#infoedit

Part 1

First, I made Maria a little older when she was caught in a storm. I wanted to distance Levia from lightning and make Maria a more Miku-ish age rather than a typical Rin age. 

Basically, I’m increasing Levia’s association with wind instead of lightning.

Next was Miroku’s name. I don’t know, it’s an alright name but it feels weird for a surname from later EC being a first name of a not-Jakokuese character here. I first renamed him Nemanja, but then found a Slavic G- name I liked, Gavriil. It’s an equivalent to “Gabriel” which is the name of an archangel.

I liked the first few chapters so not too much has changed. It got exponentially more and more divided from the source material as the book quality went down.

I haven’t changed too much of the worldbuilding or politics cause that is not my strong point, lol. It’s serviceable so I let it be.

I added a description of curled platinum blond hair for Irta Li because I think he should look like Alucard.

Changed the “gear” system of time to “period” since that term is an actual expression of time and is not used in-universe/in the book for this purpose.

Changed Adam and Gammon’s reactions to being late. I just feel maybe Adam shouldn’t be so smug and Gammon such an ass.

I didn’t change anything about Vaju, but his description makes me think of the Capitol elite from The Hunger Games.

Part 2

Didn’t feel like settling on “Mogura” or “Mole People” for those people who dig up Second Period relics, so I just titled them Excavators.

Kept the magic car cause it’s pretty dope and it made my friend go feral cause she predicted it.

Genderbent Raiou into Raijoou because I always imagined the Zvezdas as matriarchal and instead of switching it so Raiou was the late parent, I just said screw it, Eve gets two moms.

I like the idea of Horus Solnste being his own character but there’s really no way to make it work without even more rewrites so he’s still Seth here.

Raijoou’s wife still claims to have found Eve in a river. This is an in-story lie and a meta misdirection.

Added that Adam and Eve have a year to two year difference in age, but they’re both around 20.

I found the whale thing kind of dumb so I just made Catherine a “white blur under the waves” (i.e. a dead sunken body). I get it was a Jonah’s whale reference but I don’t think she needs to literally be a whale for her to fulfill that reference, like how Seth is never a literal snake.

Changed the mention of “THE White Army” to “A White Army”. Raisa mentions a test of her “Second Regiment”. I changed her from a Salem inheritor to a Vlad inheritor (who uses fire magic). This “Second Regiment” is an undead army that are all white, like the Netsuma humans of her First Regiment. Though the zombies are resistant to regular fighting, lightning gets them down quite easily.

I have to say, I wasn’t really chill with Meta being a Gilles inheritor when the info came out but the Red Devotees are so terrifying I couldn’t change it.

Salem inheritor fire is not fire magic. The Netsuma are not all Vlad inheritors like Raisa, but they are all skilled in the fire arts, that is, fire spells and weapons. The arts don’t cover blue flames, as only Salem inheritors produce that.

I made Eve a Held sect member from the start, for more conflict between her and Zellana as Zellana proceeds to be an asshole about Held. Since Nemu isn’t too close to the forest, Eve hasn’t seen Held for herself, so she tries not to cause so much of a fuss, aware she’s in a Levia sect majority place.

Part 3

Adam doesn’t have a direct memory of any river. He was just already out in the open as a very young child as far as he could remember.

Adam is still caught up in a storm like the original tsunami and is saved by Catherine.

Made Horus/Seth as less of a dick than he is, by him being unable to bring Adam to Maria (or reveal Adam as Maria’s son) since Maria’s visitors really are restricted and enforced.

It’s unclear if Horus really did update Maria on Adam’s condition as he claims, decide depending on how you want to see him.

Made Gammon and Adam’s relationship just a bit more pining-y, so when Gammon is drunk he just leans on Adam instead of the counter.

Changed the fucking STUPID Levia inheritor bullshit with Venom. Venom is now connected to Gilles Inheritors. Kept the dead body experimentation part so it’s uncomfortably close to the truth.

Made Adam a little less willing to commit homicide.

MADE ADAM KEEP HIS STUPID, GROSS PLAN ON THE BACKBURNER. HE DOESN’T GO THROUGH WITH IT.

Adam circumvents Seth for the recipe for Venom. This is very important.

Horus/Seth has told Adam about the river children, not telling Adam he is one of those. Adam thus assumes he must be one of them. This is further misdirection.

Raijoou is still a founding member of Apocalypse.

Seth isn’t around so much while Adam and Eve hang out, so as far as Adam is aware, Seth doesn’t know he’s using Venom. This is important as well.

Gammon flirts with Adam but slyly takes it back before he notices.

Adam is already paranoid that he’s given Eve too much Venom (this is unchanged from the source but still important for the payoff)

Scene with Catherine is unchanged, because I love her and this scene.

When Eve has the stillbirth, Seth implies something on Adam’s part is what caused it. The pieces all come together: Seth may have created Venom, but Adam went behind his back to get Venom, used it while trying to keep Seth from knowing about it, thus making this all Adam’s fault. Seth didn’t even convince him to use it, either.

Part 4

Seth gets a black eyes and is being creepy when pistol-whipped. Also his glasses were sent flying off his face.

Finally, Seth clears the meticulous shit I set up, lmao.

After Maria was rendered sterile and her twins were gotten rid of, she still wanted a child and enlisted Seth to make it happen.

The twins aren’t Adam and Eve. Seth kept the boy in cryostasis in Lunaca Labora for his destruction powers, and gave the girl to the Lighwatch Temple so he could keep a close eye on her. These are Amostia and Elluka, respectively.

Adam is essentially a tube-grown human. He’s not a ghoul child because he was made with two sets of DNA, Maria’s and a foreign man to obscure Adam’s phenotype.

Lunaca Labora is a large underground complex, with secret entrances spanning to and from many important capital buildings.

Thus, when Apocalypse bombed one of these buildings, this caused a collapse in the section of Lunaca Labora below it, the chaos in which Adam disappeared.

It was incidents like this that made Raijoou leave Apocalypse and take a wife in the quiet village of Nemu once again.

Horus had met both Raijoou and her wife, Inanna while searching Evillious.

I named her wife Inanna because I wanted a name that resembled “inazumi” to fit Raijoou’s lightning theme, in addition to Inanna meaning “lady” and “heaven/sky”, and being a Sumerian goddess equated to Ishtar.

Without Raijoou’s input, Inanna enlisted Horus to make them a child, she she couldn’t have any, and of course not with Raijoou.

Eve is fashioned the same way as Adam- made with two sets of DNA donated by Inanna and Raijoou.

She was a backburner project so she was finished about a year after both Adam and Meta. Seth had also made Eve a HER carrier.

Since Raijoou is a Held inheritor, Eve ended up as one, too. Noticing this early in her development, it got Seth interested in making ghoul children with inheritor abilities.

Seth is still a shitty father, but I made it less..... cartoonishly horrible. Not better, just less awful. Seth is already a twisted guy, so he tried raising Adam the way he himself was raised, the only way he could think of: purely for their intelligence. Seth had gifted child syndrome, I’m calling it.

Seth tried making Gilles inheritor ghoul children specifically because they were hard to make. If he could get them correctly, he could make any kind of inheritor.

When he failed, he melted down their compositions since they were now useless. This is where Venom really comes from.

His first success was Meta, which opened the door for more inheritors.

Seth would have preferred Cain and Abel be born alive, as he swapped the God Seed for Seeds of Malice when they were first conceived. (Notice how Seth just always has it with him and is the first to brandish it, even in OSS: Crime?) Eve being a HER carrier would have increased Cain and Abel’s chances of being born with HERS.

They did indeed die because Eve had too much Venom. Not because of some really gross lazy ass-pull of a plot twist. That’d be crazy, right?

Eve was actually immune to Venom because as the Held inheritor test tube human Seth made, her own powers cancelled Venom’s powers out.

But even though the drug did not affect her mind, it was still in her bloodstream.

Normally, that’s not a problem, but Venom’s side effects in a pregnant person include deformities in the developing fetus(es) that can kill in utero (the same general reason Gilles Inheritors were so hard to make)

Eve still went mad after the stillbirth, which is not because of all the Venom in her bloodstream, the trauma activated the self-hypnosis (another Held inheritor power) she uses throughout the series. It’s a self defense tactic to protect her from the death of her children, by making her think they are alive and well.

That hypnosis will last a VERY long time, it’s in constant action like a flexing muscle, though its effects waver. I imagine it’d make her kind of despondent or tired since she’s just constantly using her inheritor powers without even realizing it.

Seth is definitely puppeting all these disasters but Cain and Abel’s deaths are on Adam’s hands.

Part 5

RAISA AND META ARE ACTUALLY FRIENDS, LIKE MOTHY ORIGINALLY SAID.

