Chapter 246 : My Family

Lilith’s cheek burned red.

Jax’s handprint was pressed into her skin like a brand. The force of the slap had turned her head sideways and left an imprint so vivid it looked painted.

The dungeon was silent. Every person present had heard the sound. Every person present was staring.

Jax looked at her face. At the mark his anger had left behind. And something inside his chest caved in.

"I—" The word died in his mouth. Nothing followed it.

Lilith turned her head back to face him. Her eyes were wet but steady. "It’s okay."

Jax’s voice was filled with something he rarely carried. Guilt. "No. It’s not."

"You’re angry. And I understand why." She didn’t waver. "But I will still forgive you."

"I’m sorry."

"I know."

"I shouldn’t have—"

He stopped. Sighed. The kind of sigh that carried the weight of a man realizing his hands had betrayed everything his mouth had been preaching.

"Tell me, Lilith. What do you really want? Why are you doing this apart from your pointless reasoning?"

Lilith’s answer came without hesitation. As if she had been carrying it inside her chest long before this moment arrived.

"I only want to not carry the weight of watching you torture someone to death just for me. I deserve to not become the reason someone else suffers."

Her voice cracked but held.

"The someone that my uncle and aunt told tales of. The daughter they missed every single day."

She met his eyes. "I only want to choose what kind of person I become after this."

Jax stared at her. Then turned away. His voice carried the frustration of a man watching his own creation reject the blueprint.

"All my efforts went in vain. I couldn’t teach you to move past your naivety. You have the same mindset of every person I’ve watched go down first in this fucking world."

Lilith shook her head.

"No. Your actions taught me everything I needed. To see the world with a new perspective. Without fear. Without being scared to say the words I feel are right."

She stepped closer despite her body screaming at her to stop.

"But tell me, Professor. What are you teaching me right now? Is this really what you want me to learn?"

Jax didn’t respond.

"That mercy is weakness? That understanding is foolishness? That the strong can do whatever they want to the weak?"

Her voice hardened.

"If that were true, I wouldn’t be alive right now. If that were really you, you wouldn’t have seen through me. You wouldn’t have saved me even after witnessing the evil I carried. Even after seeing how I nearly ended Seris’s life. Even after seeing how I hurt you when all you were trying to do was calm me down."

She swallowed.

"If you weren’t there at that moment, I don’t know what I would have become."

A pause.

"You gave me a new life worth chasing. But her?" She glanced at Cleenah’s broken form on the ground. "After knowing everything. After knowing that what she was chasing was built on nothing but a misunderstanding. She is standing where I stood before."

Her eyes returned to Jax.

"She needs a restart. After everything she suffered. And I’m the only one here who has the right to make that choice. The only one whose family she destroyed. The only one who can grant or deny mercy."

She straightened her spine.

"And I choose to face my mother, my father, my uncle, and my aunt after my death with my head held high. Showing them I chose what they taught me."

Jax’s face carried the expression of a failed teacher watching his best student walk the opposite direction of everything he had drilled into her.

Lilith continued. Softer now.

"Uncle Ren loved her. I saw the tears in his eyes every time he carried me on his shoulders through the farm. When he helped me pluck fruits from the tall branches, he cried like a baby. Said it refreshed some old memory."

Her own tears fell now.

"Aunt Rosaline, who raised me like a mother, used to tell me how much she missed her daughter. She showed me the letters. Told me how her child behaved just like a mother in the things she wrote."

She wiped her cheek.

"They loved her so much. And I know she loved them the same. That’s the very reason she did all of this."

Jax remained unmoved. His expression hadn’t shifted. Hadn’t cracked.

Lilith pushed further.

"It’s like people say. Love can make you go blind. Love can make you burn the whole world."

She looked directly at him.

"Tell me, Professor. If you ever loved someone, wouldn’t you do the same? Wouldn’t you tear apart heaven and earth for them if something happened to them?"

Jax twitched.

