My Wives Are A Divine Hive Mind-Chapter 52: Gratefulness

The air hadn’t lifted. The tension remained wrapped around the back of Kivas’ skull, dull and steady, like the ache of a storm behind the eyes.

Samael and Azulus had drifted into another bout of verbal exchange, their voices hardened by calculation and differing instincts. Kivas could barely register the content of it—Samael’s clipped, cutting tones and Azulus’ steady, scared, yet unwavering counters collided like steel on steel.

It wasn’t heated in volume, but sharp in intent as the two of them were insistent on their own path that could barely find any middle ground. Words like "recklessness," "priority," "risk factor," and "pointless endeavor" flared in between the static of Kivas’ disorientation.

Each sentence passed over her as if her mind was filtering the world through fog.

Her breathing remained steady, but her focus slipped, carried inward toward a memory that had never fully left.

It was always there. Beneath the surface. Not dramatic or explosive, just quietly rooted like a splinter in the soul.

And she always recalled this undying memory again and again, at every waking moment.

A rooftop of a tall building. Her feet on the ledge. Cracked concrete beneath half-worn shoes. Wind pulling gently against her bruised face.

Below her, the city pulsed like a living thing. People drifted from place to place, voices raised in moments she could not hear. Lights flickered. Traffic crawled. Life moved, and they went on in their own waves, uncaring.

And she stood apart, gazing at them, those who lived their lives.

There was no call for attention. No final message written on a scrap of paper. No tragedy steeped in poetic metaphors.

Just the silence. Just the feeling of gravity calming her down, singing her lullaby about how great it was when everything ended. The warmth of entropy waiting with open arms.

Kivas remembered how her fingers had curled at her sides. Not clenched, not trembling. Just existing, giving up as if her life had already been taken from her.

She didn’t want to take a step forward. Not entirely. But the thought lingered like a taste in her mouth, and she tried her best to resist her own mind from making any critical suggestion.

And in this precious and haunting memory of hers, what she had wanted wasn’t an escape.

Kivas had nobody to tell this feeling and entropy she felt, someone to reach out her hand, someone to witness what she felt.

To be seen. To be felt. For someone to understand the weight that pressed down on her, even when she smiled. Even when she laughed. Even when she kept walking.

Just one person.

Just one hand to reach out and say, "I see you, please, keep on living."

Yet no matter how much she dreamed of it, no such hand had come.

Before she knew it, Kivas slowly came back to the present. The fog in her mind began to dissipate, and her ears no longer filled with static.

Cradled in Samael’s arms as, Kivas blinked slowly.

Then she leaned forward and buried her face into the crook of Samael’s neck.

Her arms wrapped around her without warning.

Samael’s speech was cut short. Her head tilted slightly to glance down. "Are you feeling alright?" she asked, voice dropping into something quiet. Not worried. Not surprised. Simply a gentle gesture of assurance.

Kivas didn’t answer with words at first. She only clung tighter.

Then, softly, muffled by the contact, she spoke.

"I’m just feeling incredibly lucky." Her voice had that same lopsided cadence it always held when she was trying to downplay the truth. "To meet this callous yet considerate person, the second person who ever tried to kill me when I woke up confused in this world."

Samael exhaled faintly through her nose, ignoring the bait as she smiled. "Do you want to eat something? Rest somewhere before we move? If you feel any weight of discomfort, just feel free to utter them. I’m here."

Kivas shook her head against her shoulder. "No. I just want you to be here. Right now. Every now and then, maybe never out of my sight."

Samael didn’t hesitate. "Then I will."

"If you ever aren’t—" Kivas began, her words tightening into a fragile quiver. "If you ever aren’t, I’ll be devastated."

"I won’t ever leave you," Samael replied. "And even if we split up, I’ll find you and be there for you as fast as I can."

"Hmm, since when are you this smooth of a talker?"

"I just know what stance to choose when my Fateling is feeling down, that’s all." Samael warmly grinned, albeit sharp enough to be seen as devilishly.

Kivas pulled back just far enough to look toward the horizon over Samael’s shoulder.

Azulus stood a few paces away, half-turned, visibly trying to give them space. She had her arms crossed, one brow slightly raised, expression neutral and unreadable—though, it was quite obvious that she felt rather safe now that the Endless Dragon was no longer in the aggro.

Kivas chuckled softly and loosened her grip.

"I still want to get that resonance catalyst," she said. "If we don’t use the teleportation facility now, who knows when Solvish Keep will show up again. Or if it ever will...

