"Llumen… Neris…" he mumbled softly, drawing his heavy trench coat over the two quiet bodies to shield them from the wind.
After some time, the downpour stopped. Rovelt walked back to his facility, his boots clicking against the damp pavement. As he reached the front gate, something made him halt.
"The umbrella… It's mine," he thought.
He reached down to retrieve it, but something was clutching the handle, holding it firmly in place. In the deep shadows of the gate, he couldn't see clearly. He leaned closer and realized it was the stray dog from before. She was dead, her body stiffened by the cold.
Rovelt began to turn away, leaving the umbrella behind, when a faint, high-pitched squeak caught his attention.
He paused, then reached down and pulled the umbrella aside. Though the mother dog was dead, her body remained coiled in a protective circle. Beneath her frozen fur lay four newborn puppies, shivering but alive.
Rovelt gathered them up alongside the infants and carried them inside the lab.
Mira was waiting for him just past the decontamination doors. She stopped him immediately, her eyes scanning his dripping clothes. "Why are you soaked? And why are you carrying puppies?"
"I found them outside the front gate," Rovelt replied, his voice flat. "I just thought… why leave them alone to die?"
Mira narrowed her eyes, noticing the unnatural bulge beneath his soaked jacket. "And what are you hiding inside your coat?"
A thin bead of sweat broke out on Rovelt's pale face. "Ah. It's a test subject."
Mira puffed her cheeks in frustration. "I thought you bought me a gift. Anyway, I am going home tomorrow. It's Mother's Day, so I need to go, okay?"
"Okay," he said, staring at her face.
"Why do you look so sad?" Mira asked, her expression softening. "Don't worry, I will come back soon and I'll take you to dinner. So cheer up."
Rovelt held out the four small, squirming puppies toward her. "Happy Mother's Day to you."
Mira blushed. "Thank you."
Rovelt turned his gaze upward, staring blankly at the flickering ceiling lights. "I don't think this body will last any longer," he realized.
He looked back at Mira as she cradled the animals. "She is a good person, or she acts like one. She will marry in the future, have children, and become a mother… or she will just die tomorrow. Everyone has a future; some have a good one, and some have a bad one. I hope she has a good one."
He left her there and entered the inner sanctuary of the main laboratory, where the rest of his research team was monitoring the equipment.
"Sir, you're back?" one of the scientists asked, hurrying over. He stopped short, his eyes widening as Rovelt unbuttoned his trench coat. "Who are those children? Are these… test subjects?"
Rovelt looked profoundly tired. He laid the two cold bodies onto a sterile examination table. "Yeah. I found these two kids in the rain. They were dead. But I thought if I could…" He hesitated, a violent fit of coughing racking his frail chest. He wiped his mouth and took a deep, shuddering breath. "I could revive them."
The scientists stared at him in stunned silence.
"It's in my private lab," Rovelt continued, his voice growing fainter. "I don't know if it's truly completed."
The room erupted. The scientists began shouting in surprise, some jumping to their feet in sheer excitement. Amidst the chaos, Rovelt's vision blurred, and his legs gave out.
As he slipped toward the floor, the frantic voices of his colleagues cut through his fading consciousness. "What is in your lab? Sir, what is in your lab?"
Rovelt forced his eyes open one last time, staring into the bright lab lights. "It's the framework of the universe. Though it's not completed yet… and it might be wrong as well."
Then, he collapsed completely. Around him, the frantic shouts and rushing footsteps of his colleagues began to lose their clarity, slowly fading into a distant murmur.
All he could do now was hear. His thoughts remained clear only as long as his soul maintained its fragile connection to his flesh. But he could feel it happening—the distinct, terrifying sensation of his soul detaching from his body.
The world went dark. Yet, within that absolute death, he saw a sudden, violent flicker of life.
His lips formed two names: "Llumen… Neris…"
With his absolute last breath, he murmured in a small voice, "Cigarette."
A scientist took a packet of cigarettes and a lighter out of his coat pocket. They placed the cigarette in his mouth.
He took his last puff. He inhaled and exhaled the smoke.
The smoke drifted through the sterile air, curling slowly as it traveled and brushed across the face of the dead twins.
The exact moment the line of his life snapped, a sharp gasp echoed through the sterile room. Both Llumen and Neris drew their very first breath, their hearts suddenly beating in perfect unison.
It was Rovelt's soul, splitting cleanly into two.
As his consciousness drifted deeper into the unmaking of the void, a long-buried fragment of his past surfaced.
When Rovelt was young, he had been shipwrecked and lost on an uncharted island, trapped deep within a suffocating forest. He had been severely injured, hovering on the brink of death, when a tribe of indigenous people took him under their care.
They lived by ancient, deeply ritualistic practices, offering prayers to unknown deities. Rovelt had obviously dismissed their beliefs as primitive superstition. Yet, with his own eyes, he had watched them pull miracle after miracle out of thin air. They healed mortal wounds in an instant. They spoke directly to the dead. They summoned strange, unexplainable manifestations.
At the time, Rovelt couldn't grasp the underlying logic. He had stayed with them for months to study their ways, noting how their rituals were volatile—sometimes working flawlessly, sometimes failing entirely.
That experience had sparked his lifelong obsession. He dedicated decades to secret, exhaustive research, studying everything from magicians and ancient miracles to cultivators, witches, ghosts, and mythical creatures. Through this single-minded pursuit, he had eventually uncovered the absolute truth underlying them all: the existence of the Anima and its cosmic Orders.
Fearing what humanity would do with such power, he had hidden his research papers deep within the encrypted mainframes of his laboratory, never revealing them to the public.
He had understood the logic of how they functioned, yet he had never been able to actively wield or trigger them himself.
But now, in the quiet finality of his death, the grand truth finally unveiled itself. His terminal illness hadn't been a natural disease at all. It was the physical toll of his own soul unconsciously straining to channel multiple orders at once.