Months? Years? Decades? Or centuries? Jeanne had no idea just how long she was there, dying more and more every second in the Hollow Land.
But as she was lost in her own world, looking at the empty black sky with lifeless eyes, the scene suddenly changed. Her eyes widened as she saw a beautiful blue sky above. Birds were chirping as they flew past, and a gentle breeze blew by, shaking her long black hair.
"What just happened?" she muttered, looking down at herself. She was no longer on white sand but on normal ground with soft, smooth grass. She was sitting in the exact same place where she had been burned alive, the only difference being that there was no one around and no ashes of her body.
She looked around and saw a man with an extremely handsome face that could even surpass the beauty of many females. He had white hair with a pinkish tint and smooth, creamy white skin like a ghost.
"Who are you, mister? Did you revive me?" she asked, her voice full of puzzlement.
"I'm Cain. Aurora's big brother and your uncle!" he replied with a faint smile.
"Uncle? You're still alive?" Jeanne said slowly, her surprise clear on her face. "Why did you revive me?" she added, her lifeless eyes looking down again. She didn't cry or tell Cain about what had happened to her. By doing that, she would let out all the anger and resentment she never wanted to show; she wanted to bury all this hatred deep inside her heart.
Cain turned back slowly and started leaving.
"Where are you going now?" Jeanne immediately asked, a flicker of something in her voice.
"To die," Cain replied casually.
"Die? Why?" Jeanne asked, confused. In the Hollow Land, her desire to live and take revenge was all that kept her going. To see someone giving up on life so easily was very strange.
"If you live for more than nine hundred thousand years, you'll definitely understand," he added, and turned back to leave. But then he remembered something and turned back immediately.
"Oops, I met my niece for the first time and didn't even give her a present," he sighed. "I have a Blood Path inheritance and a Time Path inheritance. You can choose one."
At that moment, Jeanne immediately felt it. This was her turning point in life, and she immediately made her decision.
"Time path!"
Cain gave her a quiet look, as if he was a little disappointed by her choice. "Do you feel something different in your heart?" he added.
Before Jeanne could say anything, he continued, "Your heart has become a Heart of Hatred. You have grown a Divine Rank Essence Stone of Hatred inside your heart. The Blood Path inheritance will surely suit you more!"
But Jeanne didn't even need a second thought. She shook her head, her expression firm. "No, I want the Time Path inheritance!"
Cain didn't press her any further. He simply gave her the Time Path inheritance from the goddess Seraphine. It was a Constellation-level inheritance, and Jeanne understood. To truly utilize it, one needed two things: time, and patience. And after what she had been through, she had both.
Her goal was not just revenge on the humans who killed her. No, that was too easy, too merciful. Her goal was to take revenge on everyone, including even heaven and the Star Constellations.
But most importantly, her own parents. Neither of them had ever given her any kind of privilege or love. She was only born to be a help to her father and nothing else.
The heart of hatred inside her worked like fuel to a fire, feeding her intense hatred. Just as how she hated her mother now, she hated her father and all the demons equally.
So she knew she needed to have a lot of patience. She made use of all the resources given by the Time Path inheritance, becoming stronger and stronger.
Aurora being a Constellation, she was also a half-Constellation. There was no need for her to put effort into reaching godhood. But of course, if she needed to have more power, she must have more followers as well.
It was not that hard to get a few thousand followers. All she needed to do was show some miracles in remote areas with backward people. But she didn't try to popularize herself much.
She kept hidden for centuries, becoming stronger and stronger, and mastered the time and space paths. Even after becoming stronger than S-ranks, she didn't show herself.
Her mother was long killed, along with her whole family, secretly by her. Even the royal family was changed by the Thorne family, and it divided into two parts.
One became the Anastasia Kingdom, and the other was the Kingdom of the Church. Both kingdoms were in their early stages, and Jeanne had the best possible moment to attack and annihilate them both, taking half of her revenge.
But she still waited. Because she had a plan. A plan that would help her kill her father, too, and lead to the destruction of the whole population.
Although she knew Aurora was already defeated and sealed, she was still doing divinations. She tried to predict the futures as accurately as possible. But predicting the future was not something just anyone could do.
Even the Time Path Awakened struggled to predict what would happen in the next few days, forget about predicting the next decades. There was only one person in her mind who could pull off something like this: she was none other than the goddess Seraphine.
But she didn't give up. She was, in fact, the granddaughter of goddess Seraphine after all. Instead of predicting directly, she changed her ways.
