There's silence. Sion takes his wife away from the Dark Realm, back to his realm. The other gods leave quietly. Only Noras and Cina remain behind.
"I need to talk to Adira." Noras sighs. "Cina, stay here. You must focus on improving your health. We might need to create many seeker gates."
Cina gives him a nod, though his heart is heavy after seeing Rilyah's punishment. For years, she's been his sister in name and he did think of her as his sister. He's concerned about Ai too. And then, Renasir and her daughter… Renasir Ari has always been good to him.
"Go to the dark castle," Kresi says to Aren after Noras is gone. "Something might happen. You might be needed."
"What about you?" Aren frowns at her. "Are you going to stay here with God Cina?"
"He won't harm me." She smiles at Aren. "He has changed."
After Aren is gone, Kresi goes to Cina's side. He's still staring at the charred ground where Rilyah was sitting a while ago.
"How long does it take to make a key for the universal gate?"
Kresi's question jolt him awake from his thoughts. He studies her with a quiet gaze. From what Rilyah told him, she's the woman who killed his daughter, Belan. He questions her slowly, "Why do you want to know?"
"I have a little knowledge of gates." Kresi glances at the charred spot. "The universal gate is your best creation. However, I don't think that you understand your own creation, Cina."
Talking to him casually like this… Cina shrugs. He has no energy to correct this woman's ways. "I don't want to discuss it with someone who killed my daughter."
"I used Ai's hands." Kresi lets out a laugh. "I don't think that you blamed him after losing your memories. Now that I think about it, both you and Adira changed a lot after losing their memories."
"You have killed the previous Cina." He narrows his eyes on her. "Gods can't die, but they can lose themselves. The memories are…"
He pauses for a moment. That fake god did say that it was possible to bring his memories back.
"Not impossible to bring them back." Kresi gives him a side-long glance. "It's not in my power, but the Renasir can do it. If she gets a grip on your true name… then again, it's quite dangerous."
"It's always been." Cina looks up at the sky. "I am fine without my memories. I have a feeling that I might start disliking everyone if I receive my memories back."
"Maybe." Kresi turns her head toward the dark castle. "His memories should return by now. I don't understand why he's not remembering… He has changed so much. When Ari appeared during the trial, he wouldn't look at anything but her. Now, he abandoned her in another world."
"He doesn't remember loving her." Cina says with a melancholic voice, "Renasir Ari didn't show it, but she was often thinking about him."
"How do you know?" She inquires curiously. "She might have hated him."
"The tree next to her window told me." Cina stares at her. "Why did you ask me about the key of the universal gate?"
"There are two ways to summon Qeshaya: universal gate and the forbidden runes." Kresi raises her arm. "I used the forbidden runes. I was thinking if it's possible to turn the universal gate into a seeker gate or the gate to the world where Renasir is."
"Universal gates can't be converted into seeker gates." Cina shakes his head. "Seeker gates are created from a completely different formula. They can open the gates to any world at any time. It means that we can go back to the past if we want. But the laws of time must be followed. That's why we couldn't find Renasir Ari until she had come to this world and returned to her world. If we had met her before her soul came to this world, it would have caused instability."
It sounds plausible. The working of the gates has always been a mystery to her. Kresi bites her inner chin. "You and Rilyah went to the past using the seeker gate because you wanted to go to a time when Renasir was alive. It makes sense that you weren't able to find her until her soul went back to her body. Why did Adira go that far back in time? He didn't use a seeker gate."
"I don't understand that either." Cina creases his forehead. "Flow of time could be different. Iravan's time might be behind that world's time. That world was strange anyway. There were too many interwoven worlds with that one. Small pocket dimensions were here and there. Gods hid among the humans and their powers were much different from us. Most of them needed to rely on the faith of humans. One god had many faces. The laws of that world were a headache."
Renasir disappeared during the true-naming and went back to her original body. She was pregnant when she returned. The soul might return to the body. That could happen. But how did the twins get transferred to another human body?
Unless someone did it.
And who is powerful enough to do that?
'Once, there was only one god.' Her mother's words come back to her. 'From its loneliness, came the many worlds and many faces of the gods. Every creature is the face of that god. Every creature, whether its evil or good, follows a will of that god. These many faces have many wills. Thus, each true name is another name of that god.'
And who is powerful enough to… Kresi looks at the dark castle. Is something blocking his memories?
"A seeker key might not fit in the universal gate." Cina scratches his chin. "But I know the name of that world now. I think that I can create a key that will lead us back to that world. But then, I can't say where we will arrive."
"Make me the key to that world." Her work is finished here. The Dark God has come back with his daughter. If she's right, something is keeping the dark god from remembering and…
Why would the dark god lose his memories in Qeshaya when she didn't? Cina received the most punishment. Qeshaya affected both her and Adira. Nonetheless, it wasn't enough to wipe all the memories of Ari from his mind.
In any case, his memories should have returned by now.