To Love A Villain

Chapter 218: Horrifying truths

>>Enya

Her eyes fluttered, only slightly. Her lips moved, trying to form words, but no sound came. Only a choked, wet gasp.

Then I saw the wound.

It wasn’t just a gash—it was a hole, torn open viciously from her side, as though something had hooked its claws into her and ripped straight through. Deep enough that her organs had spilled with the blood, staining the ground beneath her crimson. My stomach turned. Einar staggered a step back, paling.

"She’s not—she’s not going to—" I couldn’t say it.

"We need to get her inside," Einar said, already trying to lift her, his voice raw and shaking. "We have to try—"

"There’s nothing left to save," I said, tears streaming down my face as I pressed my hand to the wound, as if I could keep her soul from slipping through it. Her blood was already cooling in the wind.

Rika’s hand twitched in mine. Her eyes barely met mine for a second—there was no light left in them. No flame. And then her fingers went still.

I froze.

"No, no—Rika—!"

Einar’s breath caught. His hands clenched at his sides. I looked up at him, and for the first time, I saw the horror he’d been hiding for months break through. His lips were pressed into a line so tight it bled.

We looked toward the woods beyond the tree line.

The miasma was thicker than ever, rolling in waves like smoke from some unseen furnace. But it wasn’t just the fog that chilled me.

It was the silence.

There was something in those woods. Something that tore through a werewolf and left her to die a slow death so close to home. Something that waited just beyond the light, watching.

Waiting for more.

We didn’t speak.

Because in our hearts, we already knew—

This land was cursed beyond salvation now. And whatever had taken Rika’s life... hadn’t finished.

Just as I was about to close Rika’s eyes, Einar stilled beside me.

"Wait," he murmured, frowning.

He leaned closer to her lifeless body, his gaze falling to her bloodied hands. One of them was clenched tightly, fingers curled with the final stubbornness of someone who had fought until the very last breath. With care, he pried them open.

Something wet fell from her grasp with a muted, sickening sound.

I blinked. At first, I couldn’t understand what I was looking at. It was dark red, misshapen—but unmistakably organic. Einar stared down at it, and I saw the color drain from his face.

He reached out slowly, and the moment his fingers brushed it, a sharp jolt ran through the air. His magic reacted instantly—glowing faintly as it wrapped around the object.

And then his shoulders tensed.

His face twisted into something between disbelief and horror.

"What is it?" I asked, my voice already trembling, though I hadn’t yet realized why.

He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he looked at me with wide, pale eyes, lips parting to speak—but no words came at first.

Then, barely above a whisper, he said:

"...It’s a heart."

My own nearly stopped.

"A heart?" I echoed. "From—what?"

He didn’t look at me.

His eyes stayed locked on the small, torn organ in his palm, slick with blood and still faintly warm from Rika’s fading body.

"With my magic..." he said slowly, his voice almost gone, "...I can feel it. Whose it is."

I could barely breathe.

My stomach turned, and my hands began to shake.

"Einar—"

His gaze lifted to mine, hollow and stricken.

"It’s Ahin’s."

The world tilted.

I didn’t realize I was screaming until my throat was raw.

"No," I whispered.

The world spun around me. The snow, the trees, Einar’s face, Rika’s body—they all blurred into a mess of color and sound. My breath came in shallow bursts. I stared at the heart in his hand, that impossibly small thing. Too real. Too warm. Too still.

"No. No, no—it’s not his. It can’t be—"

"Enya—"

"It’s not his!"

Einar reached for me, his voice calm but shaking. "Listen to me, we don’t know what happened—"

"You just said it was his!" I screamed, voice cracking, breaking apart like my chest. "You just said it!"

My knees gave out, but Einar caught me before I hit the ground.

"Breathe," he whispered, pulling me into his arms. "Just breathe—please."

I couldn’t.

How could I breathe when Ahin—my Ahin—, who had kissed me under falling snow, who had smiled at me before he left—might be gone?

I shook my head violently against Einar’s shoulder, my fingers clawing at his coat. "I was supposed to protect him," I gasped. "I promised. I told him I’d get him out—I told him—"

"I know," Einar said, holding me tighter. "I know, Enya. But we don’t know what happened yet. Magic can deceive—"

But he didn’t believe that. I could hear it in his voice.

I felt his lie like a crack under glass.

Something inside me buckled.

The edges of the world darkened.

My hands went limp, and Einar’s voice became a distant echo—muffled and fading, as though I was sinking under water.

Then everything went black.

***

We lived quietly, if you could call it that. Quiet like the way flowers wilt when no one waters them. Quiet like how the sky forgets to change color.

Autumn passed unnoticed. Just like Summer did

And then, winter returned.

With it came the snow.

Thick and blinding, it buried the paths, the rooftops, even the tree where I had once found Ahin saving a shivering animal. That spot now looked like any other stretch of white.

Just cold. Just silent.

And I didn’t know why I was still alive. The world had fallen into despair. The saint was gone, the archmages were gone and everything was going to end.

So why not end myself too?

***

The day I decided to die, the snow had buried even the light.

It wasn’t a decision born from impulse. It came slowly, like frost creeping under the skin, week by week, memory by memory, until even breathing felt like dragging chains through my chest. The world was gone. Rika, Ahin... Emrys, even. All of them, swallowed by the wilds and the silence. Einar no longer looked me in the eye. I had stopped speaking to my reflection.

There was nothing left.

I waited until he was asleep.

The mansion had a silence I knew too well now. It groaned and creaked like it wept in its own language. I moved through it like a ghost. Not even my footsteps touched the floor.

There was a door beneath the cellar—an old, half-rotted trapdoor that I had always ignored. The maids once whispered that the family alchemists used to store dangerous things down there. Forgotten vials, failed concoctions... poison.

It was what I was looking for.

I brought a magic lantern with me. The stairs beneath the trapdoor were stone, slick with age and mold. I descended slowly, one hand on the wall to keep from slipping. It smelled of dust and time and something bitter, metallic—something like despair.

The shelves down there were coated in webs and silence. Some glass bottles still held sludgy liquids, sealed with old wax. I didn’t know what I was looking for, not really. Just something quick. Something sure.

And then I saw it.

It wasn’t a vial. It was a book.

Wedged between two dusty crates, hidden beneath a moth-eaten cloth. Something about it pulled at me—like a whisper I couldn’t quite hear but somehow understood.

I reached for it. The cover was old leather, embossed with a symbol I didn’t recognize. When I opened it, the scent of centuries spilled out—like old parchment, dried herbs, and forgotten magic.

The first page was written in a language I didn’t know. But the next...

It was about time.

’Time is a thread. Weak, frayed, but still a thread. It cannot be broken. But it may, in rare moments, be reversed.’

I read that line again. And again.

The book spoke of ancient spells. Of impossible rituals, outlawed and buried. Of memory as currency. Of sacrifice as fuel.

Of pain as the door to turning time back.

My hands trembled. The lantern’s flame flickered.

Could this be real? Or was this just the final cruelty of a mind desperate for hope?

But it didn’t matter.

Because I suddenly didn’t want to die.

If there was even the smallest chance—one flickering, dying star of a chance—that I could go back, change things, undo the moment I let Ahin leave... then I would try.

(Past Timeline- End)