Chapter 455: Who Am I?

The private chambers beneath the sanctuary were dead quiet. The thermal braziers flickered low, casting long, dancing shadows across the basalt walls.

Kyle sat alone on the edge of the stone dais, his head lowered, his bare hands resting motionless on his knees. The weight in his chest hadn’t diminished after leaving the throne room; if anything, the cold silence of the lower chambers only amplified it.

Lapidot’s words rang in a endless loop inside his head, overlapping with the quiet, devastating declaration of the Spire elders.

*Shed your inner skin... you think you are making choices... what do you actually remember about the vision you saw when you first received the system?*

Kyle squeezed his eyes shut, plunging his consciousness inward toward his core.

’Snow,’ Kyle called out silently.

’I am here,’ Snow’s voice responded, returning to its crisp, familiar clarity inside his mind now that the spatial interference of the celestial presence was gone.

’The vision,’ Kyle said softly. ’When I died on Earth and transmigrated... when I unlocked the system and took the F-rank demon class... do you have a log of that exact moment? A recording?’

There was a long, unusual pause before Snow answered. ’Accessing origin archives... Diagnostic complete. The memory block surrounding the Host’s initial core alignment is sealed under a high-level authority lock. It is not a missing file; it is a restricted file.’

Kyle let out a slow, heavy breath through his nose. ’So the elders weren’t lying. I didn’t just stumble into becoming a demon. It was orchestrated.’

’The system’s primary function is to facilitate Host’s evolution and survival,’ Snow replied carefully. ’However, the parameters governing Host’s core origin were established prior to system initialization.’

"Maybe I’ve been complacent for too long," Kyle sighed aloud into the empty, dim room, running a hand through his dark hair.

He had spent months leveling up, collecting attributes, expanding his shadow pool, and managing his domain in the Wandering Springs, thinking he was playing a high-stakes survival game on his own terms. But he had been coasting on the surface of a reservoir far deeper than he had ever bothered to probe.

To break the script, he needed the truth. And to get the truth, he needed the one person who had been there at the very beginning—the woman whose bond was forged before the system ever gave him a status screen.

*Lilith.*

Kyle opened his eyes, a cold, unshakeable resolve settling into his gaze. The hesitation, the doubt, and the lingering paralysis from the upper shelf vanished. He didn’t care if the higher realms were pulling strings or if a celestial entity was watching from the clouds. He was going to find his first demon wife, no matter the cost, and tear open whatever secrets she was holding.

He stood up, sliding his dark coat over his shoulders, and stepped out toward the main hall to gather the others.

An hour later, four figures stood in the high council room.

The heavy stone doors were locked from the inside. Yua stood near the left wall, her arms crossed over her chest, her red eyes locked onto Kyle with quiet intensity. Elara stood near the map table, her hand resting lightly on the pommel of her dagger. Queen Seraphina stood at the head of the chamber, her royal trident resting against her side, her expression calm, regal, and composed.

Kyle stood in the center, looking at the three women.

"I called you all here because my path is changing," Kyle began, his voice calm, direct, and holding no room for misinterpretation. "The war for the Iron Shallows is over, but my work in this world isn’t. I am leaving the trench. I am heading to the surface, and eventually beyond it, to find my first demon wife, Lilith."

He paused, looking at each of them in turn.

"I am not asking or ordering any of you to come with me," Kyle continued firmly. "The path ahead isn’t about defending a sanctuary or securing a territory. It’s going to be dangerous, chaotic, and completely unpredictable. It would be better and safer for you to stay here in the abyss."

Yua didn’t even wait for him to finish his sentence. She scoffed softly, pushing off the stone wall and walking straight up to him, stopping less than an inch from his chest.

"Did you really just say that with a straight face, Kyle?" Yua asked, her lips curving into a sharp, mocking smile, though her crimson eyes were burning with fierce loyalty. "I made my mind up the day I bound my blood to yours. I follow you to the end of the world, or I follow you to death. There is no ’staying behind’ for me."

Kyle looked down into her fierce gaze, a faint, fond warmth touching his heart. "I knew you’d say that."

Elara stepped forward next, her graceful steps quiet against the floor. She looked up at Kyle, her indigo eyes clear and unwavering.

"My attachment to you isn’t just about the bond marking, Kyle," Elara said softly, her hand reaching out to touch his coat sleeve. "You saved my people, you broke the solar grid, and you brought light back to our sea floor. Where you go, my place is by your side. The deep ocean has plenty of warriors, but I only have one strategist."

Kyle smiled gently, resting his hand over hers for a brief second. Then, he turned his head to face the ocean queen.

"Seraphina," Kyle said, expecting her to begin laying out defense plans for the sanctuary in his absence. "I’ll leave the Iron Shallows in your hands. Maintain the barrier reef and—"

"I’m coming with you," Seraphina interrupted smoothly.