"You will also get to taste that Blood Cake again," Kivas smirked. "The amount of times I hear you mutter about wanting to take a bit at those red cubes have been too many to count."

Samael stared at her for a moment longer, assessing for any lingering weakness. Then she nodded and gently lowered Kivas to the ground.

The second her feet touched the smooth tiles of the road, Kivas straightened her back.

Samael watched her regain her balance, then nodded once. "If that’s what you wanted."

Azulus could be seen brimming with excitement, her round rodent ears perked up, and her eyes were sparkling despite the deadpan.

"But we’re skipping the Zarangar Chapter." Samael continued "No guild core looting. No side scavenging. We go straight to the church."

Azulus let out an audible sigh. "Understood," she said flatly.

Samael shot her a look. "That sounded reluctant."

"It was," Azulus answered with no attempt at hiding it. "But fine. We’ll go your way. I won’t cry about it..."

Kivas pressed her hands against her cheeks, grounding herself.

The memory of the rooftop was still lingering behind her eyes, but it no longer carried that same haunting weight.

Samael’s presence was steady beside her, and she hoped that it stayed that way until Kivas felt safe enough to turn around from the sight below.

"We’ve only met for three days,

Azulus already began moving forward, wordlessly assuming the role of navigator now that the decision was final.

Fathom’s sky was starting to set, and the night was waiting for its light to bloom

"We’ve only been with one another for only three days," Kivas pondered warmly. "To think that you made me feel better than any person I’ve remembered in my past life."

"I’m glad if you feel that way," Samael smiled with half-lidded eyes. "I can say the same thing about you."

"Even though I made you more crippled than an ant?"

"Now you’re just downright insulting me~"

"Hmm, I guess I might also need to try to find my fated someone," Azulus muttered under her breath, somewhat feeling a purple envy from all of the flirting and shenanigans happening between the two priority individuals behind her.

"Do you have someone in your mind for that?" Kivas said as she suddenly closed the gap.

"Not in particular." Azulus said outright, then pausing for a second before she continued, "I’ll try my best finding them from now on though, seeing how comfortable the two of you are with one another."

"Just seek another Fateling, it might change your life," Samael casually chimed in.

"I don’t think I will be finding one anywhere in the future..."

"Exactly," Samael snickered.

"Don’t mind her," Kivas tried to console. "You’ll find someone in the near future."

Azulus nodded deeply, "I appreciate that."

They weaved through the outer sectors of Zarangar Valley, moving in a straight vector toward where Azulus remembered the church being located.

The streets remained empty. Transit platforms buzzed silently without passengers.

The glow of power didn’t flicker, but pulsed in steady rhythm. Like the city itself had never noticed it was abandoned.

Kivas glanced up at the spirals of energy rotating above spires, and the silent stairways rising into the suspended gardens overhead. A world too intact to be fallen. Too silent to be functional.

Her steps echoed on stone, and the sound failed to bounce back.

They passed through one of the outer rings, a semicircular plaza filled with statues of various humanoid figures—some robed, some armored, some alien in character. A historical monument likely meant to honor notable explorers and inventors tied to Zarangar’s growth.

No nameplates were etched. Only rotating glyphs hovering midair, as if waiting for someone to read them aloud.

None of them tried.

Even at this point, Kivas felt apathetic to the history of this place, and was much more focused on going back to Solvish Keep, that one familiar place that she might be able to call home.

Kivas couldn’t wait to meet with the people she knew again.

The tall-eared fox demi-human Charishe, the wendigo-shaped bastion guard Voille, the seemingly passionate priestess Lyenar, and many more.

"Here we are," Azulus presented.

The church sat at the third inner circle—its walls constructed from radiant black marble laced with runic light veins, interlaced with suspended bell towers that emitted no sound.

Its design was simultaneously futuristic and ceremonial. A rather strong blend of shrine and machine. A cathedral grown from logic and worship.

Two large doors marked its entrance, made of overlapping spirals of dark crystal.

As they approached, no alarms went off. No barriers triggered.

The entrance opened, responding to their presence without resistance.

Whatever else was wrong with Zarangar Valley, the church recognized them.

Azulus stopped at the threshold, waiting for confirmation.

Samael gave a small nod.

They stepped into the silent sanctum beyond.

"The inside is surprisingly creepy," Kivas’ voice echoed.

"I noticed that," Samael replied. "Are all churches at the current age of humanity made to be this way?"

