Chapter Text
From the shadows of the old cathedral, the villain watched the Heroine stand beside the handsome Crown Prince. Their wedding unfolded like a painting: flowers blooming from magic across the halls, music drifting in warm spirals from the choir, everyone radiant with hope for the kingdom and happiness for the newlywed.
He wished more than anything that he could let them have this. This jubilee. Where light filled the world, and the shadows he brought would not touch them.
Let this be the ending.
But he had a role to play. The villain could feel the threads of the world tightening around him.
If Calis, as the villain, doesn't strike soon… the story collapses. He’d already stalled too much. He had delayed too many scripted attacks, hesitated every time he was meant to be cruel, and changed what little he could without breaking character.
He clenched his fists. Holding back the weight of the world.
Just for one day, he thought. One day of peace…
The world answered his defiance with a chill down his spine.
Tomorrow, he would be forced to fight.
He had first become aware of his reincarnation when he was sixteen.
He had been granted a reprieve from his father's teachings and the war meetings. He had taken to exploring the castle libraries to avoid being pulled into court niceties by the young noble ladies vying for his hand in marriage.
As the son of the grand duke, many wished to rise in station through his family. He didn’t blame the women for their efforts. It was a way of survival. He had seen his aunts wield the power of their words often enough not to underestimate them. He just didn’t enjoy the lady’s vapid facades that they needed to put on to navigate the courts.
He would rather keep the company of books hidden among the towering shelves where the smell of old parchment, candle wax, and dust lingered in the air. Or alone, in the training yard practicing his sword forms, but they were currently occupied.
He had been reading the diary of some traveling monk when he heard a loud commotion from the front. The newcomer's footsteps echoed through the library's central hall, along with the audible whisper of someone furious. He couldn’t quite understand the root of the argument, but he did catch words like “incompetent”,”incompoop”, and “unworthy of the crown.”
Calis’s curiosity got the better of him. Who would be spewing such insults in a place meant for reading and study? By the time the speakers had come into view, he could hear the not-so-quiet words of the queen consort as she berated someone just out of his sight.
“Again, you embarrass the royal family. You can’t even perform basic etiquette. A prince who can’t hold a sword or speak without stuttering. What will the people think? That the queen birthed a fool?”
“But…But.. Mother”
The queen's consort delivered a quick slap to the figure in front of her.
“Your brothers were exemplary by your age. You? You can’t even stand up straight. No wonder the nobles dismiss you. Every time I look at you, all I see is wasted potential. The gods gave you a royal birth, and you repay it with cowardice. How do you expect anyone to respect you? You are unworthy of the crown you were born to wear. I should have left you in the countryside where children like you belong.” Her words felt like venom even to Calis’s ears.
“ You are a stain on this nation. Look at you, crying? Again? Your softness disgusts me. Princes do not cry. Only useless children do.”
The queen consort sighed.
“Clean yourself up, I don’t want to see your idiotic face until you’ve learned how to be a proper man.” She stormed out of the library.
Leaving the boy standing alone, now visible. Shoulders hunched, eyes red with tears, and a swollen cheek that would surely bruise. The boy looked to be no older than him. Hair a fiery gold adorned with a simple circlet denoting his station. Calis had only met Eryndor, the third prince, twice before, both at formal gatherings to celebrate the king’s birthday. The prince had been polite but curt, spending only enough time with Calis as was appropriate to keep up appearances. Always wearing a mask of fake smiles as he flirted with the court. Nothing like the boy who stood across the library hall from him, unguarded and full of emotion.
Prince Eryndor wiped his face and looked up. Their eyes met. Calis’s heart stopped. The prince’s striking blue eyes carried a faint ember of something fiery beneath the grief. A look he had seen before. Calis’s vision shifted to a battlefield under a dark sky.
Magic whipped around them as battle mages fought to either side. There, those eyes were not angry with unshed tears; they were filled with the rage of combat and hatred towards him as their swords clashed. The third prince had been determined to destroy him. His powerful strikes rattled him just as much as his strikes rattled the prince. The strength of their melee battle disintegrated the earth around them until one step led him too far forward, allowing the prince’s sword to slide between his breastplate and ending his life.
Calis instinctively knew that this was to be his fate. His cold acceptance of this fact would have scared him if it weren’t for how settling it was to see the role he was meant to play in the world.
He was to be their villain.
