Chapter 358 — Talk II

Damian’s voice came out quieter now, but the intensity hadn’t diminished at all.

"Let me tell you something about guilt and responsibility... About choices and consequences."

He leaned back slightly, his gaze becoming distant for a moment, seeing something she couldn’t.

"In my past life, I knew someone who took me in when I had nothing. Someone who saved me from dying on the streets, taught me everything, gave me a place to belong."

Elizabeth stayed quiet, sensing this wasn’t rhetorical anymore.

"One day, they sent me away on an errand. Just normal business. Nothing unusual... And while I was gone..."

His jaw clenched, real pain bleeding through his control for just a second.

"They were killed. By the time I got back, it was already over. I found them dead, and there was nothing I could do except stand there knowing I wasn’t there when it happened."

He paused, his voice dropping.

"I spent a long time asking the useless questions you’re asking now. Why wasn’t I there? Could I have saved them if I’d stayed? Did they blame me in their last moments for not being there to protect them? Why do I get to live when they don’t?"

His hands clenched briefly.

"And you know what I learned? Those questions are traps. They’re not actually about the person who died. They’re about you feeling sorry for yourself while pretending it’s about honoring them."

"That’s not–"

"It is."

He cut her off, his voice hard as steel.

"You want to honor your aunt? Then understand what she actually gave you. She didn’t give you guilt. She didn’t give you permission to wallow in self-pity. She gave you time. She gave you a future. She gave you the choice to do something with your life that she thought was worth dying for."

Elizabeth’s voice came out small, broken.

"B-But what if I’m not worth it? What if she was wrong? What if–"

"Then prove it."

The words were cold, brutal, delivered with surgical precision.

"Give up. Let the branch families win. Let whoever orchestrated this assassination get away with it. Die in the next attempt because you were too busy crying to get stronger. Make her sacrifice completely meaningless."

He stood up, his healed leg protesting but holding.

"Or..."

He walked toward the window, turning his back to her deliberately.

"Or accept that she made a choice based on what she valued, not on what you think you deserve."

His voice became quieter, almost gentle for a moment.

"In this life too, someone made a choice for me. Someone who used a forbidden technique they knew would kill them. Someone who walked to their death consciously and deliberately, to give me a chance to live."

Elizabeth’s eyes widened slightly. She didn’t know the details, but she could hear the weight in his voice.

"I didn’t ask them to do it. I was too young to even understand what was happening. But they did it anyway because in their eyes, my life was worth protecting."

He turned slightly, not quite looking back at her.

"Two different situations and two different kinds of death. But the same guilt is trying to consume me afterward. The same questions with no answers. The same trap of thinking my guilt somehow mattered more than what they actually wanted."

His voice dropped.

"The person in my past life didn’t die so I could spend years drowning in guilt about not being there. And the person in this life didn’t sacrifice themselves so I could waste the life they gave me feeling unworthy."

He paused, letting that sink in.

"Your aunt didn’t die so you could sit here crying about how you should have died instead. Love isn’t a transaction where you earn the right to be saved. She just loved you, and that love made her choose to protect you even if it cost her everything."

Damian walked toward the door, exhaustion clear in every movement.

"You’re Elizabeth Murdock, Imperial heir, SSS rank Seer, Student Council President... The person who promised herself she’d stand at the top of this rotten world and change it."

He paused at the door, his hand on the frame.

"Your aunt died believing you’d reach that potential. Died protecting someone she thought was worth protecting."

His voice dropped.

"The question isn’t whether you deserved to be saved. The question is what you’re going to do with the life she gave you."

He turned slightly, not quite looking back.

"Grief is like drowning. You can either let it pull you under, or you can use it as fuel to swim harder. Your choice."

Then Damian left, closing the door behind him with quiet finality.

****

In the silence that followed, Elizabeth sat motionless.

’The question is what you’re going to do with the life she gave you.’

The words echoed in her mind, reframing everything.

She’d been asking the wrong questions. Demanding answers to things that didn’t matter.

Why me? Why her? Did I deserve it?

None of those questions changed anything. None of them honored Bella’s choice.

’She gave me time. She gave me a future.’

Elizabeth’s hands unclenched slowly, blood from her nails mixing with tears on her palms.

’And I was about to waste it crying about how guilty I feel. Like my guilt matters more than what she wanted. Like my pain is more important than her sacrifice.’

The realization was uncomfortable. Almost painful in its clarity.

She’d been so focused on her own unworthiness that she hadn’t stopped to think about what Bella had actually wanted. Had actually chosen.

’She saved me... Not because I deserved it. Not because I earned it. But because she loved me and wanted me to live.’

The grief was still there, a crushing weight that made it hard to breathe.

But underneath it, something else began to form.

Not revenge, though that was part of it. Not just anger, though she had plenty of that too.

Purpose.

A question that demanded an answer.

’What am I going to do with the life she gave me?’

Elizabeth’s purple eyes stared at the closed door, at the spot where Damian had been standing.

She thought about her father’s "accident." About the branch families that had been circling like vultures for years. About her grandfather too busy with "important matters" to notice his grandchildren were being hunted.

About Bella, who had been the only S rank protecting the main lineage. The only shield between Elizabeth and the families that wanted her dead.

And about the question Damian had forced her to confront.

’Grief is like drowning. You can either let it pull you under, or use it as fuel to swim harder.’

Outside, children laughed in the orphanage courtyard, their voices carrying an innocence that felt like it belonged to a different world entirely.

But Elizabeth wasn’t thinking about innocence anymore.

She was thinking about which branch families had been suspiciously absent during the attack. About which relatives had access to her travel schedule. About who stood to gain from the main lineage’s complete elimination.

About proving that Bella hadn’t wasted her life saving someone who gave up the moment things got hard.

Her hands clenched again, but this time it wasn’t from grief.

It was from resolve.

’I’ll make them regret it. Every single one of them who thought they could kill me. Every branch family that planned this. Every relative who looked the other way.’

The grief was still there. It would always be there.

But she wasn’t drowning in it anymore.

She was swimming.