I Became the Villain Alpha's Omega (BL)-Chapter 103: A Feeling Without a Name
"Remind me why I didn’t just become a baker? Bread doesn’t talk back. And it certainly isn’t this ungrateful."
By the time the last lantern started flickering like it was about to give up on life, the medical tent stopped feeling like a safe place and started feeling... suspiciously pre-coffin energy. Outside, the night had gone full nightmare mode, wrapping the camp in a suffocating darkness that made the tent walls feel about as reassuring as wet paper.
Cherion sat on a low stool, back aching like he’d aged thirty years in a single evening. He stared at his hands, still stained, still faintly shaking, still buzzing with leftover mana like he’d grabbed a live wire and decided, yeah, this is fine.
He wished the darkness would just stay quiet. Most of all, he wished that somewhere out there in the freezing void, Zarius had already finished the job.
He closed his eyes for a second, picturing the Duke’s broad shoulders and that steady, terrifyingly efficient way he swung a blade. Please, he thought, a silent, desperate mantra against the back of his eyelids. Let him have slain every single one of those awful things. Let the patrol march back through those gates with nothing but tired feet and stories to tell. No stretchers. No more blood. No casualties. It was a naive wish, maybe. A "Southron" hope. But in this dim, suffocating tent, it was the only thing stopping him from completely losing it. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢
He turned his attention back to the "main event" on the center bed. Ezek was awake. Unfortunately.
The soldier looked like he’d been dragged through a rock crusher and then stepped on by a mountain goat, but his glare was as sharp as ever. Even with a bandage wrapped thick enough to mummify him, the man managed to radiate a very specific brand of ungrateful hostility.
"You’re still hovering," Ezek rasped. His voice sounded like gravel being turned in a mixer. "Go away, Southron. I don’t need... a nanny."
Cherion didn’t even blink. He reached out, checking the tension of the sutures with a bluntness that made Ezek hiss. "And you’re still talking. I thought I told you that was a bad sign for your recovery. Or is the brain damage from the fall finally setting in?"
"I didn’t fall," Ezek snapped, though his face paled as he tried to shift. "I was... tactically repositioning. And I don’t need a pampered little bird like you poking at me with glowy hands."
"Well, this pampered little bird is the only reason your intestines aren’t currently decorating the perimeter fence," Cherion countered. He reached for a bowl of clean water, his movements mechanical. "So, do me a favor? Shut up and bleed quietly. It’s better for the aesthetic of the room."
From the next bed over, Reiner let out a snorting laugh. The sun in human form was busy applying an ointment on another scout, but he didn’t miss a beat.
"Careful now, Ezek. If you keep being this charming, Lord Cherion might realize he’s wasting his mana on a lost cause and decide to go heal a more grateful mule instead. And honestly? The mule would probably smell better and complain less," Reiner chirped. He threw a wink at Cherion, though his expression sharpened for a second as he looked at Ezek. "Oh, hush now, Ezek. Behave, or I’ll just brew you a special ’quiet tea.’ You’ll sleep for three days, and when you wake up, I’ll tell everyone you fainted because the Southron’s glowy hands were too pretty for your sensitive nature."
Ezek choked out a protest, his face turning a mottled shade of red, but he finally slumped back, muttering something under his breath about "Southern witchery."
The scout Reiner had been tending to carefully tested his range of motion. He winced, but his eyes were bright with relief as he looked at the two healers.
"Thank you, Reiner. And you, Lord Cherion," the boy murmured, his voice thick with genuine gratitude.
He offered a quick, respectful nod before pulling his cloak tight and ducking out of the tent. The flap stayed open for a second too long, letting in a gust of wind that smelled of old iron and frost, before slapping shut.
The conversation died down after that, leaving only the wet, rhythmic sound of washing and the occasional groan from the back of the tent. Cherion fell into a silent coordination with Reiner, it was strange, really, how quickly they’d found a flow. No words were needed.
But as the minutes ticked by, the silence began to feel less like a break and more like a trap.
Cherion paused, his hand hovering over a tray of bandages. He frowned, tilting his head. The wind outside had shifted.The wind had officially stopped being normal and started acting like it was mid-breakdown, short, uneven bursts like the world was hyperventilating. The tent flapped like crazy, then froze. No warning. Just... stopped. Even the fire in the center out there went weird, flickering like a bad connection, stretching and shrinking while the shadows did their best impression of something alive.
It was an unease that didn’t have a name. It was a prickle at the base of his skull, the kind of feeling you get when you realize the person behind you has stopped walking at the same time you did.
"Does it... feel too quiet to you?" Cherion asked, his voice barely a whisper. He tried to make it sound like a joke, but the humor died somewhere in his throat. "Like the camp just decided to hold its breath?"
Reiner paused, a roll of linen mid-air. He didn’t answer immediately. He looked toward the tent flap, his head cocked toward the darkness outside. The bubbly light in his eyes vanished, replaced by a cold, clinical focus that made him look ten years older.
"It does," Reiner said softly. "I believe the phrase ’the calm before the storm’ was invented for exactly this kind of nonsense."
The agreement made the feeling settle deeper into Cherion’s marrow. He opened his mouth to say something else, perhaps to ask if the perimeter scouts were late, but the world outside decided to answer for him.
A shout shattered the stillness.
It wasn’t a tactical call or a standard guard’s alert. It was a sharp, panicked scream, followed right away by the awful crack of wood breaking apart. The sound of overlapping orders erupted, boots pounding against the frozen earth in a chaotic, desperate rhythm that sounded nothing like a drill.
They stepped out, and the air smacked him in the face. Not just cold, no, it had to come with that awful smell too. That same sweet, rotting scent from yesterday, only stronger, clinging like it refused to leave.
Chaos had swallowed the camp.
Torches burned everywhere, their orange light stretching unevenly across the snow. Soldiers rushed around, but nothing was coming together. No clean lines, no order, just people reacting, turning, trying to keep up.
Cherion followed a group of archers heading for the western side, and that’s when he saw them.
Velkyns.
But they weren’t the scattered, skirmishing creatures from the patrol reports. These were a wall of obsidian and teeth, their flint-like shells gleaming under the moonlight.
Cherion felt his breath hitch, his boots rooting to the spot as the sheer scale of the breach hit him. The distance between the safety of the tents and the nightmare at the fence was collapsing with terrifying speed.
"Lord Cherion! Focus!" Reiner’s voice cut through the din like a whip, his hand gripping Cherion’s shoulder and shaking him back into reality. "We have to move out of here!"
Cherion blinked, grounding himself. He nodded, but as he turned, a low, vibration-like sound began to hum through the soles of his boots. He looked toward the southern gate, then the north, then the east.
His blood ran cold.
The torches didn’t reveal a breach. They revealed an encirclement. From every shadow beyond the firelight, more eyes were appearing, milky, pale orbs that seemed to multiply with every blink. The scraping sound of claws against wood was no longer coming from one direction. It was a surround-sound nightmare.
This wasn’t an attack anymore. The camp was getting swallowed whole.
The Velkyns had completely surrounded them, a ring of jagged armor and hunger that was drawing tighter with every passing second.
