Chapter 296: Mom, in another timeline.

Seo Baek Hyang continued looking at Victor for some time after hearing Serafall's name. The surprise that had appeared on her face slowly faded, replaced by an expression Victor had never seen on her before.

It wasn't the arrogant tranquility from earlier, nor the dangerous gentleness with which she had treated him since he woke up.

There was something older in her eyes, a memory that seemed to have been unearthed from somewhere it had remained untouched for a very long time. She wrapped her fingers around her cup but didn't drink.

"You probably don't know what happened after you died, do you?" she asked, regarding him much more carefully than she had until then.

Victor remained silent for a moment. The question seemed simple, but he had never allowed his mind to wander too far into that subject. Thinking about his first life inevitably meant thinking about his final moments in Serafall's arms, her body already weakened by how much of her essence she had sacrificed for him, and the desperation hidden behind every smile his mother insisted on offering.

"I imagine she died shortly afterward." His voice came out quieter than he intended as his fingers slowly tightened around his chopsticks. "She used her own life force to keep me alive. All that time searching for a cure that never came... there couldn't have been much left of her when I died."

Seo Baek Hyang didn't immediately correct him.

Victor noticed.

His gaze slowly rose to her face, and something unpleasant began forming in his chest. If Serafall hadn't died shortly afterward, then there was a part of her life he knew absolutely nothing about. Years, perhaps decades. Time his mother would have spent after losing the very thing she had destroyed her own body trying to save.

Just imagining Serafall alone in that house, entering the empty bedroom where he had spent practically his entire life, was enough to make Victor feel a strange tightness in his throat.

"What happened to her after I died?" he finally asked. His tone had changed completely. There was no joking, provocation, or casual curiosity. There was only a grim need to know, accompanied by the fear that the answer would be worse than anything he had already imagined.

Seo Baek Hyang sighed.

She placed her cup on the table and looked directly into Victor's eyes.

For the first time, she seemed to be choosing her words not because she had difficulty speaking, but because she knew perfectly well that no way of arranging them would make this any easier.

"Your mother exterminated every Werewolf in this world." The statement came calmly, almost quietly, and precisely because of that, Victor needed several seconds to comprehend its meaning.

He didn't move.

Didn't blink.

He barely even breathed.

"Say that again," Victor requested after a few seconds, his voice dry.

Seo Baek Hyang turned her gaze toward the window. The wind from the mountaintop entered through the opening and gently stirred her long black hair as she contemplated the clouds scattered below the residence.

"In my timeline, I never became the Heavenly Demon," she began without rushing, allowing Victor to absorb every word. "I was merely another member of the Demonic Cult. Talented, yes, but nothing compared to what I am now. By coincidence, I discovered the Heavenly Demon's Divine Art inside a cave. I never managed to fully comprehend it in that life, but it was enough to alter my body. The Art regenerated me, kept my organs intact, and prevented aging. I lived for approximately two thousand years that way, passing through eras without truly belonging to any of them."

Victor remained motionless, but his attention was entirely focused on her.

Seo Baek Hyang paused briefly before continuing.

"I don't know exactly how it all began. Even after living for so long, some wars begin too far away for you to notice the first spark. All I know is that, at some point, the Werewolves attacked the Valentines." Her expression lost some of its softness as she recalled that period. "It wasn't a minor raid. They destroyed your family. Properties, troops, branch families... practically everything bearing that name was dragged into open warfare. After that, the Vampires retaliated, the Werewolves retaliated again, and before long, neither race remembered how to stop."

Victor felt his fingers tighten further around his chopsticks.

"And my mother?" he asked, although he was already beginning to suspect he wouldn't like the answer.

"I learned that she had disappeared," Seo Baek Hyang replied, still looking toward the horizon. "Nobody knew where she was. Some said she had fled. Others believed she had been captured. Over time, they began calling her a traitor because she disappeared precisely when the Vampires needed her most. Chysis Valentine resumed her position as General and tried to hold together what remained, but the Werewolves had prepared something much greater. A plan specifically targeting Vlad. It worked." Seo Baek Hyang narrowed her eyes slightly at the memory. "When the King of Vampires fell, the entire structure of the race collapsed with him. Without him, without the Valentines, and with a war that had already consumed generations of fighters, the Vampires lost."

Victor said nothing.

The mere thought of Chysis trying to carry an entire war alone after losing practically her whole family made his stomach churn.

