[The statement is so completely impossible that what he says comes out tangled in a baffled laugh.]

What?

[But he's serious. He's completely serious. Everything he'd said, every last thing he's said for the past two weeks was serious.]

Naoya, that's - but the vengeance against anyone who'd dare harm - the destruction of the world before, that - I mean, yes, there's evidence for the transmigration of souls, fuck, my father got his deathcurse fighting a piece of it, but that's - the - the first Covenant meant anything that went before it was forgi -

[Growing horror steadily raises the pitch of his voice, steadily widens his eyes, raises his brows and drawn them together, and sends him collapsing against the bookcase behind him with a hand clapped over his mouth, cutting himself off mid-word as the other grasps desperately for a shelf to keep himself upright. He doesn't even know if it's horror at the knowledge of someone living with thousands upon thousands of years of memory, horror at the knowledge that someone he's laughed with and has started to like is none other than the First Murderer, horror mixed with pity at the thought of Cain unforgiven for untold ages, or horror at the sheer concept that in some place, in some time, God is truly not the forgiving love of a kind Father, but the cold cruelty of a bullying child whose terrified friends "won't play pretend right".

Eli, Eli, lamma sabachthani - The thought runs through his mind before he can stop it.]