A small, almost invisible movement. But Lilith caught it. The question had hit something inside him that his walls couldn’t fully deflect.

Then Cleenah’s voice erupted from the ground. Bowing. Sobbing. Her words barely holding form through the violence of her crying.

"Stop it! My life is not worth protecting! I’ve done something unforgivable! I can’t see my own face in a mirror anymore, let alone show it to my family in heaven!"

Her forehead pressed against the cold stone.

"I don’t deserve your mercy! I don’t deserve anything except what he was giving me!"

Lilith bent down. Lowered herself until she was level with the woman who had killed her mother and brother.

And smiled.

"I don’t think that way. I don’t think Uncle and Aunt will ever hate you."

Cleenah’s sobs faltered.

"Neither do I hate you. Because you weren’t at fault. It was the circumstances that broke you. You were just a girl who loved her parents. And the world took them away, handed you a sword, and pointed you at shadows."

Her voice carried a warmth that shouldn’t have been possible from someone addressing their family’s murderer.

"It was cruel fate that took everything from both you and me. But I won’t let that happen ever again. I will be too stubborn for fate to ever break me again."

She paused.

"So hating you would mean hating the knowledge my family gave me. Everything my mother, my father, my uncle, and my aunt taught me."

Her smile grew.

"They taught me that family isn’t about being perfect. It’s about being there when someone falls. About helping them stand back up. Even when they don’t deserve it."

She extended her hand.

"You are family to me too. So what do you say, sister? Want to try starting again?"

Cleenah stared at the hand in front of her. Then at the face behind it. The face of the girl whose world she had shattered with her own blade.

"You are too dumb."

A broken laugh escaped through her tears.

"My mother was right about you. She told me in her letters that her Lilith had the kindest heart. That one day she would conquer the world with how adorable she was."

She choked on the next breath.

"At that time, I was the foolish one. The dumb one. I thought your mother had been charmed by a demon. But now I know why they all loved you."

Her trembling hand reached up and grabbed Lilith’s.

Lilith pulled her to her feet.

Meanwhile, Jax had been watching this entire exchange with the expression of a man forced to sit through the most naive display of human compassion he had ever witnessed.

He was hissing. Visibly. Through his teeth.

Then he spoke.

"Fine. I’ll show mercy to her."

He walked forward. Drew his sword. And pressed the blade against Cleenah’s throat.

Lilith’s eyes went wide. "What?!"

Jax looked at her as if she had asked the stupidest question in history. "What, what? Didn’t you say to show mercy? And that’s exactly what I’m doing. I’ll kill her, then make her my summon before her soul revives through the blessing. That way I keep my promise to you, she dies, and all her suffering ends."

He tilted his head.

"Everyone wins."

Lilith gave him a stare so deadly it could have dropped a lesser man where he stood.

Jax withdrew the sword with a tsk. Then crossed his arms.

"Then what exactly do you want me to do? To protect you from the world, I would show these recordings to everyone. Show them how great your father was. How the world failed you. How they all owe you an apology."

His voice shifted into something more calculating.

"And in doing so, she gets exposed. Her sins. Her murders. I have enough material to show how she manipulated people. How corrupted some of the leaders who followed her truly were."

He looked at Cleenah.

"Every head of state will pile their blame on her and have her executed to save their own reputation."

Then his gaze returned to Lilith.

"And don’t tell me to hide the truth. Because keeping it hidden guarantees your execution. The world saw you transform today. Without context, without the truth of what was done to you, they will paint you as the monster and have your head on a spike before the week ends."

He sheathed his sword.

"So in short, this path is much better. Either way, she dies. Whether by my hand or the world’s judgment." A grin crept across his face. "So why not help her suffer less? Quick death. Summon binding. And she becomes a great asset in my army."

[A/N: Next two Chapter is gonna be a rougher smut one — a bit more rough and brutal. So if you can’t handle that kind of stuff better skip midway before that part comes up.

Also, thank you Milk_Man_4767 and goat KngPn for dropping GT constantly]