My Wives Are A Divine Hive Mind-Chapter 55: The Endless Dragon, On An Endless Pursuit Toward Love

Samael stood still beneath a pale canopy of green, framed by trees that she recognized, just not by the same scales that she used to witness from above.

The wind tasted of daylight. The leaves rustled with the faint hush of undisturbed nature—normal, living trees of Vaingall.

She stared at her hands first.

Humanoid in nature and appearance.

She was still an Exo Human.

The body shaped for her by the Genesis Core and Kivas’s foolish defiance of death.

She was not the Endless Dragon anymore. At least not visibly.

But she was also not dead.

That much became clear quickly.

She extended her psyche inward, reaching for the familiar lattice embedded in her essence.

The response was immediate.

➤ 『WELL OF THE SOUL』

Every attribute, every skill, every thread of her progression was identical to what it had been before Zarangar Church consumed her.

Even the Genesis Core’s aftershocks were intact. Her soul echoed with all the power and structure she’d earned.

She closed the Well with a flick of thought.

Samael narrowed her eyes, scanning her environment.

She had been here before.

Days ago, in a different life.

Or perhaps—more accurately—in a previous loop.

Her expression darkened.

"To think that something like this can happen..."

She tried to recall the last coherent memory. Zarangar Valley. The church. She and Azulus was ahead, and they were attacked.

There had been an entity.

Something that didn’t belong. An ineffable thing that didn’t move through space so much as rewrite it.

Samael remembered sound without origin, light without form, the taste of endings on her tongue.

It hadn’t struck her. It hadn’t even acknowledged her. And yet she had been unmade. Annihilated without the courtesy of battle.

Even now, she couldn’t describe it.

Only that it had ended her.

And now here she was.

Alive. Whole. Reconstructed. Her soul was reborn but not rewritten by the past history.

She stood quietly as the implication sank in.

This wasn’t random. This wasn’t divine resurrection or entropy’s mercy. This bore the stench of fate. And fate, in Fathomi, had many teeth.

Her thoughts turned to Kivas.

A Fateling. The first of her kind to use a Genesis Core on another. The only person Samael had ever felt fate bend around.

"If Kivas had returned too..." She looked to the horizon, mentally calculating. The position of the stars. The scent of the earth. The timing of the breeze. "The only way to confirm all of my theories is to meet with her..."

Samael had already promised that she would be there for Kivas no matter what. And even though they were splitted, Samael promised that she would be right on Kivas’ side as fast as she could.

And not only that, ever since Samael awoke at this point of time, her heart had been heavy and weary.

She failed to protect Kivas, and she failed to detect the danger before the three of them entered the church.

For Samael that kind of mistake was unacceptable. If she weren’t brought back to the past like this, then it would be the end. It would be over, her beginning of trying to undo her lonesome nature in Fathomi.

"Kivas... Kivas... Kivas... Kivas..." Face frowned, Samael felt a tug of anxiety around her, coiling her like a rope. "Where are you... How are you... How could I leave you...?"

No—Samael was far. Too far from where Kivas had first fallen into Fathomi.

The land had not yet been distorted. But if it had returned to its cycle, as everything else seemed to, it would realign soon. The pieces would move again like sliding tiles in an unsolvable puzzle.

She would wait.

The moment crept in quietly. No thunder. No tremor. Just a whisper in her nerves, a pause in the insects, the breath of trees shifting slightly sideways in logic.

When the time arrived, reality recut itself in silence.

The distortion passed in less than a blink.

And the world was new.

Samael raised her chin. The land had shifted, folding geography upon itself with quiet precision. She opened her awareness like a net, sending her soul forward across the new terrain.

A presence.

Faint. Familiar.

But not Kivas.

Closer.

Wild, and volatile.

Samael shifted without hesitation, teleporting across the brambles as efficient as possible.

She arrived on a ridge overlooking a clearing that shouldn’t exist. There, below her, stalked a figure she hadn’t seen in her current form.

Maul’tahk.

