The Villainess Wants To Retire-Chapter 402: Beginning

It was Soren. Ophelia sat up, clutching the silks to her chest, surprised by the formal, respectful tone. "Your Majesty, of course."

Soren entered alone. He had left his guards at the end of the hall, a rare gesture of vulnerability and trust. He looked at her, and for a moment, the Emperor of the North vanished.

"Please, it’s just Soren," he said gently, sitting in the velvet chair beside the bed. He maintained a respectful distance, his hands resting on his knees.

There was a long, heavy history between them. Years ago, before Eris had arrived like a wildfire, they had been a trio: Soren, Caelen, and Ophelia.

They had grown up in the shadow of courts and expectations, a friendship forged in the quiet corners of ballrooms and adventures outside the court room.

Before the romance had complicated the lines, before the marriage to Caelen had turned Ophelia into a rival of sorts to Eris, before all of that... they had been friends.

"How are you holding up?" Soren asked. It wasn’t a formality. He saw the way her hand rested protectively over her belly.

"I don’t know," Ophelia admitted, her voice shaking. "I keep thinking... what if he doesn’t wake? What if our child never knows their father? What if I’m just... left behind?"

"Eris will save him," Soren said. He didn’t hesitate. The certainty in his voice was a physical weight in the room. "If anyone in this world or the next can pull a soul back from the dark, it’s her."

Ophelia looked at him, wanting to believe, but the fear was a cold knot in her stomach. "What if she can’t?"

"Then we deal with that when it comes," Soren replied, his gaze steady. "But I’ve seen what she can do when she’s cornered. She won’t let him die. Not for her own sake, for Rael’s. She knows what it is to be a mother without a partner."

The conversation was brief, but the presence of an old friend was a balm. Soren reminded her, without saying it, that she wasn’t an outsider here. Before he stood to leave, he looked at her with a flicker of the warmth he used to show her years ago.

"Rest. You need your strength. For yourself and the baby."

Ophelia reached out, her fingers catching the air as if to stop him. "Do you really have to go now? I don’t want to be alone."

Soren paused, his shadow stretching across the rug. "I have to help Eris out, Ophelia. The ritual is starting."

Ophelia hesitated, her heart aching. She wished he weren’t so distant, so formal. She remembered the way he used to look at her before Eris had consumed his entire world. She wondered if any of that affection remained, or if it had been frozen solid by the Empress.

"Thank you, Soren," she said finally.

He paused at the door, his hand on the latch. "He’ll wake up, Ophelia. I promise."

He hoped he wasn’t lying.

.....

Hours later,

The air in Caelen’s chambers had been stripped of its stagnant, sickly weight, replaced by the sharp, electric tang of ozone and the heavy scent of burning hyssop. The room had been transformed into a theater of clinical precision.

Every piece of ornate furniture, the velvet chairs, the heavy oak vanity, the side tables, had been shoved violently against the walls, leaving the massive canopy bed isolated in the center of the room.

Caelen lay there, a pale ghost against the dark silks, his breathing so shallow it barely disturbed the air.

Eris moved with a terrifying, singular focus. She had spent the last hour on her knees, her hands stained with white chalk and silver dust. She had drawn a massive, intricate ritual circle around the bed, the lines reinforced with salt and crushed ice crystals.

Ancient purification runes, pulled from the frantic scribbles of her notes, were etched at the cardinal points. Silver wires, thinner than a human hair, connected the symbols, humming with a dormant, metallic energy that vibrated against the floorboards.

At the North, South, East, and West points, Soren had placed jagged shards of his own ice.

They pulsed with a rhythmic, pale blue light, acting as anchors for the containment field. In silver braziers at the corners of the room, bundles of mountain sage and hyssop smoldered, the low, cleansing smoke curling toward the ceiling like ghostly fingers.

On a tray near the bed, silver instruments, scalpels, tongs, and needles, glimmered under the torchlight. A bowl of blessed water sat beside them, its surface perfectly still.

The atmosphere was suffocating. Everyone in the room understood the stakes; this wasn’t a standard healing. It was a surgical extraction of a soul-eating rot.

The doors opened, and the Head Healer entered. She was an elderly woman whose face was a map of deep-set lines, but her hands were as steady as the stone walls of the palace. Behind her, two younger assistant healers followed, their faces pale and drawn. 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

"What do you need from us, Empress?" the woman asked, her voice raspy but firm.

Eris stood, brushing the silver dust from her knees. Her eyes were already beginning to catch the gold of the dragon’s influence. "I’m going to extract the dark magic," she said, her voice devoid of emotion.

"It will be violent. His body is magicless; it has no natural buffer for the shift in energy. You stay on his pulse. You stabilize his vitals. If his heart stops, if his breathing hitches, you keep him alive by any means necessary. Light magic, potions, physical massage. Do not let his spirit slip through the cracks."

The two assistants took their plac"s on either side of the bed, their hands hovering inches above Caelen’s torso. A soft, golden glow began to pool in their palms, healing energy at the ready.

Soren stepped to the foot of the bed. He looked like a statue of frost, his presence cooling the room in a way the braziers couldn’t fight. His sapphire eyes were locked on Eris, filled with a grim, protective intensity.

"What’s my role?" he asked.

"Containment," Eris replied. She met his gaze, and for a second, the weight of their shared journey passed between them. "When I pull the shadow out of him, it will be a living thing. It will seek a new host, likely me, or the healers. You have to freeze it the second it leaves his body. Keep it confined within the silver lines of the circle so I can incinerate it safely. If even a wisp escapes, it will infect the room."

Soren nodded, his jaw set so tight a muscle ticked in his cheek. Ice began to frost over his fingertips, the air around him crackling as the temperature plummeted. "Understood. I’ve got it."

"Then we begin," Eris said.

Eris approached the bedside. She took a deep, steadying breath, trying to ignore the dull, persistent ache of her own cracked seal. She closed her eyes for a heartbeat, centering the roar of the Pyronox in her core, forcing the fire into a narrow, needle-thin point of focus.

She reached out, her hand hovering just an inch above Caelen’s chest.