And, most importantly.
Why was it that while he spoke of deeply loving Lacus Clyne and Jiliang, while he used his life to protect them, he still refused, in the deepest part of his heart, to cross that line—the boundary called "self-isolation"? Why did he insist on licking his wounds alone in that cold corner?
Lacus Clyne loved Char La Flaga. That was an indisputable fact.
Even if he was a devil, even if he was an aberration.
Was it truly a sin to want to know everything about the person one loved, to peel away his shell and touch his soul?
Was that truly arrogance─────?
"I will now reveal my secret."
Accompanied by the heavy, slow footsteps descending the stairs as if treading upon the beat of people's hearts, those theatrically charged words echoed through the empty, deathly silent facility like a recitative before the opening of a tragedy in an ancient theater. They struck the mottled, rusted walls, stirring eerie reverberations.
"I was not born into this world in humanity's original form."
The voice was elegant and magnetic, yet it carried a chill that seemed to rise from the depths of hell. Everyone had heard those words before—they were inscribed on the first page of history textbooks, the preface that had ushered in the Newtype era known as the "Coordinators." They were the famous words spoken to the entire world by George Gray, the first man born through genetic manipulation, hailed as perfection itself—words that could even be said to have changed the course of human history.
Yet at this moment, when that declaration, once a symbol of scientific triumph and human evolution, came from the silver-masked man—Rau Le Creuset—it took on an entirely different meaning. It was no longer a spark of hope, but the tolling bell