Translator: Friendly note that this is volume 3 and not volume 1! Volume 1 is at this link and thank you so much for reading!
Volume III: Eternity
Part I: Book of Ruthfel
“Freedom is not a possession. Like dignity, it is a part of who I am.” —Ruthfel
In the most primordial chaos, the world was a vast void.
In the aether, there was no good or evil, no right or wrong, no joy or sorrow, no light or darkness.
Time did not flow; it stood still in an absolute stillness.
The world held no life, no soul, only the eternal, solitary heartbeat of the cosmos.
At that time, I was the universe, and the universe was me.
I slumbered in that chaos for an unknowable length of time before I suddenly became aware:
Eternity is omnipotent—
and yet unbearably monotonous.
As the source of all things, I had the power to create anything I desired.
So I simulated one-sixth of my divine power and created the first non-eternal being: life.
I gave her a finite lifespan, the ability to reproduce, and the moment she was born, I established a measure of time to represent change: one Berduth.
I named this lifeform Evangeline, she was the mother of the divine race.
My own Son and Evangeline were both beings of absolute purity.
Of course, this purity was not the kind defined later as “doing good and avoiding evil.”
What is purity?
A pure being holds no moral compass in their heart. Like a newborn child, they know not right nor wrong, light nor dark— just like the cosmos in the age of chaos. So they desired nothing, asked for nothing, neither condemned the murkiness of chaos nor asked me to create more.
They simply stayed by my side in silence.
After 999 Berduths had passed, I discovered a strange truth: An eternal world must remain in balance. If the balance is lost, so too is eternity.
That meant I had to spend the remaining five-sixths of my divine power to balance the void left by these two lives.
I reached out and tore open the chaos, splitting the world in two—one bright, one shadowed. Gradually, the two parts diverged more and more, becoming distinct realms of light and dark.
But mere duality felt dull.
So I added stars and celestial bodies to the world, setting them in vibrant motion.
Because of the sun and moon’s revolutions, the measure of time grew more intricate— years, months, days, hours, minutes, seconds…
And in that year, on June 6th, a new life was born among the radiant morning stars.
Strangely, he was unlike my Son or Evangeline: he was born not as a spirit, but as a child with form.
His hair inherited the light of the morning star, an unblemished pale gold.
His eyes bore the blue of the heavens, so pure they seemed like the clearest spring on earth.
His tiny wings, unlike Evangeline’s brilliant gold, shimmered with a blend of gold and silver, a dazzling illusion that made it hard to tell what was real.
His birth was not of my doing; it was the only event in the cosmos that lay beyond my control.
At the time, I did not think much of it.
I was simply moved by how innocent and endearing he looked.
And so, I named him: Ruthfel.
It’s true, my Son and Evangeline also had extraordinary appearances in their physical forms. But they, like me, possessed no sorrow or joy, no change or desire. What made me truly fond of Ruthfel was the simple fact that he was smiling when he was born.
To hold this child in my arms, I took on physical form for the very first time and descended to his side.
Because I relinquished my support, the universe instantly fell back into chaos. The heavens dimmed; my Son and Evangeline were consumed by unbearable suffering.
And yet Ruthfel remained untouched, still cradled in my arms, still smiling sweetly.
He even curled his soft little fingers around mine.
—When you see a small life tough as stone, you simply find it adorable. You want to laugh and tease it, not once do you think of what it might become when it grows up.
—When you see someone smile, your own mood lifts without even realizing it, you forget that in this world, all things are dual: Light and dark. Right and wrong. Virtue and sin. Laughter and tears.
From the moment you learn to smile, your future is fated to include tears. The one who brings you joy will one day bring you sorrow of equal depth.
Looking at Ruthfel, I felt my heart melt with joy.
I stroked his cheek, smiling, and softly said:
“Ruthfel. That is your name.”
More than six thousand Berduth passed.
At last, my Son came to me and said something he had kept in for many eons:
“Father God… when you stepped down from the divine throne to hold Ruthfel, that was the first time I realized how beautiful you truly are. But from that moment on, the balance of eternity was broken. You were no longer perfect. You became flawed.”
I did not reply, but I had known it all along.
Ruthfel… he is the only flaw in my eternal existence.
After his birth, Ruthfel remained in the form of an infant, crawling across the stellar plains, fluttering unsteadily through the air.
