Chapter 1: My Lover Who Is the Villainess Is Dead (2)
Blood fell from the sky like a grim summer shower, soaking the vast plains of Haseong. The ground was a muddy graveyard, littered with the broken bodies of warriors—some twisted in agony, others staring blankly at the dull, overcast heavens. Tattered banners from the Orthodox Alliance and the Evil Faction lay trampled in the filth, their once-proud emblems of dragons and phoenixes smeared into unrecognizable stains of red and brown. In the center of this nightmare stood one man, alone and unbroken. His long black hair hung loose and wild, matted with sweat and gore. His sword dangled loosely at his side, its edge notched from countless clashes. The white robes that had once marked him as a wanderer were now a patchwork of crimson and black, clinging to his skin like a second layer of wounds.
Geomma Seonin. The Blade Demon Immortal.
His chest rose and fell with steady, unhurried breaths, as if the slaughter around him were nothing more than a passing storm. His eyes, sharp and dark as polished obsidian, held no fire, no rage—only the hollow echo of memories that refused to fade. A ring of hundreds of cultivators encircled him, their faces pale with terror, weapons gripped so tightly their knuckles gleamed white. These were men and women from both sides of the endless war—righteous monks in saffron robes, demonic assassins cloaked in shadow—united now in one shared dread. They had watched him carve through their comrades like a scythe through wheat. No one wanted to be the fool who stepped forward first.
"Monster," a voice hissed from the crowd, barely audible over the drip of blood from a nearby corpse.
"Demon spawn," another spat, his words laced with venom but his feet rooted in place.
The insults hung in the air like smoke, but still, no one moved. Fear was a chain stronger than any spell.
Seonin tilted his head slowly, his gaze drifting upward through the drifting ash and embers. For a fleeting moment, the gray haze twisted in his mind's eye, transforming into fat, lazy snowflakes spiraling down from a clear winter sky. 'Not ash,' he thought, a faint ache blooming in his chest. 'Snow. Her favorite kind—the first fall of the season, when the world feels clean and new.'
Eun Seoryeon...
The name escaped his lips like a sigh, soft as a lover's secret. The wind whipped across the plains, carrying only silence in reply.
He closed his eyes, and the battlefield faded. In its place, memories flooded in—sharp, vivid, like shards of broken glass cutting through the numbness. It all started years ago, in a life that wasn't even his.
---
He remembered waking up for the first time in that world. Not with a bang, but with a jolt of confusion, his head pounding as if he'd been pulled from a deep, drugged sleep. He wasn't himself anymore—not the tired office drone who'd spent too many nights grinding away at a mobile game to forget his dead-end job. No, he was Lucian Azrael Von Blackstar, the sneering antagonist of The Chronicles of Eden's War: Crimson Fate, a gacha dating sim he'd binged for its over-the-top romance and flashy battles. Lucian was the villain through and through: a silver-haired duke with a cruel tongue and a heart blacker than his family name. In the game's story, he was fated to be crushed by one of four plucky protagonists—a holy knight, a rogue thief, a scholarly mage, or a beast-taming druid—depending on which route the player picked. His end was always the same: a dramatic boss fight, followed by a cutscene of his broken body tumbling off a cliff or into a pit of flames.
At first, he'd tried to lean into the role. Why fight fate? He sneered at courtiers, plotted petty sabotages, and flashed that trademark arrogant smirk whenever the "heroes" crossed his path. It felt oddly liberating, like slipping into a costume for a play. But the world of Eden was scripted down to the last dialogue tree, and it didn't take kindly to deviations. Alliances formed too quickly, betrayals struck like clockwork, and soon enough, he was cornered in the game's climactic finale: the crumbling throne room, the four protagonists arrayed against him, their weapons glowing with plot-armor power-ups.
He could've followed the script—lashed out with Lucian's signature dark magic, monologued about his tragic backstory, and gone down swinging like the villain he was meant to be. But as the final boss mechanic kicked in—a massive wave of destructive energy barreling toward the heroes, the kind that would wipe them out in one hit—he felt something shift inside him. These weren't just pixels anymore; they were people, scared and determined, fighting for a world that had given them nothing but hardship.
