Chapter 376: Heaven's Gates Stood Open, and You Chose Hell Instead
How could this be — this memory-space, this fabricated realm woven purely from fragments and feeling, actually producing a living being with its own independent consciousness, separate from the memory's own owner?
The very idea shattered everything Cassandra had ever understood about how memories worked.
By her own understanding, a memory-space was supposed to be a still painting — a silent replay of the past, every frame, every figure, fixed and utterly soulless.
And yet here was this dark-haired, smiling Asian man descending the restaurant stairs, apparently doing exactly that — moving, thinking, acting entirely on his own.
She reached out with her ability to see through every kind of illusion, trying to sense exactly what he was — and to her genuine shock, his presence felt as faint and insubstantial as morning mist. No powerful energy signature at all. He might as well have been an ordinary man.
Of course, she wasn't naive enough to actually believe he was ordinary. An ordinary man had no business existing inside a memory-space in the first place.
This was the first time in her life she'd ever encountered another consciousness — one that wasn't the memory's rightful owner — carrying its own independent will inside a memory-scape.
Not that Cassandra felt any fear at the discovery. If anything, she found it genuinely fascinating — the first time she'd ever run into anything like it, and she felt no danger whatsoever from this man standing in front of her.
After all, she was an unbeatable existence.
"Who are you? Are you the 'Ethan' that Deadpool kept prattling on about?"
The instant the words left her mouth, the air inside the restaurant seemed to still completely, waiting on his reply.
The dark-haired man kept his gentle smile fixed in place, his eyes deep enough to seem like they could see straight through anyone.
"That's right. I'm Ethan." He walked calmly over to the tea table and began brewing tea, as if Cassandra's arrival had been entirely expected all along.
Watching him, a sharp, burning curiosity took root in Cassandra. She wanted to understand exactly how this man — this "Ethan" — had managed to preserve his own independent will inside a memory-space entirely under her control, and how he could face down her own scrutiny — an unbeatable existence's scrutiny — with this much composure.
"Fascinating!" She parted her lips into a playful, knowing smile. "Let's see exactly what makes you so special, inside this little memory world of yours."
With that, she raised her right hand gracefully, fingertips trembling slightly, as though the entire space itself shivered in response to her will, bracing for the storm about to break.
But at that decisive moment, her prized telepathy and psychokinesis — the very powers she'd built her whole reputation on — simply vanished into nothing, like water swallowed by sand.
"That's impossible?! This is MY memory-space! I built this! I control every inch of it!" Something close to disbelief and panic cracked through Cassandra's voice. Her eyes went wide, darting around the room, hunting for the source of this impossible malfunction.
She drew a slow breath, closed her eyes, and tried again, focusing everything she had, trying to wake the power that always answered her call. No matter how hard she pushed, though, the strength that had always leapt to her fingertips stayed locked away, as if caged behind something invisible and unbreakable.
She couldn't understand why everything kept going wrong inside this particular Deadpool's memory-space. This world, and this man standing in front of her — everything about the situation felt fundamentally, unnervingly wrong.
Whatever careless, game-playing attitude Cassandra had carried into this had fully evaporated by now. She was starting to feel something close to genuine, mounting frustration — a control freak like her, faced with a space she couldn't actually control, was reaching her limit.
Fury and disbelief tangled together in her chest, her gaze slowly hardening into something cold and absolute. Observing Ethan wasn't enough anymore — she'd decided to eliminate this threat outright and reclaim her total dominance over this world.
"What's impossible about it? This is Hell's Kitchen. This is my territory," Ethan said, rising slowly, a freshly-brewed pot of tea in hand, its fragrance filling the air with an almost tangible sense of calm.
He smiled and set two delicate teacups gently on the table — one for himself, one pushed across toward Cassandra — his every movement radiating a quiet, unspoken confidence, as though he'd already known her powers wouldn't work on him.
Truthfully, Ethan hadn't expected to get pulled into a memory-space himself either. The moment he'd arrived, though, he'd understood exactly where he was: inside Deadpool's own memory.
And precisely because this was Deadpool's memory-space, Ethan knew he couldn't afford to act carelessly. Too much disturbance here risked collapsing the whole memory-scape entirely — Deadpool might wake up with amnesia in the best case, or end up in a vegetative state in the worst.
Ethan wasn't about to let Cassandra do anything reckless here either. In the process, he'd come to appreciate that he'd genuinely underestimated the Homestead system.
The Homestead didn't just protect the physical version of Hell's Kitchen — apparently, it extended its protection even to Hell's Kitchen as it existed inside someone's memories.
That said, the Homestead system wasn't the entire reason Ethan had regained his own awareness inside Deadpool's memory-space. The real explanation was simpler: Cassandra's telepathy and her ability to intrude on someone's mind only worked on beings below Omega-tier power — single-universe-tier existences, roughly on the level of Strange, say.
Multiversal-tier beings were simply immune to it entirely. At that level, awareness itself transcended location — a single thought was enough to perceive anything, anywhere.
And Ethan wasn't the only one who'd regained his own independent awareness here, either.
Right as Cassandra's fury boiled over with nowhere to go, a voice from behind her made her whole body go rigid.
"Cassandra Nova Xavier?"
Cassandra turned slowly, and there sat Professor X in his wheelchair.
"That's impossible. What is going on with this world? One after another, people keep waking up with their own independent minds inside this memory-space. This has to be an illusion!" Cassandra roared.
No matter how hard she tried to marshal her power, nothing responded.
It wasn't as though she'd never seen Professor X before — the Void itself housed a matching wheelchair, after all.
Professor X studied his fellow bald sibling, expression tangled with complicated emotion. He was certain, without a shred of doubt, that this woman really was his sister — the power, the features, everything matched.
He'd simply never imagined that his very first meeting with Cassandra would happen under circumstances quite like this.
Fate, apparently, wasn't done twisting the knife yet.
Just as the tension between Cassandra and Professor X threatened to freeze the whole scene solid, an even more cutting voice broke the silence. "So this is your sister, huh? Doesn't seem all that bright."
The flippant remark cut through Cassandra's defenses like a blade.
She turned toward the voice and found — yet another man who'd already died at her hands once before — Magneto.
She couldn't understand why, one after another, people kept regaining consciousness inside this memory-space.
All she wanted now was to leave Deadpool's memory-space entirely, return to the Void, back to the world where she still held total control.
Except she found, to her horror, that she couldn't actually leave the memory-space at all.
"That's impossible!!"
Then Ethan's voice rang out.
"Miss Cassandra — I don't know if you've ever heard the saying: Heaven's gates stood wide open, and you chose to walk into hell instead."
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