Chapter 549: The Twin-Heart Hybrid
“Because I don’t have any other name! If I didn’t know anything, how could I even know about some second name?” Stryg muttered in frustration.
“You’re right,” said Holo. “If you hadn’t met Father then you wouldn’t have been given a name either way. However, I knew you had met him, or at least I thought you had.”
He furrowed his brow. “What do you mean?”
Holo looked into Stryg’s eyes, her own lilac eyes reflected in his own, her expression thoughtful. “When we first met, though faint, I could sense another divine aura mixed in with your own. I thought it was Father’s, but now I realize it was Lunae’s. But because of that, when we met I thought you knew exactly who I was, and the fact that you were unwilling to share your true name told me you couldn’t be trusted. I had hoped at some point you’d at least be willing to drop the act and be a bit honest with me, but you refused. Then again, you could have just lied and given me a false name to try and earn my trust, but you didn’t do that either. I didn’t know what to make of it.”
Holo sighed, “I wanted to trust you, but I couldn’t. So I gave you my orichalcum coin, in case you needed to contact me. If you were Father’s spy, I knew you would, in time. But you never did and then one night I sensed Caligo through the coin.”
“...The night at Widow’s Crag,” he whispered.
Holo nodded solemnly. “I decided to help you. After that, things became complicated. Your presence with Caligo threw all my theories out. So I kept an eye on you, especially in Undergrowth. After Shadow Lake, when you almost drowned in a lake of chaos mana, I realized you really didn’t know your true name or your lineage, otherwise you would never been so stupid as to get that close to a chaos lake with a heart so undeveloped.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?” he asked.
“Because you are an anomaly. And the fact that you didn’t even know your own constitution was more than just improbable. Father would never have let you go alone for so long. Which meant someone wanted you to be in the dark. I didn’t know why… so I decided to keep observing you.”