The Villainess Wants To Retire-Chapter 404: Ghost under a tree

The idyllic scene under the oak tree, the laughter of a child who was whole, the peace of a woman who was loved, began to vibrate with a frequency that set my teeth on edge. It was too beautiful. It was a masterpiece of "what-if," a sanctuary built from the wreckage of two lives.

I stood there, a ghost in the grass, and felt the first wave hit. It wasn’t anger. It wasn’t even the searing heat of the Pyronox. It was a profound, unmeasurable sadness that felt as though a mountain had been placed upon my chest. My knees buckled. I didn’t fall so much as I simply ceased to be able to carry the weight of my own existence. I collapsed into the grass, my fingers digging into the emerald soil. It felt real. It felt soft.

I couldn’t look away from the dream-version of myself. She was laughing as Rael tumbled into her lap. Caelen was smiling, a real smile, not the desperate, haunted mask he wore in the palace.

The heartbreak wasn’t just coming from this life. It was the first life, too. Every bit of grief I had suppressed, every night I had spent in the cold silence of the Solmire palace wondering why I wasn’t enough, came screaming to the surface. I had tried so hard to be the villain because being the victim was too painful. I had locked Caelen in a box labeled Enemy because if he was a person, if he was a man capable of this kind of love, then my entire first life was an even greater tragedy than I had imagined.

I had wanted this. In the dark, quiet corners of my soul that I never let anyone see, this was all I had ever wanted. Peace. A family. A husband who stroked my hair instead of reaching for his sword. I hadn’t wanted to be a Queen of Ashes. I hadn’t wanted to be a monster. But the Author of this world had written me to suffer. My pain was the fertilizer for Caelen’s heroism. My descent into madness was the plot point that allowed him to be the "just" King who struck down the tyrant. I was never given a choice. I was doomed from the first page.

The tears didn’t just fall; they poured. I didn’t realize I was sobbing until I felt the front of my dress soaking through, the dampness of my own eyes blinding me. The dam had finally broken. All the confusion of the second life, the terror of the hunt, and the hollow ache of the first life slammed into me with a lethal force.

I love Soren. That is a truth that lives in my marrow. He is the frost that steadies my fire; he is the man who sees me as I am and stays. But it would be a lie, a cruel, jagged lie to myself and to him, to act as if the love I had for Caelen never existed. It was the love that destroyed me. It was the love that made me burn the world. It was real. And seeing it laid out here, in this perfect, impossible dream, was like having my heart flayed open one last time.

I was drowning. The emerald field was starting to blur, the edges of the dream-Eris’s dress fraying into grey mist. I was losing the thread of the ritual. My main goal, extracting the poison, saving Caelen, stopping Vetra, was slipping away as I succumbed to the sheer gravity of the memory.

If I stay here... if I don’t let go...

I could feel my consciousness thinning. The danger was immediate. If I stayed in this grief, Caelen would die in the real world, and I would be trapped in a mind that was already collapsing.

Then, a chill.

It wasn’t the suffocating, oily cold of the dark magic. It was a sharp, brutal, yet impossibly familiar frost. It cut through the warmth of the dreamscape like a blade. I knew this cold. I knew the scent of snow and ancient stone that came with it.

Soren.

His magic was reaching through the extraction, following my thread into the void. He was anchoring me, a tether of ice in a sea of fire and shadow. It was a reminder: You have a mission. You are not that woman anymore. You are mine.

I took a shuddering breath, the freezing air of his magic acting like smelling salts. I wiped the tears from my face with the back of my hand, the wetness cold against my skin. I stood up, my legs shaking but holding.

"Focus," I whispered to the empty air. "Grieve later."

I turned toward the tree. The dream-Eris and the laughing Rael were already beginning to dissipate like smoke in a high wind. I started walking. With every step I took toward Caelen, the world became less a paradise and more a prison. The flowers turned to dust; the sun flickered. By the time I reached the foot of the oak, they were gone.

Just Caelen was left, sitting alone against the bark, staring at nothing.

"It’s time to stop, Caelen."

My voice was firm, stripped of the sobbing wreckage of moments ago. I sounded tired, exhausted by the weight of a history that shouldn’t belong to any one person.

Caelen didn’t respond at first. He didn’t even look up. He looked like a man who had finally found the one place where he didn’t have to bleed, and he wasn’t ready to leave it.

"This regret you’re drowning in," I continued, standing over him, "it’s not going to change anything. You and I both know that. Holding onto the past won’t bring it back. This dream, " I gestured to the grey, fading hills, ", isn’t real. You can’t stay here forever."

"I can," he whispered. His voice was broken, a jagged ruin of a sound.

"Rael is waiting for you," I said, my voice rising. "The real Rael. Outside. He’s crying. He’s scared. He saw his father fall and he thinks you’re never coming back. He needs the man who plays with him, not a ghost under a tree."