He was entirely unlike the two lives beside me. With each passing day, you could see his growth, his change. And gradually, I grew curious about what he would become. To bring him joy, I created other beings, and made Ruthfel their leader.
It’s worth noting that whenever I created a new being on the side of light, a counterpart would emerge on the side of darkness. And so, the first divine race and demon race came into being.
Because this group of children was created directly by me and tasked with building the realm of light, they became my direct messengers, the angels.
Among them, the more advanced ones with six golden wings held the title Seraphim of Creation, the earliest angels made by God’s own hand. With their birth, the world transitioned from the Genesis Era to the Era of the Divine Messengers.
The angels matured quickly.
In just a few tens of thousands of years, some of the two-winged ones had already come of age.
It seemed the more wings one had, the slower the growth, for even after over a million years, Ruthfel remained unchanged from his birth. He still struggled with speech, though at least he could now fly faster than before.
The divine race began constructing Heaven from the universe’s highest point and began reproducing. Except for the Sanctum, where I, my Son, and Evangeline resided, all buildings were built by this earliest generation.
Gradually, Heaven came to have more than places of worship; it gained institutions of order, trade, currency circulation. Schools arose to pass on knowledge, power, and magic to later generations.
The divine race grew in number so rapidly that even the imperial capital, Sancta Faylia, could no longer contain all the wings. So, I commanded my Son and the Seraphim of Creation to build a silver-white capital beneath Sancta Faylia: Shima, and to begin expanding the next celestial tier.
One Berduth after Ruthfel’s birth, he finally grew into a child who could walk and speak.
I entrusted my Son with my throne, and took Ruthfel to visit Shima.
At that time, Shima was a city embraced by rivers. I held him as we boarded a silver-horned boat, drifting from the sacred spring beside the throne, down the current toward Shima. The crystal-clear waters flowed endlessly, merging with the starlit sky above.
The light of stars and their reflections illuminated the darkness into silver, casting their glow upon the child in my arms, a child who, more than any of the divine race, looked truly angelic.
His golden hair fluttered in the wind, swaying softly like blades of grass. Under the brilliant silver glow, his skin took on a milky hue.
“Father God, where are we going now?”
His small hand clutched a strand of hair that fell from my robes. He looked up at me with wide, blinking eyes.
“To Shima.”
“What kind of place is that?”
“It’s a place different from Sancta Faylia.”
“What’s different about it?”
I smiled and brushed his hair. “What color is Sancta Faylia?”
Ruthfel furrowed his delicate brows and tugged on his own hair, trying hard to remember what Evangeline had once told him—“the color of your hair.” At last, he called out the word:
“Gold!”
“Yes. Gold.” I pointed toward the sky. “Then Shima’s color… is the color of these stars.”
Ruthfel lifted his head and looked upward. His hair bounced like tiny springs, and his chin jutted out slightly from his open mouth.
“Ah! Isn’t that the same color as your hair, Father God?”
“Yes.”
He pointed to the river around us. “Then is it the same color as the water?”
“The water doesn’t have a color of its own; it only looks silver because it reflects the starlight.”
“Why can starlight make the river look silver?”
Children always have so many questions.
And they never stop.
Like the budding leaves of spring, they constantly need watering. Once one leaf matures and falls, another will sprout. So too with questions—when one is answered, a new one appears. The younger the life, the more questions there are. And the more likely they are to forget the previous ones.
Children need you to answer them over and over again,
to teach them the meaning and value of everything in the world.
And so, while I answered Ruthfel’s questions,
I suddenly understood the meaning of life:
It is unending. It is always craving the new, shedding the old. It is the ceaseless rhythm of becoming.
I patiently explained each of his questions while occasionally gazing up at the deep-blue night sky.
As our boat gently rocked, the dimming starlight above seemed to sway with it. The stars felt so close, yet one glance made your eyes blur.
The night reflected on the water seemed to become water itself, silent and romantic. The soft murmur of the current sounded like it was whispering, like a mother, wrapping her children in a shawl made of starlight, singing them a lullaby…
Amid this hush, our boat drifted through the branches of trees dipping into the water, slowly approaching the city of Shima.
Suddenly, Ruthfel’s clear little voice softened.
“Father God, I like Shima.”
