Caelum had felt it. The moment he gained the recognition of the Red Moon, something inside him snapped into place as though a missing puzzle piece finally found its way home.
And this was by no means a simple matter as it was a change so fundamental that it even managed to affect his own disposition. Back then, if only for a brief moment, he felt it was highly unnatural.
It was like someone had tampered with his body, but as the seconds passed, he slowly began to feel satisfied and at the same time… dreadful.
This change was only amplified when the Red Moon purified their bodies, lifting the invisible shackles on them. And at that point, Caelum seemed to have seen a silhouette of a man standing before him.
He could not tell who the man was, but he could tell that his very existence was dread itself.
And now, as he was wielding his sovereignty over all blood and life, he again felt the dread. It was not the hateful kind of dread that one would feel for a mortal enemy who is so diametrically opposed to one's entire being.
This was a personal dread, one held for oneself.
For a moment, Caelum saw his outstretched hand flicker. One moment, it was calling on the blood of the man before him. In the next, he held a gun as pristine and silvery white as it could be. And yet, despite not being tainted by the crimson, it could not escape the stench of iron.
The man before him also flickered. One moment, he was seeing Reynor's shocked face. And the next, he saw a couple bleeding in each other's embrace, their faces satisfied, even showing a hint of gratitude.
But gratitude… to whom?
To him?
To the one who held a gun to their chests and pulled the trigger?
To the one who took the lives of the only two people he ever saw as family?
Dread surged from within him. It was not hatred for himself, but rather for what he had become.
Caelum snapped back to reality a split second later. The overflowing dread nearly drowned him before he was able to extricate himself from that illusion.
But was it… an illusion?
If it was, how ironic for it to come from the one thing that seemed to embody Truth itself.
Caelum pressed down on all the dread welling up inside him. He did not need this distraction at the moment. He had a purpose, one that cannot be any further from dreadful.
Despite all the experience he just went through, only a few seconds have really passed for the world. His mind truly just worked at an impossible speed. And so, just a few seconds after everyone felt their blood boil, Reynor's pores seemed to open up as blood began to flow out.
At first, there were just droplets. Then there was a trickle. Then soon, it was a flow no less than what could be observed from their veins.
The blood seemed to circle around Caelum's hand, yet he did not even bother looking at it. For others, if they were already terrified before, then this scene was perhaps the ultimate realisation of their fear. But to Caelum, there was nothing wrong with blood.
He was not manipulating it to sever a life, that was never how the laws of existence even saw blood. Blood had always been a machine, the vessel carrying the very essence of life. And to Caelum, that was all he was seeing, all he was commanding.
Soon, the swirl of blood lit up like a bright ruby as they flowed toward Reynor's body. They coated the parts that were missing, not only those that were visible, but even those that Reynor himself did not know of.
Caelum was indeed in full control of the man's life at this very moment, and he could tell all the flaws and imperfections in the man's body. So he moved the man's own lifeforce to fix all its flaws.
One would wonder how his method was any different from Erta's spells, but the answer to that was very simple.
He was the Ancestor of Blood. He commanded the authority over life itself and therefore, despite his method being similar, it was fundamentally different.
He was not drawing on Reynor's lifeforce to stimulate recovery as it would only lead to draining what remained of his lifeforce. Caelum was essentially creating a near endless supply of Reynor's own lifeforce by supplementing it with his own power in order to heal Reynor.
In truth, the only blood that Reynor had lost throughout the entire process was the very first drop of blood that came out of his pores. The rest that came flooding out was the power of the Ancestor of Blood to create more blood.
And despite the means with which Caelum had acquired this authority and despite the name of it, it did not truly make him a bloodsucking vampire.
"The Scarlet Light calls upon the Breath of Truth. Bless this blood with the Breath of Life."
Caelum did not know where he got this incantation from. He only felt the urge to speak it despite not truly understanding what it meant. In fact, before he could even begin to understand its meaning, he needed to understand first the language that he had spoken.