Human-faced. Lion-bodied. Voidling core knotted tightly in a mockery of pride.

He hadn’t changed either. This should be enough that there was no anomaly in this strange timeline regression.

And judging by the way he sniffed the air, he didn’t recognize her either, confused of what to make of this strange encounter himself.

Maul’tahk wouldn’t know. The Endless Dragon had been a creature of scales and entropy, not flesh and skin.

Still, the sight of him made Samael’s vision narrow.

He had nearly ripped Kivas apart once. If Samael didn’t come back in time back then, then she would had never met Kivas.

She wouldn’t be imbued by the Genesis Core, and she would still be the powerful Endless Dragon that was forever alone until another fateful encounter happened.

That was enough to make Samael’s blood boil.

Samael vanished from her spot and reappeared mid-air, directly in front of Maul’tahk.

Her fist was already clenched when she reentered visibility.

The punch landed squarely across Maul’tahk’s face, crushing his cheek inward and sending his massive body sailing into a tree with bone-jarring force. Bark cracked and the beast bounced upward, claws scraping against the trunk as he caught himself mid-sprawl and righted his stance on the side of the tree.

Maul’tahk snarled, fangs bared. "Who dares—"

Darkness bloomed.

A wave of magic surged from the Voidling, coloring the entire world in a bleak monochrome gradient. Every color bled away until only shades of ash and coal remained. The air felt dry. Frictionless.

"You insolent creature—!"

Samael snapped her fingers as she leaped, invoking a precise gravitational fold.

The next instant, she clung to the tree like it had become her floor.

She surged forward, latching onto Maul’tahk’s head with one hand, driving him backward.

Grabbing onto the Voidling’s head, his skull slammed into the trunk with a deep indentation. She followed with her knee, crunching it into his ribcage, then drove her elbow into the bridge of his nose.

Blood streaked the bark, again, and again.

Another punch to the eye. Another to the temple. Then a flurry—quick jabs, precision strikes to his face and snout, until Maul’tahk roared in disoriented pain.

Samael lifted his head again, then spun him off the tree and hurled him downward into the clearing.

The monochrome forest flickered under the shock.

She descended immediately, gravity folding around her legs to pull herself to the ground faster and stronger.

She landed hard on Maul’tahk’s torso, one foot crashing into his solar plexus with enough force to leave a crater beneath them both.

The beast gasped, spine arching involuntarily.

Samael crouched beside his head and pulled it upward by his tangled mane.

Her eyes pulsed red.

A dragon’s roar, compressed into the shape of a cone-like fury, surged from her mouth directly into Maul’tahk’s ear canal. The sound wasn’t a simple noise—it was a structured weapon, laced with the metaphysical essence of her soul and everything destructive to ensure the death of her victim.

It collapsed his spiritual cortex in one blast.

The body beneath her went slack.

The dark gradient peeled away.

She remained on top of him, hands resting on her knees, breathing controlled but sharp.

The rage receded gradually.

The memory of Kivas nearly dying under those claws was enough to ignite the storm. But now that it was done, she felt the storm pass.

She straightened, standing tall atop the cooling corpse of the Voidling, brushing a loose strand of hair from her brow.

"Hahaha..." Samael smiled as she facepalmed. "I guess I’ve been a little bit too obsessed with my lovely Fateling...

"No, Kivas are no mere Fateling." Samael gaze sharpened. "I have killed countless Fatelings, and not a single one of them is like that of Kivas...

"Her existence is unique, and she had been soothing my ennui so powerfully, like an unrelenting tempest, destroying all of the ruins that shaped my heart..."

And then—

A shift in air.

She sensed it before she turned.

The familiar aura. The distinct soul-pattern that she had come to memorize in full detail.

Behind her, just emerging from the tree line, stood Kivas.

Eyes wide.

Heart pulsing like a drum in Samael’s awareness.

Samael turned her head, slowly.

"Kivas...?"

The second she saw Samael standing over Maul’tahk’s corpse, haloed in heat and silence, every wall of composure she had built inside her mind crumbled without resistance.