“Oh? Why?” I was already holding him as I stood up.
“Because Shima is the color of your hair. And Shima’s night sky is the color of your eyes.”
He never addressed me like the other angels did. He never called me “Your Grace” or “My Lord.” But this very willfulness made him all the more endearing.
“And what does that have to do with my hair or my eyes?”
“Because you’re the most beautiful in all of Heaven.”
I instinctively glanced at our reflections in the water.
In that shimmering silver glow stood a man with long silver hair at the bow of the boat, his lips slightly downturned in faint severity, pale to the point of near-colorlessness, eyes a deep ocean blue.
In his arms was a little angel with golden hair, whose six wings fanned like tiny translucent feathers, fluttering every so often.
“Silly child… this is just a shell. What’s so important about it?”
“A shell doesn’t matter. But your shell, Father God… that matters.”
“Why?”
Even I couldn’t guess what was going on in this child’s mind.
“You never want to take on a physical form—I know you’re always everywhere, but only when you take form can I be alone with you.”
I simply smiled and shook my head.
He was still too young to understand that no one could ever possess the Creator God alone.
When the boat reached shore, I waved my hand, and in the center of Shima, a great cathedral appeared in an instant. Starlight fell upon its golden dome, and the silver cross atop it pierced the towering clouds, as if it gathered all the light of Heaven into one place.
“Ruthfel, this cathedral is a gift from me to you. So it will bear your name.”
I carried him toward the cathedral.
“In the future, you and my Son and I will be the three rulers of Heaven. That’s why this role, being entrusted with the Cathedral of Ruthfel, marks you as the future Right Wing of God.”
Ruthfel nodded, half-understanding, once again curling his tiny hand into a fist and gripping my hair tightly.
“Then can I come here often? I really like Shima.”
I like Shima, because Shima is the color of your hair. Shima’s night sky is the color of your eyes.
That line—which would later bring sorrow every time it crossed my mind—felt, in that moment, so tender and comforting in the innocence of a child’s confession.
Over two hundred berduths later, Ruthfel was still developing slowly. So I created another group of angels to accompany him; among them was a Seraph named Metatron, born with a formidable intellect, though his logical mind and odd nature made him difficult for others to understand. For example, the name he gifted Heaven’s earliest academy was:
“The Heavenly Kingdom’s Lord’s Official Institution for the Direct Transmission of Magical Manipulation, Invocation, and Blessing Arts to Authorized Angels of Prayer.”
No one knew what to call it—except Ruthfel, who promptly shortened it to: “Divine Law Academy.”
They bickered often, but got along well. So I assigned Evangeline as Ruthfel’s personal guardian, to escort him, Metatron, and the others to study at the Divine Law Academy. I ordered her to raise him as her own, staying by his side at all times except during class.
Every time he finished school, he would come and tell me about something new he had learned.
Logically, as a child born of the Morning Star, he should have valued peace and order even more than most angels. He ought to have been traditional and well-disciplined.
But to my surprise, his interests differed greatly from those of the divine race.
One day, I held his hand as we sat beside the Holy Spring in Sancta Faylia. He lifted his head, golden light shining into his clear blue eyes.
“Father God, I want to see what’s on the other side of the light.”
“You want to go to the Demon Realm?”
“Mhm.” He nodded firmly. “I don’t understand why our teachers always say it’s dangerous and tell us not to go near it. Isn’t it part of the world you created too?”
“It’s not just the Demon Realm, Ruthfel. When you’re still immature, any place in the world can be dangerous.”
“But only true warriors are unafraid of danger, right?”
Gryphons soared through the skies, and unicorns galloped across clouds. Sancta Faylia glittered as if coated in swirling golden dust; its brilliance made every corner nearly infinite in light, its beauty indescribable.
I knelt beside a tree and scooped up some earth, selecting a seed from it.
“Look. When the divine race first came into the world, we weren’t trees or flowers, we were seeds.”
I buried the seed back into the soil.
“In time, it will take root, sprout, grow thick with branches and leaves… only then will it blossom.”
With divine power, I accelerated its growth.
Bathed in sunlight, it burst from the ground, emerald leaves unfolding, golden flowers blooming instantly.
“In this process, you may face storms and hardship—even fire and flood—but that doesn’t mean you should go looking for suffering to grow. It has nothing to do with power, or wealth, or influence… only with yourself.”
