Villain Hiring: Help! Author Wants Me Dead-Chapter 207: Abyss Mirror

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After my breakdown in the shower, I had decided to tell Grandpa Venus the truth.

Maybe he will help me...or kill me, maybe.

I didn't know, but whatever it was, I wanted to get it over with.

Getting ready and calling him out of the training session he was taking with the other heirs, I decided to rendezvous with him in the underground cellar where the treasure vault was placed.

Upon meeting him outside his house, I followed Venus without speaking.

The place looked extremely empty without Grandma Sylvie here, but in one way or another, it felt like a good thing nonetheless.

I couldn't handle dealing with her so called righteousness, then again, if she were here, maybe things would be different right now.

I guessed it would take her more than a month to return back from her mission.

After the dream, or vision, or whatever you want to call it, I had a knot in my chest that wouldn't go away. Everything felt too loud. Even my footsteps on the floor echoed like hammer strikes.

Venus didn't say a word either.

Just kept walking, slow and deliberate, deeper into the vault.

We passed the main treasure hall again.

Golden statues, floating weapons, memory crystals...all untouched.

Everything seemed irrelevant to me now.

At the far back, behind a rusted silver wall with carvings I hadn't noticed before, was a door.

Not an ordinary one. It wasn't even metal.

It looked like some kind of petrified skin, greyish, wrinkled, alive in a way my very being seemed to repulse.

There were twelve glowing runes on it. One for each member of the Romero family line, or so Grandpa Venus said to me.

I saw him raise his hand, and the top rune lit up with a violent crimson light.

The rest stayed dead.

"Hollow relics," he muttered. "Classified. This section isn't open. Not unless there's a war coming."

The way he said that made my stomach twist.

The skin-door shuddered.

Then it opened...not like a door, but like a mouth splitting in the middle, peeling back to reveal darkness and dust inside.

A hallway stretched ahead, lit by blue fire torches. I caught glimpses of walls etched with Hollow language, curved, flowing glyphs that made my head ache just looking at them.

"Pixie," Venus said suddenly, turning to me. "If I sense anything taking control of you, even for a second...I'll kill you."

I didn't flinch, after all, I expected that already.

"I know," I whispered, already feeling numb to everything around me.

"I trust you to."

And so...we stepped in.

Inside, the room was vast but nothing like the grand vault. It wasn't made to impress. It was made to contain.

Stone coffins lined the right side, each with black glass lids, and strange, horned bones locked inside.

Some were cracked, as if something once tried to escape.

The left wall held rows of items, each caged in mana barriers and chained with shimmering obsidian locks. Weapons. Orbs. Crystals. Some floated. Some twitched.

A massive slab lay at the very centre.

There was no dust on it. Like time itself didn't dare settle here.

"This entire wing," Venus said, walking carefully, "was sealed after the Hollow War ended. Most of the world thinks the Hollows were wiped out completely. But…some things didn't die."

He pointed to one orb.

It was small. Just a clear, hovering globe. Inside floated a pair of earrings, long and black as they glowed faintly.

"That," he said, "belonged to the Hollow Queen. No one's dared touch it.

It still emits mana after so many years."

I stared at it. I didn't know what to feel.

After all, if the hollow king was my real dad, then this earring that Venus talked about must be my mother's...

On one hand, this was all history, dangerous, beautiful and lost. On the other hand, this was my history.

"Why keep them all locked?" I asked.

Venus paused. Then looked at me.

"Because Hollow relics don't behave like artefacts. They don't care about ownership. They choose you. And if you're not compatible, they'll rot your soul."

He wasn't kidding.

Just being near this place made the air feel heavier, like someone had laid grief itself across my shoulders.

We walked farther in.

One particular case caught my eye.

It was a mirror, black, tall, with cracks that shimmered like lightning frozen in glass. Something about it called to me. Not like the blood had. This was subtler.

A whisper in the dark.

I moved closer.

But Venus grabbed my wrist.

"Don't." He whispered.

"That's the Hollow King's 'Abyss Mirror.' It doesn't reflect you. It reflects what you'd become if your bloodline fully awakened." He looked at me with tired eyes. "People have gone mad just looking at it."

I backed away quickly.

He let go. "You're changing. Fast. That blood didn't just wake you, it's speeding up everything that was sealed in you. The dreams will keep getting more intense. You'll start seeing what he saw. Maybe even what you once saw before your memory was erased."

My throat dried at his direct mention of calling me a Kalki.

"I wasn't supposed to be human," I said out loud.

Venus didn't correct me.

He just nodded.

"You were planted here, hidden. Your entire life, your adoptive parents, your weaknesses, your lack of power, it was all a side effect of suppression. But now? It's all gonna come back to you."

I looked around the room again.

The relics pulsed faintly, one by one. Like they sensed me.

Like they were watching.

As we walked out, something inside me changed.

A pressure.

A sense that, somewhere out there, something was coming for me. Or maybe I was being called back.

'But to what?' My thoughts raced as the feeling of something familiar came at me only increased.

A throne?

A grave?

Or something worse?

I didn't know.

But I was starting to understand something very, very clearly.

I wasn't just some powerless girl trying to belong.

I was the daughter of a king.

And kings never die quietly.

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