I mean honestly they’re like casual, informal girlfriends. It’s like they never actually asked the other out but when they spar for fighting practice they pin each other a lot. They just like being near each other. Looking at each other. They drink together a lot.

I made Meta not such a bitch about Raisa, too. Like, Jesus Christ, mothy. Meta is now worried for Raisa because she’s such a hellbeast in battle, not cause she hates her for [404 REASON NOT FOUND].

Meta didn’t really have any impression of Raisa when Pale suggested they recruit her, mainly agreeing because it beefed up their forces, coming to know her because they had since lived together with the rest of Apocalypse.

Meta finds Raisa’s scar (particularly around her mouth) distracting because they aren’t covered up behind a mask like they usually are.

Raisa literally climbs onto Meta’s bed and probably over Meta so they can be face to face.

Meta’s almost not even listening, cause Raisa’s hair is like a glowing white next to her red face. Meta, please stop thinking about how pretty your girlfriend is and listen.

Instead of completely pointless amnesia, Meta simply wishes to not dwell on her past. It’s more of a conscious effort to repress that time of her life than actual locked-away memories.

To nonamnesiac Meta, her life really only meant something once she was around 20.

HEY, INSTEAD OF CHILD META BEING ASSAULTED, LET ME PROPOSE: 

Much like Adam, Meta had nothing to do but wander around the country, though she more often broke into homes and stole than he did.

Her Gilles inheritor charms allowed her to weasel her way out of trouble, but she always thought people went easy on her because she was a homeless child.

Her powers/the genuine pity of onlookers sometimes allowed her to SCP-1076 her way into a home, but she always felt out of place and would usually end up running away again.

Meta was caught up in an attack by Apocalypse but as the action was winding down, Pale found her and recruited her, her murdering a hostage as a sort of initiation.

The Royal Capital Army’s armor can’t be breached by Raisa’s fire. This is important later on.

Meta is done zoning out so she hugs Raisa to make her stop shouting.

Some very subtle rewording that implies Meta wasn’t dressed before Raisa left the room. Not necessarily naked, but maybe in whatever nightclothes she had. I imagine just lingerie though.

Milky is dressed as she usually is, on top of the covers while Pale is under them.

Made Meta less so goddamn spiteful about Milky??

Basically Meta and Pale kind of joke with each other about their other partners, Raisa and Milky respectively. Apocalypse is a big ol’ polycule, minus Yegor. Cause he’s a creep.

Kept the cute stuff Meta thinks about Pale... who’d have thought their relationship would be the least garbage out of the original book?

Changed a little bit about Pale’s music box tinkering. He’s not making something, he’s taking it apart. Though he plans to put it back together to get better at making things.

Meta is still thinking about Raisa so she accidentally brings her up when they’re discussing the mole in the group.

Meta genuinely doesn’t think Raisa is the mole, and defends her when Pale asks if she’s implying something.

The woman Meta comes across is still? Eve? I have no goddamn idea why it can’t be her in the original so, you’re welcome mothy, I fixed it.

The fog and fighting has knocked out Adam, whom Eve is cradling. The fog is a byproduct of Venom so it doesn’t affect Meta nor Eve.

Eve is so stressed, so hypnosis is going into overdrive to the point she can’t even get her children’s names right. or she could just be so upset that she’s slurring her words. 

Raisa has somehow come into intel that says Yegor is the mole and is conspiring to capture Meta, so she abandoned her trip north to warn or help Meta.

Raisa is not immune to Venom, but the mask she uses to cover her scars is helping filter some of it out so she’s still lucid enough to yell to Meta.

The fog has overtaken most of the scene, Eve has escaped with Adam, and Capital Army forces are closing in on Meta.

Raisa tackles Meta to the ground in an effort to cover her and unleashes an explosion (that ends up knocking the both of them out) in an effort to keep them away.

Elluka is older on account of being Maria’s twin daughter. She’s still quite youthful anyways.

Removed the second period legacy room mumbo jumbo. It can just be a Third Period anti-magic room.

Yegor Asayev looks like V from V For Vendetta, because I said so.

Instead of dying like a punk and offscreen no less, Raisa was killed immediately after her stunt to protect Meta. Remember, her fire can’t penetrate the army’s armor. She was aware of this but it was all she could think to do, or to do at all.

Yegor doesn’t know how Raisa caught wind of his betrayal and wonders if he has a mole of his own. I don’t either. It’s for intrigue!!

Made Meta more... emotional. Cause she kind of seemed not to care too much. Like obviously she was angry and defeated but since in this version, someone she loved, Raisa, died protecting her, all in vain, she’s even more griefstricken.

Meta and Elluka are friends by the barest means. Meta tried scaring her to get what she wanted, but Meta ends up giving her advice. This is how it was in the original but I still want to highlight it.

Instead of a pendant, Seth’s plan and map is kept in a glass bottle on Meta’s person.

Seth remains a little shit in this scene because he’s honestly the best part of the original book.

Elluka still cries for Meta, because of their rapport. God, I just think it’s so sweet.

Kept the baby Pale thing. I mean in the original it was probably added to make the age gap between Elluka and Kiril less YIKES, but I wasn’t quite sure how to take it out. Even if Elluka is older in this continuity, I think Pale being de-aged doesn’t hurt.

Hansel and Gretel are preemies!

Clearly something is up with Gammon, so I added he’s being tying his hair differently and smiling more often.

Since it was traveling into Maria’s maze that marked this changed, I changed his hair tie from high to low to match Irina’s low braid to suggest Maria might be in there.

I think it’s weird if Gammon himself was just kind of removed from the story by another character in his body so I made it ambiguous as to whether he’s still in there or not.

Looking at the babies forces Meta to think about her own childhood.

Meta can’t drain the tanks without letting the babies fall, so she dives inside, disconnects them from their support tubes and breaks them from the inside.

Yes, I’m aware the strength needed to break the glass would have to be fucking IMMENSE since it can handle the pressure from containing a building’s worth of heavy fluid, but shut up, Meta is buff in this continuity. Besides, the glass probably isn’t made to withstand sharp, repeated points of stress from the inside as opposed to the designed entire surface area pressure. I’m sure someone who’s into physics is reading this and pulling their hair out and I’m sorry. Not sorry enough to fix it. sdfghj

I want the incident that allowed Adam to escape to be the same one Meta escaped in, but I have NO idea if I can make that work in the timeline. I sure which there was a goddamn calendar system for this, mothy.

I have no idea what the hell mothy is talking about with Levia’s blessing, but anyways I kept it vague about how the babies are immune to the Venom fog. The wording is more in line with what we hear during Lust Arc when IR is talking about Mikulia’s immunity to Sateriasis’ lust spell.

Part 6

Kept the fourth wall breaking with Eve. That shit’s too great.

Definitely made the pre-demonic Venom Sword Raisa’s sword that they confiscated.

Eve picks up her Held worshiping habits again. They technically never went away but it was hard to do deep in Levianta.

Part 7

Adam doesn’t recognize Meta. To be honest, I can’t tell if he DOES recognize her in the original or not. But for sure here, he doesn’t point her out as Meta.

Adam is kind of silently panicking, so he just says sorry for every movement of the shovel he makes to bury her.

The time placements are all over the place in this chapter, just ignore it.

Eve’s self-hypnosis is still in full effect when they escape deep into Elphegort.

I sort of added a whole scene? More like I took stuff from other scenes and added enough to make it its own scene.

Her hypnosis was in complete swing when she came in the door, but Adam and the reality of Meta’s death finally broke it. Her denial from now on is normal self-denial, not the result of an inheritor ability defense mechanism.

Even though Eve has, on some level, acknowledged her wrongdoing and the reality of things, she still finds comfort in the babies.

I know earlier I made Adam less willing to commit homicide but I find his even just contemplating infanticide darkly humorous. Like, what the fuck, Adam? Of course he doesn’t follow through on it, though.

Kept Gretel being weirdly conscious of everything while Hansel is just a normal baby. I love the idea of Gretel being a creepy horror movie baby who knows more than she should and Hansel is just here vibing.

Remember that Adam thinks she’s done all this because he drugged her with Venom. He is indeed responsible for killing her unborn children with Venom, but he isn’t aware Venom hasn’t affected her mentally.

So Eve’s Original Sin is killing Meta and taking her babies, and Adam’s Original Sin is “ruining Eve” and thus killing her children.

Part 8

Added how Seth technically had Maria’s permission to do what he did, but he still took advantage of that, so even revealing that wouldn’t make him look good. It’s not officially reported cause it could lend him some credence.

Kept his edgy little manifesto because it makes me laugh.

Didn’t take out the Pale/Kiril thing because honestly that was an adequate turn of events.

Glossary

Levianta was founded by a cabal of mages who discovered Second Period artifacts. Magic is powerful, but requires time and preparation to use—however, the old technology streamlined the usage of magic, making it easier and more useful for technological advance. The woman who would become the first queen was named Alice Merry-Go-Round, and she is the one who realized this.

