Books where words flew off the pages weren't unheard of. Lucy and Natsu had encountered one during a mission once.
Books written with this special technique had two advantages. First, they allowed people without Enchanted Reading Glasses to absorb text at high speed. Second, they could compress an enormous volume of writing into a limited space. A single page could contain as much text as an entire ordinary book.
The Book of E.N.D. was exactly that kind of book.
But it had an additional quality that impressed Rhodes even more. Although the text was written in ancient script, he could read it without any difficulty. Even words he had never encountered before were instantly comprehensible, as though the book itself wanted to be understood.
Rhodes had only opened the first page. And on that single page, he found the complete story of Natsu's life. From birth to death.
It was like watching every small detail of a child's short existence unfold before his eyes.
Natsu was born in an ordinary small village.
He had a brave father, Igneel Dragneel. A gentle mother, Shea Dragneel. And a caring older brother: Zeref Dragneel.
What followed was a long, quiet chronicle of Natsu's earliest years. How he learned to crawl. How he took his first steps. How he babbled his first words.
It recorded the mischievous, disobedient side of him, and the lively, endearing side that could sense other people's emotions even as a toddler. When Zeref was sad, little Natsu would toddle over and try to comfort him in whatever clumsy, childish way he could manage.
Zeref loved his little brother very much.
The passages describing how the two brothers spent their days together took up the largest portion of the page. It depicted an utterly peaceful life. Nothing dramatic. Nothing grand. Just two brothers in a small village.
And yet, between the lines, there was an unmistakable warmth. A faint, fragile happiness.
At the end of the page, the story broke.
"That day, Zeref saw a dragon flying overhead. By the time he rushed home, the village had disappeared. Igneel, Shea, and Natsu were all dead."
This was the story recorded on the first page of the Book of E.N.D. The chapter was titled: The Death of Natsu.
Rhodes closed the book and rubbed his forehead. The sheer density of compressed text had given him a dull headache. He sat still for a while, waiting for it to ease.
It wasn't just the volume of information. He could feel something else buried within the words. A powerful force, hidden in the script itself. Blazing as fire. Violent as a demon.
But that wasn't the main issue.
The main issue was: if what the book recorded was true, then Natsu was Zeref's biological younger brother.
Rhodes wondered if Mard Geer had ever actually opened this book.
Because if he had, how could he possibly have declared war on the guild sheltering Zeref's brother? A demon created by Zeref, going to war against Zeref's own flesh and blood? The stupidity of it was staggering.
There was, of course, the possibility that it was simply a case of two people sharing the same name. But the book also noted that Natsu's pink hair was inherited from his father, while Zeref's black hair came from their mother.
The personality described in the book matched the real Natsu almost exactly.
If this wasn't a coincidence...
The more Rhodes thought about it, the worse the headache got.
He decided to shelve it for now. Send the overtime-addicted guild master home first. Then come back tonight to read the second page.
Given the potential danger of the book, Rhodes had sealed it away after reading the first page. He'd spent the following days carefully monitoring himself for any changes. Side effects. Behavioral shifts. Magical contamination.
Nothing.
Mira, the resident demon expert, had also confirmed that her husband didn't carry any strange auras or scents.
He was clean. So he could continue.
The reading location was out in the wilderness. Far from anyone.
The book itself didn't appear inherently dangerous, but Rhodes set up a ring of protective magic circles around the area anyway. Better cautious than dead.
Mira watched from a safe distance, ready to intervene if a demon decided to jump out of the pages.
Rhodes opened the second page.
"The power of magical miracles." So said the teachers at the Mildian Magic Academy.
Zeref firmly believed those words.
After Natsu's death, Zeref threw himself into studying magic at Mildian. He was brilliant. Talented beyond measure. He mastered vast amounts of magical knowledge at an age when most students were still learning fundamentals. The academic papers he produced left veteran magic professors genuinely awed.
But the professors warned him. Life and death were forbidden domains. Trespassing into that territory would invite the wrath of Ankhseram. He could not continue his research in that direction.