'If I let them die,' he thought in that split second, 'what's the point of any of this? A villain's just a hero who lost his chance.'
So he did the unthinkable. He lunged forward, not at them, but for them. His body—Lucian's body—intercepted the blast. Light exploded in a blinding cascade, searing his vision white. The taste of hot iron filled his mouth, blood bubbling up from lungs turned to ash. He heard their gasps, saw their faces twist in shock: the knight's sword trembling in his grip, the mage's spell fizzling out mid-cast.
He managed a weak grin through the pain, blood staining his teeth. "Go on, you idiots. Finish the story without me." It was the first choice he'd made that felt real, unscripted. Not for glory, not for redemption—just because it was right.
Then came the void. Endless black, swallowing him whole. No tunnel of light, no divine voice offering judgment. Just... nothing.
When his eyes snapped open again, the world had changed. He was no longer in a pixelated fantasy kingdom but on a jagged mountain peak, wind howling like a pack of wolves. Two pale moons hung low in the ink-black sky, casting an eerie silver glow over a landscape of endless snowdrifts and twisted pines. The air hummed with something alive and electric—qi, the life force that pulsed through every living thing in this new reality. He recognized it instantly: The Murim Chronicles of the Heavenly Swordsman, a webnovel he'd devoured during lunch breaks to escape the monotony of his old life. It was a brutal tale of martial arts sects locked in eternal war—orthodox "righteous" clans preaching purity and honor, demonic "evil" factions embracing chaos and power. Heroes rose and fell like seasons, but the bloodshed never ended.
Only this time, he wasn't the wide-eyed protagonist destined for ascension. He was Geomma Seonin, a minor demonic cultivator mentioned in exactly one chapter: a disposable thug cut down like chaff during the great war between the sects. His "arc" was over before it began—a quick slash from a righteous sword, and poof, off to the footnotes.
He'd collapsed to his knees in the snow that first day, laughter bubbling up bitter and raw. "So again, I'm the villain. Fate's got a twisted sense of humor."
But unlike the game, this world felt real. The cold bit into his bones like teeth, the qi in the air tingling against his skin like static before a storm. Pain from a training scar on his hand throbbed with authentic fire. He wasn't trapped in code anymore; he was here, breathing, bleeding, alive in a way his old life had never allowed.
So he adapted. No more playing the part—he forged his own. He scavenged forgotten scrolls from ruined temples, blending orthodox breathing techniques with demonic blood arts. Days blurred into nights of grueling practice: meditating under freezing waterfalls until his meridians screamed, sparring with wild beasts until his sword arm went numb. He learned to channel qi through his blade in ways no one had before—a fusion of light's precision and darkness's ferocity. Whispers spread through the jianghu, the vast underworld of martial artists: a new demon had risen, one who walked the line between shadow and flame. They dubbed him Geomma—the Blade Demon—for his sword that danced like a demon's whisper, cutting through purity and corruption without mercy.
And then, on a night when the moons aligned like twin witnesses, he met her.
Eun Seoryeon. The Silver Snow Witch of the Northern Palace.
He'd heard the tales, of course. In the novel's original plot, she was the ice-hearted villainess, a sorceress whose forbidden frost arts had frozen entire armies in their tracks. Condemned by the righteous sects for her "unnatural" power, she was slated for a poetic death: impaled on the hero's blade during the war's turning point, her last breath a curse that haunted him forever.
But the woman he found wasn't a monster from a story. She stood alone on a windswept ridge overlooking the smoldering ruins of her palace, snow swirling around her like loyal spirits. Her hair was a cascade of midnight silk, her robes a shimmering white edged in silver fox fur. Her face—pale as fresh frost, with eyes like storm clouds—held no malice, only a weary defiance. The air around her crackled with residual qi, the ground littered with the frozen corpses of attackers from both sides: orthodox enforcers who'd come to "purify" her, demonic raiders who'd branded her a traitor for refusing their blood oaths. Her sect, the last holdout of neutral northern cultivators, had been reduced to ash for the crime of existing outside the war's binary.
