Jax confird it with a heavy voice. "Is that really you, Echidna?"
Echidna responded with forced enthusiasm. "Ta-da! Yup, the one and only! Pretty adorable, don’t you think? Co on, you have to admit I have definitely surpassed Tempris on the cuteness scale here... right?"
Jax knew she was trying to lighten his mood. But what was playing out in front of his eyes was far beyond what humor could fix. A girl the sa age as Tempris, maybe younger, being treated as nothing more than raw material for soone else’s ambition. His voice ca out low and cracked. "This is just..."
He couldn’t form the words. All he could do was clench his fist until his knuckles turned white.
Echidna spoke up again with a playful tone that was doing its best to mask sothing deeper. "Oh, don’t look so gloomy, Jax! Look, every great heroine needs a dramatic backstory! If you jump down there and chop them to pieces, you are going to completely ruin my character arc! So put the sword away, stop being such an overprotective hero or should I say villain and let history do its thing."
Jax’s jaw was tight. "Just shut your mouth."
Silence hung between them for a while. Then Jax spoke again. This ti his voice carried sothing far heavier than anger.
"What is fundantally broken about this wretched world? Why is it always the pure and the fragile who get thrown onto the altar? This world punishes the weak simply for breathing. Strips them of everything. While the absolute worst kinds of scum, the bastards who actually deserve to drown in this exact agony, are the ones holding the knife."
Echidna replied with a calmness that didn’t match the scene. "Don’t make a fuss about it. The world has always been a twisted place. The strong eat and the weak are consud. It isn’t a punishnt. It is just the ugly rule of nature. Those bastards get everything because they take it without hesitation. And the weak suffer because they haven’t grown their fangs yet."
She paused. Watching her own agonizing past unfold right in front of them. And when she spoke next her voice carried sothing raw.
"But you know the funny thing about being buried in the absolute dark, Jax? It is the only place where a seed can actually grow. That pain down there? It isn’t breaking . It is forging . Making just monstrous enough to survive the rest of my story."
Her tone steadied. "I have already forgotten my past. All I rember is waking up in this world as a vessel for a celestial. And then the pain that followed for years as an experint in the hands of these bastards. But looking at right now, I am certain tomorrow will be the day Mother arrives to save . Because the seal is about to break."
Jax spoke through gritted teeth. "So a celestial is at the root of it all again. I swear to you, Echidna. Just wait and watch. I will conquer this rotting world exactly like your mother did. But I won’t just rule it. I will tear it down to its bedrock and rebuild a world where a child never has to scream in the dark again."
He looked up with dead eyes that seed to pierce right through the ceiling and into heaven itself. "Even if I have to drag every last god and celestial down from the sky and butcher them to do it. I will empty the heavens and let my shadow be the fear that keeps the rest of the world in line."
His fist unclenched slowly. "I finally know what my endga is. The ultimate power. The power to rewrite reality itself. Just to guarantee that this world remains a beautiful, untouched paradise for my family and for every generation that cos after them."
Echidna groaned playfully. "Gosh, you are being so dramatic."
Then an idea struck Jax. "Echidna. Wait. What if I use this? If I bring Tempris here at the exact mont your almighty Mother shows up, would she take Tempris too? Would she raise her and keep her safe?"
Echidna’s voice brightened. "Ding, ding, ding! Now you are finally getting to the point, Jax. Well, I didn’t stop you just to see my past for the sa reason. The thing is, the plan you just ca up with is exactly what actually happened in the past."
She continued. "Tempris gets caught tomorrow by these guys and gets brought right here. That is when Mother shows up. Kills everyone. And takes both of us with her."
Jax processed that quickly. "So all I need to do is convince Tempris and get her caught by these morons. And that will do the trick?"
Echidna humd. "I guess so. If everything lines up properly."
Jax started moving silently away from the ritual chamber. "Fine then. Let’s get this over with and hope nothing gets ssed up."
Then he stopped mid-step. "Wait a minute. You knew Tempris?"
Echidna said it like it was the most obvious thing in existence. "Duh. She is my big sis. Well, that is what she forced to call her. And recently she denied it. But yeah, we grew up together until Mother left us."
Her voice drifted into mory. "Tempris was a bit weird from the start. Hard to read. At first we got along really well. We played together. Bullied people together. Oh, and we even helped Mother slaughter her enemies together! Really good tis."
She sighed. "But as ti passed and she got the hang of her power, she went really distant from . Back when we were young she told there was a guy she wanted to et again. That is why she was trying so hard with Mother to control her power."
Echidna’s voice softened. "I still rember how happy she was when she first learned to peek through ti. She would sit for hours and use her absurd power to watch a certain soone. But those monts of happiness soon turned to sobbing. She kept seeing sothing horrifying. Again and again. And she refused to share what it was."
"But then a resolve showed up in her that I had never seen before. She pushed herself to the absolute brink with Mother. Perfecting her blessing until she wasn’t just a spectator of ti anymore. She learned how to physically step through the tiline itself."
Echidna’s voice carried the echo of a farewell she never got over. "And that is when she left . She said, ’If you ever like a man, don’t ever let him fight all alone. Don’t let him take the world all by himself.’ And with those senseless words, she was gone."
Jax jumped off the roof and was heading back to the inn when the full weight of it hit him. "Wait. Does that an..."
Echidna’s voice was quiet now. Certain. "You already know the answer, Jax. You aren’t just so random anomaly thrown into this tiline. You are a fundantal piece of its history. You are the anchor of Tempris’s past. And I am absolutely certain that you are the ’certain soone’ she broke the laws of ti to find."
Everything was finally coming together in Jax’s head. Piece by piece. The puzzle he didn’t even know he was solving was building itself around him.
—x—X—x—
anwhile, in a place far removed from dungeons and tilines, a woman was watching Jax.
She was also watching the gods who were having a grand feast while spectating their champions at work. Entertainnt for the divine.
She was the sa woman who had used a dark lord as a carpet soti ago. The sa one whose fearful na Jax had borrowed to bluff an entire academy army into his sches.
Right now she was lounging in her own domain. A forest that existed outside the rules of the world. And she was having thoughts that would have shattered the hearts of two very devoted witches.
’Gosh, seriously. These witches actually think of as so kind of holy saint?’ She scratched her head lazily. ’That has to be the doing of my max luck stat from back then.’
She stretched with a yawn. ’All I was trying to do was hunt a celestial for power who showed up at that slly place. And I just happened to find two little rats with incredible superpowers along the way. So I was simply farming them. Fed them. Trained them. Played the loving figure just long enough for their powers to fully bloom.’
A grin that carried zero maternal warmth spread across her face. ’The mont they hit their peak, I copied their skills and tossed them aside.’
She looked up at the sky with genuine confusion. ’But instead of figuring out they got used, these absolute fools actually respect . They even fabricated this beautiful, tear-jerking story about why I had to leave them behind. Gave a tragic backstory I never asked for.’
She shook her head in disbelief. ’Honestly. What a world full of nincompoops.’
-x-X-x-
[A/N: Two Chapters dropping within the next 2 hours, stay tuned! 🔥]
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