Chapter 117 Mrs. Mind [Witch]

Another twenty years later.

I’d lived a long life, far longer than I should have. In my younger years, my greatest concern had been survival and evading the Monarchy’s purges, hiding from their endless obsession with exterminating psychic-borns like me. Back then, my crime was existing. Now, my punishment was living long enough to see what that existence became.

And Ning? He was my new concern. My nightmare made flesh, wearing a smile.

“Oh, Mrs. Mind, you shouldn’t strain yourself too much. Here, sit here…” His tone was mockingly gentle, as if the title were some kind of joke we both had agreed to tell.

Right now, I am pregnant.

The irony wasn’t lost on me. The Witch, who had once lived through a hundred bodies, was now trapped in just one, forced to bear life she hadn’t asked for. I still remember, vividly, the revulsion crawling through me when Ning made me do it, when he turned conception into another one of his experiments. All for the sake of making his own birth come sooner. His mother’s birth.

“Mrs. Mind,” It was a name he had chosen deliberately. A cruel parody of my past. Once, long ago, I had been married to a man from the Monarchy. He had believed in order, bloodlines, and the righteous purity of power. He died screaming when he discovered what I really was. Ning found that story endlessly amusing.

“If my calculations are correct,” said Dr. Sequence, his voice dry as chalk, “it should be possible to accelerate your birth. But doing so might kill you. We still understand too little of the causal link between timelines.”

Dr. Sequence was one of the newer Ten, a man obsessed with science and, recently, extending his lifespan. He’d already bought himself two extra decades through Ning’s “gifts.” A heart ripped from a regenerator cape, surgically transplanted, and endlessly feeding him borrowed vitality. Ning had made it work. Ning always made it work.

Powers were strange like that. They were unpredictable, transferable, and mutable under the right kinds of cruelty.

Ning stood by the window, his silhouette framed by the cold light outside. “It’ll be fine,” he said casually. “The sooner we get ‘me’ from the future, the sooner I can move on with my plans.”

Dr. Sequence adjusted his lenses, his curiosity slipping through the cracks of his caution. “If I may ask, Ning… I’ve always wanted to hear more about your journey through time. How exactly did you do it?”

Ning turned his head slightly, his lips curling into that familiar, careless grin. “Ah,” he said. “I’d love to share.”

He paused, eyes glinting like lightning behind glass.

“But I made a promise.”

Dr. Sequence’s voice trembled between eagerness and restraint. “But if I know more, then maybe—”

“No,” Ning said flatly, cutting him off like a flick of a switch. His tone left no room for curiosity. “Now, Mrs. Mind… if you would.”

I sighed and reached out with my telepathy. Dr. Sequence’s thoughts were jittery, cluttered with equations and fragments of ambition. He was easy to edit. With Ning’s electromagnetic field suppressing interference, it took me only seconds to find and snip the right threads. His memories of this conversation, of Ning’s temporal hints, were gone like vapor.

Dr. Sequence blinked, confused, his mind folding neatly back into its old patterns. “Huh? Where are we again? Ah, supplies… yes, yes. I’m going to need more uranium.”

Ning exhaled through his nose, amused. “We talked about this, doctor. Tell him, boss.”

I leaned back in my chair, feigning authority. “No, you can’t have more uranium. Our suppliers already suspect our intentions. We can’t force them to sell what they don’t want to sell. If you want uranium so badly, you’ll have to steal it. Talk with your peers, if you must.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered as he shuffled toward the door. “You’ll see. When the reactor works, you’ll all thank me.”

The RV door creaked shut behind him, and the smell of metal and ozone settled again.

Ning chuckled softly. “You’re getting good at this.” He tilted his head, smiling toward the corner. “What do you think, Paleman?”

The air shimmered, bending faintly as a figure appeared from his invisibility, a man in a stained trench coat, the color of old rain. His skin was gray and webbed with pulsing veins, his face featureless save for the subtle throbbing where eyes and mouth should have been.

