Rhea stared at Yuga, her throat tight.
"What do you mean, the Order of Heaven is on Earth?"
"I... I don't know," Yuga replied nervously. "I haven't received any message."
Rhea turned pale. Her breathing trembled.
"We have to contact them. Now!"
"Contact who?!"
"Angel, Yabal... everyone! They need to know the Order of Heaven is descending on Earth!"
Yuga gritted his teeth.
"You want us to tell Yabal his father is collaborating with Tiger?"
"No..." Rhea murmured. "No, that would be too cruel. Our parents... are truly despicable. I hate my father! Argh!"
Her anger exploded. Rhea knocked over a chair, then a table. Her hands were shaking, her eyes burning with contained rage.
"Rhea, calm down..." Yuga breathed, approaching her.
But at that same moment, the phone vibrated.
"Hello?" came Yabal's voice. "Can you hear me?"
"Yes," Yuga replied. "And we have news. We got confirmation: Rhea... is part of the Great Lunain Clan."
"What?!" Yabal said, stunned.
"That's not all... We saw Tiger in a meeting with the white-hooded men. He's planning something... on Earth. And the Order of Heaven is probably here to stop him."
Rhea snatched the phone.
"Yabal, where are you?!"
"In Kong, a small town near Cavally. We're leaving soon... for Europa."
"Europa? Alright. We'll meet you there."
She hung up.
"I can't come," Yuga said. "I have to protect the Order of Heaven's premises."
"Alright. Be careful... And don't forget: we're being followed. Let me know if anything changes."
"Promise. I'll just see you out of the city."
They left, slipping between the Spart patrols.
In front of the gates, Rhea stopped, the wind lifting her hair.
"We'll be back, Yuga. Thank you for everything. And... take care of yourself."
"No problem. Go."
Rhea turned away and took the road to Kong.
A few hours earlier : Cavally
Angel, Yabal, and Léopold were gathered. Yabal had just explained what had happened to the inhabitants.
Angel fixed his gaze on Léopold.
"I want to see your mother."
Léopold took a step back.
"You could be contaminated..."
"You are alive," Angel replied. "So I can see her."
"No... I insist..."
"Léopold. I want. To see. Her."
The boy gave in.
They walked to a small house set against the mountains. On the neighboring doorstep, an old woman sat, watching in silence.
Inside... the air smelled of cold, dust, and sickness.
Léopold's mother was there. Her skin was black, dry, clinging to her bones. Each breath sounded like a strangled gasp.
Angel burst into tears. Léopold followed, unable to hold back his sorrow.
Yabal, however, turned pale, backed away, and left the house in silence.
Let us return to the dawn, where memories still have the sweetness of milk and the fragility of petals. Where Léopold was just a four-year-old child, a golden ray of light, ignorant of the shadow one carries within.
He had never known his father.
The word 'father' was a distant star to him, a sound he heard in other people's homes, but never in his own.
He knew only his mother, Karène: a closed face, harsh gestures, a walled-off heart.
And yet, Léopold loved her. How could he not? She was his only universe, the only figure who walked the earth before him.
That day, the sky sparkled with a blue so vast it seemed to say, "come play." The birds sent invitations with every flap of their wings.
Léopold, excited by this light, gently tugged on his mother's dress.
Léopold (eyes full of sunshine):
"Mommy... look! I want to go to the park!"
The smile already forming on his face broke before it could even bloom.
Karène (curt, glacial):
"No."
Nothing more. Not a glance, not an explanation. A "no" so sharp, so clean, it was like cutting a thread.
And that simple word became the music of his childhood: a timid request, a brutal refusal.
Every time he tried to grab his mother's dress, Karène's hand would snatch away from his touch as if the child's skin burned her. Léopold would then feel invisible, weightless, placeless, transparent in the very house where he should have been expected.
Beatings as answers.
One day, he asked for something simple—a walk, or perhaps just attention. The answer was thunder.
The blows fell like a violent rain, and the child, far from fleeing, did what his heart commanded: he held on.
He wrapped his arms around his mother's legs as if they were the last rope tying him to the world.
Léopold (voice broken, pleading):
"Mommy... mommy..."
His breath tore, his sobs trembled.
"Mommy..."
But Karène didn't hear the child.
Karène (screaming, hoarse with anger and exhaustion):
"Let me go, you wretched kid! Let go of me right now! You will not enter this house again!"
And on those words, Léopold's destiny tipped.
The night on the doorstep
He was thrown out like a cumbersome object.
