PATH OF THE STAR HUNTER

324 Chapter 324 Meeting Katya For The First Time

(Third Person POV)

Resplendent white hair, a face whose perfection could not be put into words, two suns inhabited her eyes shining brightly, her six majestic wings almost completely covered the ceiling of the room, a dreamlike beauty that transcended anything Desmond had ever seen before.

It was Katya the archangel of justice and balance who was staring at him as she floated above his bed, it was due to her overwhelming presence that Desmond was slow to realize an important fact... he was in his room, on his bed, with a Naked Claire holding his arm as she slept soundly.

But that was... “Impossible?” Katya interrupted in her heavenly voice as if she read Desmond’s mind.

Katya’s interruption didn’t bother Desmond at all, rather he didn’t know how to react to Katya’s presence or her comments, he was overwhelmed, for the first time in his life; Desmond had no idea what to do or say.

“You seem disturbed...was it that hard for you to experience death?” With a blank expression and a flat tone, Katya asked.

The word death was like a bolt of lightning that hit Desmond hard, the gears inside his mind snapping out of its slumber and beginning to spin into high gear.

His first reaction was to believe that Katya had done something to his mind while he slept, some kind of illusion or manipulation but Desmond quickly dismissed that idea, Katya had no reason to do that to him; if she wanted to harm him in any way she could do so with the flick of a finger.

They didn’t know each other to begin with so there was no enmity to back up such actions not to mention that at this point Katya seemed pretty passive.

.....

On the other hand, the idea that this was just a hallucination that he had in the last moments before he died also loses validity when he realized that Katya would have no reason to appear in his mind in his last moments.

The problem was that Desmond didn’t know much about Katya or the Celestials, that information wasn’t something a low-level hunter would have access to, not to mention that Desmond still couldn’t make sense of his sudden state of security.

As if reading Desmond’s mind again, Katya responded to his doubts with a single word: “Premonition.”

The answer was brief, but Desmond was smart enough to read between the lines, the problem was that although the word premonition revealed some things to him, others remained confusing.

“Are you saying that you showed me a premonition of how I will die?” Finding it useless to keep trying to come up with the answers on his own, Desmond asked directly the archangel who was still hovering above him looking at him with an impassive expression.

“One day, you will die in just over a day” Katya replied.

The nonchalance displayed by Katya almost made it seem as if Desmond’s death didn’t bother her at all but it was strange considering that she seemed to be warning him about it.

One day was longer than Desmond had expected, turning to look at the clock placed next to the bed he realized that the date had changed, it was the morning of the day before the moment he was ambushed.

But that was ridiculous, one day, although it seemed to be a short time, it was not the same when someone told you that one day of your life was just a vision of the future, Desmond perfectly remembered what happened throughout the next day and it was difficult for him to accept that all this was shown to him in an instant.

Trying to sort out his chaotic thoughts, Desmond asked a question that was bothering him: “why did you show me?”

That’s right, Desmond had many doubts about how premonitions worked or how Katya had made him experience a whole day in the future but beyond that, Desmond wanted to know why she was helping him.

But Katya’s answer was not satisfactory at all: “The one who will bring you death will arrive in this city at noon, it is up to you to change your destiny, we will meet again and then you will know why I have helped you”

Desmond was confused, Katya’s motives were a mystery but his instincts told him that she was not trying to harm him so he decided to trust her, at the same time when Katya mentioned the person responsible for Desmond’s own death; The killing intent emanating from Desmond almost filled the room before he calmed down as he noticed that Claire seemed uncomfortable at his killing intent.

Meanwhile, Katya just watched, her wings flapping very gently allowing her to move until her delicate feet reached the ground without touching it due to the thin layer of golden energy in which she stood only millimeters off the ground.

Desmond noticed this change and found it strange, he didn’t know Katya and one could say this was the first time they had seen each other as well as the first time they had spoken but Desmond was still able to form a brief impression of her; Katya was both proud and impassive.

The way she looked at Desmond was the way humans looked at ants... perhaps a little differently, there was no real contempt in her eyes, but being under her gaze would make anyone feel small.

That was why Desmond found Katya’s cautious behavior strange, Desmond had noticed it before but from the beginning until now Katya had been very quiet and she was looking a little peculiarly at Claire, but the change was only at the level of a microexpression so Desmond couldn’t read her intentions at all.

“Do you love her?” Katya’s sudden question caught Desmond off guard.

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It was only an instant, so brief that it didn’t even seem true but Desmond would swear he saw a very faint curious expression on Katya’s always stoic face.

Likewise, Desmond didn’t think too much about it, Katya wasn’t hostile towards him and if everything she had told him so far was true, then she had saved his life so he wasn’t reluctant to answer her question.

“Yes, I do love her,” Desmond answered as he looked at Claire with infinite fondness.

“What is love?” Unexpectedly Katya responded with another question as she stepped forward staring at Desmond as if she wanted to penetrate to the depths of his soul.

Suns, no matter how many times Desmond looked at Katya’s eyes these seemed to have two suns inside them, it was beautiful but strange, maybe even a little oppressive.

“I can’t give you an answer.” Desmond thought for a moment but ultimately decided not to answer Katya’s question, partly because the answer was too complex to put into a few words but also because Desmond believed that his answer would not necessarily be understood by Katya who saw the world differently.

Desmond’s belief was not entirely unfounded, from his experience with Kyuru, Desmond knew that different species had different values ??and related differently so applying human values ??to all of them was naive if not ignorant.

But his answer didn’t seem to satisfy Katya who moved even closer focusing her suns on Desmond as she asked with the same flat tone and neutral expression, “So how do you know you love her?”

Unable to ignore Katya anymore, Desmond felt the compulsion to answer her question, yes, the compulsion; Katya was using some kind of power on him to force him to respond.

Desmond was annoyed for a moment but then he remembered that Katya was a Celestial, she wasn’t hostile to him and probably didn’t mean anything bad at the moment, maybe she wasn’t even consciously forcing him to respond.

Desmond couldn’t be sure but his instincts told him that Katya wasn’t consciously manipulating him, it was more like her mere presence was too much to resist giving Katya’s angelic voice a touch of compulsion.

In any case, the details were not important, Desmond had no problem answering such trivial questions to satisfy an archangel’s curiosity, in any case, this was a low price to pay for having been saved by Katya from his cruel future.

“I know I love her because I know I would give my life for her without thinking twice, she brings light to my life and if I lost her the pain and despair I would feel would be even greater than what I felt dying in your premonition”

For the first time since she arrived, Katya showed a different expression, she blinked as if she was trying to understand Desmond’s response but after a brief moment her expression turned neutral once more.

“I don’t get it, loving seems dangerous” Katya commented and nodded to herself as if she had made up her mind about something in particular.

“Love is what makes life worth living.” Desmond couldn’t help but comment but Katya seemed completely indifferent to his comment.

Katya’s six wings began to emit a faint golden glow as these gently flapped and leaving only a couple of words behind Katya disappeared in a flash of light: “The rest is in your hand’s hunter”

The strong feeling of deja vu bothered Desmond for a few moments before his attention focused on Claire who began to snuggle closer to him. Seeing her beautiful and peaceful appearance caused Desmond to smile warmly.

“This time I’ll protect that smile,” Desmond commented as bloodlust flooded his pupils.

It was clear that Desmond had been marked by the premonition given by Katya that showed him his own death as well as the reasons for it, forcing Desmond to recognize his own arrogance and realize that many things would have to change if he wanted to protect his style of life...Though all of that would be until after Desmond got rid of the source of the threat that would eventually cause his death.