He blinked away the visions of a past life that crashed into the present. Focusing back on where the third prince, who he now knew was soon to be the crown prince, was staring at him with tears fully running down his face as he fought to get control of himself. Prince Eryndor flinched as if he was startled to see Calis standing there, like he too sensed something he couldn’t explain.
“What… come to make fun of me, too? The useless third prince,” Eryndor said, defensively.
Calis was taken aback by the boy's petulant words.
It was hard to reconcile the battle-hardened warrior that he had just seen with the peevish crybaby standing before him. Calis could still feel the thrill of battle under his skin. A hunger to fight, bite into flesh, or something more. The silence grew between them as he stared at the prince.
Defensive anger shifted to confusion as nothing was said. The prince huffed out a frustrated breath, beginning to turn away.
“You are not useless,” Calis finally said. The prince's head whipped around to look at him.
“What?”
“You’re not useless. Everyone has their own strengths. Don't let others' fear control you.”
Eryndor’s breath hitched like this was the first time anyone had spoken to him like a person, not a prince.
“Easy for you to say you're the pride of your family, Marquee Calis,” Prince Eryndor snapped back. Ah, so he did know who he was.
He shook his head. “I’ve seen warriors who had nothing rise higher than men born with a silver spoon in their mouths. You’re not powerless unless you choose to be. Don’t focus on what others want from you. Focus on what you are good at and use it to get what you want.” Kept his speech firm.
“But what am I good at?! You heard my mother!” Prince Eryndor shouted. ”I’m not even half as good as my brothers. They’re able to hold their own at court and fight well across the arenas while I just…can’t.”
“Then find what they can’t do. You are a prince. You have status, power, and privilege that others only dream of. You can't control what others think of you. Not the queen or the advisory court or the kingdom. But you can control how you think of yourself.”
“Are you going to let the pain of what others think of bind you, or will you discover your strengths when you look at your weaknesses? So the wounds of others’ words no longer guide your hand.” Calis repeated the words his sword master had beaten into him. The exact words he had read on the pages of a book in another life.
“No, I…”
Before anything else could be said, an attendant opened the library door.
“Excuse me, your grace, the Duke, your father, is calling for you.”
He nodded at the attendant, following him out. Happy to get away from the prince and his shimmering blue eyes.
He didn’t know what drove him to speak those words. Only that the sight of the prince crying felt wrong, he much preferred the battle-worn Prince in his vision.
It didn’t matter, though. Their paths would cross again soon enough.
On a field soaked in blood, not the softly lit pews of the library.
The hands of the world had a crude sense of humor.
Once Calis’s memories of the past had been unlocked, the brutal truth of his reality was clear. His life was nothing more than a story already written. He knew the plot he was meant to follow, the steps laid out like stones on a path he could not stray from. And the moment he remembered, the world seemed eager to hurry him along. His demonic powers awoken, twisting through his veins and forcing his hand. Leading him to murder his own father and thrust him onto the throne of a cursed land, becoming the villain he was destined to be.
Calis did his best to follow the script. His job was simple: become a menace to the kingdom, threaten the heroine, fight the prince, and after a suitably dramatic battle, he would die so the couple could live happily ever after.
So he ruled his dominion with an iron fist. He was strict, circumspect, and impossible to deceive. His word was law, and his judgments were swift. Yet Calis was no mindless tyrant. He kidnapped no villagers, burned no fields, or razed no farms. Instead, He sent polite warnings instead of curses. Some mistook these warnings for arrogance or weakness. But their misjudgment cost them their life.
Calis chose to rule responsibly. Every decree he passed was measured, written to benefit his people and protect his lands. Every punishment was weighed, allowing no room for leniency, and was just for each crime committed. Even Calis’s enemies whispered of his fairness in the same breath that they cursed his name.
And when the king called on him to war, Calis answered like the shadow of death spreading across the land. With every victory, his reputation grew, becoming known as the Demon General.
His power swelled to the point where even the king feared him.
Yet even then, Calis had refused to let darkness consume him. He ensured the fallen received proper burial rites. He made certain that ruined lands were compensated so families could rebuild. He mapped out each school and church that was needed for the towns. He appointed stewards who truly cared for others to manage the municipalities when he left.
These Little deviations were his way of defying the story he was meant to follow. Tiny rebellions that he could rejoice in. Where he could be himself. Even if it didn't change the outcome of his death.
By the time he met the heroine, he was fully entrenched in the mask the world had forced upon him. A villain’s crown on his head and a villain’s power in his hands. But with the whispers of a man who decided who he was going to be.
