I Became the Villain Alpha's Omega (BL)-Chapter 112: The Urgent Meeting

The sun didn’t rise over the Northern front so much as it simply bled a thin, anemic grey across the horizon. It was a miserable excuse for the morning. The camp, usually a clockwork of military precision, looked like a dog-eared manuscript, frayed, stained, and missing several vital pages. Chunks of blackened canvas flapped listlessly in a wind that tasted of wet ash and old copper.

There was no victory song. No cheering. Just the hollow thud-thud of hammers against wood and the low, jagged coughing of men who had inhaled too much smoke.

Zarius was right there, at the heart of the whole scene. He looked like he hadn’t slept, hadn’t blinked, and definitely wasn’t about to bend for anyone. He hadn’t changed his clothes, yet he looked more composed than any man had a right to be after facing down a Velkyn swarm. His orders from the small hours of the night had already been etched into the camp’s reality, that no one used the stones.

The summons for the urgent meeting came before the first pot of ration brew had even finished boiling.

Inside the command tent, the air was thick enough to choke a horse. It wasn’t just the heat from the central brazier, the old, reliable kind of stone, but the sheer density of suspicion. Those who were expected had already assembled, though the seating felt off, skewed by a tension that made everyone’s skin itch.

Elios was standing near the map table, his face a mask of professional neutrality, though his eyes were darting toward the tent flap every few seconds. Marielle was perched on the edge of a supply crate, looking like a cat waiting for someone to drop a piece of fish, her sharp gaze dissecting every person who entered. Reiner was there, too, unusually silent, his hands tucked into his sleeves.

And then there was Cherion.

He felt like a frayed wire. He hadn’t slept, not really, and his hair was a structural disaster, but his brain was firing on all cylinders. He stood slightly behind Zarius’s left shoulder, trying to look like a legitimate medical advisor and not a man who had been bridal-carried across the mud just a few hours prior.

Zarius did not waste time on formalities. He didn’t offer a "good morning" or a prayer. He simply leaned over the map table, his knuckles white against the parchment.

"The Velkyn did not hunt for meat last night," Zarius began. "We believed they hunted for the Hearth Stones. Their aggression was targeted, their movements synchronized toward our supply line rather than our barracks. Until I am satisfied as to why, all stones are to be quarantined. Effective immediately."

The silence that followed was brittle.

A logistics officer, a man named Harlen whose face was usually red from either cold or ale, stepped forward, clearing his throat with a sound like grinding gravel. "Your Grace... with all due respect, those stones were vetted. I saw the manifests myself. Three separate mages at the capital ran the standard resonance checks before the crates were sealed. There’s no corruption. No black-mana rot. They’re clean. We’ve used this batch for a fortnight without problem."

"And yet," Zarius countered, his eyes locking onto Harlen’s, "the ’clean’ stones still became a dinner bell."

"Is it possible the Duke is... perhaps overthinking a strange occurrence?" another captain ventured, his voice cautious. "Monsters are erratic. Maybe they just liked the smell of the crates?" 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

It was a ridiculous theory. A joke that nobody laughed at.

Cherion felt the heat rising in his neck. He knew how this looked, a paranoid commander and his "strange" Southern healer making up ghost stories. He stepped forward, not because he felt particularly brave, but because the silence was starting to feel like a noose.

"I watched them from behind the crates," Cherion continued, his fingers twitching as he recalled the rhythmic skree-scrape of claws on wood. "It was trying to dig through the crate to get to the stone."

He hesitated, the gap between his memory of the original novel and this terrifying reality yawning wide.

He saw the skeptical glances, the "what does a Southron boy know" look, and he pivoted toward the tent flap. He knew someone was lingering just outside, a shadow that had been dogging his steps since the moment he woke up.

"Ezek!" Cherion called out, his voice sharper than usual. "Get in here."

The tent flap was shoved aside, and Ezek stepped into the light. He looked like he’d been through a meat grinder, but his posture was as rigid as a spear. He’d been waiting out there, half-guarding and half-brooding, and as he moved toward the center of the room, the other shifted to give him space.

"Tell them what we saw last night, the way the Velkyn were drawn to the crates of Hearth Stones."

Eze nodded. "I was with him last night. The Velkyn we encountered... They were hovering over the crates. Drooling over them like they were gold. I thought they were just being territorial at the time, but they didn’t even snap at us until we drew steel. Their focus was entirely on the crates."

Cherion leaned forward, catching Ezek’s eye. "Think back to the past, Ezek. When your unit was hit before the main swarm arrived. Was there anything... off? Anything different about how they attacked you compared to the usual?"

Ezek went quiet, his brow furrowed as he replayed the carnage in his head. "They were frantic. More than usual. And..." He paused, his expression darkening. "Wait. I was the only one carrying a Hearth Stone. Just one, for the night watch."

Cherion snapped his fingers, a sound like a small explosion in the tense quiet. "See? He was the one carrying the stone, and he was the one who got attacked so severely. It wasn’t about the unit. It was about the little thing he was carrying in his pocket."

The room shifted. The "coincidence" was starting to look a lot like a pattern. Zarius took the opening, his directives coming out like hammer blows.

"Reiner, Marielle, I want those stones stripped," Zarius ordered. "I don’t care if you have to grind one to dust. Look for anything embedded in the quartz. Not just spells, but physical contaminants. Pheromones, ground-up Velkyn husks, whatever might survive the infusion process."

Marielle nodded, her eyes flashing with a predatory sort of curiosity.

"And," Zarius continued, "we will perform a test. A single crate of stones will be placed half a mile beyond the eastern perimeter, under heavy guard and concealment."

He went on, adjusting patrol formations, demanding that no unit carry the stones alone, and placing a double watch on the supply lines. It was a solid plan, a military response to an occult problem. But as the meeting began to break up, the tension didn’t dissipate. It just changed shape.

No one had said the word "Palace." No one had mentioned the King’s hand or the factions back in the capital who would very much like to see the Duke of the North fail. But the thought was there.

Cherion lingered as the others filtered out, his boots scuffing the dirt floor. He felt a weird, hollow sort of dread. In the novel, the North was always a place of hardship, but this felt... different.

He walked out of the tent and stopped, his eyes drifting to the stack of unused Hearth Stones sitting in the grey morning light. They looked so innocent. Just heavy, golden-tinted rocks meant to keep a man’s toes from falling off in the night.

But as he stared at them, Cherion didn’t feel warm. He felt a chill that went right through his bones.

What exactly did we bring into this camp? he wondered, his fingers instinctively clutching at the sapphire necklace beneath his shirt.