I never got used to looking at him. Paleman was an amalgam of powers stitched together from a dozen stolen sources, a walking collage of other people’s suffering. Even I couldn’t read him fully. His mind wasn’t a mind anymore, just a quiet hum, faintly alive.

I remembered him from the cargo chopper, a trembling young man with too much dread for his own gift. Now, there was nothing left to dread. Ning had hollowed him out back in Beacon, during the early “tests.” He was loyal now, but only because he couldn’t be anything else.

Paleman tilted his head in acknowledgment. “Efficient,” he rasped, his voice echoing faintly as if from inside a tunnel. “Cleaner than before.”

Ning grinned. “See? Even he’s impressed.”

I didn’t respond. Compliments from Ning always came with hidden hooks, and praise from his monsters wasn’t worth much.

It had been Ning’s policy in recent years to keep his true position secret. To the public, and even most of the Ten, he was just another cape, another unpredictable powerhouse among the roster. Only I and Paleman knew the truth. He was the voice behind the curtain, the invisible axis around which we all spun.

Time moved strangely around Ning. It always had. He seemed unchanged, untouched by the decades that eroded the rest of us. I sometimes wondered if he aged backward, or if he simply chose not to age at all.

Nine months passed.

I gave birth.

It had been a surreal affair. I’d lived through countless lives, worn other people’s bodies like clothes, but this one, this pregnancy, was different. It was my own personal hell. I didn’t like pain, not the kind that lingered, not the kind that made you feel too alive.

If I hadn’t been under Ning’s threat, I would have ended it long before the first contraction. But disobedience was never an option. When he said carry this child, I obeyed. When he said it must be done, I stopped asking why.

And then, at the end of all that agony, there she was. A baby girl. Small, warm, fragile. I’d forgotten what softness felt like until she was in my arms. For the first time in longer than I could remember, something in me stirred… something I thought I’d burned out of myself ages ago. Maternal instinct. The kind that crept up your throat and made you hold tighter, as if you could protect her from everything that had ever happened to you.

“Congratulations,” said Dr. Sequence, wiping his hands, his face glistening with sweat. “So what are you going to name her?”

“No names,” said Light. His voice was calm, but there was a finality in it that froze the air.

I blinked, startled. “But—”

He moved faster than thought. His hand clamped around my throat, lifting me just enough for my feet to leave the ground. I choked on my breath. Paleman caught the child before she could slip from my arms.

Light’s eyes glowed a fierce, unnatural blue. “You will do as you are told, woman.”

When he released me, I crumpled to the floor, my throat throbbing. The baby cried softly, and I reached for her, but Light turned away, already disinterested. The matter was over.

Days passed like that. No name. No ceremony. Just a child in the shadow of a man who claimed to be both god and future. I found myself studying her more than I should have. The woman I inhabited, this body that had become my prison, was beautiful, and so was the child. I couldn’t help imagining her older, stronger, and free.

I thought of all the decades of cruelty I’d endured under Light’s reign, and a treacherous thought took root: maybe this was worth it. If my little girl could live the life I never did and if she could grow without chains, then perhaps there was meaning in my suffering.

It was then that I realized why I’d always envied mundanes. They got to live small, simple lives filled with joys that never required power. Maybe that was why I had loved toying with them so much. It was envy made for cruel hobbies.

But love, or something close to it, made me reckless. I began working behind Light’s back. Slowly. Carefully. I reached out through an echo of myself, a ‘version’ of me I’d left buried deep within the prison from long ago. Through her, I made contact with the SRC. A certain prisoner, granted “privilege” by cooperation, served as my go-between. We spoke in fragments and half-truths wrapped in silence.

I couldn’t risk creating another copy of myself. Ning would know. He always knew. And if he discovered me meddling, if he thought I’d betray him, he wouldn’t just kill me. He’d make me watch what he’d do to my daughter first.

Still, I had to try.

Weeks turned to months. Ning kept us on the move until one day, we stopped in a clearing miles from anything that resembled civilization. He stood there, smiling, as the sky shimmered with arcs of electricity that bent reality itself.

