Chapter 706 --706

Chapter 706: Chapter-706

Heena chuckled, a dry, merciless sound, and shrugged her shoulders. "Very good. Deny it to the grave. But perhaps your resets have damaged your memory, my lovely Empress. You seem to have forgotten that the Vanguard Marquisate title comes with a very specific, very dangerous imperial privilege."

Heena tossed the heavy bronze badge in the air, catching it flawlessly.

"You arrogant nobles consider it insignificant," Heena explained, her voice echoing down the dark corridor, "but the Vanguard family holds the master registry. Every single secret emblem, every insignia, every hidden badge ever forged by the shadow guards of any aristocratic family in this empire is recorded in our vaults. It was a failsafe established by the first Emperor, ensuring that no noble could ever deploy a shadow force that a Vanguard could not instantly recognize and trace."

Heena stepped right up to the bars, holding the badge inches from the Empress’s face. "This emblem belongs exclusively to your maiden family. You gave your personal guard to the Prime Minister before he was even a minister. Because you knew the future."

The Empress stared at the badge, the last remnants of her arrogant facade crumbling into dust. She was cornered, stripped bare by a woman who saw through the fabric of time itself.

Heena tucked the badge away, the cold amusement fading from her eyes, replaced by something far heavier and much more dangerous.

"But you know what the final clue was?" Heena whispered softly. "The one thing that made me absolutely certain you were repeating this life, again and again?"

The Empress looked up, her breathing shallow, waiting for the final blow.

Heena smiled, a sad, chilling curve of her lips. "It was your lovely, lovely husband."

"The Emperor?" the Empress echoed, her broken voice scraping against the damp stone walls. She let out a wretched, bubbling scoff. "The Emperor was my puppet. He was entirely blind. He suspected absolutely nothing for twenty years. How could he possibly be the clue?"

"Because he loved you too perfectly," Heena stated, the cold, clinical truth hanging heavily in the cell.

The Empress froze.

"In the imperial court, love is a transactional currency, usually poisoned with paranoia," Heena explained, her dark eyes pinning the ruined woman to the floor. "But the Emperor’s devotion to you wasn’t just rare. It was structurally flawless. It was a psychological masterpiece. He completely ignored your flaws, slaughtered his own favored concubines to protect your feelings, and turned a blind eye to your family’s blatant corruption."

Heena tilted her head, a dark, hollow amusement in her gaze. "No human being naturally falls in love with that level of blind, absolute precision. You didn’t just win his heart. You systematically programmed it."

The Empress’s eyes widened, the breath catching in her throat.

"How many lifetimes did it take?" Heena asked softly. "How many times did you die at his hands before you finally mapped out every single one of his psychological triggers? You realized that the only way to make the most paranoid man in the world your eternal, unbreakable shield was to manufacture the ultimate shared trauma. A tragic, lost child."

Heena let out a slow breath, the vapor faintly visible in the cold dungeon air. "You wrote a flawless script over multiple lifetimes, and you played him like a zither. But perfection is unnatural. Your masterpiece was so flawless, it became the exact anomaly that exposed you."

Heena had taken exactly three steps away from the cell when she paused. The heavy, damp silence of the dungeon stretched for a moment before she slowly turned back around, her crimson skirt dragging softly against the stone floor.

She walked back to the iron bars, looking at the broken woman inside.

"So, my next question is," Heena mused, tilting her head as she looked at her ruined company. "Well, I already know this, but still... how did you literally fool my damn ’mother’ into killing me? It is rather strange, you know, that a mother was so ready to sell her own daughter’s life for a little bit of money."

Hearing that, the Empress let out a wretched scoff. Despite her shattered jaw and the absolute ruin of her soul, she actually burst into a dark, grating laughter. She dragged herself closer to the bars, slapping her bloodied hand against the cold iron with a wet smack.

"Do you know who made your mother and father meet up in the first place?" the Empress spat, her eyes gleaming with a twisted, venomous pride. "It was me. It was my plan from the very beginning."

She leaned her forehead against the bars, her breathing ragged. "I have been working so hard for lifetimes! The Prime Minister, the Minister of the Right, the entire aristocratic court... all of those powerful people were my pawns. But your damn grandfather? The Old Master Vanguard? He was the only one who was not ready to sell his loyalty, no matter what I did, no matter how much gold or power I offered him in every single life."

The Empress coughed, a splatter of blood hitting the stone. "So, I bypassed him. I put my own pawn directly into his house. I orchestrated that marriage. But who would have thought..." She glared at Heena, her face twisting in absolute disgust. "Who would have thought that damn, greedy woman couldn’t even kill you properly?"

Heena didn’t look angry. She didn’t look devastated by the revelation that her physical body’s entire existence was just a political trap set by the Empress.

Instead, Heena slowly crouched down until she was exactly eye-level with the Empress.

The flickering golden light of the oil lamp caught her face. A bright, terrifyingly radiant smile broke across Heena’s pale features. She opened her dark eyes wide, looking directly into the Empress’s feral, panicked gaze.

"Who do you think I am?" Heena asked, her voice light, airy, and dripping with an unfathomable, otherworldly danger.

The Empress stared at her, the sheer, crushing pressure of Heena’s aura making her instinctively flinch backward into the filthy straw. The Empress’s mind scrambled to comprehend the monster in front of her. She had just had her ’cheat’ ripped from her chest by invisible magic.

"What?" the Empress stressed, her voice trembling as she backed away. "You’re... you’re just a reborn person like me, aren’t you? You just remembered the past timeline!"

Heena’s bright smile widened. For a moment, the quiet dungeon was entirely silent.

And then, Heena threw her head back and burst into genuine, musical laughter. It was a beautiful, chaotic sound that echoed off the damp walls, entirely devoid of mercy.

She stood back up, looking down at the shivering, powerless woman on the floor.

"Come on," Heena chuckled, wiping a fake tear from her eye, her voice instantly dropping back into a cold, absolute void. "Don’t compare me to scum like you."

The Empress dragged herself slightly higher against the iron bars, her bloodied hands gripping the cold metal as she stared at the smiling, terrifying woman looking down at her.

"Don’t..." the Empress spat, her voice trembling with a mixture of raw terror and stubborn, pathetic bravado. "Don’t you dare try to scare me!"

Heena simply stepped back. She didn’t raise her voice, nor did she draw a weapon. She didn’t need to.

"System," Heena ordered silently in her mind. "Give me the eyes."

"Applying holographic intimidation filter, Host!" the System chimed eagerly, thrilled to finally contribute to the theatrical villainy.