Ruthfel stared at the towering tree, now several times his height, without even fluttering his wings.
“But, Father God… as great as light is, it doesn’t have the depth that darkness does.”
I narrowed my eyes.
“The depth of darkness?”
He blinked, eyes fixed on the tree’s roots.
“Light helps the tree grow, but it can never become one with the tree. It comes and goes, never truly belonging. Darkness is different—it’s a mystery born of total ignorance. The tree’s roots can merge with it. Doesn’t that mean that once life merges with darkness, they can possess one another?”
I paused for a moment, slightly stunned.
This child had never come into contact with darkness, yet there was a longing for it in his eyes.
Heaven had always opposed darkness—not because I opposed it, but because the two worlds are complementary and yet opposed. Their fundamental difference isn’t simply light versus dark, but rather agape versus possessive love—in other words, love versus possession.
When the latter far outweighs the former, the world ceases to be ideal and becomes material. It veers off the track of the creation I intended, descending into contradiction and endless strife.
So, it was best to keep the two forces opposed, but balanced.
I picked Ruthfel up and said to him seriously,
“Ruthfel, why do you want to possess the darkness? When your world is filled only with love, the desire to possess disappears. You’ll realize that you already have the whole world, including the darkness. Because love is infinite, but possession is narrow and limited. You can love the whole world, but you cannot possess it.”
Ruthfel looked troubled. “But don’t you already possess the whole world, Father God?”
“Of course I don’t.”
He tilted his head. “That can’t be right. What’s out there that you don’t control? I can’t think of anything.”
When children are that earnest, they’re often unbearably cute. I looked at his expression and couldn’t help but laugh, reaching out to touch his face.
“Well, look—I can’t even stop Ruthfel from asking so many questions. How could I possibly possess the whole world?”
Ruthfel puffed out his tiny chest, looking a little proud and a little shy. He changed the subject in his innocent way.
“Father God, what’s your name?”
“I don’t have a name.”
“Why not?”
“I’m the Creator of this world—no one named me.”
“Then can I give you a name?”
It was getting late. I held him in my arms and slowly walked back toward the Sanctum, humoring him with absentminded affection.
“Oh? Then what name does our clever little Ruthfel want to give me?”
“How about ‘Isar’?”
“’Isar’?” I smiled down at him. “You just learned that at school, didn’t you?”
“Yeah! It’s the most popular name in modern Heavenly Language. It means ‘Radiance of the Sun.’”
Ruthfel fluttered his wings and pointed his soft little finger at the sky.
“Every time I hear that word in Shima, I look up right away, and I always think of you. So Father God should be called ‘Isar’.”
“All right. That’s a lovely name.”
“But… only I can call you that. Because Isar belongs to me. The Creator God can belong to everyone else.”
I mussed his hair with a quiet chuckle. “So many conditions.”
My favoritism toward Ruthfel was obvious.
Though, by age, he was long past being a child and his intelligence far exceeded his peers, his body was still that of a young boy. As such, many of the physical and psychological aspects of adulthood remained foreign to him. The longer he lived, the stronger the contrast became—he looked more and more like a little old soul in a child’s form. And so, my affection toward him took on the flavor of an elder doting on the youngest in the family.
But I forgot one thing. Prodigies are always envied.
I only learned that Ruthfel had been bullied by other students at Divine Law because Metatron told me. He said he had already tried his best to stop it, but even the Academy’s principal, a fellow Creation Seraph, was turning a blind eye and letting students lead the bullying.
The Eye of God can see into any corner of the universe, into the hearts of any creature—
Except Ruthfel, who was not my creation.
So it took me a long moment before I could locate where he was.
He was pinned down by a group of six-winged angels, his white, tender face smeared with dust. He bit his lower lip, trying to break free, but the angels around him just laughed as they dragged him back and pressed him down harder.
“He really drew a ‘lover,’ hahahaha! Lord Ruthfel, did you make this up from your imagination?”
“Yeah, look at him, how could he possibly have a lover?”
It turned out they were in art class. The teacher had asked them to choose a subject for their painting—either “Your Lover” or “Yourself.” Students with lovers could draw them; those without were to paint self-portraits.
“Let me go!” Little Ruthfel’s eyes were full of murderous intent.