Metal rose from the ground like growing vines, structures folding into existence, forming walls of mirrored alloy, and luminous circuitry humming in the air. It was beautiful in a cold, merciless way.

Ning spread his arms as if blessing it. “Home,” he said. “I call it Tenfold Keep.”

He turned toward me, his grin wide, boyish, and terrible. “A little piece of the future,” he said. “Just for us.”

I took the tenth floor for myself, high above the rest of Tenfold Keep. It was the only place that almost felt like mine. From there, I could see the horizon stretch forever, silver clouds curling around towers of steel and glass that hummed faintly with Ning’s energy.

In that cold citadel, I raised my daughter.

She was growing fast, a curious little thing with dark hair like her father’s and eyes that sparkled with a mischief I recognized all too well. She laughed easily. She loved the old songs I hummed, even when my voice cracked and faltered.

That day was her tenth birthday. Just the two of us. I’d stolen a few hours from the endless cycle of duties, reports, and silent obedience. I baked her a cake, burnt around the edges, uneven, but it was ours.

“Happy birthday to you…” I sang softly. She giggled, clapping along off-beat, joining in halfway through.

When the song ended, I whispered, “Now, blow the candle.”

She took a deep breath and blew with all her might. The small flame flickered, then vanished in a curl of smoke.

“What wish did you make?” I asked.

“I can’t tell,” she said, smiling shyly. “If I tell, it won’t come true.”

I smiled back, but curiosity had always been my curse. I brushed against her thoughts, just lightly, like a mother fixing her child’s hair.

‘I wish for a name. Maybe something cool… like big bro Lightning. Or something awesome.’

And it broke my heart.

All this time, she’d been nameless. Not because I’d wanted it that way, but because Light had forbidden it. He’d said names gave things weight, gave them power, and he wanted her to have neither.

So I defied him.

“Alice,” I said aloud.

She blinked, confused. “Whu… Mama?”

“Your name,” I whispered. “From now on, it’s Alice.”

The world felt still. Then her lips quivered and tears began to spill down her cheeks.

“I got a name? A-Alice…” She sobbed, smiling through it. “It’s a cool name…”

I pulled her into my arms, holding her close, feeling the warmth of her tiny body against mine. It was her tenth birthday, and I gave her a name. The only gift that mattered.

For the first time in a long, long while, I felt something like peace. I believed she would grow into a beautiful woman, strong, kind, free. I told myself that as long as I had her, my life might still mean something.

But I was naïve.

Later that night, I heard the hum of electricity long before he appeared. The air in my office grew heavy, the lights flickered, and the door slid open without a sound. Ning… no, Light… walked in. I could feel his anger like static before a storm.

He didn’t speak at first. His gaze drifted to Alice, who sat playing quietly with the remnants of her cake. His fury spiked so violently I almost flinched.

Still, I tried to keep my composure. I was the “leader” of the Ten, even if only on paper. I thought I could reason with him, maybe remind him that optics mattered, that cruelty had limits. Surely even he wouldn’t harm a child.

I was wrong.

“Why?” he asked finally. His voice was calm, but the kind of calm that only came before something terrible.

I forced myself to meet his eyes. “What do you mean?”

Behind him, the air shimmered, and Paleman appeared, trench coat stained and worn. In his gray hands, he carried something heavy. When he dropped it onto my desk, I saw the head.

An older woman’s face, my face. The other me. The version I had hidden away, the one that had been working with the SRC. She was gone, and I hadn’t even felt her die.

Light tilted his head, eyes glowing a cold, merciless blue. “Why did you betray me?”

I didn’t have the words. Maybe there weren’t any.

He raised his hand. My body seized before I could even breathe. Electricity surged through me, pinning me to the chair. My vision blurred. Pain shot through every nerve, every thought, and every memory.

“Mama!” Alice screamed. “Don’t hurt Mama!”

She ran forward, sobbing, reaching for me. “Big brother Lightning! Please, don’t hurt her!”

She didn’t even know what she was saying… or who she was calling for.