She sensed him before he spoke, her sword—a slender blade etched with glacial runes—whipping up in a blur of cold light. "Another executioner of so-called justice?" Her voice was steady, laced with frost that made the words hang sharp in the air. "Come to finish what your masters started, Geomma Seonin?"
He paused at the edge of the ridge, hands open and empty. The wind tugged at his robes, carrying the metallic tang of blood and the faint, clean scent of pine. Up close, she was even more striking—beautiful in a way that hurt, like staring into the heart of a blizzard. "If I were here to kill you," he said, his tone light but honest, "you'd have felt my qi long before you saw my face. I'm not one for ambushes."
Her eyes narrowed, searching his for deceit. Finding none, she lowered her sword a fraction, but the tension in her stance didn't ease. "Then what? Pity from a demon? Or do you seek alliance, only to sell me out when the price is right?"
He chuckled softly, the sound swallowed by the wind. "Pity's for the weak. And alliances... those are chains disguised as ropes. No, I came because the north feels emptier without voices like yours cutting through the lies."
They circled each other warily at first, words turning to blows as suspicion ignited into a spar. The frozen lake below the ridge became their arena, its surface cracking under the force of their strikes. Her frost arts wove illusions of shattering ice, blades of wind that could flay skin from bone. His sword responded with arcs of silver-dark qi, parrying her tempests with strikes that hummed like thunder trapped in steel. They fought from dusk to dawn, the two moons tracing lazy paths overhead. Sweat froze on their brows, breaths came in ragged clouds, but neither yielded.
By the time the first gray light of morning crept over the peaks, exhaustion had stripped away the edges of their guards. She stumbled on a slick patch of ice, and he caught her elbow—not to strike, but to steady. They locked eyes, chests heaving, and something shifted. A laugh escaped her first—harsh, disbelieving—then his joined it, echoing off the mountains like a shared secret.
Villains, it seemed, had a way of recognizing their own.
In the days that followed, they became unlikely companions. She taught him the subtle flows of northern qi, how to draw power from the earth's frozen veins without corrupting the soul. He showed her the balance of his hybrid sword arts, turning her rigid frost into fluid storms that could bend rather than break. They roamed the wilds together, scavenging herbs in hidden valleys, clashing blades against opportunistic bandits who mistook them for easy prey. Her disciples— the few young survivors she'd hidden in mountain caves—emerged warily at first, wide-eyed orphans clutching talismans like lifelines. But Seonin proved himself not with words, but with actions: a demon who mended their wounds with orthodox healing arts, who told stories of far-off worlds around campfires to chase away the night terrors.
The Silver Snow Witch's name began to echo through the jianghu once more, but not as a harbinger of doom. Whispers turned to warnings: touch her, or her ragtag family, and vanish beneath a whirlwind of blades and blizzards. Sects that had razed her palace sent scouts to test the rumors, only to return—if they returned at all—with frostbitten limbs and haunted eyes.
He cherished the small moments most. The way she'd hum ancient northern ballads while polishing her sword, her voice a melody soft as falling flakes. The evenings they'd sit on cliff edges, sharing flasks of rice wine warmed over qi-infused flames, debating the follies of the war. "The righteous preach harmony," she'd say, her breath misting the air, "but their swords drip with the same blood as the demons'. What's the difference between a holy war and a profane one?"
"None," he'd reply, staring at the stars. "It's all just excuses for men to play gods."
And then, one crisp autumn eve, as leaves turned gold under the harvest moon, she smiled at him—not the guarded curve of politeness, but a real one, warm enough to thaw the chill in his bones. They were sparring lightly in a meadow dusted with early frost, her laughter ringing out when he feigned a stumble. She sheathed her sword and stepped close, her fingers brushing a stray lock from his brow. "Seonin-ah," she murmured, the endearment slipping out like a confession.
That single syllable hit him harder than any blade. 'This,' he thought, his heart stuttering in a way no cultivation breakthrough ever could, 'this is worth every cursed fate.'
