Odyssey of the Blind God

"What are you talking about?" Nial asked as his smile faltered.

"The young boy in the picture is Killian, Maline, and my son. He died 22 years ago, just a few days before Maline found you…" Miles answered. His voice was trembling and he was getting quieter the more he spoke.

But Nial could hear everything.

"He was ill, and we couldn\'t afford the medicine to treat him. I just hope he didn\'t suffer as much as my wonderful wife. Maline was so tortured by the loss of her child that she would often go to the playgrounds where they had always played. She stayed there for several days without eating or drinking anything, and she didn\'t get any sleep either…"

Nial\'s lips twitched and he was not even able to force a smile on his face.

\'Is that for real?\'

Even if he didn\'t want to know what his father was just about to say, Nial was able to guess it. Nonetheless, his expression turned into an even worse grimace when the very words he didn\'t want to hear out of his father\'s mouth fell on his ears.

"I was searching for my wife, expecting the worst while the anomaly of a dungeon portal manifested. But what I didn\'t expect to happen was that the horror of this incident turned out to be a blessing in disguise…because it brought you into our family…"

Miles\' voice cracked and though he was sitting close, it felt distant and cold to him all of a sudden. Nial didn\'t even realize that he had fallen back on the chair that had appeared behind him. His expression was filled with incomprehensible emotions and his mind was overflowing with doubts.

"So…Mo–...Maline picked me up from the dungeon portal like a stray cat, and she decided to raise me to make up for the loss of her own blood and flesh…" Nial summarized, his voice laced with bitterness and pain.

He tried to breathe but it felt like his throat had suddenly gone dry. The mana and dark energy within him were reacting wildly, and his hands began to tremble.

"We never thought of you as a replacem–..." Miles wanted to defend himself, but Nial wasn\'t having it.

He sighed deeply in an attempt to calm himself but his father\'s words made him feel even worse. "Do you think I\'m stupid?"

"N-No…of course not…"

"I am fully aware that you are talking bullshit right now…" Nial said in a bitter tone. He wanted to shout at Miles, but the words he had in his mind were stuck on his tongue.

Nial could clearly tell that Maline had picked him up to tend to the wound caused by the loss of her son, her biological son.

This realization hurt much more than any pain Nial had ever gone through. He had always loved his family and he had sworn himself to protect them by all means, no matter what.

However, it was the same family that had pierced a dagger deep into his back, backstabbing him and hiding the truth for so long.

"I…no…We found you and brought you back…yes…, but you were never the replacement for Kilian… We visited the playground every single day to see if someone, your parents, were looking for you, but nobody came for an entire year. Not even the police knew anything about a missing report of a small child, and we didn\'t want you to suffer as an orphan at such a young age.

Thus, when Maline got pregnant with Sabrina…we thought that it would be great for our little girl to have a big brother, a brother she can trust and rely on…" Miles tried to explain why they did what they had done but he was having a hard time getting it all out as tears continued to stream down his face.

He couldn\'t hold back his emotions anymore and started to cry bitterly. His hands reached out for Nial in the hope that his son would understand him, that he would know that he was not a substitute for the loss of their son and that they had always loved him for being himself, not for being someone else.

Despite his emotional breakdown, Miles was not able to reach Nial\'s hand because his son moved his hands to avoid getting touched by Miles, the man he had always presumed to be his real father.

"Hah…so I was really a stray cat, and you guys picked me up…" Nial mumbled, unable to think of anything else to say. His mind was in a mess after what he had just heard, and he didn\'t know what was right and wrong. Everything felt like a lie all of a sudden, and he didn\'t want anything else but to be alone at this moment.

"Does Sabrina know as well…that I\'m not actually her brother, but just a stranger picked up from the streets?" Nial asked bitterly, and saw Miles freeze in response.

"We never told anyone about you…we thought you were going to get taken from us if something were to happen… so we just asked for help to have your ID renewed…saying that you were our son and that we found you coming out of the dungeon portal, which is the truth…you actually came out of the dungeon portal!"  Miles was trying hard to convince Nial but he was too overwhelmed. He simply got up from the seat and prepared to take his leave.

"I will conquer a few dungeons to clear my mind. You…just stay here or do whatever you want. I will come back…probably," Nial said, getting up from the chair before he turned into darkness currents as he merged with the shadows around him.

"Wait!..." Miles shouted out loud and he jumped forward to grasp the darkness currents but his hands brushed against empty air.

"You cannot just leave like this…"

"As you can see, he can," The Little Oracle said all of a sudden. She pushed her tiny body up the chair and sat down in front of the sobbing Miles Orin. Ryu jumped on the Little Oracle\'s lap where he laid down to take a well-deserved nap.

"That…was not what I meant," Miles Orin retorted and the Little Oracle couldn\'t agree more.

"You really messed up the explanation."

"I…know…"

"At least, I know that you guys did a fabulous job. Nial would have had it much worse in an orphanage. He would have been thrown out before awakening his Origin and his chances of surviving until the age of 18 would have decreased drastically!" The Little Oracle said as a matter of fact.

She didn\'t really care whether it was any consolation, or if it made things worse for Miles. However, who she was interested in was Nial.

"It\'s just sad that he forgets to ask the most important questions. Seems like he is far more naive and soft-hearted than expected," The Oracle mumbled before she averted her focus on patting Ryu.

There were too many questions Nial had forgotten to ask. He knew that he possessed memories about his life before losing his eyesight, but they were blurred.

That meant Nial would have found out more about his life before he emerged on Jundra, sooner or later.

However, as of now, Nial didn\'t even question whether he was born on Jundra, to begin with, who his parents were, or other questions of even more importance!

"Did you ever question whether Nial is truly a human or not? Or did you imagine that raising him could turn out to become the worst possible decision in your family\'s life?" The Oracle asked, her purple eyes darting straight into Miles\' grief-stricken eyes.

"Of course not…why would we ever think like that?? We always loved him, no matter what. Others might have hesitated raising a blind child that was not even theirs but we felt connected to him right off the bat! It would have been better if Kilian was still alive because they would have grown up as great and loving brothers, but Killian\'s death has nothing to do with us picking up Nial…even if it might look like that…" Miles replied vehemently, which was rewarded with a thumbs up from the little Oracle.

Her eyes darted over to the shadows that were moving and the corners of her lips curled upward. \'Are you satisfied with that, Nial?\'

Nial was already far away from Halheim Shelter but his shadows had heard everything necessary. Nial felt as if a heavy weight was taken off his chest, though he was still not able to smile as too many thoughts flashed through his mind.

"Dad…you are really bad with words, aren\'t you?"