Killed Me? Now I Have Your Power Chapter 500: Path Righteous

Chapter 500 – Path Righteous

It was time.

That notion echoed deep inside Kaden’s mind as he walked the same path Karim had taken him down on that fateful day; the day he had been told he was going to meet a wise person, so the historian had said, without Kaden fully understanding that he was actually about to meet his own grandfather.

He remembered, as his steps struck the ground below — with Karim and the old woman flanking him on either side — how broken and utterly worn-out his body had been on that day. How he had needed a cane just to walk properly.

Now, for some reason, Kaden found himself wishing he were in that state again. It was far easier to bear the pain of flesh than the pain of the mind and heart.

Yes. Far easier.

’Ah, I am rambling.’ He mused inwardly, shaking his head with quiet self-mockery. He had grown even more melodramatic lately, he had noticed that. The thought made him smile oddly.

A crooked smile.

At that, he felt the gazes of both Karim and the old woman settle on him. He paid them no mind, rehearsing inside his head everything he had to do. And there was only one thing to do, in any case:

Retrieve the Key of Pandora.

How he would accomplish that, Kaden wisely chose to think about once he was actually standing face to face with Vainglory.

And it seemed that meeting was only a couple of breaths away now...because they had arrived.

The moment Kaden stepped back into that place, his perception flared. His eyes snapped instantly to the small yellow lake, where the portal his grandfather had left behind was shaking sporadically, flickering, close to being completely extinguished.

Time was running out. And Rea, or Pandora — or whoever she truly was by this point — was waiting for him.

He turned urgently toward both Karim and the old woman. "If there is anything I need to know before meeting Vainglory, say it now. Quickly. The portal is disappearing."

Karim and the old woman — Yasmine — locked eyes with each other. Understanding passed between them, shaped by sorrow and an unending woe that had long since worn grooves into their faces.

Each of them grasped immediately what this moment meant.

They had always known it since Raven and Vainglory had found their way into the village, the village hidden inside a timeline never meant to be found again by any mortal.

And even Kaden, looking at them now, knew.

That was why he was giving them this moment to say something, to blame him, to curse him if they wished. He wanted them to show him something.

Any hatred. Any resentment. Because he was walking toward a path that would doom them all.

They would have died either way. He knew that. But Kaden’s heart was the kind that loved to gather all blame into itself. So he took it. And he expected to be condemned for it.

But Karim only looked at him and smiled, scratching his bearded jaw with vigour.

"We won’t give you what you’re looking for, wise boy." He said, smirking. "You want hatred. Because at least that’s something you can process. Something you can understand and learn to carry even under its weight. Because that’s what you believe you deserve from us. I don’t know why you think and live the way you do, wise boy. But go."

He waved him off the way a grandfather might wave away an annoying grandson.

"Go and do what you must. Isn’t that your duty?"

"My duty?" Kaden echoed, his voice steadier than the pain beneath it had any right to allow.

"Aye." Karim said, grinning. "To deliver us from this hell. Even if doing so means killing all of us. There is no other way, boy. Not every salvation ends with an angel descending from heaven wearing a smile. Some salvations are ugly little things."

He paused, then shrugged.

"Just like us. And, wise boy, one more thing: it is often unwise to believe a path is righteous simply because the destination is righteous. That belief can lead you to do terrible things in the name of a final good. However..."

"...we need you to believe exactly that today." Yasmine finished. She stepped forward suddenly and took Kaden — a simple seventeen-year-old boy expected to bear the deaths of thousands — into her arms. "Believe it, little one. Believe it. Because only by believing it will you carry the burden without crumbling."

Then, without warning, Yasmine kissed his forehead, and shoved him with overwhelming strength straight toward the lake.

His mind still hazy, Kaden plunged into the water with a crashing sound, her final words replaying through him as he fell.

’Believe your path is righteous, because your destination is righteous.’

At that, as if something had been lifted from his chest, Kaden Warborn smiled faintly.

Darkness.

...

Light.

The light inside the Tower was searing and blindingly bright as Kaden burst out of the swirling mass of blue spatial mana. So bright it felt as if his eyes were being scorched by some mythical fire.

He frowned hard at the sensation but refused to close his eyes, and looked around.

The interior of the Tower was strange.

In every direction stretched a wide expanse filled with a forest of grey-coloured pillars, reaching high toward a ceiling...a ceiling Kaden couldn’t quite see.

The tips of those pillars disappeared into a churning mass of energy that stirred within him a sorrow he couldn’t explain and couldn’t trace to its source.

’This...’ He thought, staggering to find his footing on a floor that seemed to rise and fall like the chest of something alive and breathing. ’...this looks familiar.’

His brow furrowed deeper as he turned his head toward the one place he had instinctively been trying to avoid looking.

The place where he could feel a pair of eyes fixed on his body with an intensity impossible to ignore.

He turned his head, and the sight that met him pulled a memory forward as if it had been waiting to be remembered.

He had been somewhere like this before. Not physically. But in a memory.

That day when he had entered the mind of Rea’s uncle who had wished to kill her. That day he had watched, through the body of an unknown grey-skinned woman, Rea’s uncle kneeling and accepting the very poison to kill his own brother.

That Place of Sorrow. Where a woman had sat on a throne high above, looking down on the world with sorrowful arrogance.

The scene before him now, inside the Tower, was similar.

But instead of a woman, it was something close to a man sitting on the beautifully terrible throne.

Even seated, it was clear he was tall. His eyes were red, the colour of something ruined and rotting. His right hand was not made of flesh, but of countless grey, living, twisting, churning maggots.

The same was true for the right half of his face, where his lips constantly peeled back to release maggots that dropped into his lap, only for new ones to immediately take their place in a vicious, unending cycle.

His hair was white and dirtied by something Kaden couldn’t name.

Vainglory cocked his head to the left, his left hand — where a grey-purple ring sat on his index finger — pressed loosely against his jaw. He held the pose of a king thoroughly bored by the world itself.

Their eyes met. Red against red.

"I... was not expecting you, young Warborn." Vainglory said. His voice sounded like a lament. "Where... is Raven?"

Kaden stood straight, wincing inwardly at the sound of that voice, but his eyes unwavering as they settled on his grandfather-in-law. The one person his fiancée had loved and so desperately wished to save.

And here he was, standing in front of that same person.

But not to save him.

"My grandfather is dead." Kaden said and without knowing why, he began to smile.

"And I am sorry to cut this meeting short. But..."

He nudged his head toward the ring on Vainglory’s finger.

"...I am going to need that, grandfather-in-law." He paused. Then, slowly, "May I?"

Vainglory smiled at Kaden and nodded slowly, the maggots across his body increasing for some reason.

"That would be... quite difficult for me to allow, I must admit."

Kaden mirrored his smile.

"Let me help you, then."

—End of Chapter 500—