Ascension Of The Villain-Chapter 309: Complete Rejection

Clyde's boots pounded against the marble floor, the sound echoing down the long hallway like the drumbeat of dread. His chest ached. Not from the run, but from the storm of emotions threatening to crack him open from the inside, from imagining what Vyan must be feeling right now.

He had quit as Vyan's aide.

But not as his friend.

Never as his friend.

And that's why he was here.

When he reached the tall double doors of Vyan's office, he didn't barge in like he used to. This time, for the first time, he… hesitated.

His hand hovered over the door handle. Fingers clenched. The air felt too heavy. Like the aftermath of something that should never have happened.

Clyde raised his hand and knocked, the sound surprisingly soft and uncertain.

No response.

So he turned the handle gently and pushed the doors open.

And there, in the center of the grand office, stood the Grand Duke of Ashstone—his back to the door, shoulders rising and falling with sharp, furious breaths.

The office was unrecognizable. Chairs shattered. Books torn, their pages scattered like feathers after a storm. A painting on the far wall was slashed in two. The desk was cracked down the middle, and in one corner, there was ashes of something that was still on fire, faintly smoldering, curled upward in silent grief.

Vyan was breathing like a caged beast. His fists clenched at his sides, knuckles pale, the veins in his arms bulging under the skin. But even from behind, Clyde could see the truth.

Cracks lined his frame like fault lines under pressure. His fire had always been fierce, but now, it was aimless. Wild. Consuming everything, including him.

His soul was screaming, begging for salvation. And his only salvation was Iyana. Nothing Clyde or anybody else said would matter to him.

"How dare he," Vyan hissed. His voice was gravel, raw and shaking with rage barely held together by shallow breaths. "How dare he suggest I give up?"

Clyde didn't answer right away. His eyes scanned the room again. So much destruction for a man who didn't cry. So much grief in a silence that roared.

Finally, carefully, he said, "You know he has a point, though."

Vyan froze. Slowly, he turned. And when Clyde met those wine-red eyes, he wished he hadn't said it.

Vyan's gaze was fire. No, not fire—fury. Deep, piercing, and devastating. His stare hit like a sword against bare skin, and for a moment, Clyde flinched.

Anyone else would've run. But Clyde stayed. He stayed because Vyan needed someone who wouldn't.

"How could you say that, Clyde?" Vyan's voice broke. Not in weakness, but in disbelief. "How could any of you suggest this?"

Clyde stayed quiet, not looking away.

"She's not dead. She's breathing." His voice cracked again. "Why do you all insist on ending her life just because you don't understand it?"

Clyde swallowed hard, but his tone stayed even. Not challenging. Not harsh. Just… honest. "Is her heart beating, though?"

Silence. For a beat. As if he had no comeback for it.

But then, Vyan snapped. Because out of everything, he had chosen anger as his coping mechanism.

"It doesn't matter!" he shouted. His fire flared behind his words, not literal flames this time, but they were nevertheless furious and desperate. "She's alive. And I'll find a cure. I will."

His chest heaved. Eyes shining, not with tears, but with defiance.

"So all of you, shut the fuck up if you can't help!" he yelled.

Clyde hummed, feeling bad for saying what he did.

"I don't need your reason." Vyan's head hung low, voice dropped, lower now. Bitter. Hollow. "I need hope. I need only one person to say that… that she is going to be okay. But none of you ever say that."

He flared up again and pointed to the door. "So, if you can't say anything good to me, go away. Don't stand here and ask me to bury her while she's still breathing."

Clyde didn't move. Didn't go away.

After hearing that Vyan needed false hope, he couldn't bring himself to tell him that Iyana's breathing was the only thing still passing her as the living. Everything else indicated her as the dead—no heartbeats, cold body, no movement, just frozen in time.

It would be too cruel to give that reality check to Vyan right now. Because despite every shattered object in this room… despite the wreckage and the rage…

He saw the real damage.

It was in the way Vyan's fingers trembled, in the way his shoulders hunched as if protecting a wound no one could see. In the wild, reckless hope in his voice—that last thread he refused to let go of.

That last thread… which might just tear him apart.

"I'm not here to fight you," Clyde said softly. "I just… I thought maybe, by now, you would've calmed down. That you'd listen. That you'd accept—"

"Don't."

The word was guttural. Final.

"I won't accept it. Not now. Not ever. And none of you can make me."

There was no reasoning with grief that deep.

So Clyde didn't try anymore.

He just exhaled quietly.

It had been three days.

