NOVEL NEXT Chapter 798: The End Of Their Love
Kafka sat rigid, his body trembling, his thoughts a storm with no order.
He could barely process what his mother had just said and how vulnerable she looked in the moment.
But Abigaille and Olivia—though shaken, were faster to react.
Seeing her tear up, they clung to the hope that Vanitas was softening, that perhaps her heart was opening at last.
And so, Abigaille took a step forward, her voice hesitant at first, then gathering strength.
"Then...i-if you truly feel this regret...if you truly see us as the mothers who stood in your place...then perhaps tonight can be different. Why not stay, Miss Vanitas?...Stay and share a meal with us."
"We can talk, not just about the pain, not just about what went wrong, but about Kafi's future...About how we all move forward together."
She tried to smile, though her cheeks were damp.
"I've even prepared a duck roast, mashed potatoes, beans too...there's plenty for all of us. Even with Kafi's appetite." She gave a shaky laugh. "So, you're more then welcome to sit at our table."
Olivia too stepped up beside her, gripping her hand for strength. Her voice was steadier, though her eyes were wet.
"Abi's right...It doesn't have to be all about what comes next either. W-We can talk about the past too, what he was like as a baby, why you left him that day."
"We've only ever known the boy who grew into the man standing here...But you knew him before that. And, if you're truly his mother...then maybe it's time we put everything on the table. Maybe it's time for the truth and understanding."
And just like that, the both of them turned toward Vanitas with eyes full of hope, offering her something neither expected to give just moments before—an invitation, a chance at reconciliation.
Kafka's heart also thudded in his chest. He didn't understand how they could be so forgiving, so brave, after all the threats his mother had spat.
Yet, when he saw their faces, their hands linked, their love shining even now, his own heart wavered.
For a fleeting second, he almost let himself hope.
Vanitas, the target of their desperate pleas, watched them in silence, her tears still glimmering.
Then, slowly, a smile touched her lips.
Not her usual serene smile, nor the cruel one she had shown him before, but something fragile, something achingly human. And then suddenly—
—she stepped forward towards the duo.
Kafka's instincts screamed, he shot up from his seat, ready to shield them, thinking that she was going to make her move against them.
But instead of raising a hand to harm, Vanitas to everyone's surprise spread her arms wide and—
....drew both women into a sudden, enveloping embrace.
Hug!
Abigaille gasped, her face pressed against the goddess's chest, while Olivia stiffened, utterly caught off guard.
The sheer warmth of the gesture melted their resistance for an instant, and they blushed despite themselves, especially since Vanitas's height dwarfed them both, her presence overwhelming yet strangely comforting.
Her voice, low and resonant, then trembled against their ears.
"To speak of my child's past and his future...to share those pieces of him with one another...it would be a gift beyond measure."
"For though I have watched him all his life, I have only been a shadow...A spectator."
She smiled wryly as she went on to say,
"I know his face, his steps, his triumphs and sorrows, but I do not know him...Not as you do. So, to have an opportunity to hear your stories, to tell mine—"
"...it would make the happiest, most fulfilled mother in all the realms."
For the first time, her words rang with sincerity so deep it made even Kafka falter. Abigaille's eyes also widened, Olivia's lips parted in disbelief.
Could it be…? Was she truly ready to change?
But then, just as they were beginning to hope again...
...her smile faded.
...Her arms loosened.
...Her eyes, heavy with sorrow, dropped to the ground.
"But no, sadly...it cannot be."
Her tone shifted, breaking the fragile hope blooming in the room.
"I cannot sit with you. I cannot break bread at your table, no matter how much my heart longs for it."
"I carry my own penance and my duty cannot be set aside. I abandoned him once. I betrayed him once."
"And the weight of that sin is mine to bear forever."
"So, to stay here...to pretend I could join in your love...it would be too cruel, to him and to you both."
Her voice cracked, and she shook her head, tears dripping again.
"But I really do want it—oh, how I want it. But I cannot allow myself the comfort I forfeited."
"My path is already carved, and it is not one of warmth, since my responsibilities to the order I shattered bind me tighter than chains."
Abigaille and Olivia both stared at her, stunned, as she pulled back from their embrace. Their hands twitched, as if reaching to hold her, to keep her from slipping away.
But Vanitas only smiled bitterly, looking fragile as porcelain as she continued to say,
"So, as much as I am grateful for you both...as fond as I am of you, and as much as I wish I could sit here and share warmth like an ordinary mother."
She whispered, her fingers flexing as though they ached to hold them again.
"I cannot. My responsibilities and sins stretch far beyond comfort. They involve me, they involve you...and most of all, they involve him."
Her gaze shifted sharply to Kafka. A glint of sorrow mingled with steel lit her eyes.
"And to ammend for my sins, the truth must be known."
"...The truth about everything. About who he is. About what his intentions have been from the very start."
Abigaille and Olivia froze, glancing from the goddess's solemn face to Kafka's rigid frame.
Confusion and unease rippled across their features, having no clue about what she was saying.
"I honestly do not want to do this." Vanitas sighed softly, almost regretfully. "If it were only my choice, I would let you live in the illusion a little longer. But some truths demand light, no matter the pain they cause...This is one of them."
And with that, she raised both her hands. Fingers elongated, pale as ivory, trembling with restrained power.
And then, slowly, she aimed them toward Abigail and Olivia's foreheads.
"What are you—?" Olivia began, her voice shaking.
But the answer never came from Vanitas.
It came from Kafka's silence.
He felt his body lock as if shackled underwater. His breath froze in his chest, every muscle stiff.
He knew what she was about to do. He knew because he had dreaded it for so long.
His nightmare, the one he told no one, not even himself in the dark, was about to unfold before his eyes.
She was going to pour the truth into them. All of it.
They would see how, in the beginning, he had never looked at them as mothers.
How he had seen them as women, bodies to covet, warmth to steal.
How his lies had stacked, one after another, until affection became manipulation and tenderness became schemes.
They would see his lust laid bare, stripped of every excuse.
Worse still, they would know the deepest, most damning secret: he wasn't their son.
Not truly. Not even the abandoned boy they thought they had rescued from that coffee shop all those years ago.
He was an imposter. A replacement from another world.
And the Kafka they had raised, the boy they had loved...he might very well have been the one he killed.
The man in the library. The one whose life he ended in cold blood.
He had buried that suspicion, buried it deep, because the thought alone threatened to destroy him.
But now, now his mother was about to rip it open, expose it, force them to see the possibility that their real son had died by his hands.
And in response, they wouldn't just hate him.
They would despise him.
They would scream at him, recoil from his touch, curse the day they ever let him into their lives.
He wouldn't even be a stranger, he would be a parasite, a thief who stole their son's place.
And just thinking about that, made his heart thrash in his chest, his throat searing with unshed cries.
'No...no, not this…'
Tears burned at his eyes as he lunged forward, arms outstretched, desperate to stop her.
'Please, don't—!'
But he was too slow.
Vanitas's fingertips brushed their foreheads.
At once, Abigaille and Olivia's bodies jerked as if struck by lightning. Their heads snapped back, eyes rolling white, pupils vanishing as pure light flooded them.
Whoom!
A soundless shockwave rippled through the roomz wheir mouths opened in silent gasps, as if they were drowning in a torrent only they could feel.
Bang!
And just like that, Kafka's knees buckled as well, despair crushing down on him as he watched helplessly.
It was over. It was all over. The truth was pouring into them at the moment
And the end of his life, the end of their love, had just begun...