Chapter 248: The Price of Knowing

"A... Aura...?"

The word escaped Erza’s lips in complete disbelief as her violet eyes remained fixed on the energy surrounding Yuuta.

Her hands trembled slightly, not because she had never witnessed aura before, but because the person standing before her should have been incapable of drawing it out in the first place.

The Crown Seal wasn’t merely hiding something inside Yuuta; its restrictions should have prevented his soul from reaching this stage while he remained as weak as he had been.

Yet the proof was standing directly in front of her.

Yuuta was controlling aura.

Erza’s mind immediately filled with possibilities as she tried to understand how this could be happening.

If the Crown Seal was still functioning exactly as she understood it, Yuuta shouldn’t have been able to draw aura from his soul so freely.

But if he had somehow reached the point where he could overcome that restriction himself, then perhaps the danger she had been terrified of moments earlier was no longer the same.

Then... maybe I can tell him.

The thought made Erza hesitate.

Her instincts still warned her not to take the risk, and the memory of the Crown Seal’s consequences remained fresh inside her mind, but what she was seeing with her own eyes directly contradicted everything she believed about Yuuta’s current condition.

Yuuta slowly allowed the aura to remain around his body before looking directly at her.

"You see it now, don’t you, Erza? I’m not weak anymore."

His expression softened as the desperation from earlier returned to his eyes.

"So please... tell me who I am. Tell me why everything around me has always been so strange."

Erza remained silent, caught between what she knew and what she wanted to believe.

Her heart continued warning her not to reveal anything, while the aura surrounding Yuuta gave her a reason to believe that perhaps he was finally ready.

She didn’t want to risk his life, but she also couldn’t continue watching him suffer while everyone else decided what he deserved to know.

Yuuta stepped closer before gently taking her hand into his own. The unexpected touch made Erza look up, and when their eyes met, she found none of the anger he had shown earlier. There was only exhaustion and a quiet plea for the one person he still wanted to trust.

"Erza, don’t hide it from me anymore," Yuuta said gently. "Trust me."

Erza stared into his eyes for several seconds while the last of her resistance slowly weakened. Perhaps she was still afraid.

Perhaps there were risks neither of them fully understood. But after everything Yuuta had said, she finally realized that continuing to keep him blind might hurt him just as much as the truth itself.

She slowly tightened her fingers around his hand.

"...Okay."

Yuuta’s eyes widened slightly.

Erza took a deep breath before finally making her decision.

"I trust you, Yuuta."

Her violet eyes remained locked with his.

"And I’ll tell you everything I know about you."

Erza remained silent for several seconds, gathering thoughts she had never expected herself to put into words.

There were too many things she had witnessed within Yuuta’s memories, and even she hadn’t managed to understand all of them. More importantly, she had no idea what learning the truth would do to him.

Once she began speaking, there would be no way for Yuuta to return to the ignorance he had lived with until now.

"First... you need to understand one thing," Erza said seriously.

"Whatever I’m about to tell you may be too much for you to accept. I don’t know how you’ll react after learning it, and I don’t even know whether you’ll believe everything I say."

She paused briefly before looking directly into his eyes.

"But what I’m going to tell you is the truth."

Yuuta swallowed nervously.

His hand remained inside his pocket, unconsciously gripping the pen he had been holding as though the small object could somehow calm him.

This was what he had wanted for so long, yet now that the answers were finally sitting directly in front of him, an uncomfortable pressure had begun building inside his chest.

"Okay..." Yuuta said after taking a breath.

"I understand. Just tell me."

Erza studied his face for another moment before finally deciding to continue. She could see the nervousness he was trying to hide, but there was determination beneath it as well.

Yuuta had already spent too long questioning his own existence, and hiding everything from him now would only make that confusion worse.

"I know what you’ve been trying to understand," Erza said.

"You want to know why you’re different. You want to know what you really are, where you came from, and why so many things surrounding your life don’t make sense."

Yuuta unconsciously straightened his back.

