Killed Me? Now I Have Your Power

Chapter 501: Chapter 501: Woeful’s years of planning

Chapter 501 – Woeful’s years of planning

“Well… not so fast, young Warborn.” Vainglory said, making Kaden slowly tilt his head to one side.

“Why such hurry?”

“I would love that.” Kaden admitted. “I would have loved to take the time to speak with you, to at least know the man my fiancée loves so deeply before getting into the serious matters. However…” he paused, then looked at him steadily, “you already know what is happening, don’t you?”

“Know what?” Vainglory inquired, his voice lazy yet carrying a kind of weight that rattled the bones inside Kaden’s chest. “About the fact my granddaughter is about to be taken over by Woeful? Or about my granddaughter about to be taken over by…” he laughed quietly and finished, “…Pandora?”

“You say it as though the two mean the same thing.”

“Don’t they?” He cocked his head. “Then tell me what the difference is.” Vainglory raised his hand — the one made of crawling, grey maggots — and waved it loosely across the hall. “And don’t worry about time passing, young Warborn. There is no concept of time here. It has become meaningless, transformed into nothing but a source of sorrow uselessly trying to heal this body… this Tower… this dead Tower.”

Kaden’s frown subtly deepened at those two words. Dead Tower.

But Vainglory continued, his smile carrying obvious scorn. “What She didn’t know — or perhaps she did and simply chose to go on regardless — is that this damned thing would never be able to kill me as long as I hold her ring.” His two rotting red eyes fixed themselves on the quiet, listening Kaden. “A ring you wish to take from me in order to transform my granddaughter into someone else.”

“Is that how you see it?” Kaden asked, confirming inwardly with Blanche that yes, the concept of time inside the Tower was essentially nonexistent. But that knowledge did nothing to ease his urgency.

He knew too little about how time functioned in this space. He had no Origin attuned to it. The only thing he possessed in that domain was his Seed of Metheus, a power he still hadn’t learned to wield properly.

So Kaden hardened his expression, his body crackling with restrained power. Behind him, the bloody silhouette of Reditha in her sword form hovered faintly, phasing in and out of existence like a fever dream.

“If you don’t see it that way, then you are a fool.” Vainglory’s voice went colder. “Rea is Rea. Pandora is Pandora. They are two entirely different beings, with Pandora wishing to take over Rea’s body. My granddaughter’s body. And you think I would allow that?”

“If not Pandora, it would be the Goddess.” Kaden retorted, his eyes narrowing. “And Pandora and Rea…they are the same person. Rea was born from the Seed of Sorrow that Pandora left behind.”

“Then by that logic,” Vainglory retorted, “are you implying that Pandora and the Goddess are one and the same?”

Kaden’s thoughts stopped completely, as if he had run straight into a physical wall.

Vainglory’s words began echoing inside his mind — over and over — bringing with them a perspective he had failed to see before.

He stood completely still. He could only stare at the man who didn’t look old at all — at least, the part of him not corrupted by the Curse of Sorrow inflicted during his final battle — and found nothing he could say in response.

Because wasn’t Vainglory right?

What was the difference between what Woeful was doing to Rea and what Pandora was attempting? He couldn’t find one.

Both were trying to take over the body of Rea Thornspire…who was Rea. Not Pandora, even if she had been born from Pandora’s Seed of Sorrow. And she did not belong to Woeful, who perhaps saw her as Pandora reborn.

Rea was Rea. She was his fiancée and his soon-to-be wife. She was the one he loved.

He didn’t fully understand what Pandora had meant about making them forget. But none of that changed the fact that if it were within Kaden’s power, Rea would stay Rea.

However…

“Maybe you are right.” He whispered. “But I have neither the right to choose for Rea who to belongs to sorrow, nor the power to create a third option out of the two The Will has given me.”

“You are misunderstanding my granddaughter.” Vainglory shook his head. Maggots scattered as he moved, giving Kaden an involuntary urge to wince. “She wants to become one with Sorrow, yes. But not in the way you are thinking. My Rea wants the power that comes with it, not the alteration of herself. So the reason she has accepted the possibility of becoming someone — something — else is only because she was made to believe that was the only available path.”

Kaden’s eyes widened. And Vainglory’s grin spread wider.

“Yes, young Warborn. You are still far too young and inexperienced to go against divine beings. They work in layers upon layers of plans, some so subtle you could never perceive them until it is far too late.”

He shifted in his seat, interlacing his fingers together and resting his chin atop them. “Both Pandora and Woeful made my granddaughter believe in that lie. A lie that would not simply change her, it would kill her. She would not become something better. She would become something else entirely, and in so radical and drastic a way that she would be unrecognisable. Change is supposed to be gradual, young Warborn.”

“Then—!”

“Oh, I am not finished.” Vainglory cut in. “Hear me well. This is my lesson to you, and hopefully to my granddaughter, if you are even a sliver of what your grandfather was.”

He paused briefly, then continued.

“There is one more lie. One more scheme Pandora has used to trap you like a helpless insect in a spider’s web.”

Kaden’s heart was now pounding loud enough that his chest trembled with it. “What… what else?”

Slowly, doubt began to creep through every certainty the young Warborn had held.

“The time limit is a lie.” Vainglory said simply.

“That is not possible!” Kaden shook his head immediately, unable to accept the words. “I saw it myself. I watched her struggling against the pressure of the Goddess bearing down on her. She didn’t have long. That, at least, I am certain of.”

“You… saw it?” Vainglory burst into laughter. “Saw? Young Warborn, even gods do not blindly trust what their eyes show them! And you — a mortal — want to believe your own eyes? The easiest of all senses to deceive with a simple trick? How have you survived this long without dying?”

“You… you can’t mean…?” Kaden’s breath caught in his chest.

“You were fooled, yes.” Vainglory nodded. “The Goddess and Pandora are not opposed to each other. But no, that is not quite the right way to say it either.”

He smiled thinly. Maggots fell faster and faster from his lips.

“In this timeline, Pandora no longer exists. She was captured and destroyed by The Hero long ago, the very one who transformed this timeline into a forbidden one through his deeds. However, Pandora’s original body was left behind, albeit broken. This very Tower. And her anger and hatred were left behind with it, causing me — who carries the bloodline of Sorrow — to fall into a state of berserk and fight my own friend. Your grandfather.”

He chuckled without humour, face twitching to one of pure sadness for a moment.

“And yet everyone believes that it was I who harmed Pandora and shattered the Tower. That it is I who can grant them salvation and give them hope. All of that is what they believe…because Woeful told them so. I have been used as a tool, young boy. Used to give a people hope, only so that they could feel even greater sorrow when that hope amounted to nothing.”

“My bloodline — our bloodline — is nothing but a curse, Warborn. Nothing but a remnant of Pandora’s destroyed body, repurposed as a bloodline. One that Woeful controls. A bloodline she planted deliberately to use… and to recreate her Pandora.”

A shorter pause this time, Kaden standing there, face aghast and pale.

“Do you see where I am going, young Warborn?”

Vainglory didn’t wait for an answer. His voice dropped into a tense, cold, deliberate tone.

“In this forbidden timeline, the Goddess of Sorrow is Pandora herself…”

Kaden felt his knees go weak.

“…and you and my granddaughter have been playing inside her hands since the very beginning of your lives.”

—End of Chapter 501—

I will do 3-4 ch/ a week from now on. sorry that I can’t do more. This book was already going down and now it’s worse, welp!

I shall do my best to give it an ending.