"That’s not true, but I can see where you came from," Azulus answered without looking back.

The church welcomed them with silence, the kind that wasn’t born of reverence or sanctity, but of something hollow and watching. ƒreewebɳovel.com

As they moved deeper into the cathedral’s vast nave, the temperature didn’t shift, but something in the air grew softer—thicker.

It pressed against Kivas’ skin with a slow, syrupy resistance, as though she were walking through a dream that wasn’t entirely her own.

She blinked, expecting her senses to adjust, but the fuzziness remained.

Her breath caught for a moment. Her vision clouded, not with darkness but a strange haze, like the warmth of vapor slipping beneath her skin.

Her balance wavered slightly, though her feet still moved on reflex, keeping pace with Samael and Azulus without question.

Something sweet drifted into her ears.

A melody.

Delicate at first, thin and fragile as the whimper of a lost thing, played on strings too old to hold perfect tension.

It fluttered like the wind brushing across a glass harp, each note trembling as if hesitant to exist.

A distant reverb followed, like the pluck of something wet and glistening, yet hollowed. An underwater piano of bone and pearl struck slow chords beneath the fragile strings—notes held too long, decaying too fast.

Then came the chorus of breath.

Soft, feminine, like a choir lost in mourning, harmonizing in distant echoes. It wasn’t in any language. Just vowels stretched into emotion, woven into the notes like veins into a leaf.

They didn’t rise in joy, nor grief. They simply were—aware of their own resonance, aware of being heard.

Kivas turned her head, watching their surroundings shift—tall obsidian columns inscribed with glowing glyphs, crystalline murals depicting entities in ritualistic poses, a suspended circular balcony far above, from which runes spun in spirals like gravity had abandoned them.

She could see the lips of Azulus moving. Samael’s hand flicking in some subtle gesture, the lift of a brow, the tilt of a head.

She understood none of it. The words didn’t reach her. They passed by like the wind around the music.

All that existed was the sound.

And something deeper beneath it, as though the melody curled around her soul and hummed softly into her bones.

The air grew warm again, too warm for comfort, but her limbs refused to register anything beyond the melody.

Kivas moved like a ghost following the scent of its old name.

Then the music stopped.

Abruptly.

Cut clean like a thread severed mid-weave.

The weight of the silence that followed was immediate, suffocating.

Kivas inhaled sharply—and her lungs failed to respond. Her breath staggered.

Her knees buckled.

Azulus stood ahead of her, only a few steps away.

Headless.

Her body remained upright, utterly still, frozen mid-turn as though she were about to respond to something.

Blood didn’t flow. It just hovered, a crown of red mist where her neck ended, spinning ever so slightly like it obeyed another world’s physics.

Kivas tried to scream, but no sound came.

Her limbs wouldn’t move.

Then her eyes were torn toward the right, against her will, as if a puppet string had snapped taut.

Samael was there.

Or what had once been her.

It was a shape writhed in the air.

"Aaah..."

The body was twisted at impossible angles, arms bent backward with joints that didn’t belong, legs spiraled inward like they were caged by an unseen force.

Her jaw unhinged in silence, black threads pouring from her mouth like ink made of hair.

Her eyes were blank.

"Samael...?"

The light in the church flickered. The glyphs dimmed.

Then all of a sudden, Kivas felt a cold, at the same time, burning sensation on her neck.

Her vision spun.

The world tilted sideways, round and round it spun.

And then she hit the ground, gaze landed upward to the ceiling.

It was there, the perpetrator of it all.

『Soulmate Detected.』

It was one of the most hideous evil that Kivas had ever seen in her entire life.

A shape so horrible, a color so hideous that the concept of malice reeked from every pores that exist on the skin of that ineffable being.

An imagery—no, a memory that would forever be engraved upon her soul.

『Would you like to imbue a Genesis Core onto this Soulmate?』

Before Kivas’ putrid consciousness waned into nothingness, she finally remembered the words and things that were caught in her ears when that evil melody intoxicated her.

One of them was the sound of her Soulcall Whisper Bell, ringing a minute ago.

To think that she would let her guard down.

Kivas felt something inside of her, sunk deep into the abyss, so deep that she could taste the entire void.

"He...lp..."

Darkness soon consumed.

The pain, the happiness, the suffering—the amalgamation of all things rainbow and sunshine.

All doomed to entropy.

Thus, marking the first death of her epic.

In the ever repeating cycle of hell.

In this Fathomi.