For the first time since his soul had been flung across worlds, he believed he could rewrite the stars.
But the murim world devoured dreamers like kindling. Defiance was a spark in a powder keg, and their bond—a demonic swordmaster and a witch of the forbidden north—ignited outrage on all fronts.
The Orthodox Alliance decried it as an abomination: a pure-hearted immortal sullied by demonic taint, a witch's curse spreading like winter's grip. Edicts flew from temple halls, branding them heretics to be purged for the "greater harmony." The Evil Faction, no less zealous, saw betrayal in his refusal to unleash chaos unchecked. "The Blade Demon turns soft for snow and whispers," their spies sneered, plotting to drag him back into the fold—or eliminate him if he resisted.
War came at dawn, as wars often do, when the world is still soft with sleep. The Northern Palace, rebuilt stone by stubborn stone from the ashes, awoke to the thunder of marching boots and the crackle of demonic talismans. Orthodox banners snapped in the wind like accusations, while evil shamans chanted curses that twisted the air black. Thousands poured from the valleys—monks with glowing staves, assassins cloaked in illusion, siege beasts lumbering on qi-fueled legs.
Seonin and Seoryeon met them at the gates, back to back as always. Their qi intertwined like lovers' fingers: her frost weaving crystalline barriers that shattered arrows mid-flight, his blade qi erupting in geysers of dark silver that cleaved through ranks like a hot knife through silk. The sky wept white with her blizzards, bled red from his slashes. Disciples fought at their flanks—raw but fierce, their cries a chorus of loyalty forged in loss.
They held for hours, a tempest of two against the tide. But numbers are a cruel arithmetic, and qi has its limits. He saw it first in the tremor of her hand, the flicker in her aura as a righteous spear grazed her side. Blood bloomed on her robes like ink on snow. She staggered, but her eyes met his—clear, unyielding.
"Go," he urged, parrying a demonic claw that raked toward her throat. "Fall back to the caves. I'll hold them."
She shook her head, a sad smile ghosting her lips. "Not without you, fool." Then, softer, as if to the wind itself: "Don't let them touch the mountains. Let the north stay free."
Before he could stop her, she channeled it—the Forbidden Blizzard of Eternal Night, a technique from ancient tomes that no sane cultivator touched. It demanded everything: meridians, dantian, life essence itself. Her qi surged outward in a vortex, the air howling as temperatures plummeted to unearthly cold. Snow erupted from nowhere, a maelstrom that encased the invaders in pillars of ice, their screams muffled into silence. Spells fizzled, weapons snapped, bodies piled in frozen heaps. The palace grounds became a white tomb, the assault shattered in minutes.
But victory's price was etched on her face. She collapsed into his arms as the storm died, her skin paling to translucence, veins tracing blue lines like cracks in porcelain. Frost crept from her fingertips, inching toward her heart like a thief in the night.
"Seoryeon!" He cradled her close, his voice cracking like thin ice. The disciples gathered at a distance, faces streaked with tears and blood, but he saw only her. "Why? We could've run. We could've fought another day."
Her hand, cold as marble, lifted to cup his cheek. Her touch burned worse than any wound. "Because fates like mine don't end in sunlit meadows, Seonin-ah. I was always the storm meant to break. But you... you were thrown into this madness to shake it awake. Promise me. Live. Change this rotten world for the fools who'll come after us."
Tears welled in his eyes, freezing into shards before they could fall. He clutched her tighter, as if will alone could anchor her soul. "I can't. Not without you. Please..."
Her smile was a fragile thing, softer than the first snowflake of winter. "Then let the world fear your blade. Let it remember what happens when they crush what's good in the shadows."
Her eyes fluttered shut. The frost claimed her fully, her body going still in his arms—a statue of ice and sorrow, beautiful even in death.
He buried her that night under the palace's oldest pine, the disciples chanting northern dirges as snow began to fall in earnest. Rage had simmered then, a quiet forge in his gut. But now, years later, it had hardened into something unbreakable.
