"..." She looked at Ethan through the bars of the cell, and Ethan, who had been lying there with both eyes closed, cracked one open to look back at her. The moment he saw who it was, his body went still.
"Tomorrow you would die… I want to give you a chance to live." She said calmly, her voice carrying the same emotionless weight it always did. But Ethan just shrugged, the movement so casual it was almost insulting given the gravity of what she had just told him.
"Just kill me," Ethan said softly, and the words caught Ellen off guard. She hadn't been expecting that. Her guard went up immediately, every instinct she had sharpening to a point, because she knew full well that Ethan was at his most dangerous when he appeared to have given up. This was a man who manipulated people the way other people breathed—without thinking, without effort, and without remorse.
"I was a fool to trust you… the one person I trusted fully." Ethan said, his expression shifting to something downcast, his eyes dropping to the stone floor of the cell. Ellen's frown deepened at those words.
"You trust no one," Ellen said calmly, and that was a hard truth that both of them knew. Ethan didn't trust people—he got people to fully trust him instead, and even then, even after they had given him everything, he kept his guard up around them. Trust was a tool in Ethan's hands, not a bridge.
"I trusted you enough to let you know where I am at all times. I trusted you enough to…" Ethan snapped, his voice rising as he yelled at her through the bars, but he caught himself mid-sentence, forcing his mouth shut when he realized he had lost control. The outburst hung in the air between them, raw and unfinished. And it shocked her—genuinely shocked her—because for the first time in as long as she could remember, Ethan had become easy to read.
She was Ethan's twin. She had known him since they shared a womb together, two heartbeats existing side by side before either of them had drawn their first breath. She knew her brother better than anyone alive.
She knew how effortlessly he could lie, how he could fabricate emotions so convincingly that even cultivators who could sense deception would swear he was telling the truth. She knew every mask he wore and every trick he used to keep people at arm's length.
And that was exactly why she was so shaken right now—because the mask he normally kept firmly in place had slipped, and what she was looking at was his actual face. Not a performance. Not a play for sympathy. Just… him.
"Enough to what?" She asked coldly. What had Ethan done? She was right to question it—it genuinely wasn't normal that he had allowed her to track his location at all times. Ethan had the means to remove that tracker whenever he wanted. He had the technology, the resources, and the intelligence to disappear from her radar entirely. But he never did. Why?
"Don't force me to force you to speak," Ellen said coldly, and the threat in her voice was real. Ethan's jaw tightened, his teeth grinding together as he glared at her. Then, without warning, he shut his mouth and moved to bite down on his own tongue—hard enough to sever it. But Ellen was faster. In a flash, she was inside the cell, her hand wrapped around his throat, pulling his jaw open before he could do any damage.
"I know about your extra lives. I will not let you use them." She said coldly, her grip firm enough to keep him still without crushing his windpipe. There were treasures in this world that could grant a person additional lives—items that, once bonded to a soul, mimicked how a Martial Grand Master was able to survive even after their physical body was destroyed.
A Martial Grand Master at that point could take over another body, and with the right technique, they could even reform their original one, though it would come back far weaker than before. Ethan had bonded himself to many such treasures over the years.
As long as his soul wasn't destroyed, it would latch onto one of those items and pull him back from death. And because he was a mortal, with no cultivation base to lose, the process wouldn't weaken him at all. He could die and come back at full capacity every single time.
That was why Ethan was so reckless. That was why he threw himself into situations that should have killed him without a second thought. Death, for him, was an inconvenience—not an ending.
"Speak, or this time, things would be going into you." She said coldly, and Ethan's teeth clenched so hard that a vein pulsed along his jaw. She wasn't bluffing, and he knew it. Silence stretched between them, heavy and sharp, before he finally broke.
"I tried to make you love me…" Ethan said, the words coming out low and strained, like they had been dragged out of him against his will. Ellen's hand loosened on his throat. She hadn't been expecting those words.
She released her grip entirely, and Ethan dropped back onto the bed with a dull thud. She stood there looking down at him, frowning, as the words settled into the silence of the cell.
It didn't add up. Ethan had the perfect chance to do exactly that—to make her fall for him. He had cracked her dao heart that night. He had her in the palm of his hand, vulnerable and exposed in a way she had never been before.
She was helpless in front of him. If he had pushed even slightly, if he had pressed that advantage, she would have fallen. But he didn't. He avoided her entirely after that night, putting as much distance between them as possible.
