My world is shattered.

Family.

I woke up to find a pink-haired beauty - seemingly my own age - claiming to be my youngest daughter.

By that calculation, would that mean I fathered Aurora when I was barely one or two years old?

While General Lai was badass enough to single-handedly take down the neighbor's vicious dog at age five, even he wasn't badass enough to impregnate a woman while still in single digits.

The crackling campfire nearby cast flickering light on Leon's dumbfounded expression.

Aurora could tell from his reaction that he wasn't ready to accept this reality immediately. Barely containing her excitement at their reunion, she said calmly,

"If you don't believe me, you can ask me anything about the Melkevi family."

Her tone was cool, with a touch of aloofness, reminiscent of how Leon's first acquaintance, Roswitha, carried herself.

However, the pink-haired beauty's voice carried an additional quality beyond aloofness—a hint of the "mechanical tone" characteristic of scientists, as if everything was firmly within her control.

Even though her emotions were turbulent beneath the surface, her rationality allowed her to remain calm and analytical.

For now, the priority was to earn Leon's trust and slowly help him accept this world that was both familiar and strange to him.

Leon gradually snapped out of his shock.

He couldn't immediately believe that the woman standing in front of him was Aurora, but her suggestion wasn't entirely unreasonable.

So, for now, he decided to ask a few questions to probe her credibility.

Leon thought for a moment before asking, "Roswitha's birthday?"

"October 25th, Scorpio."

"Noa's birthday?"

"February 16th, Aquarius."

"And Muen's—"

"They're twins, so the same birthday."

After smoothly answering these questions, Aurora took the next step by rattling off details on her own,

"You, Leon Kasmod, birthday August 5th, Leo, height 186cm, weight 77kg. You don't have a favorite food, but you hate eggplant and carrots."

"Mom loves oranges, but above all else, she loved the orange-flavored ice cream you bought her a long time ago in front of Sky City Theater. She said it was the best ice cream she'd ever had."

"On her 218th birthday, you prepared a gigantic cake for her with 218 candles on top."

"You also have an older sister named Isa, who is our aunt and queen of the Red Dragon Clan. My first words as a child were calling her 'Aunt Isa' because I found it entertaining to watch you and Mom bicker every day, so I stubbornly refused to speak to anyone else."

"Constantine is the only Dragon King you remember exactly when you killed because that was the same day I was born."

"If you want me to keep going, I can list a lot more."

Hearing this series of answers delivered so smoothly as if reciting a menu, General Lai was once again bewildered.

He swallowed and blurted out, "You... you investigated me!"

Aurora froze for a second, then sighed helplessly. "I already told you, I am Aurora. All of this is family business to me. Why would I need to investigate you? And some of these details couldn’t possibly be uncovered just through tracking or spying, could they?"

"...You're right."

Though still finding it hard to believe, Leon was reluctantly convinced that this might really be Aurora.

What swayed Leon, apart from her seemingly encyclopedic bombardment of facts, was the subtle familial bond—the inexplicable and undeniable sense of kindness family members naturally share.

It’s something that can’t be described or quantified but effortlessly builds trust when family members are together.

Even someone as cautious as General Lai found it hard to suspect the girl standing before him.

However—

"No, no, no, no, something's not right. When I entered the spatial rift, Aurora was only four or five months old."

As he spoke, Leon stretched out his hand to indicate Aurora's size as he remembered it, then extended his arms to measure the height of the pink-haired beauty in front of him. "How did she grow this much while I just took a nap?"

Sure, the Dragon Clan genes are extraordinary; Noa was already performing Chidori at the age of two.

But no matter how extraordinary, they shouldn’t be extraordinary enough to transform a cute little dragon toddler into a 170cm-tall bespectacled lady overnight.

Aurora raised one elegant eyebrow. "Took a nap? Well, that was quite the long nap."

"Long? How... how long?"

Aurora propped her chin on one hand and held up two fingers in front of her father.

"Two days?"

She shook her head.

"Two years?"

Still shaking her head.

Leon felt a twitch in his lips. "T-Twenty years..."

"Exactly~"

Aurora clasped her hands together and squinted with a smile, as though celebrating her father guessing the correct answer. But her voice remained as cold as ever, "To be precise, twenty years, four months, and eight days."

Dragon Clan members rarely bother to measure the passage of time due to their extraordinary lifespans.

But Aurora remembered the full twenty years, down to the specific day.

Seeing his utterly bewildered father, Aurora continued,

"Honestly, my mind is a mess right now too, and I don't know how to deal with this."

"For you, the Star Dragon King war and stopping the spatial rift might have happened just yesterday."

"But for me, twenty years have indeed passed."

Taking a deep breath, Aurora closed her eyes and massaged the space between her brows. "So, so I... tch."

From the brief exchange with Leon, Aurora found herself unable to suppress her emotions any longer.

After all, for her, it had been twenty long years since her father disappeared into the spatial rift. Now that he had suddenly appeared again, she genuinely didn't know how to face him.

Her heart was a mixture of emotions, but her dominant feeling was finally having someone to rely on.

When Leon vanished, she had been just a few months old.

Yet he left a deep impression on her:

Gentle, powerful, and insanely responsible.

It felt as though with him around, any troubles could be easily resolved.

So, even after all these years, the moment Aurora saw Leon, the weight she'd been carrying for twenty long years began to lift.

But after the relief came the inevitable silence of helplessness.

Aurora knew she needed to explain everything to Leon—why all of this had happened.

Yet she didn’t know where to begin.

There was too much she wanted to tell him, too many burdens she longed to share.

She removed her glasses, wiped at the corners of her eyes somewhat haphazardly, sniffed, and then put them back on again.

Leon pursed his lips. He could see Aurora's distress and hesitation.

So, even though he desperately wanted to understand what "twenty years" really meant, he decided to prioritize comforting his daughter.

Glancing at her black-rimmed glasses, he asked, "You... you're nearsighted now?"

Naturally, as a father, her health concerned him.

Aurora nodded. "Yeah, I've been nearsighted for a long time. From reading too much."

Leon's thoughtful 'oh' came as he noted her lab coat, vaguely recalling her childhood aspirations.

"When you were little, you said you wanted to become a scholar or a scientist. So now... have you achieved your dream?"

"More or less."

"More or less?"

"Mm. Because what I study can’t be published, nor will it ever be recognized academically by the Dragon Clan."

Leon blinked. "So what are you studying?"

Aurora didn’t answer. Instead, she posed an entirely unrelated question. "When did you regain consciousness?"

"Today."

Aurora lowered her gaze and muttered softly,

"Today... So that means there are only six months left."