The Villainess Wants To Retire-Chapter 372: Final Word

The dream was not a place of sanctuary; it was a cathedral of ice and jagged silence. Soren stood upon a mountain peak, the alpine air so thin it felt like breathing glass.

A blizzard raged with a ferocity that defied the natural world, wind howling like a thousand dying wolves. He could barely see his own hands, but he wasn’t cold... he was the source of the cold.

As he turned, shielding his eyes from the stinging spray of white, he saw it. In the middle of the atmosphere, hanging over the precipice, was a split.

It looked like a crack in a mirror, a jagged fissure in reality itself. It started small, a hairline fracture at ground level, then it began to grow. Soren watched, transfixed, as the crack raced upward, tearing the sky apart like fabric caught on a nail.

The crack, he thought, his heart thudding against his ribs. The one from the forest. It’s the same.

He felt an irresistible pull, a magnetic compulsion to reach out and touch the void beyond the tear.

But as his hand moved, a warning screamed through his mind... a primal, ancestral roar.

Don’t. It shouldn’t be.

It shouldn’t exist.

What lay on the other side was older than the time itself, a dark, hungry entropy that made his very soul recoil. His fingers were an inch from the rift when the mountain beneath him seemed to scream.

Soren jolted awake with a violent gasp, his lungs burning.

He didn’t wake to the warmth of the imperial bed. He woke to ice. It was pouring out of him in uncontrolled waves, a physical manifestation of his panic.

The sheets beneath him were already stiff with frost, intricate and terrifying patterns spidering across the silk. The air in the room had plummeted below freezing, thick clouds of vapor rolling off his skin like he was a block of dry ice.

His own body was turning a translucent white, the sapphire patterns of his dragon-blood glowing beneath the surface of his arms and chest.

"Eris?" he croaked, his voice cracking.

He reached out, his hand searching for the dip in the mattress, for the radiating heat that usually anchored him. But the bed was empty. The furs were cold.

Panic, sharper than the dream’s wind, sliced through him. He sat up, forcing himself to breathe, fighting the ice back into his marrow. Slowly, the frost on the sheets began to recede, but the hollow ache in his chest remained. He checked the balcony, the dressing room, the study. Empty. She was gone.

He strode into the corridor, not bothering to hide the frost still clinging to his hair. The guard at the door bowed, his eyes widening at the visible mist trailing behind the Emperor.

"The Empress," Soren demanded. "Have you seen her?"

"Yes, Your Majesty. She left about twenty minutes ago. She headed toward the Eastern Gardens."

The Eastern Gardens. The Nevarian blooms.

Soren didn’t wait to think. He moved, his pace a predatory glide that grew faster with every hallway he crossed.

He asked every guard he passed, his unease building into a towering wall of dread.

Each answer pointed toward the same place. But something was wrong. He could feel it... a disturbance in the weave of the world, a dark, oily resonance that tasted like the crack in his dream.

In the Eastern Garden, the air was not silent; it was thick with the suffocating weight of a soul being swallowed.

Caelen held Eris, his grip no longer just desperate, it was possessive, fueled by a voice that had ceased to be his own. Within him, the battle was reaching its zenith.

His reason screamed at him to stop, to look at the terror in Eris’s eyes, but the Desire had turned into something black and parasitic.

Take it, the dark voice commanded, sounding less like Caelen and more like the grave. Take what you want. End the pain. She’ll love you again, and the world will be right.

Caelen’s internal alarm was ringing, a faint, distant bell in a storm. This isn’t me. This isn’t just love. But the poisoning was nearly complete.

Eris felt the shift. The man holding her didn’t feel like the Caelen she knew... the one she had once loved for his goodness, even if she had resented him for his weakness.

This man felt like a hollow shell filled with shadows. His grip was too tight, his fingers digging into the back of her neck with a bruising force.

"Caelen, let go!" she hissed, activating her heat. Her skin began to glow, the temperature rising until the snow around their feet turned to steam. Usually, the sheer heat would have forced any man to recoil, but Caelen didn’t flinch. He didn’t even seem to feel the skin-searing fire.

She looked up at him, and the breath caught in her throat. His eyes, his steady, gray eyes she once loved so much were gone. The pupils had expanded, swallowing the iris until his eyes were two obsidian voids, black and bottomless.

Wrong, her magic screamed. "Caelen! STOP!" she cried, struggling with everything she had.

He ignored her. He was a man possessed, a puppet dancing on silver strings. He leaned down, his movements jerky and unnatural, trying to find her lips.

Eris wrenched her head to the side, his lips brushing her cheek instead, the cold of his skin clashing violently with her fire. He forced her head back, his hand on her neck acting like a vice, making her look into those terrifying black pits.

SAY IT, the dark voice commanded him. ACTIVATE THE SPELL.

The ring on Caelen’s finger burned, a dark, sickly silver light beginning to pulse from the band. The skin contact was made. The bridge was open. Caelen opened his mouth, his voice a hoarse, tortured whisper that sounded like it was being dragged through thorns.

"I’m sorry," he choked out, the words dripping with a terrible, forced sincerity. "I’m so sorry, Eris. Let me love you the way I should have. Give me another chance."

The ring’s glow intensified, a thin trail of dark energy slithering from the metal and sinking into the skin of Eris’s neck. She felt it... a cold, oily serpent sliding beneath her flesh, heading straight for her heart.

It was a compulsion, a magical command to rewrite her own soul. She countered it with her fire, burning from the inside out, but the energy was persistent, weaving through her defenses like smoke.

"Be mine again," Caelen whispered, his face hovering inches from hers. "Forget him. Remember only me. I love—"

The final word was on his tongue. The word that would seal the pact.

And then, clarity struck like a thunderbolt.