The Villainess Wants To Retire-Chapter 405: Goodbye

I took a step closer, my shadow falling over him. "And Ophelia. Your wife. She’s four months pregnant, Caelen. She’s carrying your second child, and she’s been sitting by your bed for three days without food or sleep. They’re both waiting for you to open your eyes. And you’re hiding here. Like a coward."

Caelen finally looked up. His eyes were hollow, filled with a pain so vast it seemed to swallow the light. "I don’t want to leave. This is the only place... the only place where I get to live what I truly wanted. After I lost it. After I lost you with my own foolishness." 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

He let out a choked, wet laugh. "Here, I don’t have to face what I’ve done. I don’t have to see the hurt in your eyes every time I walk into a room. I don’t have to live with the regret of knowing I was the one who broke us."

"You need to accept what happened," I said, my voice unwavering. "It’s the only way to heal. The only way to move on for the sake of the people who still need you."

He stared at me, his eyes searching mine for something, some shred of the woman who had once loved him. I saw the unspoken question in the way his hand twitched. He wanted to hear it. He needed to hear it before he could let this place go.

I took a deep breath, the air in the dreamscape becoming thin and cold. "I know you want me to say this. And I will. Not because you want me to, but because it’s true."

I knelt in the grass before him, the observer finally becoming the participant. "I love-d you, Caelen."

His breath caught. A single tear tracked down his cheek.

"I loved you more than I loved myself," I said, the words feeling like stones being pulled from my throat.

"More than I loved living. More than I loved breathing. I wanted everything with you. The life we just saw, the peace, the family, that’s what I wanted too. I destroyed myself trying to make you love me. I burned everything down and became the monster you hated because I didn’t know how else to be yours."

I looked at the blackened veins on his neck, the only sign of the reality outside. "And you never saw it. You never believed it. You thought I was manipulating you, or playing a game. But it was real, Caelen. Every desperate, destructive, terrible bit of it."

Caelen was breaking. He was openly weeping now, his shoulders shaking as the years of denial and obsession finally crumbled. He looked at me with an expression of pure, agonized relief. He had finally heard it.

"But that was the past," I said, my voice hardening. I held up a hand. "That Eris doesn’t exist anymore. I loved you. That love existed, and I think that’s enough. We were never meant to be together in this life, Caelen. That’s why this happened. Not because we didn’t try, but because it wasn’t our fate."

I looked at the fading sky. "If there was a world out there where you and I were supposed to be, nothing would stop us. Not fire, not ice, not fate itself. But in this world... we were never meant to be. And the sooner you accept that, the less it hurts."

I was crying too, now, but it was a different kind of release. It was a cleansing. I was letting the first life go, one tear at a time. Caelen had his full breakdown then, a decade of regret pouring out of him in a way that shook the foundations of the dream.

"You’re right," Caelen whispered, his voice hitching. "You’re right. I can’t stay here. I have to face it. I have to go back."

He looked at me, his eyes red and swollen, and reached out. It wasn’t a command; it was a desperate, humble request. "Take me back. Please."

I reached out and offered my hand. He took it, his grip was firm, a man anchoring himself to reality. We stood together for one last moment in the grey, dissolving meadow. It was our final goodbye to the life we never had. To the dream that never was. To the love that had destroyed us both.

The world began to brighten, the trees turning to white light, the grass dissolving into silver dust. The sky opened up into a blinding, pure radiance.

I gasped, my lungs burning as if I had been underwater for a lifetime. My eyes flew open, the ceiling of Caelen’s chamber spinning into focus.

I was in Soren’s arms. He was holding me tight against his chest, his face a mask of frantic relief. His cloak was cold, dusted with the frost of the containment field.

"Eris, " he choked out, his grip tightening. "You were gone so long. The seal, "

I looked at my chest. The seal was humming, but the black rot was gone from the air. I had collapsed during the final pull, and Soren had caught me, holding me through the spiritual backlash.

The healers were still working, their hands glowing with a soft blue. In the center of the room, a sphere of ice sat on the floor, containing the writhing, black liquid shadow I had extracted. It was trapped, ready for incineration.

"He’s moving!" one of the assistants cried.

On the bed, Caelen’s fingers twitched. His breathing deepened, becoming a steady, rhythmic sound. His eyes fluttered, the dark veins on his neck and hands fading back to a bruised purple, then to a normal, pale flesh.

"He’s waking! Your Majesty, he’s coming back!"

I stayed in Soren’s arms, my heart pounding against his. I didn’t move to the bed. I didn’t reach for Caelen. I just watched. The tears were still on my cheeks, drying in the chill of the room.

Caelen’s eyes opened slowly. He blinked, the focus returning to his pupils as he looked at the ceiling, then the healers, then the room he had almost left forever.

Then, he turned his head.

His eyes found mine. There was no more obsession in them, no more madness. Just a deep, quiet, and terrible understanding.

He was back. And with him came a look of painful resignation.