Erza’s expression remained serious as she continued.

"And your suspicion that people have been hiding things from you..." she said, watching his crimson eyes carefully.

"You were right."

Yuuta’s eyes immediately widened.

For a moment, he didn’t know whether he should feel relieved or terrified. That suspicion had been following him for a long time.

Every strange memory, every unanswered question about his childhood, and every person who seemed to know more about him than they were willing to say had slowly convinced him that something was being deliberately kept from him.

Now Erza had confirmed it.

"So I wasn’t imagining it..." Yuuta muttered, his grip tightening around the pen inside his pocket. He looked directly at Erza before asking the question that had been tormenting him.

"Then what are they hiding from me?"

Erza didn’t answer immediately.

Her violet eyes remained fixed on him for several seconds before she finally spoke.

"Everything."

Yuuta frowned, genuinely unsure whether he had heard her correctly.

"Everything?" he repeated. "What do you mean by everything?"

"I mean exactly what I said," Erza replied.

"From your origin to the person you’ve become today, there are countless things about your own existence that you don’t know. Your childhood, your memories, the strange things hidden within your body and even the reason certain people treated you the way they did... there are secrets surrounding almost every part of your life."

The anxiety Yuuta had been trying to control slowly returned. He had expected Erza to tell him that something terrible had happened during his childhood, perhaps some forgotten incident responsible for his nightmares and missing memories.

He could have accepted something like that. However, the way Erza described it made the problem sound far larger than a single hidden event.

Erza noticed the growing tension in his face and quietly added something that only made matters worse.

"And before you ask me to explain all of those secrets, understand that even I don’t know everything about you."

Yuuta stared at her.

That statement frightened him more than he wanted to admit.

Erza had lived for centuries and possessed knowledge about things Yuuta couldn’t even begin to understand. If someone like her could look at him and admit that even she didn’t completely understand what he was, then whatever had been hidden from him was far deeper than he had imagined.

Still, Yuuta didn’t interrupt.

Erza appreciated that and continued carefully.

"If I had to explain it simply, there are things buried within your own soul that neither you nor I completely understand yet," Erza said.

"Some of those secrets are connected to your memories, while others appear to go much deeper. That’s why I’m worried about telling you too much at once. I don’t know how discovering everything will affect you."

Yuuta’s eyebrows immediately rose.

"Wait... even my soul has secrets now?" he asked, sounding genuinely exhausted by the idea. "How does my own soul know more about me than I do?"

Despite the seriousness of the conversation, Erza almost smiled.

"Your entire existence is somewhat like an iceberg," she explained.

"What you currently know about yourself is only the small portion visible above the surface. Everything else remains buried where you cannot see it."

Her eyes slowly closed as she remembered what she had witnessed among the elves. Their elders had clearly known something.

Their queen had known something as well.

Erza still didn’t understand exactly what they had discovered within Yuuta, but beings with that much knowledge would never have associated divinity with an ordinary human without a reason.

Yuuta stared at her for several seconds before suddenly raising both hands.

"Wait, wait. Stop right there," he said, shaking his head.

"Why are you explaining this like some ancient lore? Icebergs, buried souls, hidden existence... you’re making it sound even more complicated. Just be clear with me, Erza."

That was precisely the problem Yuuta was beginning to have. He had come looking for answers, yet every answer Erza gave him somehow created another hundred questions.

He wanted to understand what had happened to him, not leave this conversation wondering whether his soul had secret rooms hidden inside it.

Erza took a quiet breath before a small smile appeared on her face. She had almost forgotten that her mortal was stupid when it came to things like this. Explaining souls, hidden memories, and the deeper nature of his existence would only confuse him further if she continued speaking like some ancient scholar.

"I’m sorry," Erza said, the faint amusement still visible in her violet eyes. "I should make this easier for you."

Yuuta’s eyebrow twitched slightly at the way she said it, but he decided not to argue. For once, he genuinely didn’t care whether Erza thought he was stupid or not.