Kivas ran—feet hammering the ground, not as a calculated charge but a reckless sprint driven by raw emotion. Her breath caught in her throat, not from exhaustion but disbelief. The moment blurred around her. Colors. Trees. Air. Gone.

Just Samael.

Samael, who was dead.

Samael, who had fallen beside her in a place they never should have entered.

Samael, who now stood as if no time had passed.

Kivas leapt.

Samael didn’t move. The stoic poise she held—shoulders squared, posture balanced, eyes half-lidded—shattered the instant Kivas collided with her.

The two of them toppled sideways onto the soft, torn earth beside Maul’tahk’s body.

The breath went out of Samael’s lungs, more from shock than force. Her arms flailed for a fraction of a second, then dropped against the ground in stunned surrender as Kivas clung to her with the intensity of someone who had just been resurrected by proximity.

"I’m sorry," Kivas choked. "I’m so sorry..."

Samael’s eyes blinked slowly, letting the warm and gratitude enveloped her as she tried to convince herself that it was Kivas that was currently tightly hugging her.

"I didn’t listen," Kivas continued, voice already breaking. "You told me. You said we should leave. You knew. You knew, and I—" Her words were tangled. Her body trembled. "I thought that nothing could go wrong. I felt too complacent, a goody-two-shoes who didn’t see the obvious. That I could survive it like I always have. But I—"

Her voice collapsed into a sob, raw and ugly, spilling out of her like all the pressure and guilt that had built since the moment she realized she had survived when Samael hadn’t.

"I killed you!"

The sentence hit the air like a weight thrown into still water.

Samael stared at her, frozen for a breath that felt like eternity.

Then, slowly, she sat up, arms lifting Kivas with care.

Samael then put Kivas on the ground standing, before examining Kivas.

Finger trembling, arms retracted. Samael leaned her head toward Kivas’ shoulder, then wrapped her hand around Kivas, gently, like enclosing a wound that refused to close.

Her hands pressed against the trembling back, and she pulled the girl in tighter.

"You didn’t kill me," Samael said, voice quieter than usual. "It’s alright. Everything is fine."

"I didn’t listen," Kivas whispered again, clutching the fabric of Samael’s coat like it was the only thing keeping her from slipping away again. "You said we should leave. We could’ve gotten out. We should’ve. And I said no, I insisted on going back so that we can hurriedly get back to Solvish Keep. I led us there—"

"You don’t have to explain," Samael interrupted gently. "I remember. You must be scared, confused, lonely."

Kivas buried her face into Samael’s poised shoulder, voice muffled. "I didn’t know what to do..."

Samael held her tighter. "And I promised to protect you."

There was a pause. The wind moved through the leaves like a soft breath from the world itself.

"I failed," Samael admitted. Her tone was heavier now, lined with something she rarely let show. "I said I’d keep you safe. I said you could rely on me. But I let my guard down. I thought I could beat whatever was in her way. I thought—" Her jaw clenched. "I thought I was still strong enough to protect you from anything. I had forgotten my new weakness. It all happened because of how careless I was."

"No," Kivas gasped, lifting her head enough to meet Samael’s eyes. Tears streaked her cheeks, jaw tight from grief. "Both of us are at fault."

"Indeed," Samael smiled in amusement. "Truly, what an unreasonable conclusion.".

Samael unwinded their position, and then she pressed her forehead to Kivas’.

Samael closed her eyes. "Everything will be alright, now that we’re together again."

Finally, Kivas painted a smile on her face.

"Yeah..."

A silence stretched between them, but it didn’t ache.

Samael moved her hand to Kivas’s cheek, brushing a tear away with the back of her knuckle. "Then let’s do it right this time."

Kivas nodded, eyes clenched, as another sob slipped through her lips.

They stayed like that, curled together beside the broken body of Maul’tahk, two beings bound by fate, scarred by entropy, and tangled in something deeper than either could define.

Neither spoke.

They didn’t need to.

Their hearts were beating near each other, communicating with the feeling of warmth.