*****For a brief, disoriented moment after hearing Xavier’s words, Mistress Ayra stood frozen, her mind blanking as though someone had smacked her with an invisible frying pan of disbelief.She just… stared.Her eyes were wide open, her mouth slightly ajar, and her brows twitched in confusion. Then, like a puppet coming slowly back to life, she blinked, lifted a trembling finger, and pointed at Xavier with all the grace of someone having an existential crisis.“You…” she sputtered, the words sticking to her tongue like peanut butter. “You only met the Founding Father… five years ago?”Xavier didn’t react for a second, then he gave a calm nod, oblivious to the mental meltdown currently going on before him.“Hmm. That’s right,” he said. “I met him about five years ago, and he took me in as his disciple about four and a half years ago. He’s the one who taught me everything I know.”That, right there… that was the fatal blow.The straw that didn’t just break the camel’s back but

*****Xavier met her gaze without blinking, then gave a solemn shake of his head. His face was still as stoic as a mountain in winter… so straight, it could’ve been carved from cold stone.And Ayra…It was like her entire consciousness had unplugged.Her spirit exited her body and stood beside her in disbelief. Her once-vivid eyes became glazed and hollow, like the spark had been vacuumed out of her.She looked like someone who had just been told her childhood idol was a scam artist.“How... How is that even possible?” she gasped, her voice trembling.But then, just as his words settled into the air, his brows drew together sharply. Something clicked.“Wait!” he suddenly exclaimed, jolting upright.Ayra yelped, her entire body twitching like she had been shocked by lightning.“Didn’t you say,” Xavier continued, “that the people who attacked your hidden world claimed they had poisoned Grandpa Zev? That he had… been killed?”Ayra

*****“He had returned to his ancestors three years ago.”These words didn’t just land in Ayra’s ears… they detonated inside her skull like a time bomb, echoing in her mind with the force of a falling cathedral, the weight of an entire belief system collapsing.For a moment… an entire heartbeat that seemed to stretch into eternity, she couldn’t react, she couldn’t blink, and she couldn’t breathe.She just stood there as if gravity itself had become heavier, dragging her into a dazed paralysis, her eyes fixated on Xavier like he had just become an entirely new species.Her body felt distant, like a puppet left limp after its strings had been abruptly and cruelly severed.Her lips parted, struggling to form a coherent sound. “You…” she began, her voice shaking like a thread caught in a storm.Then she inhaled sharply, dragging a deep, trembling breath through her lungs as though trying to chill the inferno of confusion blazing in her skull. She tried to compose herself… just bare

*****There had been one day… one unbearable moment that would forever be etched into Xavier’s bones.That day, a bald, pig-faced inmate had stood on Grandpa Zev’s back, laughing hysterically like a lunatic on bath salts, bouncing as though riding a trampoline.And the old man, on the other hand, had bitten his lip so hard that blood had trickled from the corner of his mouth, his face had contorted in agony, and his body had trembled uncontrollably... yet he hadn’t screamed, hadn’t shed a single tear. He had simply endured it all in silence.Buckets of sweat had poured from him like he was melting. Yet, all he had done was cling to the ground, trembling and silent.And seeing this, Xavier, who wasn’t able to watch it again, had snapped.He hadn’t calculated anything; he hadn’t even cared about the consequences. Instead, he had simply lunged forward, grabbed the bald monster, and shoved him with every ounce of strength he had, which, at the time, wasn’t much more than a sneeze in

*****“I know you have something to do with the assassin's attempt on me last night,” Xavier said, his voice soft and nonchalant… so relaxed that in fact, it could’ve been mistaken for small talk about the weather.The words left his lips with the same ease one might use to discuss rainfall or the mild disappointment of a soggy meat pie.But those words?They didn’t land softly.They slammed into Ayra like a steel vice, snapping shut around her chest with brutal precision. The echo of his statement repeated in her ears like a cursed mantra… loud, sharp, and unforgiving.For a second, she couldn’t react, stunned to the core and dumbfounded.But then… Ayra’s eyes bulged, practically springing from their sockets. Her breath caught so violently in her throat, it sounded like someone had punched her lungs from the inside.She didn’t blink, she didn’t breathe, and for a moment longer, she didn’t even exist. She just… froze, her mouth ajar, suspended in an eternity of panic, somewher