While Kafka wrestled with his own confusion, desperately trying to piece together why any of this was happening, Seraphina’s voice broke the silence. Calm, asured, yet edged with gravity.
"We don’t know exactly when it happened." She began, her eyes narrowing as though replaying the mont in her mind. "But...it was probably when she cried. That one ti. After that, she vanished. No one saw her again. She secluded herself completely, and even among the gods, there was silence about her."
"Everyone assud she was retreating into her grief, dealing with her own emotions. But no one, no one, could have expected what ca next."
Kafka’s stomach knotted. He already knew where this was going, but he needed to hear it aloud.
Seraphina continued, her lips tightening.
"When she finally erged...she had ascended. She had beco sothing no god before her had ever achieved, an Eternal Sovereign of Life and Death. And almost imdiately, she tore through the barrier and entered your realm."
Her mouth curled into a wry, bitter smile.
"But even if we had known, even if we had ti...it wouldn’t have mattered. The mont she ascended, she surpassed us all. Every god, every law, every safeguard, we were powerless. Once she beca sovereign, nothing could restrain her. Nothing."
Her words sank into Kafka like stones dropping into deep water. He swallowed, hard, then finally asked the question that had been clawing at his throat:
"Why?" His voice cracked, confusion and desperation bleeding through. "Why would she do that? She was already the strongest. She didn’t need it. Why risk sothing so insane, so torturous, why go through ascension when she could have stayed as she was?"
"Why would she...why would she do sothing that could have destroyed her?"
Seraphina turned her gaze on him then, her expression softening, almost sorrowful. "There are many reasons, Kafka. Perhaps even so she herself couldn’t na."
"But all of them...all of them revolve around you."
His breath caught. "M-?"
"Yes." Seraphina’s voice was low, steady, but unyielding. "You are the center of it all. You were the reason she ascended. You were the reason she took the risk no one else dared. It was the only way she could descend into the mortal realm to et you again."
Kafka staggered back a step, shaking his head as though trying to ward off her words. But Seraphina wasn’t finished. Her tone grew even more solemn.
"But if you want it put plainly, objectively, there were two goals driving her. Two anchors to her madness. The first..." Seraphina’s eyes flickered with pity. "The first was to punish herself."
Kafka froze. The words sounded alien in his ears.
"And the second..." Seraphina went on, her voice deepening. "was to give the world to you."
"What...?" The blood drained from his face. He stared at her, pale and uncomprehending. "Give the world? What do you an? Like—a taphor? Figuratively?"
She shook her head. "No, Kafka. Not figuratively. Literally. Lady Vanitas was ready to hand you the entire universe."
"...To make you the most powerful existence in creation."
The words struck him like lightning. His knees weakened. One second ago, he was grappling with the fact that his mother was now the most powerful being alive, and now Seraphina was telling him she intended to pass that power on to him.
"How—?" His voice tumbled over itself, his mind spinning. "How would she even do that? No—forget how. Why? Why would she want that? Why ? She abandoned . She hated . She left to rot, didn’t she?"
"Why would she want to give everything when she couldn’t even give herself?!"
Seraphina tilted her head, her eyes softening. "Kafka. Co now. After everything you’ve seen today...can you really say that? Can you really say your mother hated you?"
The question pierced him. His breath faltered. Images flashed unbidden in his mind: her eyes when he had gripped her throat, not hateful, but tender. Her smile, broken but full of love. The way she looked at him, like a mother gazing at her child for the first ti.
No...she hadn’t hated him. He realized it with a painful clarity. She had loved him, loved him so much that she had wanted him to kill her. A love twisted and terrible, but love all the sa.
Seraphina’s voice wove into his thoughts. "First, you must understand this: your mother does not hate you. Quite the opposite. She loves you more than anything in existence."
Kafka’s throat went dry. His eyes burned. Love? This was the first ti he had ever heard soone say that about her.
For years, his entire life, he had believed she despised him. That she had cast him aside because he was worthless. And now, here was Seraphina telling him the exact opposite.
He didn’t know what to feel. Relief? Anger? Grief?
Seraphina pressed on, her voice both sharp and compassionate. "Yes, she abandoned you. That is undeniable. But what you do not know is that from the mont she did...she regretted it."
"She regretted it more than anything else. She was consud with sorrow, with sha, with guilt, and with love. From that day until now, regret and love were the only emotions alive in her heart. Nothing else."
Kafka’s breath shuddered in his chest. He felt as though he was starting to see his mother, not the goddess, not the eternal sovereign, not the torntor—but the woman beneath it all. A woman drowning in her own choices, in her own twisted way of loving him.
