Chapter 463 – Servant
Kaden instantly frowned. His crimson eyes glowed like dying embers, straining to their limit as he tried to see deeper into the eyes bearing down on him.
It didn’t take long for Kaden to grasp that sothing was wrong. Just as it didn’t take him a second to open his jaw and spit his words with an anger that bood through the twisted Warren:
"A clone." He grated, his voice carrying a note of certainty he wished wasn’t there.
Forbidden chuckled, his eyes darting toward the inverted crimson sky, barely hiding the awe peeking through the curtain of indifference clouding his gaze.
"Why, of course, Kaden Warborn." He said, his voice now shedding its godly tone for sothing more subtle and gentle. "This is nothing but a clone. One made especially for you. Aren’t you pleased? It’s an honour few have ever received."
"You like clones, don’t you?" Kaden sneered, yet his voice was growing weaker, and the weight of Rea in his arms made them tremble and creak like branches on the verge of snapping.
Each blink felt like it could be the last. And at what felt like the final one, the eyes Kaden had trained through death and with death caught a sight that sent a chill down his spine.
For the first ti in a while, he was reminded of the weakness of his flesh. A weakness that poisoned both will and soul alike.
He pressed his lips into a thin, bloodless line. The urge to curse and collapse overwheld him, but he shook it off and pressed on, as fearless as he could manage.
"Is this what you truly are?" He said. "A coward who hides behind a parade of clones and sches from a distance? What are you afraid of? Aren’t you the very definition of a rat?"
"A rat? Please, leave that definition to Her. And if you are trying to provoke ," Forbidden chuckled, "then stop. It’s embarrassing. I haven’t lived this long to be rattled by a fifteen-year-old boy."
"You aren’t denying it."
"That would imply arguing. And you argue with soone at your level." Forbidden replied coolly. "Surely you can relate to that, boy. You may be a pawn, but a fine one nonetheless."
Kaden’s eyes narrowed.
"In the sa way you don’t register the curses of ants when you step on them," Forbidden continued, "the words of soone beneath may as well be background noise. Irritating at best."
"The wheel always turns, Forbidden." Kaden said, words that ca to him strangely, as though they uttered themselves.
Yet he continued despite the unease riding his gut.
"That’s how life works, I’ve co to realise. One day you are up and everything is sumr. The next you are down, and even the smile of your beloved carries the chill of winter."
"Trying to be poetic?" Forbidden whispered, mocking.
"No. Just trying to deliver a thought. I heard gods have a taste for poetry."
"We tend to seek things that still make the heart stir, with ti, yes."
"Then this should speak to you." Kaden said. "A wheel never rests in one spot for long. Which ans it’s already falling."
"Then I shall kill you before Providence decides to play gas." Forbidden said with a leisurely tone. "Though I fear I don’t need to. Your ti is already running out."
A bitter truth. Kaden mused, dread worming its way through his heart.
And yet he grinned up at the eyes in the heavens. "Can you see , Forbidden? I cannot die. Today I am at the bottom of the wheel, but fear the day I reach the top."
"Fear?" Forbidden echoed. "Oh, I know fear well enough, child. I also know grief, and pain, and the unending hunger for vengeance that hollows a man out entirely."
He paused, then in a cold whisper: "That’s where you ask why, child. Play the ga, will you?"
Kaden’s expression didn’t change. "Why should I? I can’t afford to carry the histories of every being I encounter."
"A wise choice." Forbidden resud his smooth tone. "Not all stories are ant to be heard. So can break you as though you lived them yourself."
At that, Kaden finally asked the question that had been gnawing at his throat since the beginning. "You aren’t surprised, are you?"
A brief but heavy silence settled between them like a shroud, then shattered just as quickly by Forbidden’s matter-of-fact tone.
"There is one lesson you learn after enough years of living and planning, child." He said. "The most important part of any plan is planning for the plan not going according to plan."
Kaden’s eyes widened slightly.
"So yes." Forbidden’s voice was amused. "You cannot be surprised by sothing you already expected. And—!"
Reditha summoned herself into his right hand. Kaden’s stance shifted, his body stooped forward as he slashed dozens of tis in a single breath, spending the last of what strength he had left.
Crimson sword strikes erupted outward and tore into the heavens, leaving what looked like bleeding wounds across a blank sheet of flesh.
Blanche appeared at the sa mont, surging toward the eyes of Forbidden, trailing immaculate white fire in her wake.
Her phoenix form blazed with a dazzling brilliance, as though a second sun, moving and screeching, had been born from Kaden’s will alone.
The Eyes of Forbidden went montarily blind from both strikes landing swift and simultaneous. Unable, in that window, to witness the sight of Kaden sinking weakly to one knee, his gaze fixed on what Naless had beco.
The creature’s body was slowly cracking apart. Beneath the ruined shell, another body was erging — like a moon shedding its shadow to renew itself. Like a snake slipping free of old skin to beco sothing greater.
The sight was equal parts holy and touched by madness.
Naless was in the process of rebirth, driven by the intent, will, soul energy, blood, and fire that Kaden had poured into its body during the attack.
What was being created, even Kaden didn’t know. And he had no ti to witness the result of what he had unknowingly made.
So he used the window Blanche and Reditha had bought him, and turned his mind toward the one who wished to be nad.
He parted his lips with that intention and imdiately felt the world press down on them. His eyes went wide. The veins along his head and throat bulged like restless snakes beneath the skin.
Instinctively, he tried to stop it, sensing sothing fundantal to his very existence being drawn out by the act.
It was far too late.
Hearts hamring against his chest, beads of sweat and blood blinding his eyes, Kaden heard his own mouth speak the na of Naless:
"Servant." He declared, and the entire Warren shook like a living thing struck by thunder. "Your na is Servant."
The body of Naless — now Servant — blazed with a blinding, colourless light.
Above, Forbidden’s voice bood across the Warren, but Kaden’s mind was already subrged beneath sothing else, too deep to hear it.
A voice. A whisper that surfaced from within.
’The place. Envision the place in your head.’
The instruction was vague and incomplete, but Kaden’s mind landed on the Dungeon of the Whimpering Saintess without hesitation.
At once, he felt his body seized by an unseen force. then pulled away as though swallowed by a current.
An instant later, Kaden and his companions vanished from the Warren, having t its one and only condition for departure.
What they left behind was a Warren that could no longer recognise itself. A Warren wounded by the wrath of the one ant to be its successor.
Forbidden was no longer laughing. His eyes had co to rest on the strange being now slowly rising.
The creature stood upon the inverted crimson sky and turned its gaze toward Forbidden.
Alchemist watched, and laughed, finding his clone completely eroded by the simple weight of Servant’s glance.
"Oh, this is so sweet!"
—End of Chapter 463—
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