Chapter 708 - -708

Chapter 708: Chapter -708

The Empress began to tremble violently. The last remnants of color drained completely from her face, leaving her looking like a freshly exhumed corpse.

It was the absolute truth. It was the deepest, most sacred secret of her existence—a divine pact she had never spoken aloud in twenty years, hidden in the darkest corner of her mind.

Heena watched the sheer, cosmic terror completely consume the older woman. The mocking smile faded from Heena’s face, leaving behind the grim, merciless gaze of a veteran who had slaughtered these anomalies across a dozen dimensions.

"You arrogant, stupid woman," Heena said calmly, the weight of the universe pressing down on every syllable. "Have you ever thought for a single second about who that so-called being truly is? The entity that claimed to love and care for you, giving you endless chances to rule?"

Heena leaned in closer, her dark eyes locking onto the Empress’s shattered soul.

"And more importantly... did you ever stop to ask yourself what it took from you in exchange?"

"It took nothing from me!" the Empress shrieked, her voice cracking as she slammed her bloodied hands against the iron bars. Her eyes were wild, dilated with a desperate, clinging delusion. "I had everything! I controlled the court, I controlled the Emperor, I controlled the empire! It is you! You are the anomaly! You are the one who is taking everything from me!"

Heena stared at the raving woman. She didn’t flinch. She simply let out a long, heavy sigh that sounded remarkably like pity.

"You didn’t lose anything, huh?" Heena asked softly.

"No!" the Empress spat, her chest heaving.

Heena didn’t argue. Instead, she closed her eyes for a fraction of a second. "System," she whispered in the quiet confines of her mind. "Open the medical scanner. Do a thorough, deep-tissue X-ray of her physical body."

"Scanning... Processing... Oh. Oh, wow," the System murmured, the digital readouts scrolling rapidly across Heena’s retina. "Host... she is hollowed out."

Heena opened her eyes. A slow, chilling smile spread across her face as she looked at the Empress.

"Your right kidney is completely necrotic," Heena stated, her voice dropping into the cold, clinical cadence of a mortician reading an autopsy report. "Your left lung is barely functioning at thirty percent capacity. The lining of your womb is entirely scarred over—you permanently lost the ability to conceive a decade ago. Even if I hadn’t dismantled your faction tonight... even if the Emperor let you walk out of this dungeon, you would have been dead of organ failure within a year or two."

The Empress froze, her mouth slightly open.

"That ’deity’ of yours didn’t give you time for free," Heena whispered, leaning closer. "It used your physical body as fuel. But that wasn’t the only price, was it?"

Heena tilted her head, her dark eyes piercing straight through the Empress’s fragile reality. "Let’s talk about your childhood. Your first love. The boy you cared for before you ever entered the palace. If I am not wrong, he died very suddenly, didn’t he?"

The Empress trembled. A violent, full-body shudder racked her frame.

"And the guards, the scholars, the few men in this palace who genuinely grew to love you over your various lifetimes," Heena continued relentlessly. "They all mysteriously died. Every single person who ever offered you true, unadulterated devotion slowly withered away and died every time you were reborn."

The Empress squeezed her eyes shut, a pathetic, strangled sound escaping her throat. It was the truth. It was a curse she had ignored, a trail of corpses she had stepped over in her blind pursuit of the throne.

"Your ’savior’ is a parasite," Heena said coldly. "It feeds on the life force of those who love the host. The Emperor is the absolute last one to survive its feeding. And his body has been steadily weakening for years. Do you know why he didn’t completely die like the others?"

The Empress opened her bloodshot eyes, staring at Heena in sheer terror.

"Because his heart was never totally yours," Heena delivered the blow flawlessly. "Did your so-called destiny-favored deity ever warn you about that? Did it ever tell you that the Emperor’s love gauge for you was stuck at exactly eighty percent?"

The Empress’s face twisted into an ugly, jealous snarl. "So what?!" she hissed defensively, her voice dripping with venom. "He is an Emperor! Of course his love wasn’t full! He loved another woman! One of those wretched concubines! If he didn’t, his love would have been a hundred percent!"

Heena looked at the ruined, paranoid woman, and for the first time tonight, she felt a profound, absolute disgust.

"You are so pitiful," Heena said, her voice completely hollow. "You fought ghosts for twenty years."

The Empress glared at her, her breathing ragged.

"The Emperor never experienced parental love," Heena explained, the tragic truth echoing off the damp stone. "His parents were entirely consumed by harem warfare and the brutal politics of the throne. They ignored him. They left him in the dark. So, when he finally took the crown, he made a solemn, unbreakable vow to himself: no matter who bore his child—whether it was a lowly concubine or the Empress herself—he would love them."

The Empress’s glare faltered, confusion bleeding into her rage.

"And he kept that vow," Heena said softly. "Every single child born in this palace, he loved as if they were his own life. The remaining twenty percent of his heart didn’t belong to another woman. It belonged to his children."

The realization hit the Empress like a physical blow. The air rushed out of her lungs.

"It wasn’t that he loved the concubines," Heena whispered, her dark eyes locking onto the Empress with terrifying judgment. "It was that he loved the children you were systematically murdering. He loved you, yes. But he intentionally held that twenty percent back. Because he knew the nature of the Empress. He knew that one day, you and his children would fight for the throne. He knew he would eventually have to protect them from you."

Heena stood up straight, looking down at the woman who had burned the world down for a monopoly on a heart she fundamentally misunderstood.

"He didn’t love you fully," Heena said, the final, fatal truth ringing like a death knell in the dungeon. "Not because he didn’t want to. But because he didn’t dare."

Heena calmly looked at the Empress’s ruined, shivering state, the absolute destruction of her enemy’s psyche finally complete.

"Anyway," Heena sighed, casually dusting off the hem of her black silk top. "I am not some merciful Bodhisattva who descended to the mortal realm to tell you bedtime stories and grant you enlightenment. My work here is done."

She looked at the trembling Empress, tilting her head with a look of mild, clinical fascination.

"But I have to say, I am truly impressed with you," Heena admitted, her voice smooth and conversational. "I have never seen a person generate so much pure, concentrated malice. You were so exceptionally vile, so relentlessly cruel, that you made the original Seera wish for your death with an agonizing, world-breaking desperation. She wanted you torn into pieces so badly that she dared to call me here to do it for her."