"She couldn’t handle it." Seraphina continued, her tone softening further. "She couldn’t handle the fact that she had abandoned her own child. The sa child she was ant to cherish and love."
"The sa child she was ant to nourish, to take care of, to play with. The sa child who was supposed to call her ’mother’ with fondness...but who was now struggling in a cold, distant world entirely because of her."
"That truth gnawed at her for years. Feelings of sadness, sorrow, and regret festered inside of her, growing into a monstrous weight."
She paused, letting the gravity of her words settle.
"Which led her to a decision. She concluded that the only way to escape the suffering, and the only way to truly punish herself for what she had done to you, was to end her own existence."
The pieces began to click into place, each one more horrifying than the last.
"She believed you hated her." Seraphina said, confirming his dawning realization. "That you wanted her gone at all costs. So, in her mind, the perfect solution was to have you be the one to kill her."
"It would punish her for her sins, and it would satisfy the one she believed she had wronged the most...That’s why she baited you. She didn’t put any real mories into Abigaille or Olivia’s heads; she simply made them act as if they were repulsed by you, disgusted by you, knowing it would ignite your rage."
"Then she taunted you, pushed you, all so you would finally kill her."
"And you almost did. You would have, if you hadn’t seen her eyes and hesitated." Seraphina’s gaze held a flicker of approval. "You stopped doubting your anger and started doubting her actions. That was good on your part, Kafka. A very good job."
"Lady Vanitas was acting recklessly. Honestly, her plan was profoundly stupid. But you...you took control. You didn’t act on your feelings alone."
To her surprise, Kafka let out a dry, humorless chuckle.
"It’s more like I did act on my feelings." He corrected, his voice raspy. "There was a part of , a very loud part, that just wanted to twist her neck in that mont."
"But then...there was another part. It was just screaming at not to. A sad part that knew it couldn’t...that there was no way I could kill her."
He looked up from the clouds, eting Seraphina’s eyes with a wry, pained smile.
"Did she really think that? Did she really think I wanted to kill her? That I hated her so much I wanted to snap her neck? Did I really give off that impression?"
He shook his head slowly.
"It’s true that I hated her. But...it never went that far. I never wanted to kill her. I would have been more than happy to just sit down and talk to her. To ask her why. To talk about everything that happened. I never wanted this."
As he spoke, Seraphina’s eyes darted for a split second to a point just behind him, as if soone was there, watching. She didn’t linger on it, her focus returning to him instantly.
"That is true." She conceded. "And if Lady Vanitas had been more level-headed, she would have seen that. But by that ti, she was already consud. Drowning in her negative emotions, she thought her death at your hands was the only path to salvation, for both of you."
"And beyond that, there was another reason. The main reason she needed you, specifically, to be the one to kill her."
Kafka stiffened. "What other reason?"
"Her power." Seraphina stated plainly. "If you had killed her—you would have been able to take her power and make it your own."
He jolted, staring at her. "What? What do you an?"
"Normally, when a true god gives birth to a demigod, a small percentage of their power is shared with the child, which then grows according to the child’s potential. In doing so, the god loses that portion of their power permanently."
"It’s why children are not common in the heavens; no god wishes to be weakened so easily. But for a Eternal Sovereign, the rules are different. She holds power over everything, she can bend the laws of reality to her will. Everything, except one. A Sovereign cannot kill herself."
"Why not?" Kafka breathed.
"Because her existence is tied to the existence of the universe. To kill herself would be to kill existence as a whole. It is the one absolute restriction placed upon them, a responsibility bound to the very power they wield."
"The only way for a Sovereign to end their own existence is to pass on their power. And it cannot be passed to just anyone. It can only be given to soone directly related by blood, their own child."
"Even then, she cannot simply hand it over. The exchange only happens when her child takes her life, and at the mont of death, she willingly gives that power away."
Kafka’s eyes widened in horror. "That’s...that’s so cruel. Making a child kill their own parent."
"Precisely." Seraphina affird, her voice heavy. "That is why Lady Vanitas wanted you to kill her. So that you could take her power. So you could beco the King of the Universe."
"She thought this was the only way she could repay you for all her sins, the only way to atone for being such a horrible mother."
"She decided to gift the entire universe to you...as a mother’s apology."
The words hit him like a physical blow. A choked sound escaped his throat, and his eyes suddenly burned with tears.
He had never expected an apology, not ever.
But this...an apology of this magnitude, an act of self-destruction so profound it would shatter and remake the cosmos...it was incomprehensible.
She was willing to orchestrate her own murder to lay the universe at his feet on a silver platter. He struggled to breathe, caught in a maelstrom of conflicting emotions.
How could he hate her now? But after everything she had done, how could he possibly accept her at the sa ti?
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