She hired people to dig up the technology in the temple, but was faced with resistance from the local populace, who revered Levia-Behemo using that temple. Alice put a wall around it in response, and this became the “first wall”. More walls were built and eventually this became a fortress.

Her followers named it Alicegrad, and Alice herself founded Levianta with herself as the queen. Still, they faced resistance from the natives. To appease them, Alice declared Levia-Behemo as the country’s god, and made a council of 12 people. Six of them were mages who served under her, and six were comprised of the local natives. Levianta grew prosperous. 

When the first queen died, her daughter inherited her position and took on the name of Alice Merry-Go-Round herself. Since then, every queen has taken that name. The one who appears in the story is the seventh one.

Alices 1 through 4 are based on Alice of Human Sacrifice, broken by the Fifth one.

Loop Octopus and Vaju are of the 6 mage families in the senate. Asayev and Li are of the 6 native local families. The families are supposed to be equal, but there are great gaps between them. Example being Loop Octopus has taken much of Vaju’s wealth, and there are two Loop Octopuses on the senate now (Gammon and his younger brother, Nazar, the family’s heir).

Lighwatch is a place where they raise queen candidates, but also has things like jail cells and execution devices like Torcia Tower. Lighwatch collects girls with Levia inheritor powers. They are able to remove “malice” from people’s hearts, and also hear the “voice of god”. Yegor is able to tell them by sight, as he is an inheritor of Behemo, who can see another person’s inheritor powers. Zellana and Elluka are orphans.

There were different varieties of Ghoul Children when it came to the artificial personalities they had. “Clean” refers to those that have no memories, “Preset” refers to those that have pre-made false memories, and “Copy” refers to those that have identical memories to Seth.

Catherine was a marine scientist, and married to Gilles. They rode along in the Climb One. They had a son, but he was sickly and did not ride on the same ship as them.

For this reason she grew jealous towards female psychologist Rahab, whose two children were able to board the ship with her. When she realized that Rahab was having an affair with Gilles, her jealousy turned to rage. She conspired with Lich to kill Rahab, but in the end was killed by Lich, who she realized too late was really “malice” wearing his form.

Scene 1

The scene opens with Gavriil Loop Octopus stomping on a snake at his feet and then plucking up and eating some red fruit floating down the canal to him, to the shock of his retainer. They discuss the water’s cleanliness, and then bring up how Asmouse (and the rest of the country for that matter) is progressing pretty well with their water purification, thanks to the Second Period technology and, as the retainer hurriedly adds, the senate’s efforts. Gavriil is a member of the senate.

Gavriil is in a bad mood over the latest prophecy. There’s a senate meeting in two hours, and all members need to be called to the “round hall”. Before the retainer can head to the palace, Gavriil also adds to bring along Adam Solntse, who is the head of the royal research facility, and Gammon Loop Octopus, who is a commanding officer of their security forces which are currently slated to go around the town of Welvya.

Gavriil is Gammon’s father. He also seems to be arrogant and self-righteous.

There’s a bit of reflection on Levianta, nothing new—mostly how they gained their prosperity by researching the Second Period technology that they’re uncovering, and that Levianta is the only place with mages (and magic is necessary for using most of that technology).

Gavriil crushes the apple with his bare hand.

Gavriil then reflects on the whole deal with Maria– how she’s forbidden from having a husband and must remain pure, but somehow got pregnant anyway. They don’t know who the father was (she’d claimed it was a virgin birth, but Gavriil didn’t believe her at the time). Gavriil feared losing his status— it is the job of the senate to pass down Alice’s decrees, and Gavriil is, himself, the only one allowed to directly interact with her. So obviously he’d be the main suspect for getting her pregnant. He tried to have her get an abortion, but she escaped. When she was captured again, she’d given birth to twins. He’d ordered one of his retainers to drown the babies in the river.

He refuses to believe the twins were supposed to be receptacles for Levia-Behemo, figuring the gods would have punished him for that if they were. But if Alice says they need to make receptacles for the gods now, then they have no choice but to do as she says—even if she’s merely a puppet, it’s still true that she can hear the gods speak to her, so they can’t go against her prophecies.

Scene 2

Levianta. All of northern Evillious is its territory. It has twelve small cities across its northwestern region, popularly called the “Twelve Royal Capitals”. Alicegrad, the royal castle, is in the center. Originally, it was just walls built to protect the temple for worshiping the dragon god nearby where most of the Second Period tech was found, but the walls were increased over time until it was made into a large fortress. It became a town as other people gravitated over to live there. As such, the castle isn’t very tall but it has a lot of ground, almost the size of a small town. The Round Hall where the senate meets is located in the western section of the First Wall block, near the center of the fortress.

Gavriil shows up in the Round Hall. There are twelve members of the senate, one for each capital city. The other members are there, but Adam and Gammon aren’t there yet. He bids his stammering steward to go fetch them before beginning the meeting.

Gavriil is referred to only as Loop Octopus by senator Irta Li, who has curled, platinum blond hair. They know that there’s been a prophecy, and can tell by the look of him it isn’t good. Senator Idola brings up a time two years ago where they were able to minimize damage to the country through a prophecy. Naturally, they are not happy to hear when he says that the prophecy was about the gods’ wrath destroying everything.

One of the senators, an old man, is named Quina.

The prophecy specifies that they have until “The Period of Twilight” Quina speculates, based on ancient historical records, that the time they are currently in is the “Period of Daybreak”, meaning they have roughly 12 years before the gods’ wrath is upon them.

Before Gavriil can explain how to avert this, Adam and Gammon enter. Adam is polite and embarrassed, Gammon is quiet and bows in apology but doesn’t explain his tardiness.

Senator Vaju knows Adam. Also Vaju has facial hair on only the right half of his face. Vaju knows Adam through collaboration with the research institute on the “Next Queen Project”. Adam has only recently inherited the position from his father, according to Vaju.

Scene 1

When Seth talks about Adam disappearing, he refers to him as “my adorably foolish child”.

Scene 2

Seth only ever saw Gammon’s rebellion as being a result of desperation. Apparently it was unexpectedly successful, though, as the senate (including Gavriil) had grown too complacent. Seth doesn’t mind— he’s gotten tired of messing with Gavriil, and Adam (who he was curious over) has fled the stage.

Scene 3

The revolution is underway. Seth is waiting for Gammon in front of the Levia-Behemo temple. Gammon arrives in the garden with pitiful Gavriil in tow, throwing him in front of him. He’s a mess but he’s still breathing, murmuring Alice's prophecy. Gammon dismisses him as a mere drugged-up madman now. Seth, as ever, is calm and a complete troll about it, despite the fact that Gammon knows Gavriil is like this because of Seth.

Gammon approaches him with a revolver in hand. Seth, hands up, asks him to explain what his research found out— so that he can correct him if Gammon got anything wrong.

Seth isn't taking anything seriously, and laughs inappropriately.

Gammon’s theory: Seth became Gavriil's servant over twenty years ago. Along with Gavriil, they developed a drug to brainwash Maria with— except in truth, it wasn’t Maria that was being drugged, but Gavriil himself, so that Seth could rule through him. As for Maria— she was already dead; Gammon’s not sure if she just died or was murdered. Gavriil has been having purple dreams, and passing them off as the queen’s prophecies. However, he’s been brainwashed into thinking that these prophecies are really coming from the queen, and that she’s still alive.

Gammon has no proof of his theory, though, so that’s why he’s come here to see her corpse for himself, demanding to know where it's being kept if it hasn't been disposed of already. Seth happily tells him Alice is where she always has been.

Gammon pistol whips Seth out of the way and heads inside the Hall of Glass. Seth, with a black eye, collapses with a smile.

Seth wonders what Gammon will see in the temple, and what will become of him once he’s come face to face with the “queen”, suggesting that Gammon’s theory is correct in some regard but also missing some key information. Seth pulls himself off the floor, retrieves his glasses (which had gone flying), and goes to a corner of the garden and opens a secret passageway buried in the dirt.

Right as he enters, he can hear someone's scream echoing from inside the Hall of Glass.

Scene 4

Seth reflects on things.

Adam is not Maria's child, but he also is.

To be accurate, he is not one of her twins, as Adam thinks. Yes, Seth "disposed" of them, but instead of tossing them into the river, he left the girl in the hands of a temple for her inheritor abilities (not that they knew he was the one to leave her there), and kept the boy in cryostasis.

Because the twins were irregulars, Seth found them invaluable for his research, but held the Ending Boy's value in higher regard than the Genesis Girl's. Still, he ensured both were alive for later reference.

