"System".
The word left his mouth before he could think, before he could stop it, before he could do anything except try to understand what was happening.
The blue screen flickered into existence, cold and steady, and Kain's voice was shaking when he spoke again.
"Scan them. My parents. Tell me if they're real. Not memories. Not illusions. Real."
The screen flickered. Spun. Paused. And when the words appeared, they came slowly, one by one, as if the system itself was hesitant to speak.
SCANNING. SYSTEM PROCESSING. DATA FOUND.
USER'S PARENTS ARE REAL.
THEIR FORMS ARE SOUL-BASED.
THEY ARE NOT ILLUSIONS OR MEMORIES.
THEY ARE ACTUAL SOULS, PRESENT IN THIS SPACE.
Kain lowered his hands. His parents were real. His parents were here. His parents were dead.
"Souls," he said, and the word was barely a whisper, barely a sound, but it echoed through the church like thunder. "What do you mean, souls?"
But even as he asked, he knew.
The trial wasn't about memories anymore.
It wasn't about the past—about contracts and loan sharks and years of hunger and fear and abandonment.
It was about the present, about the people standing in front of him, about the truth that had been waiting for him in this church, in this moment, in this choice he would have to make. His parents were dead.
They had died somewhere, somehow, and their souls had been pulled into the trial, pulled into this moment, pulled into the same place where Kain was fighting for his own survival.
His father raised his head.
His eyes were wet, red, the kind of red that came from crying too long and too hard and too often, and when he spoke, his voice was low, hoarse, the voice of a man who had been carrying something heavy for a very long time.
"We died two years after we left you."
The words fell into the silence like stones dropped into still water. Kain didn't move, didn't breathe, didn't do anything except stand there and let them settle somewhere deep in his chest.
"Accident," his father continued, and his voice trembled on the word, cracked like old wood under too much weight.
"After we left you, the loan sharks knew about it. I thought we had outplayed them, thought we were finally safe. I was doing well in business better than well, actually.
In less than a year, I had earned millions, my company's stock had gone through the roof, and I thought, this is it, this is the moment I go back for my son."
Kain's mother was crying silently beside her husband, her hand pressed against her mouth, her shoulders shaking, but she didn't interrupt, didn't try to stop him, just listened the way Kain was listening, both of them caught in the same terrible story.
"I called them," his father said, and his voice dropped lower, almost a whisper. "The loan shark leader. I told him we were coming to pay off the debt, every last penny of it.
And he laughed at me. He said the loan had gone up, ten times what we owed, with your safety net already factored into the interest."
Kain's hands clenched into fists at his sides, but he didn't speak, didn't move, didn't do anything except stand there and let the words wash over him like waves crashing against a shore he had been standing on his whole life.
"But I was prepared," his father continued, and something flickered in his eyes—something that might have been pride or might have been grief or might have been both tangled together so tightly that they couldn't be separated.
"I had saved enough. More than enough. I transferred the money to his account right then, right there on the phone, millions of dollars that he never expected to see from me. I watched the confirmation go through, and I said, Give me my son. End this. End all of it."
His father paused, his throat working, his face twisted with the effort of holding back tears that wanted to fall.
"He was shocked. Speechless. For the first time since I'd met him, he didn't have anything to say. And then he said, Fine. I'll call my men off the boy's area. He can live in peace. And I believed him. God help me, I believed him."
Kain's heart was pounding so hard he could feel it in his throat, in his temples, in the tips of his fingers. His father had come for him. His father had paid the debt, had faced the monster, had won. And then—
"It was a trap," his father said, and the words came out flat, hollow, dead. "We didn't know until it was too late. The loan shark never intended to let you go. He just wanted us to let our guard down, to come out of hiding, to make ourselves easy targets."
His mother sobbed beside him, a raw, broken sound that seemed to come from somewhere deep inside her, somewhere that had been wounded and had never fully healed.
"We took the twins," his father continued, his voice barely a whisper now. "Your mother and I, we packed the car that night. We were coming to get you. To bring you home. To finally, finally be a family again."
Kain's mind was spinning, images forming behind his eyes—a car on a dark road, headlights cutting through the night, his mother in the passenger seat, his father's hands on the wheel, the twins sleeping in the back, all of them driving toward him, toward a reunion he had dreamed about a thousand times and never believed would come.
"I was only a few kilometers away from you," his father said, and his voice broke on the words, splintered like glass dropped on stone. "I could almost see your building. I was imagining it—how you would look, how you would react, how I would hold you and never let you go. And then—"
He stopped. His hands were shaking. His whole body was shaking. His mother reached out and took his hand, and he held onto her like she was the only thing keeping him upright.
"A truck," he said, and the words came out raw, torn, scraped from somewhere so deep that Kain could feel the pain of them in his own chest. "Out of nowhere. It came out of nowhere. I didn't see it until it was too late. I tried to swerve, tried to brake, tried to do something, but—"
His voice failed him. His mother picked up where he couldn't continue, her voice small and broken and barely audible.
"The impact was horrible," she said, and tears were streaming down her face, dripping off her chin, falling onto the stone floor of the church. "I was in the passenger seat. I felt everything break—my ribs, my spine, my—" she touched her chest, her hand hovering over a place that Kain couldn't see but somehow understood, "—everything. And then nothing. Just darkness. Just silence. Just the end."