At that point, Serafall had been with him... right?

Seo Baek Hyang seemed to read the question on his face. "Years later, she returned." Her voice changed slightly, becoming heavier, more personal. "The woman who returned was no longer the General people remembered. I don't know exactly where she had been during those years, but judging by your reaction, she was with you. Serafall never told me everything, and I quickly learned that there were wounds I shouldn't touch. All I know is that when she reappeared, she didn't come back to reclaim her position, rebuild the Valentines, or save what remained of the Vampires."

Seo Baek Hyang looked at Victor again.

"She came back to kill Werewolves."

Victor felt a chill run down his spine.

"All of them," Seo Baek Hyang continued, and now there was something profoundly sad in her eyes. "It didn't matter whether they were soldiers, hunters, nobles, kings, or people hiding in distant villages. Even children were killed without remorse. If they belonged to that race, Serafall hunted them down to exterminate them. At first, I thought it was merely revenge. I've seen enough vengeance to recognize how it consumes a person. But with Serafall, it was different. She wasn't seeking satisfaction. She didn't celebrate victories. She took no pleasure in it. She simply... continued."

Victor lowered his eyes.

He could imagine it.

That was the worst part.

He could imagine Serafall like that.

Seo Baek Hyang kept her voice low as she continued. "She began bathing in their blood. Literally. She used every enemy she killed to nourish her own body, rebuild what she had lost, and grow even stronger. The more she killed, the stronger she became. And the stronger she became, the farther she could travel to hunt down the next ones. Eventually, there was no organized force left capable of confronting her. The world began treating the name Serafall Valentine as a calamity."

Victor closed his eyes.

The image of his mother smiling beside his bed appeared without warning.

Reading stories to him.

Changing his bandages.

Offering him blood when she thought he was asleep.

Hiding how much it hurt her.

The idea of that same woman covered in the blood of an entire race seemed absurd.

But Victor knew Serafall.

He knew what she would do for him.

That was precisely why he believed it.

"Was that when you met her?" Victor asked, opening his eyes again.

Seo Baek Hyang nodded slowly. "I heard stories about a Vampire who was crossing entire territories, leaving Werewolf corpses in her wake. By then, I had already lived long enough to lose interest in most of this world's conflicts, but that was too significant to ignore. I went looking for her." A very small, humorless smile appeared on her lips. "We met in a region that no longer exists. I didn't ask her name. She didn't ask mine."

Victor continued listening.

"We fought," Seo Baek Hyang said simply. "For six days."

Victor raised his eyes slightly.

"Six days?" he asked, imagining what a place would look like after enduring two women of that level fighting nonstop.

"Without sleeping. Without talking. Without asking why," Seo Baek Hyang replied, her memories seemingly returning with much greater clarity. "She attacked me because I was in her way. I fought back because she tried to kill me. That was all. For six days, we destroyed mountains, crossed rivers, and killed any creature stupid enough to approach us. Serafall fought as though every strike had to be her last. She didn't defend herself when she could trade blows. She didn't retreat even when an attack would have been fatal. It was like fighting someone who didn't care whether she survived, as long as she could keep moving forward for a few more seconds."

Seo Baek Hyang remained silent for a few moments, and when she spoke again, there was enough emotion in her voice to surprise Victor.

"It was on the sixth day that I asked her why," she said, looking not at Victor now, but at something very distant in her own memories. "I was tired of fighting a woman who seemed completely unafraid of dying, so I asked why she was so desperate. Serafall didn't answer immediately. She kept attacking."

Victor felt his heart tighten.

Seo Baek Hyang closed her eyes for a moment. "Then she started crying."

Victor froze.

"Not ordinary tears," Seo Baek Hyang continued, her voice growing even quieter. "Blood. Her eyes began shedding blood while she continued trying to kill me. She was crying and attacking at the same time. She didn't scream. She didn't beg. She didn't say her name. She just wept blood while fighting as though stopping would mean having to think."

Victor lowered his head.

His stomach had tightened completely.

The bowl in front of him no longer meant anything.

Seo Baek Hyang remained silent for a while before continuing. "I was the first to stop attacking. I began doing nothing but defending myself. After some time, she stopped too. We stood there, two idiots surrounded by miles of devastated land, not knowing exactly what to do after spending six days trying to kill each other." A sad smile appeared. "That was when Serafall told me about you."

