The Villainess Wants To Retire-Chapter 106: River of Aneithra

The entity actually stepped back.

Just one step. Just a fraction.

But it moved.

And in that movement, Soren saw something he hadn’t seen before.

Uncertainty.

The golden eyes widened slightly, the flames around Eris’s body flickering as though caught in a sudden wind.

"You..."

The voice was quieter now. Still layered, still divine, but carrying something that might have been surprise. Or recognition. Or fear.

"You Bear Her Mark."

Soren’s eyes narrowed, frost still pouring from him in waves. "Whose?"

The entity opened its mouth to answer,

And cracked.

The sound was faint at first. 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

Like glass fracturing. Like ice breaking under weight it was never meant to hold. Like reality deciding it had bent far enough and something had to give.

The entity looked down.

And Soren followed its gaze.

Cracks were spreading across Eris’s skin. Fissures, glowing from within with light that was too bright, too hot, too much for mortal flesh to contain.

They started at her fingertips, racing up her arms in jagged lines that pulsed with each beat of her heart. Spread across her chest, her neck, her face, creating a web of fractures that made her look like a porcelain doll that had been dropped and was holding itself together through sheer stubbornness.

The wings flickered. Dimmed. Reformed. Flickered again.

And the entity’s expression... Eris’s expression... shifted.

From certainty to something else.

Something that might have been regret.

"This body reaches its limits," it said quietly, and for the first time, the voice sounded almost... sad. "I cannot remain."

The vessel was never meant to contain us fully. Only to wake us. To remember us."

It looked back at Soren, and the golden eyes met his glowing white gaze with something that transcended the godhood they both wore.

"We will meet again, child of frost. When you understand what you are. When you remember what you have forgotten."

A pause.

"Take care of our host. She carries more than she knows. More than you know. And the world will need her for what comes next."

Soren opened his mouth to demand answers, to refuse to accept cryptic warnings and divine mysteries,

But the entity was already fading.

The flames extinguished.

All at once. Not gradually, not flickering out like dying candles.

Gone.

Snuffed like they’d never existed, leaving only the faint scent of smoke and something else, something that smelled like ozone and copper and the moment before lightning struck.

The wings dissolved. The glow faded from her skin. The cracks stopped spreading, sealed themselves, left no trace they’d ever been there except for the memory of light bleeding through flesh.

And Eris... Eris, not the entity, not the god, just the woman, collapsed.

Her eyes rolled back, showing whites that were still faintly tinged with gold, and her legs gave out as though someone had cut the strings holding her upright.

She fell.

Soren moved.

Faster than thought, arms outstretched, catching her before she could hit the ground.

Her skin was scalding.

Hot enough that steam erupted where his ice-touched flesh met her heat, where winter and inferno collided in a hiss of evaporating moisture. It should have burned him. Should have seared through his palms, left marks that would never heal.

But he didn’t let go.

Couldn’t.

He pulled her against his chest, cradled her like she was made of glass and fire and the last precious thing in a dying world. Frost poured from him instinctively, desperately, trying to cool her down, trying to bring her temperature back to something survivable.

The steam thickened. Obscured them both in a cloud that smelled of winter and burning.

But her temperature wasn’t dropping.

His ice evaporated on contact, reformed, evaporated again in an endless cycle that was draining his power faster than any battle ever had. And beneath her skin, he could feel it—heat. Not surface warmth.

Something deeper. Something cooking her from the inside out, something that had nothing to do with the entity and everything to do with whatever the dragon’s presence had awakened in her blood.

She was unconscious. Couldn’t regulate it herself. Couldn’t fight it.

And if this continued, if her body kept heating, kept burning, kept trying to contain power it was never meant to hold...

She would die.

Her body would simply give out. Burn itself to ash from within. And there would be nothing left but memory and regret.

Soren’s mind raced.

There was only one place cold enough.

One place where water ran so cold it could extinguish even dragon fire, where the very concept of heat went to die, where winter reigned eternal and nothing, nothing—could survive that wasn’t already dead or divine.

The River of Aenithra.

Ancient. Mythical. Most believed it was just a story told to children, a fairy tale about the Frost Mother’s tears freezing as they fell and creating a river that could quench any flame, cool any fever, calm any rage.

But Soren knew better.

He’d been there. Seen it with his own eyes when he was barely more than a boy, before he’d been emperor, before he’d understood what he was. Had stood on its banks and felt the cold radiating from water so pure it looked like liquid crystal, so cold that standing too close could freeze mortal flesh solid in seconds.

It was real.

And it was on the border of Nevareth.

Days away at normal pace. Through wilderness and beast-territory and terrain that would kill most travelers before they made it halfway.

But Soren wasn’t most travelers.

And he would burn the world if that’s what it took to save her.

He lifted her into his arms.

Rose with fluid grace despite the power still crackling across his skin, despite the exhaustion beginning to creep in at the edges.

Turned.

And walked out of the temple.

The battlefield outside was carnage.

Bodies everywhere. Beasts scattered across blood-soaked ground, frozen mid-death or burned beyond recognition. The Winter Knights had won, armor dented, weapons broken, faces pale with exhaustion and shock.

But casualties were miraculously few.

Because Soren had eliminated most of the threats before they’d ever reached his men. Had frozen half the attacking force solid before they’d taken three steps. Had turned the tide before it could truly begin.

Ryse saw him first.

The knight ran forward, armor clanking, face streaked with soot and blood that probably wasn’t his.

"Your Majesty! What happened? Is she—"

But he stopped dead when he got close enough to see Soren’s eyes. Still glowing. Still wrong. And the woman in his arms, unconscious, skin flushed with fever that made the air around her shimmer.

"Your Majesty?" Ryse’s voice was careful now. Quiet. The voice of a man addressing something that might explode if startled.

Soren strode past him without slowing, heading straight for the horses.

To Eris’s horse specifically, a massive war-trained mare with a coat like midnight and eyes that had seen battle and not flinched. She was the only horse that hadn’t panicked when the beasts attacked, the only one steady enough to carry them both.

He mounted in one smooth motion, Eris cradled against his chest, and finally spoke.

His voice was still layered. Still carrying harmonics that didn’t belong in a mortal throat.

"I’m taking a detour. Continue to the border. I’ll meet you there."

Ryse’s mouth opened. "But Your Majesty—"

"That’s an order."

Not harsh. Not angry. Just absolute. The kind of command that allowed no argument, no negotiation, no room for anything except immediate obedience.

Soren kicked the horse into motion and disappeared into the wilderness, frost trailing in his wake, before anyone could stop him.

Before anyone could ask where he was going or why or what had happened in that temple.

Before Ryse could tell him that riding alone into the wild with a woman burning from the inside out was suicide.

He was already gone.

Nothing but hoof prints in frost-covered ground and the fading echo of winter’s fury riding toward a river that shouldn’t exist.

To save a woman who shouldn’t have survived.