The Villainess Wants To Retire-Chapter 476: Missing pages

Eris didn’t panic. She didn’t even gasp. The grimoire was a living vessel for her past wickedness; it had a habit of moving when it felt ignored, a sentient petulance that she had grown accustomed to.

She closed her eyes, following the psychic pull across the room. She walked to a bookshelf on the opposite wall, reaching behind a row of encyclopedias.

Her fingers brushed the cold, pebbled leather of the binding. She pulled it out and carried it to the center table, the weight of the book feeling heavier than it had that morning.

She flipped it open. The handwriting was her own, from a few years ago, back when she was the "villainess" of a story she hadn’t yet realized was fictional. She saw the entries written in moments of boredom, of cruelty, and of a desperate, hidden fear.

She began to flip through the spells absently. There were curses of destruction, fire that could melt flesh from bone, hexes that could snap a man’s spine with a thought.

There were the torture spells, amplifications of the nervous system that turned a breeze into a searing lash of pain. And then, the control spells, the mind-bindings and will-breakers she had once used to dominate the court.

She looked at the pages with a detached sense of revulsion. She remembered the original purpose of the book: to find a way to remove the dragon-core without killing herself. But she had failed. Instead, she had filled the pages with wickedness, becoming the monster the world expected her to be.

But as she flipped, the nagging sensation in her mind grew louder. It was a warning.

Is it the core? she wondered, her hand pressing against her stomach. Is the seal failing faster than I thought?

She focused inward, her consciousness dipping into her own marrow to examine the golden geometry of the seal. She felt the crack. It was wider now, jagged and dark, spreading across the crystalline structure like a fracture in a frozen lake. The last time, the seal attempted to knit itself back together, drawing on her vitality to repair the breaches.

Now, it was doing nothing. The repair had stopped. The fracture was simply... existing. Growing.

My awareness, she realized, a cold shiver running down her spine. Knowing this world is a story... it’s breaking the internal logic. I’m an anomaly now. The world doesn’t know how to heal an anomaly.

She accepted the thought with a grim, practical stoicism. She couldn’t solve the nature of reality while her mother-in-law was preparing to burn the empire. She began to flip through the book again, her movements automatic, until she stopped.

Something was wrong.

She flipped back three pages, her heart beginning to hammer against her ribs. She stared at the spine.

There were two clean, jagged edges of parchment remaining where two pages had been. They hadn’t fallen out. They hadn’t been lost to the book’s shifting nature. They had been torn out.

The tears were deliberate. The remnants were ragged but recent, the fibers of the paper still white and unaged.

Someone had bypassed the guards and locks. Someone had entered the room, known exactly what they were looking for, and taken the most dangerous pieces of her past.

The nagging feeling in her mind finally clicked into place. This was the source of the warning. The grimoire was screaming about its own violation.

Why didn’t I check sooner? she hissed, a wave of bitter regret washing over her.

The suspicion was immediate and absolute. It was Vetra. It had to be. No one else in the palace possessed the combination of dark-magic knowledge and the sheer, suicidal audacity to steal from the Empress.

But how? How could a woman in a magic-dampening cell, under constant guard, reach into the royal living quarters?

Eris stood up, her jaw set in a hard, dangerous line. She snatched the grimoire from the table. "I’m visiting the former Empress," she whispered to the empty room.

The descent into the dungeons was a journey into a colder world. Eris moved through the winding stone stairs, her grip on the grimoire so tight her knuckles were white. The air grew damp, smelling of salt and ancient mildew.

The guards at the entrance to the high-security block stood at immediate attention. Their numbers had been doubled, their faces grim behind their steel visors.

"Your Majesty," the lead guard said, bowing low.

"Open the gate," Eris commanded, her voice like a crack of a whip.

As she stepped into the final corridor, she felt the pressure of the magical barrier. It was overwhelming, a wall of freezing, absolute silence. She recognized the signature immediately.

Soren had reinforced it. He had woven his own ice-magic into the dampeners, creating a cage of absolute isolation. It was a masterpiece of containment.

She walked to the inner cell.

Vetra was sitting on the edge of her cot, her back to the bars. She was hunched over something in her lap, her shoulders moving slightly as she muttered in a low, rhythmic cadence. The vibe of the room was toxic, a humming, oily sensation that made the hair on Eris’s arms stand up.

Vetra didn’t turn around, but she sensed Eris long before the Empress reached the bars. 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

"To whom," Vetra said, her voice smooth and melodic, like honey poured over a blade, "do I owe this unexpected pleasure?"

She turned slowly, a slight, mocking smile playing on her lips. She looked rested. She looked smug.

Eris met her eyes through the glowing blue shimmer of the barrier. "I just thought I’d visit," she said, her voice calm, deceptive. "Before your trial tomorrow. To see if you had any last requests for the headsman."

Vetra’s smile widened, her eyes glittering with a predatory light. "How thoughtful of you, Eris. Truly. Though, I must say, you’re late. Soren visited me earlier."

She leaned back, her gaze dropping to the book in Eris’s hand. "He was much more... aggressive. But I suppose that’s the difference between a husband and a wife, isn’t it?"