He first met the real Adam when he fashioned him in his very own laboratory. It was partially to increase his “allies”, and partially on order by Maria. Through Gavriil he met Vaju, and through him became the head of the research institute, where he began to build his “ally” network. He would sometimes apply Venom for this purpose, though as the drug had several failings he tried not to rely on it too heavily.

Maria essentially gave him the okay to use the institute to further his efforts in creating artificial humans. After the disposal of her twins, and her resulting infertility, she desired an heir and privately requested Seth's assistance.

Adam was fashioned out of Maria's provided DNA. Seth has several stores of different racial DNA so he used foreign DNA to obscure Adam's resemblance to Maria.

Genetically speaking, Adam is the son of Maria and some unknown man. With the father identity-less and irrelevant, one could say Adam is her second virgin birth.

Adam was different from other Ghoul Children, having a mix of DNA, which improved his longevity. He's really no different from a normal human, the only difference is having been grown in a glass chamber than inside Maria. Seth doesn't really count him as a Ghoul Child.

After Adam's creation, a rogue Apocalypse attack destroyed part of the laboratory and Adam went missing.

Around the same time, Raijoou had left Apocalypse due to their increasing violence, and during an excursion, Seth as Horus met her and separately, her wife, Inanna. Seeing their disappointment at her inability to have children, Horus offered to her an ideal solution: use both the couple's DNA to make them a child. Of course, he added in something extra.

The result was a normal human child born from a glass vessel, like Adam. Seth had only recently learned Inanna told Raijoou she found this child in the river rather than it being their truly biological child. That was the logical decision, despite the irony.

As such, the child created from Held inheritor DNA exhibited the same abilities, which piqued Seth's interest in the creation of artificial inheritors.

Seth had wanted to see what came of the irregular twins, and track down his missing experiments once things calmed down, but he had a problem: his health was just beginning to decline, so he couldn’t just be running all over the place. Luckily, he didn't have to go too far to go find Adam, who had washed up on the shore nearest one of the exits of Lunaca Labora. Seth was also a bit surprised to run into Catherine there.

This was Seth’s first time raising a child— he tried to raise him by fostering his intellect, and his intellect solely. The emotional starvation he employed wasn't entirely deliberate, he simply wanted to create a mind similar to his, and Seth's warped view on his own childhood stopped him from seeing the issue with this.

It was a busy time— he was building his network, running the institute, drugging Gavriil, and had to solve the issue of his health going downhill. For the last problem, he researched this in Lunaca Labora, where he was “born as a human”. His current body was inferior to human ones— it aged at a much faster rate.

As he’s a genius, he was soon able to make a new, longer lasting type of body he could use using a similar method to the one he used for Adam and the Zvezdas. Pleased with his success, he made two other Ghoul Children (clones of himself) while he was at it, as another test in increasing his allies, giving them personalities based on his own. One was a failure, which he put in refrigeration in case of an emergency, as a backup body, and the other was a success. This Ghoul Child became Pale Noel. He entrusted Apocalypse, now abandoned by Raijoou, to Pale. Pale is still active to this day.

… Of course, Pale is such a terror that Seth’s own position could have been put in jeopardy, so he ordered Pale to keep from showing himself publicly and instead work behind the scenes. He then expunged all the information on Pale from his info network. After that he went to Raijoou and erased the memories she had of his appearance with Venom.

Of course, this didn’t really erase the mistrust that Raijoou had towards "Horus". Just memories of what he looks like.

His body was starting to fail then, so he decided to retire the Horus identity. He went back to Lunaca Labora and transferred his mind into the new, complete body. He could have changed the face but apparently it was just too handsome to mess with. As for still looking like Pale, he figured he could just tell people they were twins.

He decided to drop the false identities and go by his real name, Seth Twiright. He spent some time in Lunaca Labora while he waited for the excitement regarding Pale to die down, making more Ghoul Children. But he also didn’t want to make the same problem with Pale being identical to him. So he decided to make some that were completely new, different in face and gender— clones, but also not clones. This makes him think of Behemo, comparing himself to his work.

Seth says something profound— even geniuses have failures. Rather, being a genius in the first place is because you learn from your failures. Several attempts to create an inheritor Ghoul Child failed, so he had their organic compositions melted down.

After several trials, he made a Ghoul Child (he lists this as his official third) that was a different person, finally succeeding at installing an “inheritor” power in her for good measure. The moment he gave her a personality, she became rebellious, and as soon as he took his eyes off her she escaped Lunaca.

He was unable to find her for a while, but eventually received word that Pale had found her. She is also apparently very attached to Pale, which stupefies him because Pale is a clone of him despite her being rebellious towards Seth himself. He decides to leave her with Pale.

The way he talks about Adam sounds almost like he views him as a plaything. He gets tired of making Ghoul Children, freezes his current projects, and then goes to meet with Adam again as Seth. He recalls having fun the time Adam tried to kill him at Merrigod, though he was a bit flummoxed that Meta genuinely attempted to kill him along with the other researchers.

Seth was very intrigued by Adam, due to their similar upbringings and yet different personalities, and even sought to make him like himself. But Adam has quit the field— though in a way, Seth views that as “evil” like him, too. As for Eve— Cain and Abel’s deaths were not his own fault. He in fact would have preferred they were born alive, because they contained Seeds of Malice. But it's not a major loss of his either way. They died because Eve's blood was too diluted with Venom, which reduced the twins' survival rate.

Seth had fibbed a little bit when he told Adam that he derived Venom from a dead Gilles inheritor. In truth, he synthesized it from those melted down Ghoul Children, all failed Gilles inheritors before the success of Meta. 

Eve, as the Held inheritor child Seth created, was immune to its effects. The mind manipulating power of Venom has no effect on one capable of the same sort of power, especially one with the blessing of Held himself. Seth is relieved she never indulged this power to Adam or else he could have pieced that together.

While a single use of Venom does little harm to someone, many uses can hamper their cognitive ability. One immune to this would have no worries— unless they tried to have children.

Overuse of Venom had the tendency to cause severe deformities in the children of those drugged, so severe it often killed them in the womb. This was why making a Gilles inheritor was so challenging. The twins must have been dead for a while to be in that condition at birth.

Unlike Gilles inheritors, Held inheritors are capable of turning their mind manipulation powers onto themselves. Seth isn't sure because he can't read minds, but he's certain Venom did not break Eve at her stillbirth, because she was immune. Instead, Eve's power was attempting to keep her from breaking by preserving the belief that Cain and Abel were still alive, as a subconscious defense mechanism.

Scene 1

Project “Ma” was a failure.

Scene 2

From a young age Adam has had primarily two strong emotions: Loneliness and anger at the world.

When he was a child, his parents were nowhere to be found. He was among smoking ruins. There was no home for him so he wandered the coast, passing through minor port towns. The only thing he had on him was a small bottle he was carrying. A piece of parchment inside read “Adam Moonlit”.

Those in the towns who could read took this to mean that this was his name. A fisherman temporarily housed Adam and taught him to read and write.

He lived a relatively peaceful life for about five years, though he doesn’t remember that time well.

One night, he was washed out to sea during a tempest. As he thought he was going to drown, everything turned white and warm and when he regained consciousness, he was deposited back on a shore. 

Adam somehow survived off of beached fish, making a crude home out of rubble and old boat debris. Every so often, the white blur underwater that saved him (though he didn’t have any way of remembering that) would appear to keep him from being too lonely.

One day, Adam asks the being’s name, and he hears it reply, learning its name is Catherine. He keeps talking to it, thinking of it as his mother (and then there’s this heartbreaking part where he’s just asking it questions, which devolve into demands to know why he’s alone and abandoned). Adam does not grow up well.

Scene 3

Adam, armed with a harpoon, reacts with hostility when exploring his new surroundings, comes across Horus Solnste, as most of the people who have shown up are hostile to him and steal from him. Horus isn’t bothered and tells him to relax. He says he is here to adopt Adam on the orders of his real mother. Excited, Adam gets into the carriage with him.

Just then, Catherine emerges out of the ocean, too far to make out and calls to him in his head, saying that Horus is lying and won’t reunite him with his mother. Horus says that Adam is being tricked by Catherine, as she is a familiar of Held. She can’t deny that she used to be a forest spirit, which enrages Adam.

He throws his harpoon, and she vanishes before it makes contact. Her voice, still present, tries to say something to him to calm him down, but he cuts her off, ranting about how it’s obvious she isn’t really his mother. Horus and Adam leave her, and head to the capital.

Scene 4

Of course, Horus says Adam can’t see his mother immediately. So he ends up living with Horus in the research facility, in the living quarters. Eventually Adam becomes Horus’ adopted son. He would always brush it off as Adam needing to study more, to work harder, as he can’t meet with her as he is now. Adam believes him because Horus is very persuasive.