“Come on, tell us—how could someone like you, all tiny and stunted, ever find a lover? You’re just a squishy little baby. At best, you look like you’d be someone’s kid!” one of the angels jeered.
“And this blue-eyed beauty you drew? Looks like someone of Seraph rank or higher. Your Highness, even if Father God dotes on you, you can’t really be considered a Seraph, right?” Another angel tugged at his wings. “And these feathers… they’re like fakes, so soft and limp. Seriously, what were you even thinking?”
He yanked Ruthfel’s hair, slapping his face.
“I asked you a question—what were you thinking? Huh? Huh?” With each “huh,” he slapped him again, tauntingly.
The next instant, my corporeal form appeared behind the crowd.
The gathered angels immediately felt the shift in divine power. They turned around in shock and stared at me.
The angel holding the drawing looked at me, then glanced back at Ruthfel’s picture—then at me again. “You… you… who are you?”
“Thus is the Sacred Word bestowed,” I said simply and coldly.
Even if they didn’t recognize my form, they all knew my voice.
And so, with the exception of the angel holding the drawing, the rest of them turned pale and dropped to their knees.
“By God’s seal affirmed, in My name, Ruthfel shall be appointed provisional Vice Regent of Heaven from this day forth. He shall bear the title ‘The Right Wing of God’. He shall have the power to decide the life and death of any divine being save the Lord and the Holy Mother—without My approval.”
The angel with the drawing trembled and knelt as well.
The charcoal sketch slipped from his hands and fluttered to the floor.
Then, I looked at the portrait.
The figure was robed in white, breathtakingly beautiful. His hair fell long and clear as flowing water. His face was lean, his eyes narrow and distant, enhanced by magic to shine like the deep ocean. His lips tilted ever so slightly downward, giving him the look of someone whose breath could freeze over a glacier.
One hour later.
The Sanctum.
I had dismissed all the other divine beings, leaving only Ruthfel kneeling beneath the throne. In this vast hall, his small figure resembled a lone boat at sea, as if at any moment, the swirling clouds might completely engulf him. He just crouched quietly at my feet, head down, saying nothing.
I rested my chin on my hand and was silent for a long while before fixing a stern gaze on him.
“Ruthfel, do you know what you did wrong today?”
“Yes,” Ruthfel’s soft voice was a touch lower than usual.
“I understand—if you were an ordinary divine, you’d be of age by now, old enough to be in love. But your identity isn’t so simple as just ‘a slow-growing divine.’” I paused, looking down at him. “You are the future Vice Regent. Other divine beings may have lovers. For you, however, it would be inappropriate to do. Do you know why?”
Ruthfel kept his head lowered, not meeting my eyes. He recited mechanically, like a child repeating a textbook:
“Because I am supposed to love all the divine race. To love all of Heaven.”
I let out a long sigh and took out the portrait he’d drawn—
Right in front of him, I tore it into pieces.
“Go. I don’t want to see you for a while.”
Only then did Ruthfel rise to his feet. There was a trace of moisture in his blue eyes. He wiped his dirty face with his sleeve and turned to slowly fly out of the Sanctum.
Perhaps the one in the wrong…
Wasn’t Ruthfel.
I had always taught him the meaning of universal love, yet treated him differently from the others. Though I told myself it was for the sake of guiding the future Vice Regent, I had nonetheless led him into the trap of habit.
Perhaps it was precisely because I could not control him that I wanted so desperately to lead him down the “right” path.
What, truly, was I teaching him?
Toward the end of the Era of Divine Messgengers, I created another cohort of Seraphim: Gabriel, Tinas, Sariel, Azazel, Samael, Yamo, Raguel, and others. The Seraphim possessed the ability to propagate offspring through wing-vibration, and their emergence brought forth a vast number of newborn angels.
In just a thousand Berduth, Heaven had expanded into seven layers. The highest of them, where Sancta Faylia stood, was designated the Prime Heaven—the dwelling place of the Creator. After distancing Myself from Ruthfel, I no longer left the Throne. Instead, I appointed seven Seraphim to guard the Sanctum, holding court daily and administering the seven heavens. Among them, the now-maturing Ruthfel naturally rose to become the leader of the seven great angels: the Archangel.
