"Natsu's personality after his resurrection was just as troublesome as before. He had no patience for studying, no interest in learning magic, and no tolerance for listening to his brother."
"So, with a certain plan in mind, Zeref entrusted Natsu to the Fire Dragon King Igneel to be raised."
"Igneel was Zeref's friend, and he was willing to teach Natsu Dragon Slayer Magic."
"Natsu took to him immediately."
"At the same time, four other children, Gajeel, Wendy, Sting, and Rogue, were each taken in by a dragon of their own."
"They played together often."
"Natsu and Gajeel were constantly bickering and brawling. Sting and Rogue looked up to both of them as role models. Wendy cried and threw herself between them every time they fought."
"Beyond the dragons teaching them Dragon Slayer Magic, there was also a human entrusted with their general education."
"Her name was Anna Heartfilia."
This was what Rhodes had read in the Book of END a few days ago.
Of course, that was only the summary.
The book contained far more detail. Had he chosen to dig deeper, Rhodes could have pulled up the win-loss record of every fight Natsu and Gajeel had ever gotten into as children. But that kind of clutter held little value.
What actually caught his attention was the fact that among the seven Dragon Slayers he knew of, five had grown up together.
That alone was worth scrutinizing.
Because Natsu, Gajeel, and Wendy had absolutely no memory of one another.
Natsu had mentioned, though, that when he first met Wendy, something felt strangely familiar about her, as if they had crossed paths before.
Had someone used Memory Magic on them?
Then there was Anna Heartfilia. The name matched Lucy's ancestor, the woman who had left behind a magic tome about the Eclipse Gate and given the Heartfilia bloodline the mission to open it, a mission that Lucy's mother, Layla, finally completed fourteen years ago.
According to the memories Rhodes had pulled from the King and the Gemini transformation of the King, what had emerged from the Eclipse Gate that day was Anna, along with what were described as "five shooting stars."
Rhodes worked out the timeline. Fourteen years ago placed it at exactly X777.
Natsu and the others had always said their dragons vanished on July 7th, X777.
The date matched the day Layla opened the Eclipse Gate.
Which meant that "the dragons disappearing" may have only been how it looked from Natsu and the others' side of things. The actual truth was likely something else entirely: all of them had passed through the Eclipse Gate alongside Anna and arrived in the present, four hundred years removed from where they had started.
They were genuine grandpas and grandmas in dragon's clothing.
Of course, all of this rested on one assumption: that what was written in the Book of END was true.
To keep the book's demonic energy from warping his reasoning, Rhodes had taken precautions from the start, including a firm rule against treating anything written inside as gospel. Even so, much of what he had read so far aligned cleanly with information he had already gathered from other sources.
His confidence in the book was rising.
Natsu was Zeref's younger brother. Igneel and Zeref were friends. Lucy's ancestor had once been Natsu's teacher.
Rhodes recalled something from a while back: Happy had once sold intel to Mirajane about Natsu claiming he liked the smell around Lucy because it felt comforting to him. Anna's presence during his childhood could well be the root of that feeling.
Watching scattered clues click together one by one was genuinely satisfying. It also meant the Book of END's credibility was climbing higher with every page.
And that meant the possibility of Natsu being a demon was climbing with it.
In search of more answers, Rhodes opened the Book of END again that night.
"The peaceful days lasted for quite some time."
"But then, without warning, Natsu forgot Zeref. He forgot Anna. He forgot his four companions. He woke up alone in a forest somewhere in the Kingdom of Fiore."
"His last memory was of being with Igneel the day before."
"When he opened his eyes, Igneel was gone."
"He did not know that he had crossed four hundred years of time and arrived in the year X777."
Rhodes stared at the page, eyes wide.
A complete reset right from the start. Natsu had genuinely crossed four centuries of time and genuinely lost every memory of it.
The contents of the book lined up perfectly with his deductions, which meant...
"I should probably check whether this book has some kind of illusion or mind-reading magic that generates content based on my own thoughts.
With an attitude of bold questioning and careful verification, Rhodes still didn't dare blindly trust a book of unknown origin that was saturated with demonic aura.
He silently added another item to the growing list of doubts in his notebook, then continued reading.
"Natsu thought it was just an ordinary morning. That Igneel had simply gone out for a while."
"But the surroundings and the scent were clearly different from when he had fallen asleep the night before."
"He waited in place anxiously for a full day. Foraged for food in the forest on an empty stomach. And then began searching for traces of Igneel."
"But Igneel had vanished completely."
"Natsu searched desperately for his foster father, the only family he had in his memory."
"What he didn't know yet was that the Fire Dragon King Igneel was hidden inside his body. Using the Secret Dragon Soul Technique, Igneel was creating special antibodies within Natsu."
"Those antibodies would help him resist the greatest side effect of Dragon Slayer magic: the gradual transformation into a dragon."
"So... Natsu spent years looking for someone who was inside him the whole time?"
Rhodes immediately thought of an inappropriate metaphor. Looking for the donkey while riding on it.
Then another thought followed. If Igneel had used the Secret Dragon Soul Technique on Natsu, had Grandeeney and Metalicana done the same for Wendy and Gajeel?
Were all three foster dragons hidden inside their respective Dragon Slayers, quietly producing antibodies?
As for why none of them had revealed themselves or come out to reunite with their children, Rhodes guessed it was either because the technique couldn't be interrupted mid-process, or because the timing wasn't right.
Just like the reason Gemini had refused to reveal more during the Grand Magic Games.
As Anna had said: "Everything has its order."
Rhodes paused at that thought. "Then... will my accidentally discovering all of this disrupt the 'order' they planned?"
He considered it carefully. It couldn't be that his obtaining the Book of E.N.D. was also within their calculations. Carla's inherited precognition magic wasn't even that accurate. Nobody's foresight was that precise.
And speaking of those antibodies... they handled the biggest side effect, the dragonification. But they couldn't fix motion sickness?
Seriously?
"That day, he arrived in Magnolia and found the famous local mage guild: Fairy Tail."
"Master Makarov took in this homeless child."
The passages that followed used an enormous amount of space to chronicle what happened after Natsu joined the guild.
When he first met Erza. When he encountered Cana. The day of his first fight with Gray. Small, seemingly trivial moments that built, one by one, into the picture of a boy finding his place in the world.
Natsu gradually grew accustomed to guild life. He began going on adventures. Training. And never stopped searching for Igneel.
In the year following Natsu's arrival, X778, Mirajane, Elfman, and Lisanna joined Fairy Tail.
The process of Natsu and Lisanna becoming friends was recorded in vivid detail.
Rhodes even read the moment when a young, precocious Lisanna told Natsu she wanted to be his bride someday. Natsu's face had turned as red as a ripe tomato.
"It feels like I've just watched Natsu's entire childhood."
Rhodes sat quietly as the flying words drifted back into the pages and settled. He closed the Book of E.N.D.
Much of what he'd read today were things Mira had told him before. Stories about the guild's early days. How the kids grew up together. Those accounts could be cross-referenced with Mira and Lisanna later to check for accuracy.
With each page, he was leaning more heavily toward one conclusion: the contents of this book were true.
He was also growing curious about something else. How far did this book go?
Why would a book written four hundred years ago contain detailed accounts of events from just over a decade ago?
If he kept reading... would he eventually read about the arrival of Rhodes himself?
"How about... just one more page?"
....
STONESSSS 💎💎
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