Adam doesn’t feel like a human being the way that he’s raised. He gets only what he needs in terms of food and clothing, and is only allowed to leave the facility when Horus orders him to go shopping— he doesn’t want for things like knowledge and shelter but he is severely deprived emotionally.

When Adam grows up he becomes more persistent in asking about his mother, but Horus only says it’s not time yet.

Horus becomes older and weaker, and ends up relying more and more on apprentices. Adam ends up working with them more.

Scene 5

Adam only learns his mother’s identity when Horus is almost on his deathbed (Horus refers to his body as an “inferior good”).

Horus tells Adam to take over as institute director in his stead, which Adam agrees to.

Adam asks why Horus adopted him, thinking that he merely lied about knowing his mother. That’s when Horus reveals that Alice Merry-go-Round’s true name is Maria Moonlit. All queens have their name kept private by the Senate and scrubbed from all existing records and renamed Alice. Adam's mother is the seventh Alice thus far.

Horus admits he could never take Adam to her personally, because she is not allowed to contact anyone from the outside world. He insists he tried to make an exception, but the best he could do was have servants pass on his messages of Adam's condition to her.

Horus explains the situation further— that Maria didn’t want to get rid of Adam, but that it was all Gavriil's fault, and that furthermore he has turned Maria into his puppet using the brainwashing drug Venom, which he claims was made through collaboration with Horus’ “greatest apprentice”, Seth, who he says will seek Adam in due time.

Horus has put a notebook full of names and locations in a drawer— these are his allies, those who wish to overthrow Gavriil. Adam has a million questions, but before he can ask them Horus goes to leave— he has decided that when he dies, he will be alone. Adam never sees him again.

Scene 6

There are roughly ten other researchers at the institute— none of them object to Adam taking over, given Horus has been training him since he was young. Adam is a prodigy, and he has a keen interest in researching the legacy pieces, while at the same time upset that the research is being used for political squabbles.

One day Gammon visits the institute, claiming to be looking for Horus. Adam figures that he’s probably dead, and just wanted to die alone in peace, especially given the state of his health when he vanished. Adam then reveals that he knows Gammon was one of Horus’ collaborators in his secret revolutionary efforts. Of course, it wouldn’t look good for either of them if it got out.

Adam isn’t sure what side he wants to be on. He both respected and resented Horus. But for now he would like for them to look out for each other, sort of blackmailing him into it. Then he offers to get him some coffee. From then on they develop a sort of uneasy allyship.

Gammon is the eldest son of the Loop Octopus family, but he was cast out of being the heir due to being born without magic; not treated well by his family. He became skilled with guns and swords due to fervent study, and worked his way up to being head of the security division.

He also has purple prophetic dreams, which he admits to Adam while they’re drinking at a bar one day. He is an inheritor of Rahab— all Loop Octopus members are, to some extent, implying that there are differences in the strength of inheritor powers between individuals. He says that because his family can foresee the future, this means that a queen (who is only important because she can tell the future via divine revelation) is not necessary. Adam has not told Gammon he’s Maria’s son.

This leads to a lot of speculating and reflection on Adam’s part on if Gammon intends to rule the country, the possibility of someone who does not have divine revelation being in charge, whether the gods are even worth revering in the first place, etc. He starts to think that maybe the country should go back to being a kingdom with a hereditary ruler— that this would end the power struggles among the senate. And of course, Adam is a great candidate for king.

Gammon interrupts Adam’s thoughts to bring up that his father is very cunning. So much so that if, hypothetically, the real queen died twenty years ago (as she hasn’t shown herself to the public in that long), no one would have found it out. Gavriil was, himself, the one who established the rule that only the head of the senate can interact with her.

Adam dismisses the idea— Horus told him Gavriil was manipulating her with drugs. He’d have no reason to kill her. Either way, though, Gavriil is clearly the real power in charge of the country.

Gammon is sort of sprawled onto Adam's side, drunk. Adam tries to wake him, as Gammon tightens his grip, and then he is suddenly approached by someone. A man who looks identical to Horus, appearing to be the same age that Horus was when he first approached Adam on the coast all those years ago. He is Seth Twiright.

Scene 7

Adam has no proof that this is the real Seth Twiright, of course, but him looking identical to Horus is a pretty big deal. While he looks roughly the same age as Adam, Seth claims to be older, saying he studied under Horus long before he became head of the institute, roughly twenty years before, which would be about five years before Horus adopted Adam.

Seth claims he came to help now that his mentor is dead even pretty much none of the other apprentices have even heard of him until now. Adam tries to brush him off, but Seth persists, sharing knowledge of the Next Queen Project— something only those involved are supposed to know about. This makes it clear that he does have a connection to Horus.

Seth clarifies that he isn’t Horus’ child or anything, despite them looking alike, though they might have a distant relation or something.

Adam obviously can’t trust him given what Horus said, and it’s hard to read what Seth is after. But he’s a lead regarding Adam’s real mother, so he can’t just dismiss him. He lets Seth join the institute.

Seth is, like Horus, very persuasive and affable, and gets along well with the rest of the staff. He’s also just as brilliant, his assistance revitalizing the “Next Queen Project” which had come to a bit of a standstill after Horus’ death.

Seth is the one who brings them the “God Seed”, which is held in a small black box. Adam is examining it while Seth fiddles about with some of the machinery in the room. It’s a living liquid, Seth explaining that it was extracted from Sin, and that it is part of Levia-Behemo. Adam speculates that they can create people with magical power with this. He asks how Seth got his hands on it, and Seth says he was allowed below the temple by Gavriil due to being an old friend of his. He did not go through the Glass Hallway, but rather a different route, and claims to have never met the queen himself.

While Seth is just as interested in the legacy of the Second Period as Adam, his area of research isn’t machinery so much as living things, biotechnology. Adam asks him about his knowledge of drugs— Seth eventually tells him to stop beating around the bush, as it’s clear he’s asking about Venom.

Seth explains Inheritors of Gilles are able to manipulate people’s minds. Adam remarks he already knows this but Seth cuts him off. Seth claims he found the grave of one such inheritor, as he could find no Gilles Inheritor volunteers. He took the body back to his home, experimented on it, and at the end of this experimentation and analysis he produced Venom. He then analyzed his success and devised a recipe to make Venom with— but then says that he never used it, because it’s outside of his interests.

Adam wonders why; it seems he was commissioned to make it, but Seth doesn’t look like he’s interested in things like money or power.

Scene 8

The Project “Ma” stuff starts one year after Horus went missing. This chapter is basically a reflection on Adam’s motives; how he is empty inside and is doing all these things to try and fill that emptiness, how he blames Gavriil for not being able to live a normal life with a family that loved him, how he wants to control Levianta’s future by making his own puppet queen, etc.

He will fill the hole in his heart. If it’s for that, he will even become evil.

Scene 9

Adam goes to get Gammon to collaborate with him. He reveals that he is Maria’s son, though he has no proof, and tells Gammon that if it works he will become the next head of the senate. Adam plans to have the next queen change the laws so that succession will be hereditary again— and as the son of the former queen, Adam will become king.

Gammon doubts that’ll work out well, but Adam says that if he becomes king, Gammon will become the new prime minister. Gammon points out that it’ll be the next queen’s relatives who will be in line for succession, not Adam, to which Adam says he’ll just marry the next queen. And her children will be the Twins of God— no one would object to them being next in line for the throne.

Adam privately considers mixing his own genes in the Divine Seed that he’ll be using for Project Ma, so that those children will also be related to him. The outcome could be unpredictable so he mentally leaves it as a last resort should anything go wrong.

Adam hesitates to even think about killing Gammon for refusing, but Gammon agrees. He too is dissatisfied with the current state of affairs. And he also had a purple dream about Adam. But he doesn’t say what it was about.

Scene 10

Through Gammon’s contacts, Adam is able to get the recipe for Venom. He is also able to get his hands on Gavriil's journal. Though, it’s really more of a memo pad used to secretly write down Gavriil's private thoughts and as such, it’s very scattered and brief, providing little detail on what its entries are referring to.

In brief: Gavriil discovering Maria’s children and having a young retainer throw them in the river. The queen freaks out, and has to be quieted down. Gavriil thought he killed the servant to keep the secret safe but he shows up again. Gavriil decides to keep him around, as he’s useful. The servant makes Venom. Gavriil drugs the queen and then Ceci Vaju as well, saying that when he is dead he will inherit what he leaves behind.

Gavriil's notes become scrambled— basically saying first that he’s had purple dreams then amending that they are prophecies, repeating “I am Alice/Queen Merry-Go-Round”. His notes then detail the Project Ma prophecy.

There’s more that isn’t shared. The only thing Adam can glean from it is that what Horus told him about Gavriil is true, and that what Gammon suggested in his drunken stupor might not be total nonsense.