He had waited far too long for these answers, and if enduring a few insults meant finally understanding what was happening to him, then he could tolerate it.

Erza remained quiet for a moment as she considered where she should begin. There were countless things she could tell him, but throwing everything at Yuuta at once would only overwhelm him. After thinking carefully, she decided to begin with the one mystery that had followed him longer than almost anything else.

"Let’s start with your nightmares," Erza said, her expression becoming serious again.

"Those should be easier for you to understand first."

"My nightmares?" Yuuta repeated, immediately becoming focused.

His body unconsciously straightened as every trace of irritation disappeared from his face. This was something he had wanted to understand since childhood.

Those dreams had tormented him for years, sometimes disappearing for months before suddenly returning without warning, and every time they came back they felt far too vivid to be ordinary nightmares.

"Yes. Your nightmares are directly connected to your past and everything happening to you now,"

Erza explained while keeping her eyes fixed on him.

"I’m aware that you’ve spent most of your life wondering why they keep tormenting you. You want to know what those dreams are, why you keep seeing places you don’t remember, and why everything inside them feels so real."

Yuuta’s hand tightened around the pen inside his pocket.

"Yes," he answered without hesitation.

"Tell me why they keep tormenting me. What are those dreams actually about?"

Erza looked directly into his crimson eyes.

She didn’t avoid his gaze or attempt to soften what she was about to reveal, because there was no gentle way of telling him something that would completely change how he viewed his childhood.

"They feel real because they are real, Yuuta," Erza said. "The nightmares you’ve suffered since childhood aren’t simply dreams created by your imagination. They’re fragments of things that actually happened in your past."

Yuuta’s expression went blank.

"My... past?"

"Yes," Erza replied.

"Those things happened to you. The memories were buried so deeply inside you that you couldn’t consciously remember them, but they never completely disappeared. Pieces continued surfacing while you slept, and because you couldn’t understand what you were remembering, your mind experienced them as nightmares."

Yuuta stopped breathing for a moment.

For years, he had comforted himself with the belief that they were only dreams. No matter how horrifying they became, no matter how real the pain felt or how clearly he remembered dying inside them, he had always been able to wake up and remind himself that none of it had actually happened.

Now that comfort had disappeared.

"They were... real?" Yuuta whispered, slowly looking down at his hands.

For a brief second, his vision betrayed him.

The ordinary hand before his eyes became smaller.

Much smaller.

Blood covered the tiny fingers while wounds ran across pale skin, and somewhere within his mind he could almost hear the distant sound of a child crying.

Yuuta blinked hard, and the vision disappeared as quickly as it had arrived, leaving his normal hand trembling before him.

"It was my past..." he murmured, unable to take his eyes away from his fingers. "All of that... was actually my past."

Memories began rushing through his mind before he could stop them. He remembered running through an endless frozen land while snow struck his face, desperately following an elf whose identity he still couldn’t remember.

He remembered strange creatures appearing again and again, hunting him no matter how desperately he tried to escape. Then his thoughts reached the oldest and most horrifying nightmare of them all.

The laboratory.

Yuuta remembered himself as a child inside that place.

He remembered the pain.

He remembered dying.

Not once.

Many times.

Until today, he had always believed those horrifying scenes were simply nightmares created by a frightened child’s imagination.

Now Erza was telling him that somewhere within his forgotten childhood, those events had actually happened.

Yuuta’s breathing slowly became heavier as the realization settled deeper into his mind. Questions began forming faster than he could process them, and every one of them dragged another forgotten image closer to the surface.

Erza hadn’t noticed the change yet.

She had lowered her gaze, quietly thinking about where she should continue now that Yuuta understood the truth behind his nightmares.

There were countless things she could explain next, but if she truly wanted him to understand his own existence, then there was only one proper place to begin.

"I think I should start with what I know about your creation," Erza said thoughtfully. "More specifically... the earliest part of your life I was able to see."

She lifted her head, expecting Yuuta to immediately bombard her with questions.

