Killed Me? Now I Have Your Power Chapter 497: Broken Mind vs Empress of Silence

Chapter 497 – Broken Mind vs Empress of Silence

"Keep it to yourself." Daela finally spoke, her voice flat and stripped of emotion. But it was a different kind of emotionless from Sabine’s.

Sabine was unable to feel anything because of something badly damaged inside her mind after her lover’s death, leaving her to clumsily mimic emotions in a desperate attempt to feel something, anything, to enjoy this vengeance she was carrying out in the name of a love she could no longer remember the taste of.

The only thing left inside her bypassed the realm of feeling entirely and reached something more elusive: a calling.

A purpose.

Her one and only purpose: to make Kaden Warborn suffer. That was the only thing holding Sabine together — like glue clumsily pressing broken pieces back into a shape — giving her just enough drive to keep moving.

Daela Warborn was completely different. Her feelings were clear, churning and abundant with warmth; but she had deliberately chosen to silence them, showing Sabine nothing but a flat face.

And somehow, for a woman incapable of feeling anything, Sabine was profoundly irritated by that.

"Oh really?" She said, letting her hands fall to her sides, her blue eyes brightening as if blue stars were being born within them. "I thought women, especially young ones like you, loved this kind of story."

She cocked her head, watching Daela slowly rise from the ground, twin swords tight in each hand.

"Dramatic. Heartbreaking. Filled with impossible love." Sabine continued, her voice dropping soft. "And a sad ending."

Daela said nothing at the sudden loquaciousness of Sabine. Her thoughts were racing. And only now did she begin to remember what had woken her.

’My Grandmaster rank Quest.’ She recalled, thinking back to the Elf Forest, the strange tree and their the battle. ’I received something as a reward. Something that made it incredibly hard for my mind to be manipulated. And alongside that reward...The Will spoke to me directly.’

The words returned clearly:

{The Broken Mind is stirring. Be wary of its whispers.}

As those words resurfaced, Daela looked at Sabine again, and felt the Mind Rot she had refined inside herself quiver at the power coating her opponent.

Everything became clear. And her mind was set.

"Are you even listening?" Sabine asked, then twisted her face looking at Daela’s lone red eye. "You weren’t, were you? Oh, you damned Warborns, why are you all so obsessed with making me lose my mind?"

Her voice shifted, becoming something inhuman, robotic, terrifying.

"I hate you so much! So damned much! Your bloodline, I will destroy it! Turn it to ash and let the River of Time forget it ever existed! I will kill you! I will kill Kaden—!"

"You know my brother?" Daela cut in, her face finally changing at the sound of Kaden’s name.

"Oh, I know him very well." Sabine’s voice slurred, blue blood seeping from her eyes. Her power erupted like a blue whirlwind, then coalesced into two swords, identical to Daela’s own. "I know him in ways even you don’t, little girl."

"And you wish to kill him?" Daela settled into her battle stance. An immaculate white light surged and wrapped around her like armour.

"Kill?" Sabine echoed, mirroring her exactly, even the way her stance was set. The sight was eerie, and sent a chill through Daela’s heart she hadn’t expected.

She felt seen from the inside out. A kind of scrutiny that didn’t leave even her mind untouched.

She clenched her jaw and held against the tension slithering inside her. Then Sabine’s next words landed:

"I will not only kill him." She shook her head as if killing would be far too easy. "Death is too merciful for a man like him. I will break him. And I will start with you."

She tilted her head and took one step forward. Power rippled outward and upward, raising a blue translucent barrier that sealed them completely from the outside.

Nothing from within that training ground would be sensed by anyone.

"No one will hear your cries when I inflict on you everything that was inflicted on me long ago." She smiled in a way that had nothing of a smile in it. "I will use your body in ways you will never—!"

"Domain Activation..."

Daela had heard enough.

Her twin swords dissolved into the fold of space. Her lone eye opened, and revealed a blinding white iris with an X-shaped pupil formed from the silhouettes of her swords.

The training ground ceased to exist. In its place was a deep white expanse. Nothing within it but a throne made from the fragments of a thousand swords.

An empress-like robe draped over Daela’s frame, a crown hovering above her head, as her domain came fully into being.

"Empire of Silence."

"HAHAHAHA!" Sabine laughed, but no sound came. As if the concept of sound had been erased from the world.

Yet she laughed harder, feeling the immense power clinging to her body trying to press her down.

Then the back of her neck sizzled. Her eyes snapped wide. Thousands upon thousands of sword slashes erupted all across the domain — continuous, relentless, unceasing.

She raised her twin swords of mental energy and began blocking everything, spinning like she was dancing, knowing that stopping meant losing. Her hands became a blur of blue light.

But she had severely underestimated the domain.

Even if she could see the echo of the slashes, she had lost one critical sensory perception, and her reactions were slower than they should have been. And the slashes were unending. They felt like something that would continue until there was nothing left to cut — like unfinished echoes of events that had occurred long before sound ever existed, trying to make themselves known, trying to be heard.

Her speed began lagging and some slashes slipped through. They shredded her flesh as if she were paper.

Blood sprayed. Her face showed nothing: no grimace, no flinch. She only pressed harder, her body being carved down piece by piece — flesh peeling, bones sliced, organs splintering and draining through a cracked-open chest.

Yet She kept moving like something that had long since stopped feeling pain. Even when her right arm was severed cleanly, she simply manifested another sword, clenched it between her bloodied teeth, and pressed on.

That was when Daela moved.

Deciding Sabine’s condition was damaged enough, and accounting for the heavy toll of holding the domain too long, the Empress of Silence appeared behind her — white eye blazing with incandescent light, her two swords reappearing overhead, far larger than before, plunging downward like heaven’s judgment toward the wounded, crippled Sabine.

And at the last possible instant — an inch from landing — Sabine twisted an impossible one hundred and eighty degrees and faced Daela directly.

Her mouth was stretched into something inhuman.

Daela’s heart lurched, no time to react as Sabine lunged, seized her lower lip between her teeth, and ripped it away with a ferocious snap of her head.

Daela cried out. The pain was so sudden and deep her vision blanked for a moment.

Then Sabine’s voice echoed — — through the domain of silence, laughing, the consumed lip still on her tongue.

"Domain Activation..."

Daela Warborn’s eyes went wide and a deep, existential dread clawed at her soul.

"...The Covenant of the Broken World."

—End of Chapter 497—