Scene 11

Adam reflects on what he’s learned— he believes Seth was the one who tossed him in the river, and he has or had, a twin sibling. He figures he’ll need to put some restrictions on Seth— now that he has Venom, he no longer has a use for him.

Adam has received information on a potential Ma candidate— Meta Salmhofer. Gammon warns him against recruiting her, as she’s a member of Apocalypse. Adam points out that one of their founders, Raijoou Zvezda, is listed as one of Horus’ collaborators. Though it was different when Raijoou founded it, evidently they weren’t a terrorist organization then, and she had since ditched it.

Even leaving aside the matter of Apocalypse, given that Meta is Pale’s girlfriend it’s unlikely she’s a virgin.

Gammon is against going to fetch Meta, as it would be dangerous. Adam, on the other hand, sees it as an opportunity for Seth to die in an “unfortunate accident”.

Of course, the plan was a miserable failure. Basically, Adam planned for Seth to be in one spot that would be attacked, while all the other researchers were safe. But instead the researchers were in the danger zone, and Seth was safe. Adam’s not sure how that happened. All Seth had to say about it is that they better do their best just the two of them from now on.

Scene 12

And so, Adam meets Eve, someone who would be perfect to manipulate. He didn’t plan for everything that happened— the fight with the White Army, Meta attacking Nemu (likely looking to punish Raijoou for her desertion)— but ultimately, he was able to get Eve to the capital. He drugged her with Venom by mixing it into her coffee.

Even with the drug, getting her to like him was a little tricky— he wasn’t charming like Seth and Horus. But he tended to her needs, spent time with her, was understanding, etc. Fortunately, Seth didn’t pop into the lab much due to his recovery, so he wouldn’t catch on that Adam was using Venom.

He and Gammon are drinking in a bar, and he’s complaining about women (“why are women so hard to understand blah blah blah”). Being the perfect boyfriend is stressful. He’d like to have Gammon switch roles with him, but Gammon evidently already has a wife and kids. Gammon also thinks they make a good couple, and so would they and that Eve would like him even without the Venom. Adam cuts him off, saying their being a couple is just for the plan.

He shifts the conversation to Vaju. Apparently they’re waiting for him to die, him already being sickly, before they move ahead, so that if Eve becomes queen it doesn’t appear to be solely Vaju’s work. Gavriil is in a similar position— once Vaju dies, all of his stuff goes to Gavriil, because he doesn’t have an heir, so Gavriil used the Venom to get him to make him his heir. This includes the institute, so that he can continue being head of the Senate even if they produce a different queen.

Adam asks if Gammon has any hesitation over killing his father. But apparently there’s no love lost between them.

Basically— Gammon is all ready to overthrow the current government. The only reason he was waiting this long is because he didn’t have a lynch-pin to pull it together. But Eve, once she’s queen, will be able to allow him to do as he pleases with restructuring the country.

Scene 13

The queen trial was Adam’s one chance to ascertain the queen’s condition, but of course Eve remembers almost nothing of it (which is to be expected). The moment Adam heard that Zellana was dead, he started worrying about Eve. He’d been confident she’d succeed, but she isn’t back yet. He can’t go get her, though, because it might tip people off that they’re more than just scientist and patient.

He’s concerned for her, which surprises him, but denies his feelings as being for his plan’s success only.

Eve suddenly arrives, and he goes to hug her (again denying that it’s for anything other than his charade). She seems a little mad at him, but also doesn’t act on it.

Scene 14

Eve is impregnated with the God Seed, with twins. Now all that’s left is to wait for them to be born. Meanwhile, Vaju dies, leaving everything to Gavriil.

Gammon is going to do his small rebellion after Eve becomes queen, and Gavriil will get mixed up in it and die. Then Gammon will be captured for his crimes. This is what Adam’s real plan is regarding him.

Scene 15

Eve gets restless and mood-swingy as the due date approaches. Earlier she’d been scared all day, having dreamed that she saw a bear. Adam thinks this might be because she’d drunken too much Venom.

Seth hasn’t shown himself since Eve became pregnant. He hasn’t gone home either. Adam, fearing that Seth has cottoned on to the plan and will tell Gavriil, increases surveillance on Gavriil and has his people look harder for Seth.

Adam takes Eve out of the institute for a bit. She says she wants to go to the Western coast, to meet Adam’s “mother”. He hasn’t gone back since Horus picked him up around there— he wonders if she’s still there.

He picks a car that won’t sway much, and they arrive at the coast. They gaze at the ocean together, Adam glancing over at Eve and noting her simple beauty. He starts to wish that they had met in some other way, without all these plans and prophecies and such, before forcing himself to drop the thought.

Eve suddenly announces that she’s going to name the babies Cain and Abel, though when pressed she says that there’s no real meaning behind those names.

Right as they’re going to leave several hours later, Catherine calls out to Adam in his mind. She explains that her physical body is gone, not because he speared her with a harpoon, but because it was a natural end result of her leaving Held’s power. She is now part of the ocean.

She was once a small fish, but one day she rebelled against Held and left. Unlike the other spirits, she had fragments of her memory remaining from their past, her past of being one who served the creators of the world.

Apparently in Levianta they are taught that Levia-Behemo is the only true god, and all others are false gods. Catherine explains the whole deal about Levia and Behemo making humanity, and Held suggesting the gods merely watch over the world, etc. Catherine hadn’t agreed with this, which is why she left the forest. Her body became humanoid once again, but it also signified that she had lost the physical immortality that she had with Held. Hence why she’s invisible now.

Eve can’t hear Catherine, as a note.

Upon being asked, Adam tells Catherine that Eve is his wife, which pleases her. She’s also relieved to hear that Horus is dead, saying that he was dangerous. Adam apologizes for his anger when last they saw each other, and they part on good terms.

Scene 16

Eight months into the pregnancy, Eve is moved to Alicegrad. That way she can be attended on and also be under greater security. The due date is very close now.

Once Adam receives word that she’s in labor, he rushes to Alicegrad from the institute. The sun has gone down, and there are no stars or moon in the sky. He’s stopped before he can get in her room by a guard, who informs him only those assisting with the birth can get in, including a priest. He does reassure Adam that she’s with the best doctor available— not Dr. Moreno, who drowned in a river the other day, but Seth Twiright.

The door opens. Adam sees Seth there, and also can’t hear the sound of babies crying. He had no information on Seth being a doctor in this regard— apparently his informants haven’t been telling him everything (Seth chides him for trusting them so much).

Adam pushes past Seth. Eve is sobbing but laughing, but the things she’s holding in her arms are not babies. They are darkish “things”. Eve is delusional, calling them her and Adam’s babies, thinking they’re still alive.

Adam tries to get her to hand them over, but she freaks out. Enraged, Adam goes outside to see Seth smoking, initially assuming he was behind it. But Seth claims he did his best. He says the babies simply died while they were inside Eve’s womb.

Rather, he says that this was Adam’s fault, because he was doing something “extraneous”, being vague on what exactly Adam did that caused it. He calls him out, basically insulting him as a researcher, but also won’t tell Gavriil what he was planning. He leaves Adam there, seeming really amused it all went to crap.

Scene 17

Adam is drinking alone in the furthest corner of a bar when Gammon comes in and sits next to him, arm across Adam's back and hand on his shoulder. He says they’ll have to start again— find a new candidate, and deal with the traitor in their informants.

Eve is infertile now. And she’s gone mad. Adam speculates that her spirit was weak already, due to the drugging, and she lost it when the twins were born dead. She’s still following the delusion that she has children.

Gammon tries to get him to perk up— they still have plenty of time before the prophecy comes to pass. But Adam’s had enough— he’s giving up on everything, telling Gammon to go back to his original rebellion plans.

Adam thinks Gammon’s not liable to leave him as a loose end, so Adam figures he and Eve need to flee the capital together.

Scene 18

Adam apologizes to his mother for failing to save her, not really knowing if she loved him or not. He’s tired of chasing his past, though. He also apologizes to Eve for what he’s done, realizing he does love her and wanting to go live in Held’s forest with her. He also wonders if Catherine might be able to find them there.

Scene 1

Meta dreams of running away from orange flames, and an endlessly black, warped figure standing among them, shining, dead eyes. She has to keep running— for she is a fugitive.

Scene 2

Meta is in a bad mood that morning— not just because of the dream, but because she’s being woken early by a pounding at her door and angry shouting. It’s Raisa Netsuma. She ends up busting in the door before Meta can get up.

Raisa has burn scars all over her body including her face, from Eve’s lightning strike earlier. She and her people are refugees from Jakoku, and she leads the White Army in the southwest of Levianta. She is also one of Apocalypse’s top brass. Meta worries deeply about her— she thinks she’s too passionate and too wild in battle for her own good. In person, Raisa spoke little, but in a fight she had earned the title of a fiend. It was Pale’s idea she join, hearing of her prowess, and Meta originally agreed because it added the entire White Army and the Second Regiment to their forces, coming to know her better as they lived together in Merrigod. 