Three whole days since Iyana passed away—something that Vyan refused to accept. He didn't accept that three days ago. Not now, either.

Clyde still remembered that day with painful clarity.

Three days ago, when Iyana had gone cold.

He had been in the empress's private chambers then, sitting beside Althea, helping her stitch together the broken threads of her own body with trembling fingers and what little healing magic she had left.

That was when they had heard swords hitting the floor, bodies dropping, and some painful grunts coming from outside the door.

And soon, there were knocks on the door.

Clyde and Althea exchanged glances in confusion, only for the knocks to grow more frantic.

Clyde went to open the double doors, cautious, only to find Vyan with Iyana in his arms.

What the hell? How did this happen? He had seen the two of them a few hours ago, and they had been okay. And now…

Iyana was unmoving. She didn't even seem like she was breathing.

Her platinum hair was loose and tangled over Vyan's arm. Her face too still. Her limbs limp. There was no visible wound. No blood. Just stillness—quiet and unnatural. The kind that made even time itself hold its breath.

Vyan didn't explain. In fact, he didn't need to. Clyde stepped aside in silence and watched him gently lay her down on the velvet couch. Vyan had come here after discarding all the knights and guards who stood on his way to see the empress. Of course, he wasn't here for a chit-chat.

There was a kind of madness in that moment. Not the loud, screaming kind. But the silent one.

The kind that sets in when the world shifts under your feet and you're still pretending it hasn't.

Althea had risen from her bed, her steps unsure, her mana barely present. But she tried. She had to try for Vyan—her friend to whom she was indebted to, her ally who hadn't asked anything significant of her in exchange for helping her reach her goal.

Althea pressed her hands over Iyana's chest. Whispered incantations, letting the golden light seep through her trembling fingers.

And then she felt the curse.

A thick, malicious shroud wrapped around Iyana's very life force, denying any light, any healing, any hope.

She tried again. Harder. Frantic.

But it was like throwing sunlight at a void.

The curse would not let her in.

She looked up, her eyes brimming—not with tears, but with the kind of grief reserved for truths that could not be changed. And Vyan… he saw it in her eyes. Even before she spoke, he knew.

And he rejected it. Just like he was rejecting it now. Even after three days had passed.

Now, back in the office thick with destruction and ash, Clyde stood by the door, watching his friend with tired eyes.

"Either way," he said softly, "you need to eat something." His voice held no judgment,only quiet concern. "You're not helping her like this. You're not helping anyone like this."

Vyan didn't look at him.

"Has Iyana eaten?" he asked, his voice hoarse from days of yelling, refusing, pleading with the gods that never answered or the doctors who never had anything positive to say.

Clyde closed his eyes for a second. He had expected that. "You know she can't."

Vyan's lips curled bitterly. "Exactly."

His gaze flicked up sharply, but not at Clyde. At the world. At fate. At himself.

"If she can't eat… then I won't either. Not until I find a way to fix this. Not until I make sure she can open her eyes again, look at me again, and live again."

His words weren't stubborn. They were desperation made of bone and blood.

He wasn't starving himself to make a point. He was starving because his soul had been hollowed out, and food meant nothing if she couldn't share it.

Clyde sighed again and rubbed his face.

"You keep saying you'll fix this, fix her," he said gently, "but what if she can't be fixed, Vyan?"

Vyan flinched. He turned away, eyes burning, not with rage this time, but with something much worse. Helplessness.

"Then I'll die trying," he whispered. "Because I don't know how to live in a world where she doesn't breathe."

And Clyde… he had nothing left to say to that.

Even if the empire had declared Iyana dead, her beloved fiancé refused to acknowledge it.

Vyan wouldn't allow a funeral. Not even a whisper of a memorial. And should anyone dare organize so much as a candlelit gathering in her name, he'd burn it—along with the building it was held in. Everyone knew she was gone, but no one would dare to say it out loud near him. No one, except the unfortunate doctors—poor souls bound by duty to speak the truth, only to be met with the full price of their honesty.

Clyde could do nothing but leave Vyan in this shattered state. Forcing him to accept the loss would've broken him beyond repair, and Clyde wasn't willing to be the one to deal that blow.

But if Vyan didn't start picking up his fractured pieces soon, madness would no longer be a rumor; it would be a label. One Clyde pitied anyone for uttering, because whoever dared say it to Vyan's face wouldn't live long enough to regret it.

While Clyde did worry for Vyan, he wasn't afraid of Vyan—he was afraid for everyone else. Because Vyan was now a breathing, seething wreckage of grief under the guise of uncontrolled wrath.