"I thought if anyone would care for me, it would be you…" Ethan said lightly, his voice stripped of its usual charm, and her frown deepened further. As he spoke, her eyes shifted briefly—just for a fraction of a second—toward the presence she had already detected. Someone was watching them. A woman, hiding in the shadows beyond the corridor, listening to every word. Ellen said nothing about it.
"You had all of Mom's love growing up," Ellen said lightly.
"She loves me out of guilt. She tried to kill me four times since I was born." Ethan said blankly, his voice flat and empty.
Ellen's composure cracked for just a moment—she hadn't known that. But she realized it was true the instant she felt the person spying on them react. A spike of emotion from the shadows. Guilt, maybe. Or fear of being exposed. Either way, it confirmed everything Ethan had just said.
"The only reason she spoils me is that she wants to make up for the fact that she gave you my talent, leaving me a cripple in the womb… like I ever cared about that," Ethan said lightly, his tone so casual it was almost dismissive, as if the fact that his own mother had crippled him before birth was barely worth mentioning.
"How long have you known this?" Ellen asked coldly. In one fluid motion, she drew her sword and pressed the flat of the blade against his neck, using the tip to tilt his head upward by the chin until he was forced to look her in the eye.
"I remember everything since I was born. The first thing I recall is Mom's eyes; she never loved me. She was regretful that I survived childbirth. She had put on an act of joy that I lived… for years, I tried to be her perfect son. But I gave up when I realized her love would always be just an act." Ethan said softly, and there was nothing behind the words—no anger, no bitterness, no resentment. Just the quiet exhaustion of someone who had accepted a wound that would never close.
"So, you started sleeping around to fill that void inside," Ellen said with a raised eyebrow. Ethan said nothing in response, and she recognized the trick immediately. Silence was one of his favorite tools—leaving a gap in the conversation for the other person to fill with their own assumptions and emotions.
But this time it was different. Right now, Ethan was an open book. The walls he normally kept up were gone, and she could read him as clearly as she could read anyone else. So she pressed harder, forcing him to keep talking.
"But I had to put on a mask to get anyone to love me… no one would love the true me… I thought my twin would surely love me for my true self," Ethan said lightly, and the simplicity of the words hit harder than any elaborate plea could have.
"This is the cultivation world. You're a fool to think such a thing is possible… I thought you were better than that." She said, sneering down at him, her voice dripping with contempt for such a childish, naive dream.
Ethan said nothing to that. No comeback, no deflection, no clever redirect. Just silence—and it wasn't the calculated kind. It was the kind that came from someone who had nothing left to say. That silence made her pause, made her think for a longer moment than she had intended before she spoke again.
"I will love you for who you are… take my hand." She said softly, extending her hand toward him.
"I'm foolish, not an idiot… just kill me. Erase my soul or something. I don't care," Ethan said, not even looking at her outstretched hand. The refusal was absolute, and it left her standing there with her hand hovering in the air between them, her frown cutting deeper into her expression.
"..." Ellen looked at Ethan for a long, silent moment, studying his face for any trace of the mask she was so used to seeing. She found nothing.
After a few seconds, she withdrew her hand, turned on her heel, and walked out of the cell without another word. As she passed through the corridor, she threw a quick, sharp look toward her mother—the woman who had been hiding in the shadows, listening to every word her son had just said. Ellen held the look for only a moment before continuing on, her footsteps echoing against the stone as she made her way back to her chamber.
The moment she stepped inside and closed the door behind her, her legs gave out. She slid down with her back pressed against the wood until she was sitting on the floor, her knees drawn up and her head resting in her hands.
The memories came flooding in. Her time in the womb—the warmth, the darkness, the feeling of another heartbeat right beside hers. She recalled how Ethan had shaken in pain as she unknowingly absorbed everything from him—his talent, his potential, his future as a cultivator—all of it pulled from his body and into hers before either of them had even been born. She recalled how his heartbeat had stopped.
How he had died inside the womb, still and silent, while she continued to grow stronger from what she had taken. And she recalled how, after birth, the doctors had managed to bring him back—barely, desperately, by the thinnest of margins.
She recalled it all… and that was the reason she was working with the demons. Not for power. Not for ambition. But because she had never been able to shake the feeling that she shouldn't have been the one to absorb Ethan's talent.
It should have been the other way around. He was so much more capable than her in every way that mattered. He was a mortal—a cripple who couldn't cultivate a single breath of Qi—and yet he had built an empire that rivaled nations, charmed beings that could destroy planets, and made himself untouchable through nothing but his mind. What could he have done with the talent she had stolen from him?