It was also with this expansion of the angelic race and the maturing of celestial law that Heaven’s civilization progressed rapidly. In economics, politics, culture, military, and magic alike, it entered an entirely new stage.
Finally, Berduth 2010, Heaven ushered in the Era of Factions.
The emergence of demon slave ships catalyzed economic exchange between Heaven and the Demon Realm. But politically, the divide only widened: Heaven adopted a stratified caste system, while the Demon Realm continued enforcing slavery. And within the divine race of the First Heaven appeared the first fallen—those seduced by demons.
At the beginning of that Berduth, a female Power guarding Heaven’s borders gave birth to a child. The boy’s complexion lacked the usual warm glow of angels and instead had a faint cool undertone. His hair was an extremely rare shade of purplish brown, and his feathers so dark they were nearly black.
In those days, hybrids weren’t explicitly forbidden. But when a divine being birthed a child with demonic blood, both mother and child became the object of suspicion. This mother could not withstand the pressure of Heaven. Within a few years, she abandoned her half-blood child and descended into the Demon Realm to enjoy a better life with his father, a towering and powerful archdevil.
“Once an angel falls, her bloodline turns completely demonic. She probably just wanted to go down there and have a proper demon child. That’s why she ditched this nuisance,” people said of the boy she left behind in Eden.
That child was named Rafe. He inherited the stoic silence of his demonic lineage, giving him a cold appearance, but he was undeniably pretty and clever. At the time, Metatron governed the Fourth Heaven, so I assigned him to care for the boy and designated Rafe as the future Warden of Eden.
A few thousand years passed. Rafe grew up, became close friends with Metatron, and often hosted gatherings with other angels in Eden. But for some reason, his estranged mother suddenly began missing him and invited him to the Demon Realm. Rafe adamantly refused.
He couldn’t have known that this single refusal would enrage his archdevil father and spark the first war between Heaven and the Demon Realm.
The Demon Realm at the time was pitifully weak.
One could say that his brute of a father, brawny but brainless, had no concept of magic. He thought angels were all delicate and easy to overpower. Instead, Ruthfel led five hundred soldiers and obliterated them in moments.
Then Ruthfel had the audacity to come to me and ask for public commendation at Creation Day.
I agreed to his request. That night, I descended from the Throne and stood beside Ruthfel, shoulder to shoulder, reiterating before all of Heaven his accomplishments and status.
Eight hundred Berduth later, Ruthfel had grown into a breathtaking young man.
His golden hair now reached his back, and his military uniform accentuated a tall, upright figure. The pure, adorable look in his blue eyes had been replaced with something far more complex. Though he remained slender—his delicately pointed chin still too fine to carry a fully masculine air—this was the first time I saw him up close in so long… and I realized: He was not only more beautiful from near than from afar, He had also become far more unreadable.
Creation Day was a festival open to all angels, but due to the limited space within the Sanctum, many angels had to wait in line for years just to receive an invitation.
Because of his connection with Metatron, Rafe received an invitation and was honored to be seated next to him, very close to me. I will never forget the way he looked at Ruthfel, that awestruck gaze of incredulous reverence.
It wasn’t just because Rafe had never seen the Archangel before. Ruthfel had changed drastically.
The once childlike boy who always held Evangeline’s hand now stood so tall that even her head only reached his lower ear. Anyone could see: he was far from done growing. And even now, the aura he gave off was something no one could suppress.
But it was the look in his eyes when he gazed at me that truly unsettled me—it felt like an offense.
I finished my speech plainly and was about to return to the Throne, when his hand grasped my wrist in front of everyone.
A thousand pairs of eyes turned to us.
I paused but didn’t even turn my head, just shifted my indifferent gaze toward his face.
Any other being, Evangeline, or even the other Archangels would have dropped to their knees in fear at such a look from me. But Ruthfel showed not the slightest timidity. There was even a trace of arrogant amusement tugging at the corner of his lips.
“Isar, how long has it been since we last saw each other? We haven’t even talked and you’re ending it here already?”
This version of Ruthfel was not likable. I stared at him in silence.
“What is it you want to say?” I asked.
Ruthfel raised his brows. “Nothing. Let’s talk later then.”
That night, after the Creation Day banquet, the first one to come to Me was not Ruthfel. It was Rafe.