She decided to find a special person and predict the future of that person, someone who would be a key role in all the grand events that would unfold later. Someone with great potential and innate luck. And that's where after multiple failures she found out that soon, there would be a person who would regress back in time and start his journey again.
And that person was none other than Ethan.
At that moment, Jeanne knew that Ethan was the most perfect candidate for her prediction. She started doing predictions on him, deducing hundreds of different routes based on his choices where he would face different challenges.
Some with good endings, some with horrible ones, his different journeys. In the process, most of her essence stones couldn't handle the over usage and were destroyed. She received backlashes many times.
But after a long struggle, she managed to find many possible futures for a man who hadn't even been born yet.
But this was just the start of her plan. Because knowing Ethan's personality, she knew relying on Ethan would be the worst possible choice.
She needed to find another person. And that's where she found Esdeath. She was born in the same era as Ethan and was very intelligent at young age.
Jeanne was already exhausted, and her resources were limited. Because for these past years, she had been creating a system for the chosen person. She just did a simple deducing and felt like esdeath's potential was quite good enough to meet the minimum criteria.
And she chose Esdeath to be her incarnation.
But Esdeath turned out to be way smarter than people her age. Jeanne tried to convince her to accept the contract, but she never did. And when she finally did, her demand was a single thing:
"I want love." But all Jeanne had was just hatred and nothing else. Somehow, she made a promise that she would find a soulmate for her soon, and that made Esdeath accept the contract.
And that was where the real game began. Because unlike other people who are approached by a Constellation and gain knowledge and power, Jeanne started doing the opposite.
Other than some basic skills, she didn't give Esdeath anything else. She wanted Esdeath to experience the harsh reality of the world, to let her know how people treat a black-haired girl who is weak. She wanted Esdeath to bury a deep hatred towards everyone, just like she had in her own heart.
But despite being criticized and bullied so many times, Esdeath never stopped approaching others. It was not like she didn't feel anger or hate, but she always buried them in a corner of her heart and tried again with a big smile.
Jeanne didn't try to do anything and just waited for Esdeath's patience to break, but the real problem started when Lortell came into her life.
Soon enough, Esdeath fell deeply in love with Lortell. She stopped approaching others, becoming shut in and completely devoting herself to Lortell as if she was some kind of deity. It was literally making Jeanne pissed off every day.
"I don't want a love-sick dog as my incarnation! She's literally ruining my plan!" Jeanne gritted her teeth in anger.
With no choice left, Jeanne separated half of her soul and used her space path methods to let that half of her soul be born in another world, as Wayne, also known as Fable.
Fable was the dark part of Esdeath, the hatred that she had buried so deep. Thus, he was completely devoid of love. One year in Esdeath's world was the same as four years in his. As Esdeath reached sixteen, Fable was already thirty-two.
When Fable retired, his mind was already partially controlled by her. Being a normal human, he had no way of knowing or resisting Jeanne. All day he would sit by his console and tap random buttons on his controller, thinking he was playing FLF.
But no, it was just her way of putting the memories about Ethan's different routes inside his head. Of course, by a contract's rule, one cannot mess with an incarnation's memories or manipulate their mind forcefully. But Fable, in a way, wasn't her incarnation, so this became a loophole.
Jeanne's plan was to wait a few more years. During these years, she will not provide Esdeath any new skills or power. In fact, she did her best to not let Esdeath awaken and tried her best to stall for as much time as she could.
Her plan was to let Esdeath awaken at the very last moment. With no knowledge or practice of magic or martial arts, she would be bullied by her classmates as well. The point was to push her into depression until she had completely given up. And that's when she would put the other half of her soul, Fable, back into her body.
When it happened, Esdeath, despite being the host soul, would be consumed by Fable, and Fable would take over the body completely.
But again, Esdeath foiled Jeanne's plans coincidentally. Before something like that could happen, Esdeath actually drank poison and tried to commit suicide.
This was completely out of Jeanne's expectations. She couldn't stall for any more time. She made Fable die by his own trap as soon as possible, like it was just a coincidence, and put Fable back where he belonged: his host body.
But in this process, although Fable had the body's control, Esdeath lived too, and her feelings for Lortell started affecting him more and more.
With both souls actually being one, They started their merger to become one again.
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[author]
To explain about Ethan's part, You can think of him as mc of demon slayer or akame ga kill, Although they weren't the strongest or smartest but they were present in every battle (Also if you have any questions, You can ask, Maybe i can explain one on one even better)
[/author]