Villainess is being pampered by her beast husbands

Chapter 456: Chapter-456

He scratched absently at his jaw. "Knowing someone is not of this world is not the same as knowing who they were before," he said. "I can tell when the river doesn’t belong to this valley. That doesn’t mean I know which mountain it came from."[1]

"So you’re not sure if I’m her."

"I’m not sure if *anyone* is her," he said bluntly. "Reincarnation is not a neat road. Souls get chipped, broken, glued to others. Memories shatter. Sometimes the power wakes without the person. Sometimes the person wakes without the power. Sometimes neither wakes at all, and you just get a loud, annoying kid with no destiny—"

He paused, looked at her, and added, "Which, to be honest, is what I prefer."

Kaya squinted at him. "Are you calling me a loud, annoying kid again?"

"If the shoe fits," he said. "Wear it. Don’t complain."

She ignored that. "So you really don’t know. Not ’pretending not to say,’ but *don’t know*."

He held her gaze. "If I knew, girl, I wouldn’t be sitting in a half-broken house counting my own teeth. There are tribes that would kill half the continent to get their hands on her. You think I’d keep that kind of trouble under my roof?"

He snorted. "I may be old, but I like breathing."

Kaya sat back, thinking. The room creaked softly as the night wind pressed against the walls.

"Alright," she said after a moment. "Forget ’who’. Then *why*? Why does this keep happening? If the beast god sealed her and threw her out once, why let her come back at all? Couldn’t he just... crush the soul and be done with it?" freёwebnoѵel.com

The old man’s eyes narrowed in faint approval. "Better question," he murmured.

"And?" she pushed.

"And I don’t know," he said.

Kaya blinked, frowning. "You just praised my question and then said you don’t know?"

"I said it was better," he corrected. "Not that the answer exists in my pocket."

She exhaled through her nose. "You have *the* ancient tribe, records older than most kingdoms, and you never found even a hint?"

"Oh, we found *plenty* of hints," he said. "They just point in too many directions. Some old texts say the beast god couldn’t destroy her without destroying that half of his own power. Others say heaven forbade it—threatened to unmake him if he tried." His mouth twisted. "One idiot scroll even claims he was too sentimental to kill her because she reminded him of a woman he once loved."[1]

"That one’s probably fake," Kaya muttered.

"That one was definitely written by a bored priest with too much wine," he agreed. "Point is, we don’t *know*. We only know this:" He lifted one finger. "One: every time she appears, something in this world shifts. A tribe rises, another falls, some god gets clever and regrets it." Another finger. "Two: she always ends up at the center of beasts and gods, no matter how hard she tries to walk away." A third finger. "Three: she never stays. Ever. Either she leaves, or the world forces her out. That much, the patterns agree on."[1]

Kaya studied his hand, then his face. "And what about the beast god now? Is he still trying to become Heavenly Emperor, or is he dead, or... watching from some cloud, laughing at us?"

"If you’re hoping I can point to the sky and say, ’There he is, third cloud from the left,’ you’ll be disappointed," the old man said. "We don’t know his current realm. Gods disappear, change names, get devoured, get bored, get promoted. The last solid record we have says he was still a god placed over this world, still short of his precious throne."[1]

"So he might still be here."

"Or not. Or sleeping. Or split in ten pieces. Or hiding as a rock." He lifted a shoulder. "Gods are exhausting to track."

Kaya drummed her fingers again, faster this time.

"Can she break it?" she asked suddenly.

He frowned. "Break what?"

"The cycle," Kaya said. "The sealing, the rebirths, the half-power stuck to her soul like gum on a boot. Is there any way for her to... stop being his missing piece?"

The old man’s expression changed for the first time—less irritation, more something like pity. He looked away, out the dark window where the moon had already slipped behind clouds.

"That question," he said quietly, "we’ve asked ourselves more than you."

"And?"

"There are stories," he said. "Dangerous ones. Some say if she cuts herself off completely from all beasts and gods—no contracts, no marks, no mates, no oaths—then after enough lifetimes, the power will thin and she’ll just be... human again." He shook his head. "But those are just wishes written as legends. So far, every time she appears, she ends up surrounded by beastmen like flies to honey."[1]

Kaya’s jaw tightened.

He glanced at her. "Others say the only way to end it is for her to willingly give the power up—offer herself to be devoured, body and soul. Not forced. Not sealed. *Offered.* If she does that, the cycle snaps." He snorted. "Of course, no one explains why she would agree to that. Or how to make a god keep his promises."

"So either she dies on purpose for his sake," Kaya said flatly, "or she lives forever as his missing battery."

"You asked for the stories," he said. "I didn’t say they were kind."

Silence settled between them again. Outside, something howled far away, then faded.

"Next," Kaya said eventually, voice lower. "You said two others from my kind of world came here. One from a place called India, one from France. Did either of them... awaken? Show signs of being her?"

"The first one?" The old man frowned in thought. "He was too busy trying to get home. Never stayed long in one place. Ran around asking every tribe if they had a door between worlds." He shook his head. "If he had any power, it never woke. Or he died before it did."

"And the other?"

"The French one." His mouth twisted slightly around the foreign word. "He stayed. Married into a tribe, had children, grew old, died. If there was anything special about him, it never reached us. No gods came down. No world broke." He gave Kaya a pointed look. "Sometimes a lost person is just a lost person."[1]

Kaya’s chest eased a fraction. "So not everyone who falls here is automatically her."

"Of course not. Otherwise this world would have exploded a dozen times by now," he said. "You overestimate your importance, girl."

She blew out a slow breath. "Then why did you look at me like *that* when you said human?" ƒreeωebnovel.ƈom

He held her gaze for a long moment, then sighed. "Because humans from other worlds," he said, "tend to collect trouble. Even the ones who aren’t her. You carry ideas that don’t belong here, weapons that shouldn’t exist here, and a talent for grabbing the attention of all the wrong people."

Her hand brushed unconsciously against the holster at her side.

"So no," he finished. "I don’t know if you’re her. I don’t know who she is now. I don’t know why the beast god did what he did. I don’t know how to break fate. Satisfied?"

Kaya studied him, searching for any hint of evasion, any crack in his honesty. She found only frayed patience and an exhaustion deeper than the wrinkles on his face.

"Almost," she said.

He groaned. "There’s more?"