Kyle blinked. His dark eyes widened slightly in genuine shock. "What?"

Yua and Elara both turned to stare at the Sovereign in complete astonishment.

"You’re leaving?" Kyle asked, taking a half-step back as he stared at the three-hundred-year-old ruler. "Seraphina, you are the Queen of the Abyssal Sanctuary. You have a kingdom, a throne, and thousands of merfolk relying on your authority. Why on earth would you leave all of that behind to chase a phantom on the surface?"

Seraphina tilted her head, a faint, teasing arch rising in her brow as a soft, rare smile touched her lips.

"Because we’re married, silly," Seraphina replied casually, as if stating the most obvious fact in the world.

Kyle stared at her for three full seconds before breaking into a sudden, genuine laugh—the first real laugh he had let out since entering the Iron Shallows.

"Married?" Kyle echoed, shaking his head with an amused grin. "A political alliance and a soul-bond ritual to save your trench counts as a full marriage now?"

"In the eyes of ancient abyssal law, absolutely," Seraphina said, stepping down from the dais with regal grace. Her dark eyes held a warm, affectionate spark. "Besides, I have sat on this throne for three centuries, Kyle. I have guarded these rocks and vents since before the surface mages built their first wooden boats. I am bored of sitting in the dark. And as your wife, it is my absolute royal right to see what kind of chaos you’re going to cause up there."

"What about the ocean?" Kyle asked, gesturing vaguely toward the hall outside. "What happens to the sanctuary and the Wandering Springs while you’re gone?"

"Commander Vaelen and the high council can manage the day-to-day defense," Seraphina dismissed easily, waving a slender hand. "The next potential candidate for the throne—my grand-niece, Princess Neria—will act as regent in my place until I return. The Wandering Springs has its own barrier arrays intact. The trench will survive without me for a few months."

"You really thought this through, didn’t you?" Yua teased, crossing her arms and offering the queen an approving nod.

"A good sovereign always plans her vacations in advance," Seraphina joked, her warm laughter lightening the long-standing tension in the room.

The next morning, the small group assembled in the sanctuary’s high archive vault, away from the eyes of the general public.

Resting on a floating stone pedestal in the center of the room was an ancient, yellowed scroll wrapped in faded silk and sealed with a heavy lead clasp.

"This scroll has been passed down through our royal line for seven generations," Seraphina explained, gesturing toward the artifact. "Every queen before me assumed it was an ancestral blessing or a dormant defense ward. None of us possessed the high-tier spellcasting background required to decode its inner script."

Elara stepped up to the pedestal. She carefully unclasped the lead seal and unrolled the brittle parchment, her indigo eyes scanning the complex, overlapping geometric runes etched into the ancient leather.

"This isn’t a blessing," Elara said after a long moment, her fingers tracing the glowing blue lines of logic built into the ink. Her eyes lit up with deep academic fascination as a high-tier spellcaster. "It’s a spatial bridge. An ancient multi-nodal enchantment designed to bypass terrestrial waypoints entirely."

"Can you trigger it?" Kyle asked, stepping up behind her, his gauntlet humming softly as it sensed the ambient spatial energy contained in the scroll.

"Yes," Elara replied, a confident smile spreading across her pale lips. "The coordinates are pre-anchored. Whoever forged this scroll locked its destination to a high-density mana nexus on the upper continent."

"Where does it lead?" Yua asked, her claws twitching at her side with eager anticipation.

Elara double-checked the rune matrix, decoding the ancient geographic glyphs. "The heart of the upper continent... the Lumia Kingdom."

Kyle smirked, his dark eyes glinting with dangerous excitement. "Lumia... the heart of the surface mages’ domain. A perfect place to start asking questions."

Elara raised both hands above the ancient scroll, her aquatic mana flooding into the yellowed parchment.

*HUMMMMMM!*

The ancient runes on the scroll ignited with a blinding, iridescent cyan light. The parchment didn’t burn—it dissolved into millions of glowing mana threads that rose into the air, weaving themselves into a towering, circular spatial gateway right in the middle of the vault.

Through the swirling, watery lens of the portal, the dark basalt walls of the abyssal sanctuary faded away. In their place, a distant view of towering white stone spires, lush green hills, and a bright blue sky filled with morning sunlight flickered into view.

Kyle looked at his three women—Yua, with her fierce predatory smile; Elara, with her calm, brilliant intellect; and Seraphina, the ocean queen stepping out into the unknown world for the first time in three hundred years.

"Ready?" Kyle asked softly.

"Always," Yua replied.

"Lead the way, husband," Seraphina added with a playful wink.

Kyle turned, took a firm step forward, and led his party straight through the glowing spatial portal, leaving the abyssal dark behind as they crossed the threshold into the Lumia Kingdom.