Meta is distracted from Raisa's upset ranting by staring at her mouth scars, which are not covered with a mask like they usually are.

Raisa is visibly in pain since a lot of her facial muscles are stiff, and her skin sensitive, but is too upset to stop yelling. She hadn't even waited for Meta to get out of bed, having climbed onto it. Meta thinks her hair looks even whiter against her reddened skin.

Raisa says that their base in the north has fallen.

The security forces have become the Royal Capital Army, and are cracking down on Apocalypse— an organization which seeks to disrupt as much of the world’s order as it can, just because they think that’s how things should be, thinking things like laws and such are foolish. Meta is one such person.

She has tried hard to forget her past. She was an orphan, grew up alone, and hated everything in the world. Her life only gained meaning in her eyes after she turned twenty.

She wandered the streets of Levianta, living off of what she stole from vendors and unlocked homes. Whenever she was caught, she would always manage to charm them and be let off with a warning. She didn’t know it at the time, thinking it was because she was a pitiful child, but this had been a result of her Gilles Inheritor powers, which she had no idea how to use, manifesting without her direct control. 

She was sometimes allowed into homes and invited to stay as long as she liked, though she never did stay long. Watching the family dynamic around her somehow only made her even lonelier. So when people came to her with their arms open, she always chose to run.

One day, Meta found herself in the midst of chaos, with lots of bodies and fire and destruction around, but she did not run. Not even when she was surrounded by armed men, and one of them (Pale) approaches her with a knife in one hand and a person by the hair in the other. Recognizing her as a Ghoul Child and fellow HER, he offers her the knife, which she accepts.

With his encouragement, she kills the hostage with the knife.

This was her first murder. And she finally felt at home.

She and Pale have committed a great many crimes together at this point. Gammon is the new head of the senate, and is the reason why the royal capital army is pursuing them so fiercely. They’re having trouble fighting them off— in addition to their skill, neither Meta nor Raisa’s powers or magic can breach their bulky armor. They have to come up with a battle plan for here on out.

Meta zones back in and embraces Raisa in bed. When Raisa stops speaking, she lets go and orders Raisa to go retake the northern base, or at least stymie the soldiers there. She’ll send the rest of the former White Army and half of her Red Devotees to give her aid. Raisa, still teary, points out this’ll leave them short-handed to the west, but Meta says they should leave that to the “baron”, Yegor.

Raisa awkwardly runs off the bed. Meta gets dressed, and then thinks she’ll head over to see Pale, her “darling”.

Scene 3

Meta changes into her favorite clothes, and then goes to Pale’s room. She can hear him talking with a woman in there, and then sees a scantily clad Milky laying on the bedsheets, next to Pale who is under them, when she opens the door. Milky greets her politely, and then leaves to go to her own room. Meta goes inside to see Pale is smoking in bed.

He asks if she’s okay, and she shakes her head at the notion that she has anything against "that girl". No matter who Pale sleeps with or loves, she’ll love him still. And she believes he will always come back to her— her powers don’t work on him, so she is certain that they really do love each other.

She wryly asks if he's okay with Raisa, to which he says it's not his business.

Pale has a unique physiology. He has to absorb magical power from another person periodically, or else he’ll lose his youthfulness. His preferred way of doing this is by sleeping with them, with women, specifically. Meta’s magic is not enough alone to sustain him, great though it is. The other person’s magic replenishes once he's done, though the initial drain exhausts the person being fed on.

Meta notices a black box on the nightstand. It is a music box with a winding key that Pale is taking apart. Apparently he’s not very good at reassembling it, though he's disassembling it for the practice.

Meta tells Pale about their base falling, the two speculating that they might have a traitor in their ranks. 

Meta worries about Raisa— she's been rampaging worse than ever before. Meta thinks she may be taking out her anger on everyone, including the Royal Army, as the woman who might have been queen that she was trying to get revenge on (Eve) for her injuries is missing.

Pale asks if Meta is implying Raisa is the traitor, or a liability. Meta flusteredly jumps to her defense, insisting it must be someone else.

Pale decides to head north. His “older brother” told him to lay low, but Seth hasn’t contacted him in a long time— thus, they think he might be dead, in which case, there's no need to hide anymore. He tells Meta to go west, to enlist Yegor’s aid in suppressing the forest of Held.

Meta would like to go with him, but knows he wouldn’t like her to go against his wishes. They kiss and part ways.

Scene 4

Yegor is the baron, as suspected. He is cruel and brutal despite having once been the head of a religious temple, having already crushed the villages living in the forest’s eastern half by the time Meta arrives there. Though curiously enough, despite the buildings being in ruins, she can’t see any corpses around. She figures he must have cleaned up the corpses, wondering why for a moment. The place has a fog rolling over it.

Yegor is the “Black Baron”, his army is called “The Black Army”.

One of Meta’s devotees tells her they found some survivors. He takes her to an area before a trauben field to the west of the village. It’s a green haired woman, covered in blood and crouched down, cradling a half-conscious man with blue hair, surrounded by devotees. She’s crying about her missing children— Cecil and Vell.

Meta thinks she’s stupid, figuring that the woman should be grateful she’s alive, and that she can just make more children, that is, if Meta allows her to live. She’s about to order her men to kill the woman when she realizes her men have collapsed, foaming at the mouth. She realizes that the fog is actually poison.

Meta is almost as bewildered to find both she and the woman seem unaffected, noting she can't tell with the man in her arms as he was already out of it.

Meta hears Raisa's hoarse shrieking as the fog grows too thick to see anything. The couple seems to have vanished.

Meta is confused because Raisa shouldn't be here, meanwhile Raisa can only scream about "treason".

Raisa's words are slurring, indicating she may not be immune, protected from complete incapacitation only by her mask to cover her scars.

By the light of the moon, Meta sees figures approaching her from the fog, all wearing masks. They clasp one of her wrists in chains.

The meaningless shrieking crescendos as a sudden impact around her waist brings Meta to ground as a bright red flash explodes, and everything turns black.

Scene 5

Meta is in a dark, inhumane, cold jail cell. She tells the girl in front of the window that she wants a jacket or hot food or something, but no dice. It’s not mealtime yet and they have nothing else for her to put on. There are no men in this jail, so she can’t use her powers to escape.

Upon being asked, the girl introduces herself as Elluka Chirclatia (Zellana’s younger sister). She is a young looking teen. Meta threatens her, expecting her to cry, but Elluka calmly states that she’s more powerful than Meta is, and, in fact, now that her sister is gone, Elluka is the strongest person there.

She reveals Meta is not in an actual prison— she is in Lighwatch temple. Elluka is a virgin priestess there. This is a very special jail cell in the temple designed for someone of Meta’s magical talents. The walls and the ceiling are covered in anti-magic runes— meant to weaken and negate magical power or spells.

They hear footsteps, and Elluka declares it must be the head of the temple— in other words, Yegor Asayev, who has long black hair and thin, black facial hair. Meta accuses him of being the traitor— he claims that Apocalypse merely disappointed him. He abandoned his post believing them to be patriotic warriors, but defected when he realized they were just thugs. Meta accuses him of merely wanting to satisfy his cruel urges. Yegor doesn’t deny or confirm this— merely saying that unlike them, he wants to live a long life.

He tells her (and Yegor really does give the impression that he might enjoy making people suffer) that Pale has been captured, and is in Welvya prison. Raisa wasn't captured— but she was killed immediately after her attempt to protect Meta. That means that Apocalypse has essentially been beheaded.

Yegor isn't sure how Raisa managed to catch wind of his betrayal soon enough to arrive there at that time, and wonders if he may have a traitor of his own.

Yegor mocks Meta and Raisa a little more and tells her to wait for her execution like an adult. He claims to have been divinely pardoned for his crimes— Meta thinks it’s a mix of his family connections and his reward for selling out Apocalypse. He leaves.

Meta is nearly in tears, of both grief and rage. She's shaking in her seat, which rattles the chains.

Meanwhile poor Elluka has been watching this whole thing from the sidelines. She notes that while Meta is a bad person, so too is Yegor. Meta advises Elluka to leave this place as soon as she is able to. Elluka says she’ll think on it, and then leaves the room.

Scene 6

Meta is moved to a new room, similar to the old one except that there is a smooth white chair in the middle. The legs are affixed to the floor, and it has several leather straps on it. Meta figures this is the execution chair.

The executioner (who has his face covered) tells her to sit down, and she does. She tries to think of a way out of this, but the executioner tells her that her Gilles power won’t work on him— she quickly recognizes his voice as sounding like Pale. And when he takes off the cloth covering his face, she quickly realizes that it’s Seth (he was thinking of messing with her by pretending to be Pale, but decided not to at the last second).