Victor couldn't bring himself to look at her.

"She told me about the son who had been born sick," Seo Baek Hyang continued, each sentence seeming to come more carefully than the last. "She told me how she had spent years trying to find some way to save you. She spoke about her own blood, the life force she had sacrificed, the people she had sought out, the cures that had failed. Then she told me how you had died in her arms despite everything she had done."

Victor felt his fingers trembling slightly.

Not from fear.

Seo Baek Hyang noticed, but continued.

"Back then, I understood Serafall in a way perhaps nobody else could," she said, her black eyes taking on a much deeper sadness. "Because my daughter had died too."

Victor finally raised his head.

Seo Baek Hyang continued looking toward the window. "My Seol-ie died from an incurable disease in that timeline. I watched my daughter fade away while possessing enough strength to destroy armies, but not enough to cure a child." She slowly exhaled. "It's a strange experience, Victor. When someone is strong for too long, they begin to believe that power actually means something. That if you train enough, learn enough, and kill everything standing in your way, eventually you'll be able to protect what truly matters. Then a child falls ill, and all that power becomes nothing more than decoration."

Victor said nothing.

There was nothing to say.

"I wanted to do more for her," Seo Baek Hyang continued. "Serafall did too. That was what brought us together. We didn't become friends because we got along. In fact, we were both far too difficult for that. We became friends because we both knew the same emptiness."

She looked at Victor again.

"After that day, I remained by her side for several thousand years."

Victor needed a few seconds to absorb the number.

Seo Baek Hyang didn't seem to notice. "Sometimes we went decades without seeing each other. Then we'd meet again. I tried to convince Serafall to stop. Sometimes I managed to do so for a few years. She would rebuild some part of herself, try to live, learn new things. Then she'd see a Werewolf, and everything would start again."

Her gaze returned to the horizon.

"Serafall didn't hate Werewolves simply because they were Werewolves. I think that, at some point, she turned that entire race into a physical manifestation of her own pain. As long as even one of them existed, there was something to blame. Something to pursue. Something that prevented her from having to accept that you had simply died from a disease nobody could cure."

Victor remained completely motionless.

It was cruel.

But it made sense.

"And did she succeed?" he asked after a long time, although he already knew the answer.

Seo Baek Hyang nodded.

"She did," she replied with a quiet sadness. "Your mother accomplished something entire empires had tried and failed to do. She hunted down every bloodline, every family, every hidden group. She crossed continents, islands, underground territories, and regions where no civilization existed. It took thousands of years."

Seo Baek Hyang looked directly at Victor.

"But Serafall Valentine drove the Werewolves to extinction."

Victor opened his mouth.

No words came out.

An entire race.

For him.

Perhaps not directly because of him, but because his death had broken something inside Serafall that had never been put back together.

He remained like that for a long time.

When he finally managed to speak, his voice was barely more than a whisper.

"And afterward?"

Seo Baek Hyang didn't answer immediately.

It was the first time Victor had seen that woman genuinely hesitate before answering a question.

Her eyes lowered toward her cup, and the smile that appeared on her lips held absolutely none of the gentle arrogance she usually carried. It was simply sad.

Profoundly sad.

"After the last one died, she came to visit me," Seo Baek Hyang replied, slowly running her fingers along the rim of her cup. "She was calm. Calmer than I had seen her in thousands of years."

Victor felt something inside his chest begin to sink.

Seo Baek Hyang continued.

"We talked for hours. She spoke about you. Not the illness. Not your death. Just you." A small, genuine smile appeared on her face. "She told me how annoyingly curious you were as a child. How you always wanted to hear stories about places you couldn't visit. How you pretended you weren't in pain because you thought she was already worried enough. She told me about the first day you managed to stand on your own for a few minutes, and how she went somewhere private to cry afterward because she didn't want you to realize how much it meant to her."

Victor closed his eyes.

His breathing grew heavy.

"She seemed happy talking about you," Seo Baek Hyang continued, her own voice beginning to carry the memory of an old pain. "I should have realized."

Victor opened his eyes again.

"Realized what?"

Seo Baek Hyang looked at him.

There was a strange compassion in her gaze, something Victor didn't want to receive because he already knew what it meant.

"She was saying goodbye."

Victor didn't move.

Seo Baek Hyang allowed a few seconds to pass before finishing.

"The following day, Serafall took her own life."