The problem was that, although he somehow understood the language on an intuitive level, understanding the words was something he was not able to do.
It was like he was hearing someone speak a foreign language that he had heard enough to somehow understand bits and pieces of, but not enough to actually understand how to speak it or even just listen to it.
This only made him frown more. It seems the secrets of this Red Moon were so deep that he simply could not believe it had come from a mere dungeon, unique or otherwise. It was even more of an impossibility than the divine darkness that he had acquired from that same dungeon.
And if Caelum himself could not understand what it was he spoke, then how could anyone else understand. Even Erta stood speechless as she witnessed all this. Even with all her knowledge, that language was far too ancient and alien for her to even grasp any inkling of.
But soon, all their shock toward the alien words that Caelum had spoken had been shifted toward the miracle that unfolded before them all.
The blood that gathered on Reynor's body slowly pulsed with bright ruby light like a beating heart. And with every pulse, it shrank and shrank. However, as it did so, the places where it once were had now been replaced by full bones, muscle fibres, nerves, blood vessels and flesh. The blood was like a curtain slowly being pulled to reveal a perfect body devoid of any flaws it once had.
And for the first time, the world itself seemed to beat once, resonating with all the hearts of those watching.
If earlier there were only a few who understood what kind of existence Caelum was, now the entirety of Earth, no matter where one was, would have been made to know.
Earth had given birth to an Ancestor of Blood.
If such a news were made to spread throughout the Myriad Worlds, it would not be long before a war of a scale that would dwarf the current Great War began. That was simply how tremendous the significance of an Ancestor was.
Ancestors were the very pinnacle of mortal divinity. For anything that exists, a path would be tied to it. An Ancestor is one who had reached the pinnacle of this path, obtaining an authority greater than anyone else treading that path.
And there could only be one Ancestor for each path, just as there could only be one god for each path.
One might wonder then how Caelum was able to obtain such a position with practically no connection to Blood whatsoever. But the answer has two layers. First of all, he had always been related to Blood, or rather, to Life by virtue of Serenity and Chaos. And second, there was a mystery to his existence that was now being unveiled.
Seeing his work complete, Caelum breathed a sigh of relief.
It was his first time using this power and he was not sure how well it would have worked. Especially because he was so wary of the dread that accompanied it.
He had sealed it deep within him knowing that he would have to face it sooner or later. But at least for now, he would not.
He could not.
His vision grew hazy as his eyes grew heavy. For the first time in a long while, Caelum Grace fainted. Erta, who had already sensed his weakness, managed to catch him before he could fall to the ground.
Her eyes as she gazed at her husband's face was conflicted. After all, the dread that Caelum had suppressed was far too much for him to even notice that Erta had been forced to help him suppress it through their Life Covenant.
She brought Caelum to his room in Halo as the rest of the people who witnessed the miracle looked on with both awe and inevitable fear. Reynor followed behind.
Meanwhile, in Caelum's head, he saw something he did not expect to see so soon.
He stood there filled with anguish and regret. His hands dripped with the blood of his friends and their love. The silent tear that ran down his cheek drowned in the crimson pooling beneath his feet.
They still stared at him with smiles of contentment and gratitude. Their faces yet uncaring for the pain he had caused himself, for the burden he never wished to carry. The voice of the woman still echoed in his ears even when her pulse had long ended.
"Kill me now or kill me never. Take my life than a million others. Tears will but spoil the truth. You know the world needs to be cured."
And yet he still cried.
The truth was that he was a lone man abandoned by the world. But now that it faced its greatest crisis, it turned to him. The forsaken one who learned to wade through the shadows, stepping onto the very boundary of life and death, was the only one who could bring them hope.
But he did not want to. The world had taken too much from him. The world had pushed him to the very brink. Why should he now bring it salvation?
The truth was… he could only cry in defiance… in righteous indignation.