Seth remarks that they haven’t seen each other since she tried to kill him at Merrigod (which he thinks Pale ordered her to do, though she denies it). Not that he holds any ill will for that. Pale has apparently been growing more and more rebellious towards Seth. He insists that he is not their enemy, even if he isn’t really on their side.

He says that he came here to help her. His plan is to have her “killed” to get her out of the capital— Gammon decided that all criminal corpses are to be taken to an installation outside of the city. Meta jokes that he’ll revive her as a zombie, to which Seth nods— seemingly to freak her out, as when she objects he goes into his real plan.

It skips their discussion of that. Seth reminds her that the condition for him saving her is that she participate in his experiments at his research facility, and hands her a glass bottle. There is a map to the facility rolled inside.

He starts affixing the straps to her arms, legs, stomach, and head. She asks if this’ll hurt— Seth says he wouldn’t know, as he’s never been executed before.

He throws the switch. She’s electrocuted, and then falls unconscious.

Scene 7

After the execution, Meta’s body is taken inside a casket to the installation as planned. Right after it leaves the temple, Yegor and the priestesses all say a prayer for her. A tearful Elluka is the only one who notices Yegor smiling a little as he makes his prayer.

Meta awakes in the coffin in the installation. She gets the lid open and climbs out, amazed that she’s alive. Seth regulated the electricity so that it would only temporarily disrupt her heart. She takes out the map, though of course has no intention of keeping her promise. She’s about to tear up the map when she sees a message in there from Seth.

He has Pale. And if she doesn’t show up, he’ll kill him. She runs across the cold stone to the institute.

Scene 8

Ever since Gammon’s coup, the twelve capitals have been in an uneasy governmental state. The 12 senators are supposed to be the heads of each family that governs the 12 cities— but Gammon has shuffled them all out, including his father. Fearing too much backlash, Gammon selected sons of the same families instead of getting new family lines altogether. Making the new senate SIGNIFICANTLY younger, in their twenties.

Gammon also made public the matter of Gavriil brainwashing the queen, promising to bring the senate back to something that serves the queen rather than using her. The prophecy of destruction also becomes common knowledge, and to help ease the unrest, Gammon appoints Seth in charge of a new Project Ma.

Seth is explaining this to Meta in the royal research institute. He has since hired on a great deal more researchers, though they are actually political informants, there to make sure she doesn’t run away. This is several months in— she’s already pregnant, and showing.

Meta asks if she’ll be made queen, but Seth says not this time (though she will get a higher status and various rewards). Apparently he had to do it this way because otherwise the Senate wouldn’t have given him permission to have her birth the Twins of God. They talk a bit about the politics of this a little. As a note, Seth marks the time of destruction as being “ten-odd” years away, so probably no more than a year has passed since Adam and Eve disappeared.

Seth says that Gammon isn’t like the other politicians, though— he faced the queen and came into contact with the “truth” though Seth doesn’t know what that was exactly, and as such he is legitimately desperate to avert the country’s destruction. This is part of why he accepted a criminal as the potential mother.

Since becoming pregnant Meta has been living hidden away in the institute. They don’t want the public to know that she’s the mother. She considers her situation a little, like that they might just kill her when they don’t need her anymore. She can reasonably assess that the government isn’t a monolith— Seth, whether ordered by Gammon or acting on his own, wouldn’t have had to go to such measures to break her out of jail if Yegor was in on the plan. So while Seth may promise to keep her safe, there’s no guarantee the others will. She also just doesn’t trust him.

She asks (as she has many times without being told yes) if she can see Pale. Today, Seth agrees. He explains that Pale had not been able to sustain himself without taking magic from people, and as such he wasn’t likely to live much longer— so he had him swap into a more sustainable body. He calls someone into the room, a boy. This is Pale.

Meta is really confused, so Pale explains. He is a Ghoul Child— an artificially created being, comparing it to Meta’s children, saying that they are different only in that his mother was a glass vessel instead of a human being. Meta has to agree with that, she was not impregnated by sex but by a procedure, after all. Ghoul Children were the fruits of Seth’s research on the Next Queen Project as Horus.

Pale notes that he started having the issue with needing magic once he became an adult, though he’s better off than the other Ghoul Child made alongside him, who was little more than an empty shell. They ended up transferring his soul from his degrading body into the empty shell to save him. However, it took some time, which is why Seth couldn’t have them meet until now.

Pale knew this from the beginning, and it is why he ordered Meta to try to kill Seth— he wanted to become the “true” one by killing the original. Meta is moved by sympathy for Pale and goes to hug him. Pale asks Seth if they can be alone for a little bit, and Seth agrees because he’s not a monster, come on.

After hugging a little while, Pale tells her they should escape together— he can live as he is now, so there’s no need for Seth to keep him alive. They can’t flee while Meta is pregnant, so he figures he’ll do something after the babies are born. He wants to restart Apocalypse with her, and Milky if they can afford to find her.

He’s living at Seth’s house right now, under the guise of being his nephew. Figuring the conversation is over, Seth enters to fetch Pale, taking him away. Meta sees Pale as nothing more than arms and legs connected to Seth’s fingers by thin strings.

Scene 9

Several months pass, and the babies are born. They are immediately put into a life support system. The “baby room” is in the institute, with the twins inside two large glass tubes, that run from halfway up the tower to the ground floor, full of fluid. Gammon is looking at them with Seth.

Like normal premature babies, Meta's babies weren’t able to breath well after being born, but they’ve recovered now, the tubes are a precaution. Gammon wants to have them taken to Alicegrad soon, so they can be made into the receptacles for Levia and Behemo’s souls.

Gammon explains that Alice herself will do this using the “Swap Technique”. He claims she is the only person in Levianta who knows how to do it, and that supposedly all of the queens through Levianta’s history have had this power. Their ability to receive revelations is, according to him, a result of temporarily allowing the gods’ spirits into their bodies.

Seth doesn’t let on that he already knows all about it, because he can do something similar.

Gammon has been wearing his hair differently, setting his ponytail low instead of high. He's been smiling more often, too.

Seth also thinks that this is all quite unlike Gammon, being much more knowledgeable than he would have thought. He thinks maybe someone has swapped their soul into his body. Whether Gammon is still in there or not is something Seth can't tell.

The day after next, Hansel and Gretel’s birth is told to the public, and the new Evillious calendar is made to mark their birth date.

Scene 10

Four days later, at night, Meta is looking at the babies and thinking to herself how cute they are, despite the fact that she never had an interest in kids before now. She’s not happy though that they aren’t her and Pale’s kids, she can’t even hold them, and that they’re going to be taken away to be used as vessels for gods tomorrow.

Looking upon them, it triggers memories of her past. Gretel’s eyes are open, and she is reaching for her mother inside the glass. Meta puts her hand over hers on the glass, and then has a flashback.

Scene 11

It’s her dream from the beginning of the chapter, running from orange flames with a figure in the middle. She has to keep running. When she glances back, she sees Seth Twiright.

Scene 12

Meta's reminiscing is interrupted. She can hear screaming, shouting, and gunshots. Realizing it’s Pale at work, she dives inside the tanks, taking the babies with her as she shatters the tubes. The remnants of Apocalypse are wreaking havoc. Pale calls to her from a window in the hallway, bidding her to leave the building through it.

He objects to her taking the children along, saying they’ll only get in the way, but she refuses to leave them behind. She realizes his current body is too small to run with babies in his arms, so she carries them both herself.

She thinks about her birth, her early childhood, that time she hated so much. Seth declared her a failure, and, fearing being put in refrigeration like her “brother”, escaped from him during the same attack Adam disappeared in. She knows it’s selfish, but she doesn’t want the babies to suffer as she has. She doesn’t want them to be the toys of gods.

Scene 13

Meta and Pale are running through a foggy new moon night. They think that they’re safe— but Pale suddenly trips and falls, starting to lose consciousness. Meta remembers what happened in the forest, and realizes the fog is the same poison as before.

Seth approaches (wearing a full-face mask), wondering why it’s not affecting her babies. He says the fog was a sort of byproduct of producing Venom— it won’t kill anyone, but they’ll be put to sleep for a few days. Seth already knew the fog likely wouldn't affect Meta, but he's certain the babies wouldn't be inheritors like her. He wonders if a god could be interfering.

Pale urges Meta to leave him behind and run south to escape the country— he knows Seth won’t kill him; Seth confirms, saying basically he’s too good at being evil to kill. Meta says she’ll wait for Pale in the forest, and runs off. Seth tries to follow her, but Pale grabs his leg and she gets away.

Seth kicks him to get him to let go. He won’t kill Pale, but he does plan to “reset” him.

Scene 14

Meta is running away, referencing the last part of the song.