His father's jaw was tight, his eyes squeezed shut, and when he spoke again, his voice was thick with tears he refused to shed.
"I died trying to hold on. The airbags deployed, but they didn't matter—the impact was too severe, too fast, too much. I felt myself going, felt myself slipping away, and my last thought—my last thought was you. Was that I never got to see you again. Was that I failed you one last time."
Kain's world crumbled.
Not slowly, not gently, but all at once, the way a building collapses when its foundations are pulled out from under it. His father and mother had been coming for him. They had paid the debt, faced the monster, won the battle—and then they had died on a dark road, kilometers away from him, kilometers away from the reunion that should have been.
The two years after they left, Kain thought, and his mind was racing, connecting dots he had never known were there. The two years weren't that bad. Not compared to what came after. The loan sharks treated me like a hostage fed me, housed me, kept me alive because I was leverage. But after my parents died, after they killed them.
He couldn't finish the thought. Didn't need to. The truth was there, ugly and undeniable, etched into his bones and his memories and the years of hunger and cold and loneliness that had followed his parents' deaths.
After they died, the loan sharks had no reason to keep me alive. No reason to feed me. No reason to protect me. They just left me there, in that apartment, alone, with nothing but the debt my father had already paid and the anger of men who had lost millions because of him.
His parents hadn't abandoned him. They had died trying to save him.
The tears came then—not the angry tears of a boy who had been wronged, but the grieving tears of a son who had finally, finally understood. He didn't hold them back, didn't try to hide them, didn't do anything except stand there in the church, in the candlelight, in front of the parents he had hated for so long, and let himself feel.
His father's face crumpled. His mother reached for him, her hands outstretched, her eyes begging for something Kain wasn't sure he could give. But this time, he didn't turn away. He didn't push them back. He didn't build walls or hide behind anger or pretend that he didn't need them.
He stepped forward.
His arms opened, and his parents came to him like they had been waiting their whole lives for this moment—which, maybe, they had.
His father wrapped around him from one side, his mother from the other, and the three of them folded together in the center of the church, in the candlelight, in the silence that had been waiting for them for years.
Kain wept like he hadn't wept since he was a child.
Great, heaving sobs that shook his whole body, that tore through his chest and left him gasping, that soaked into his parents' shirts and his own and the stone floor beneath them.
He held onto his mother like he was afraid she would disappear, held onto his father like he was trying to make up for years of not being able to hold onto anything at all.
His mother stroked his hair, the way she used to when he was small, the way he had almost forgotten but would never forget now. His father pressed his face against the top of Kain's head, his shoulders shaking, his tears falling into his son's hair, and for a long time, none of them spoke. There were no words for this.
There were no words for the years of pain and the moments of understanding and the terrible, beautiful truth that they had all been wrong about each other.
The system watched. The blue screen flickered quietly at the edge of the church, its light dimmed, its voice silent, as if it understood that this moment was not for it.
And the mist watched too, swirling at the edges of the church, violet and dark and patient, waiting for the trial to end, for the forgiveness to be complete, for whatever came next.
But Kain didn't care about any of that. He didn't care about the trial or the demon king or the dungeon that waited for him beyond the fog.
All he cared about was the warmth of his mother's arms and the solid weight of his father's hand on his back and the simple, impossible fact that they were here, that they were together, that for one moment—one perfect, terrible, heartbreaking moment, they were a family again.
And he let himself have it.
He let himself cry.
He let himself forgive.
An hour passed.
The Church had long fallen into a suffocating silence, broken only by the faint ticking of a clock somewhere in the distance. Kain stood still for a moment, forcing his breathing to steady, forcing his thoughts back into place. Whatever storm had shaken him earlier, he pushed it down—buried it.
Slowly, he turned toward his parents.
"Father… Mother…" he called, his voice quieter now, but firm. "What about the twins?"
His eyes moved across the room, searching instinctively—as if they might suddenly appear from behind a door or around a corner.
"I want to meet them," he continued. "At least once. I haven't even seen their faces… I don't know what they look like… not even their names."
But there was no answer.
Kain's gaze sharpened.
The Church felt wrong.
Too empty.
Too quiet.
His chest tightened.
"…Where are they?" he asked again, this time more directly.
His father's shoulders stiffened.
His mother lowered her gaze, her fingers tightening against the fabric of her dress as she turned her face away.
A cold feeling crept into Kain's spine.
"Father… Mother," he said, his voice rising slightly. "Where are they?"
Silence.
Then—
His father finally looked at him.
There was something in his eyes Kain had never seen before.
Guilt.
"They… were taken."
Kain froze.
"…Taken?"
The word didn't make sense. It didn't fit. It didn't belong in his world.
"What do you mean, taken?" His voice cracked despite himself. "Taken by who?"
His father opened his mouth—
But no words came out.
His hands trembled slightly, as if the truth itself was too heavy to carry.
Kain stepped forward.
"Was it loan sharks?" he pressed, urgency breaking through his composure. "Or someone else? Tell me, Father!"
Still, hesitation.
Still silence.
"Tell me!" Kain demanded, his voice echoing against the walls.
Finally—
His father closed his eyes, as if bracing himself.
And then he spoke.
"…The Lords of Angel."
The words fell like a verdict.
Kain's breath caught.
"…The Lords… of Angel?"