The ambush was almost over by the time Calis arrived.
His shadow patrols had reported bandits preying on travelers at the eastern border. Evidence of the neighboring countries’ growing boldness, as rumors of the king’s illness arose after the death of the first prince. Their crude tactics were an irritation he tolerated only once. Now he needed to remind them why he was called the demon general.
Calis descended from the ridge astride his blackened horse, clad in regalia that made it look like a horned nightbeast. His own obsidian armor shimmered like fractured starlight against a darkened sky as he readied to make an example of the bandits.
Charging at them, the people his men fought were more than simple bandits. Some were seasoned warriors. Judging by their fighting style, they could even have been knights who were in disguise. Calis cut his way through them, rushing to aid the remaining survivors of the caravan.
There, circled by bandits, stood a young woman who barely looked more than twenty, brandishing a staff at her attackers. Her dark, curling hair framed her face, looking far too fierce for someone so small. The Light clung to her like a second skin, shining bright enough to sting his senses. A soft radiance pulsed around her as visions of flowering fields, holy light, and blood filled his mind.
This was the fated Saintess… he realized. The one the prophecies spoke of. The one who will one day stand against him. She was more beautiful than he remembered.
And she was losing.
There was sweat on her brow as she maintained her concentration on a magic shield around herself and several children. The bandits continually struck the shield, looking for weak points. Her magic hummed weakly, her shield flickered, and the bandits laughed, preparing to strike the final blow.
In a single step, he jumped from his horse in a burst of dark flame, landing between her and the bandits with the force of a falling meteor, knocking several back as the ground split underneath them.
“Step away from the woman,” he commanded, voice low and calm. “You were warned not to cross my borders.”
The bandits, recognizing the infamous Duke Demon General, dropped their weapons and began to run. With a swing of his sword, the blue black flames that surrounded him shot forth, cutting them down, leaving only two men who were too stuck with fear to move. He approached the two, leaning into the face of the one who looked to have some form of station, if the marking on his sword's hilt meant anything. The shadows around him grew longer.
“Tell your lord, if he wishes to attack travelers on my lands again. Then I would be happy to make his head a decoration for my front gate. Is that understood?” The man nodded.
“Then leave.”
The two took off. Calis didn’t bother pursuing. They would not return.
Silence settled now that the battle was done, broken only by the crackling of fading flames.
When he finally turned to face the girl, she was staring at him breathlessly, wide eyes filled with equal parts awe and terror.
“You… saved me,” she whispered.
Calis straightened, towering over her. “I prevented a nuisance on my lands.” His tone was clipped and formal. “Do not mistake it for benevolence, Saintess.”
She blinked. “You know who I am?”
“I know more than you assume,” he replied critically. “Including the fact that you are far from the holy capital and dangerously unprepared for a long journey.”
Her cheeks flushed with embarrassment and a spark of stubborn defiance.
“I can defend myself. I just… misjudged the terrain. I’m on a pilgrimage to deliver these children to the east, where they can be cared for by the Terradew people of the coast,” The Saintess said, defending herself.
As if she needed to justify herself to him. She was always putting herself in harm's way when it came to the good of those around her. It was one of the things he had loved about her, both then and now. Calis almost allowed himself a smirk. Almost.
“That’s stupid and foolish of you. But you are alive… and that is enough.”
He bent down to look at the children who clung to the saintess’s skirts. Checking for any wounds. They flinched away from him.
“Are you hurt?” he asked softly. Several of them shook their heads “no’ as they were too afraid to speak.
“Good,” He stood up. His cloak billowed in the cold wind as he turned towards his men. “Burn the dead and salvage what you can. We will escort the saintess and the rest to the waypoint.” There was a chorus of ‘yes, sir’s’ as his men got to work helping the survivors.
The saintess hesitated before stepping closer to him, studying Calis with a courage he had not expected.
“You’re nothing as they described,” she murmured.
Calis stiffened, unsure of what to do about her closeness. “Leave this place, Saintess. Do not tempt fate a second time.”
But as he turned away, her voice stopped him.
“ My name's Lyra by the way, not the saintess, Duke Calis. Thank you for your help.” There was a hint of a smile in Lyra’s voice. One that he dared not turn to see, for he would brake.
It was the story’s expected path that led him to walk away, not acknowledging her comment. This was the first moment when the villain and the heroine stood on the same side.
The moment where destiny began to unravel.