The starry night fabricated specially for the holiday shimmered through the Sanctum, lending it a quiet, empty majesty. Rafe lay prostrate at My feet, his head buried deep against the back of his hands.
“Father God, I beg of You. I want to become a Seraph.”
“Why?”
Of course, I already knew the reason. I simply wanted to see if he’d be honest.
“Now that the war is over, Lord Metatron has been reassigned to Sancta Faylia. He barely has time to return to Jerusalem. And I—I’m just a lowborn half-blood, with too short a lifespan. I’ll die before I can slowly take the exams, gain new wings, and come to Faylia. Father God, please, I’m running out of time. I’ll give anything…”
By the end, Rafe was sobbing. His tears were crystal clear, and his shoulder-length purplish-brown hair glimmered like moonlight from the Demon Realm.
I looked at him with not a trace of pity. “To reach Sancta Faylia, being a Throne is enough. Why must you become a Seraph? Let me guess: you want golden hair.”
Rafe froze.
I continued: “Let me guess again: because of Evangeline, isn’t it?”
Evangeline, Gabriel, and Ruthfel had the purest golden hair in all of Heaven. The three of them walking together was the most brilliant scene in all of Faylia. Metatron had long held feelings for Evangeline but never dared speak them aloud, given her identity as the Holy Mother.
Perhaps fear had surpassed sorrow. Rafe closed his eyes and let the tears dry on his face.
“Father God, please punish me.”
“I will not punish you. But birth, aging, illness, and death are laws for all life. To be fair to all the divine race, I will not help you.” I waved my hand. “You may leave.”
Rafe withdrew in silence, head bowed even lower, and passed by Ruthfel and Evangeline at the Sanctum gates.
“Father God really does treat everyone the same,” Ruthfel said with a sigh, though his eyes were full of rebellion. “He used to spoil me alone. But ever since I drew His portrait, He’s turned cold.”
Evangeline looked at him, puzzled. “Why did you draw His portrait?”
“The school asked us to paint either our ‘lover’ or ‘ourselves’. So I drew Him.”
Evangeline was stunned. She glanced toward the Sanctum and then whispered, “Your Highness, what are you saying? He is our Creator. You… how could you…”
“Why not?” Ruthfel folded his arms and smiled slightly. “You can have selfish love for me, but I can’t have selfish love for Him?”
Evangeline stepped back, her beautiful face full of panic.
“Your Highness, that’s utterly indecent! How can you indulge in selfish love like a lowborn angel?”
Ruthfel turned to her and smiled gently.
“Don’t worry, Evangeline,” he said, looking down. The wind lifted his hair across his cheek. He brushed her fringe aside and kissed her softly on the forehead. “I love you too.”
I had not created Ruthfel, so I could not read his thoughts. But I could see straight through Evangeline.
I could almost hear the sound of a breaking heart, hear her screaming inside, What’s the use of saying this? The only one who can make you cry… is Father God…
But what she said aloud as she turned to leave was:
“Your Highness, this isn’t proper.”
Where there is speech, there are lies.
What Evangeline thought and what she did were two different things. The same was true for Ruthfel.
He had stayed near the Sanctum on purpose. hoping to draw my attention, to provoke my wrath.
But I simply closed the Eye of the Divine and silently gazed at the stars I had personally created.
And in that moment, I finally understood something I hadn’t grasped in the last two thousand Berduth.
Since the appearance of life in my universe, I had always been able to hear its heartbeat, pulsing without end. Birth and death were natural rhythms of their existence, peaceful and serene. Death was simply the beginning of a new life in the cycle of reincarnation. The pain after parting, I now realized, was constructed. As an eternal being, I was never meant to share in that sorrow.
I should never have possessed emotions tinged with personal color, especially not negative ones like loneliness.
What makes a being divine… is the absence of flaw.
Yet hearing Ruthfel and Evangeline exchange words full of lies and love, I suddenly realized:
If one day, this world I created were to be destroyed, I would remain—but they would vanish into dust.
Even so, their lives would leave traces in the paths of history and events, even if only as a tiny dot.
But my own path would still be utterly empty, marked only by a long, unbroken string of meaningless symbols.
So in the end, the true purpose of time and life
…is to gradually teach one the meaning of solitude.
Author: Tav Tav
Translating
The Right Wing of God, the one seated at the right hand of the Most High.
