A is in StarCraft, just disembarked from the Zerg Prince spaceship.

*************

......

Orion's gaze fell on the easel covered with velvet.

I have a bad, ominous feeling.

He walked over in silence.

He reached out, with an almost stagnant slowness that even he himself was unaware of, and lifted a corner of the velvet cloth.

On the canvas is an unfinished portrait.

The figure in the painting is the Insect King.

But the man in the painting is completely different from the one Orion sees today.

There was no makeup, no gorgeous robes, no fear or greed, no pale face or dark circles under the eyes, only a kind of almost transparent, fragile beauty.

He sat by the window, his face turned to the side, gazing at a tree in the courtyard outside the window that was blooming with white flowers. His eyes were vacant, yet strangely, the painter captured a touching, almost childlike innocence in them.

Sunlight streamed through the window, dancing on his platinum blonde hair and fair cheeks, casting a hazy, pure white glow upon him.

Like a young angel.

Atticus's brushstrokes were so gentle, so careful, as if afraid that even a little too much pressure would shatter the figures in the painting.

Orion's fingers gripped the thick velvet cloth covering the painting so tightly that his knuckles turned white and trembled.

He stared intently at the ironic innocence and fragility that Atticus had imbued in the insect queen with his brush in the painting.

An indescribable wave of nausea overwhelmed his reason.

Orion suddenly flew into a rage.

He ripped the velvet cloth off violently, then kicked over the easel and stomped on it viciously.

The rough movements stirred up a gust of wind, and the easel rattled and crashed.

Atticus is a real idiot.

You have to be very careful even when you draw him, but he never hesitates to harm you!

Why waste time drawing something else instead of this?

Then, he turned around, his back to the shattered image of the Insect King, and faced upwards, with another huge image of his own face on the wall behind him.

It's much bigger than the one the Insect King had just worn.

The entire space suddenly fell into a deathly silence.

The moonlight flowed in silently, falling on Orion's suddenly tense shoulders and back, which were as stiff as a rock.

He stood there, like a statue that had suddenly turned to stone.

The moonlight cast a deep shadow on his profile, and his eyes glowed with a grey-blue light.

His eyes were filled with joy, the kind of pure joy a child feels when they receive a toy and recognition.

He looks exactly like Atticus, but they give off completely different vibes and are easy to distinguish. Short hair, rebellious, arrogant.

Atticus didn't paint himself, he painted him.

The sarcastic, mocking, and arrogant thoughts that had been roaring in my mind just now... all the intense voices suddenly disappeared.

Haha, Atticus does have some brains after all.

But this joy quickly faded.

Only a heavy, cold silence remained, as deathly as the winged palace itself.

He gazed at the enormous portrait.

After a long while, he turned and left the room without saying a word.

After passing through a bunch of rooms that were mostly just for show and had no practical use, and through a quiet corridor, I pushed open a heavy, modern alloy door.

The control core of the Wing Palace appeared before him.

As a modern palace, the Wing Palace naturally has an AI-controlled control core.

Many things can be adjusted. The height of the floating island can be adjusted, the light transmittance of the protective shield can be adjusted, and even the changing seasons and weather on the island can be adjusted.

Controlling everything from the entire island to dispatching sweeping robots, controlling the core of the Wing Palace is tantamount to completely controlling the palace.

The floating control interface emits a steady blue light as it flies in mid-air, dividing the space into geometric shapes of light and shadow.

His gaze swept over the complex and sophisticated array of instruments, finally settling on the main control console in the center of the hall.

A massive holographic star map covered an entire wall. The star map slowly rotated, outlining the three-dimensional structure of the Wing Palace itself.

Then, he stared at the diagram and froze.

He saw the control core of the Wing Palace.

The structure of this imperial palace.

What kind of structure is this?

How could it be structured like this?

In the Crown Prince's palace, everything was in duplicate.

With the central axis as the dividing line, the entire Wing Palace is precisely divided in two.

East wing, west wing.

From the massive main building to the most subtle corridor transitions, from the dome's curve in the master bedroom to the window patterns in the annex hall... everything is a symmetrical mirror image.

Master bedroom, living room, study, training ground.

Even the two enormous viewing terraces, like perfectly equal weights on either side of a scale, hung silently under the moonlight.

He looked up at the vast, cold, perfectly symmetrical space.

The east wing, where he was standing, belonged to Atticus and maintained the cleanliness and order that his master had left behind. All the control procedures were listed on it in an orderly manner.

The west wing, the other half of the mirror image, appears as a gray shadow on the giant hologram: vacant. Never used.

The empty area was covered with an invisible layer of time's dust.

Orion was speechless.

All his previous arrogance seemed to have been shattered at this moment.

There was one that Atticus might have wanted to leave for him.

A feeling of suffocation gripped his throat.

Why...why?

Did Atticus love him?

This realization brought not joy, but an indescribable, excruciating pain.

He suddenly remembered the scene when they hatched.

Those fragments of memory he had deliberately forgotten now pierced through all his defenses like icicles.

Thick, warm egg mixture.

Another heartbeat beside me.

The days when my brother held me in his arms.

The first time I breathed in the cold air, there was a faint hissing sound, equally damp, around me.

The first thing we see when we look at the world is not our parents, but each other.

The exact same outline, the exact same insect shape, the exact same compound eye reflection.

Two rare twin insects, struggling to emerge from the same egg, are connected by blood and share the same breath.

If they are separated and cannot hear each other's heartbeats, they will both fall into panic.

They huddle together in this cold world.

They are each other's other half; their lives, from the very beginning, have been two sides of the same coin.

......

The wing is a semicircle; by walking along the long corridor around the side wing, one can return to the main hall.

Orion paused.

Stand at the side exit of the main hall.

No wonder I didn't see Atticus's portrait when I first entered the hall; usually, the hall would have a portrait of the owner.

On the wall directly opposite the side wing exit of the main hall, there hangs a huge portrait.

At this time, Atticus had become the Crown Prince, wearing a crisp crown prince uniform and without elaborate medals, only the Lernia badge symbolizing his status as Crown Prince.

Atticus hung his portrait on the side of the exit.

The portrait is cleverly placed, with his eyes fixed directly on the exit of the side wing.

His usually gentle blue-gray eyes, captured by the paintbrush, held an extremely complex expression—a deep tenderness and anticipation.

Or perhaps a lingering sense of melancholy and regret that cannot be dispelled.

The painter's brushstrokes are extremely skillful, and complex emotions are frozen in Atticus's deep eyes, like undercurrents surging beneath a calm sea.

Orion stood before the enormous portrait, looking up.