Zeref didn't care. If he couldn't resurrect Natsu, what was the point of learning magic at all?
He ignored the warnings and continued his research into reversing death.
Several years later, the teenage Zeref produced his first major theoretical breakthrough: the R-System.
The concept was straightforward in principle. Gather enough magical power. Offer a suitable sacrifice. And the dead could be brought back to life.
More years passed. Zeref refined his work. He forgot the professors' cautions, or perhaps he simply stopped caring. He presented his findings at the academy's annual seminar.
Afterward, one of his professors pulled him aside and warned him again. Please, change your research direction.
This time, Zeref listened.
But not because he feared Ankhseram's wrath.
It was because of one sentence the professor had said: "Besides, it's unfair to those who die as sacrifices."
That single line changed his path.
Zeref abandoned the R-System's approach. Instead of trading one life for another, he would find a way to reverse time and space itself. Go back to the moment of the tragedy. Prevent it from ever happening.
He believed this method carried no ethical burden. No sacrifices. Just turning back the clock.
A set of concepts for a gate that could reverse time and space was born. Within just a few years, the theory reached completion.
However, this was a magic so dangerous that the academy could no longer look the other way.
Zeref received a final warning. Then a notice of expulsion.
It was at that moment that the Curse of Ankhseram descended.
Zeref became immortal. And a walking source of death. Every living thing that drew too close to him simply died. Not from violence. Not from magic. Just from proximity.
Not a single living person remained at the academy.
Seeing the lives around him extinguished again and again, powerless to stop it, Zeref carried an unbearable weight of guilt. His mind teetered on the edge of collapse.
He tried to end his own life. Every method he could think of. None worked.
Others came to kill him. Assassins. Armies. They all failed just the same.
And then Zeref had a thought. They couldn't kill him because they weren't strong enough.
So what if he created something stronger?
Thus, the Etherious were born. Demons forged from Ethernano, the building blocks of magic itself.
None of them could kill Zeref. Not a single one.
But the process taught him something. Gave him an insight he hadn't possessed before. And using that knowledge, combined with his younger brother's preserved body, Zeref created the final demon.
E.N.D.
Etherious Natsu Dragneel.
The name carried three meanings. It was Natsu's new identity. It designated the last demon Zeref would ever create. And it meant exactly what it sounded like: the end.
Zeref achieved both of his goals in a single act. He resurrected his brother. And he created the one being in existence that could finally end his life.
"Damn. This is just too ridiculous."
Rhodes carefully closed the second page of the Book of E.N.D. The chapter title had been The Birth of E.N.D.
He sat in the dark for a moment, letting the information settle.
Natsu was a demon?
Where did he look like a... actually, on reflection, he kind of did.
Rhodes found himself uncomfortably close to believing it. Just in terms of raw temperament. The explosive anger. The insatiable hunger for combat. The gleeful enthusiasm for property destruction. Honestly, the demons of Tartaros might not even match Natsu on those fronts.
But if Natsu really was a demon, how could Mira have missed it? She had been around him for years. She was the foremost expert on demon physiology in the guild. If Natsu carried Etherious energy inside him, surely she would have sensed something.
Unless he wasn't a demon in the conventional sense.
Rhodes turned the pieces over in his mind. The R-System. The Eclipse Gate. The Curse of Ankhseram. Everything the book described lined up with established history. Verified facts. Events he already knew to be real.
This was a four-hundred-year-old book. It wasn't as though someone from four centuries ago had played some elaborate practical joke about a pink-haired kid who wouldn't be born for another several lifetimes.
Wait.
Rhodes felt a chill.
If the book was four hundred years old, and the events it described happened four hundred years ago... then Natsu had existed since four hundred years ago?
But Mira had told him that Natsu was a child when he first arrived at the guild. There were photographs of young Natsu in the guild hall. He had grown up there. Visibly. Over years.
How did a four-hundred-year-old demon show up as a child?