Perhaps he would be shocked, perhaps confused, or knowing him, he might even say something stupid before allowing her to continue.

Instead, the moment Erza looked at him, every thought inside her mind abruptly stopped.

Yuuta’s crimson eyes were glowing.

It wasn’t the faint shine of reflected light.

His eyes burned with an unnatural crimson radiance, almost like two flaming torches had suddenly awakened within his skull.

Yuuta didn’t appear to notice anything happening to him.

He remained completely focused on the fragments of his nightmares, desperately forcing his mind deeper into memories that had remained buried for years.

Erza’s eyes widened as her breath caught in her throat.

She recognized that glow immediately because she had witnessed the exact same phenomenon before.

When Yuuta’s first seal had broken, those crimson eyes had shone with the same unnatural light, and seeing it happen again while he was merely trying to remember his childhood sent an unfamiliar fear through her heart.

"Yuuta!" Erza shouted, her heartbeat suddenly accelerating. "Stop!"

Yuuta didn’t hear her properly.

Erza’s voice reached him as nothing more than a distant echo while his thoughts continued spiraling deeper into the memories.

The laboratory remained at the center of everything, appearing again and again no matter which nightmare he tried to remember.

He had always found himself there as some kind of test subject, helpless and confused, and many of those dreams ended with his younger self dying in horrible ways.

"Why did I keep dreaming about that laboratory...?"

Yuuta whispered, his glowing eyes staring blankly at his trembling hand.

"Was I... created there?"

The possibility terrified him, yet it was the only explanation his confused mind could produce. If those nightmares were truly pieces of his past, then the laboratory wasn’t something his childhood imagination had invented.

He had actually been there. He had actually been treated like a test subject, and if Erza was now talking about his creation instead of his birth, then another horrifying thought naturally followed.

"If I was created..." Yuuta whispered as his breathing became increasingly uneven.

"Doesn’t that make me... fake?"

The word fake struck something buried deep inside him.

For a fraction of a second, Yuuta was no longer standing. Another voice suddenly emerged from somewhere inside his memories, small and frightened, unmistakably belonging to a much younger version of himself.

"Does that mean... I’m fake, Sophia?"

Yuuta’s entire body stiffened.

Then another voice answered him.

"No, little Yuuta. You’re not fake. You’re real... and you always will be."

Yuuta’s eyes widened even further as the crimson glow intensified.

He recognized the name, yet the voice attached to it remained frustratingly beyond his reach. He desperately tried to remember who had spoken to him, forcing his mind toward the fragment before it could disappear again.

"Who...?" Yuuta whispered, pressing one hand against his forehead.

"Whose voice was that?"

The instant he pushed deeper, unbearable pain exploded through his skull.

Yuuta screamed.

It felt as though something inside his mind had suddenly torn in opposite directions. His thoughts became impossible to separate as memories, voices, nightmares, and unfamiliar images crashed into one another.

The hand inside his pocket clenched violently around the pen until the plastic shattered beneath his grip, yet Yuuta didn’t even notice the broken pieces cutting into his palm.

Both hands immediately moved toward his head as he grabbed his own hair, desperately trying to endure the sensation of his skull being split apart from within.

"AAAAAAAGHHHH!"

The scream was so violent that Erza immediately reacted.

With a wave of her hand, she formed a sound barrier around Yuuta, preventing the deafening noise from reaching Elena and protecting her own sensitive hearing from the sudden blast.

Her earlier fear immediately became alarm as she stepped toward him, finally realizing this wasn’t simply Yuuta suffering from an ordinary headache.

Blood began dripping onto the floor.

Erza’s expression changed completely as she saw thin streams of crimson running from Yuuta’s nose.

Another trail appeared beneath his ear, followed by blood slowly gathering beneath his glowing eyes like tears.

Within seconds, blood was leaking from his eyes, ears, and nose simultaneously while Yuuta continued clutching his head in unbearable agony.

Erza stared at him in horror.

Yuu..

YUUTA...

To be Contiuned..