Night fell heavy, cold, foreign.
Little Léopold knocked on the door. Once. Twice. A thousand times.
Not out of rage.
Out of hope.
Always that immense, naive hope that children have, that sacred belief that mothers always, eventually, open the door.
But the door remained silent.
When his small hands became too heavy, too numb, he collapsed on the doormat, curled into a ball like a wounded animal.
Sleep took him, his cheeks still wet, his little dragon Bolt curled up against him.
At dawn, Karène opened the door to leave.
The small body on the ground flinched, waking with a start.
Léopold immediately followed her, trotting behind.
He held no grudge.
He had only love.
He believed, oh, he believed so strongly that if she saw him smile often enough, she would eventually smile back.
But Karène, when she spotted his silhouette behind her, would quicken her pace, change streets, sometimes even run.
As if this child were a ghost come to haunt her.
When he returned to the house, she would hit him, pushing him away again.
And still, he would return.
The neighbor with the heart of wool
That was when Mother Hélène appeared.
An old woman with a hunched back, hands thick with work, but a heart as vast as a chapel.
She would open her door every time the child drifted too close to the abyss.
She offered him rice, a hot soup, sometimes a piece of sweet bread.
She didn't talk much.
She would just rest her hand on his head.
Once full, he would return to his mother's door.
Always.
One evening, the moon bathed the house in a pale light.
Karène was fast asleep.
Léopold found a slightly open window.
He slipped inside with the delicacy of a leaf.
He moved toward the bed, watching his mother sleep.
She was so calm like this.
So beautiful, even.
So different from the daily hurricane.
He wasn't looking for revenge, or even warmth.
He was only looking for...
That love he had never felt.
He climbed onto the bed, slowly, and placed his tiny arm around his mother's waist.
A silent hug.
A mute prayer.
For a few seconds, he believed he had finally touched the miracle he had been waiting for since birth.
But the dream shattered when Karène woke up.
Karène (horrified, almost hysterical):
"Argh! How did you dare come in here!"
The violence crashed down like a hurricane.
She hit, and hit, and hit... but it was no longer the child she was hitting.
It was her past, her fears, her regrets, her own broken image.
The sound of the blows tore through the night.
That's when Mother Hélène burst in.
She tore the child from his own mother's arms.
She pressed him against her wrinkled chest, like one saving a fledgling fallen from its nest.
And for the first time, Léopold was carried.
For the first time, he was held.
For the first time, he felt what a home was supposed to be.
Léopold grew up at Mother Hélène's.
He became a child, then an adolescent.
But never... never did he stop returning to Karène's door.
Every day, he showed up there.
Sometimes with a flower picked along the way.
Sometimes with a cookie he wanted to share.
Sometimes with just a smile.
He would knock softly.
And always, he hoped.
The years passed, the seasons changed, the storms raged one after another.
The rejection became a routine, a painful murmur deep in his chest.
But Léopold kept in his heart the child he had been.
That child who knew no resentment.
That child who had never stopped loving.
For he had offered his mother the only treasure a human can give without ever losing it:
an unconditional, patient, immense love
an eternal love.
On Earth, the members of the Order observed the planet's catastrophic situation.
They dispersed to the countries where Saturn Enterprises had headquarters, searching for clues.
Nothing.
Until the moment Arbinger, their leader, accompanied by two subordinates, ran into Jaden (Tiger's right-hand man) in a dark corridor of the American headquarters.
It was a narrow corridor, almost oppressive, like a passage no one was meant to use.
The walls were made of a black, matte metal, without the slightest reflection, absorbing all light.
On the ceiling, neon lights flickered slightly, casting a sickly white light that blinked at irregular intervals.
The floor was a long strip of gray metal, perfectly silent. No footsteps echoed here even sounds seemed to be muffled.
Thick black cables snaked along the walls, vibrating with an unknown energy. They sometimes made a very faint noise, an almost organic hum, like veins pulsing beneath the skin of a creature.
In the corners of the ceiling, surveillance lenses pivoted slowly, tracking movement, recording everything, coldly, mechanically.
At the end of the corridor, a single, massive, armored door with no handle bore only the symbol of Saturn:
a broken ring surrounding a black sphere.
They didn't even have time to speak.
Their heads had already hit the floor.
Jaden stood before them, wiping blood from his cheek.
"A shame you won't see what comes next... Soon, there will be no more humans on Earth. The planet Saturn will be their new home. And no one... no one... will stand in the way of Sir Tiger, King of the END..."