---
The memory shattered like glass underfoot. The plains of Haseong rushed back—the circle of trembling cultivators, the metallic reek of death, the weight of his sword in his hand.
He lifted his gaze fully now, locking eyes with the horde. The wind tugged at his robes, as if urging him onward. "So," he murmured, his voice carrying like a blade's edge, "this is what you call justice? The same hands that snuffed her light, now banding together to snuff mine."
Silence stretched, thick as fog. Then a young monk broke ranks, his shaved head gleaming with sweat, his staff clutched like a talisman. Barely out of boyhood, his eyes burned with the fire of indoctrination. "Geomma Seonin! You've spilled rivers of blood—ours, theirs, innocents caught in between. The heavens themselves cry out against your sins! Surrender, and perhaps mercy—"
Seonin's expression didn't change, calm as a frozen lake. "The heavens? They watched while your Alliance burned children in the name of purity. They yawned as your Evil brethren feasted on the weak. Hypocrisy has been their favorite pastime for centuries."
The monk flushed, his resolve cracking but not breaking. With a shout that echoed his fear, he charged—staff whirling in a blur of orthodox forms, golden qi trailing like comet tails.
Seonin sighed. His sword rose in a single, fluid motion. The staff met it once, vibrating with the impact, then sundered like dry bamboo under a storm's fury. The monk's eyes widened in that final instant, a gurgle escaping his throat as he crumpled.
That was the spark. The circle erupted. Spells bloomed like fireworks gone wrong—fiery talismans from the demonic side, purifying light from the orthodox. Arrows whistled, poisoned and blessed alike. The air thrummed with clashing qi, the ground quaking as earth-shapers tore fissures in the dirt.
Seonin moved through it like a specter, his body a blur of controlled fury. His blade sang a dirge, each swing a precise crescent that severed limbs or pierced hearts without flourish. No wild hacks, no vengeful roars—just clean, inevitable ends. Blood misted the air, turning the falling ash to a gritty pink slurry. A rogue's dagger grazed his thigh; he spun, disarming the man with a flick before ending him mid-retort. A shaman's curse coiled around his arm like shadow serpents; he shattered it with a pulse of sword qi, the backlash flinging the caster into his own allies.
As steel met flesh, memories wove into his strikes—fleeting visions that fueled the storm. Her laughter echoing in a sun-dappled glade. Her voice, sharp and teasing, correcting his stance during a midnight drill. The warmth of her palm against his in the quiet hours, when the world slept and they could pretend they were just two souls, not pawns in a cosmic game.
'Seoryeon,' he thought, parrying a flurry of monk staves, 'if I carve through every last one of them, will the heavens finally see you? Will they spit you back to me, thawed and whole?'
The answer was a hollow no, carved into his bones long ago. But the question propelled him, a mantra amid the chaos.
Pain lanced through him—an arrow burying fletchings-deep in his shoulder, qi-laced poison burning like acid in his veins. A talisman detonated at his feet, shrapnel scoring his legs. He ignored it all, his cultivation a fortress beyond mortal frailty. Deep in his dantian, the core of his power, sword qi roared like a wounded tiger—devouring orthodox light and demonic dark, forging them into something transcendent, untamed.
"Run! He's ascending again—breaking through to the next realm!" a voice wailed from the rear ranks, panic rippling like a stone in still water.
Too late. The sky darkened, clouds boiling as if the gods above recoiled. Seonin planted his feet, qi coiling around him in a vortex of silver-black fury. He unleashed it in one cataclysmic slash—a rent in reality itself, space folding like paper under a blade. Light warped and screamed, the wave propagating outward in a silent apocalypse. When the glare faded, the plains were a tableau of stillness: bodies strewn like discarded puppets, weapons shattered, the circle of hundreds reduced to echoes.
Only he stood amid the ruin, chest heaving, sword dripping.
The last cries faded into the wind. He let the blade slip from numb fingers; it plunged halfway into the blood-soaked earth with a wet thunk. The breeze stirred again, lazy and cold, whispering of distant snow on its wings.
His eyes turned north, toward the jagged silhouette of mountains where the Northern Palace had once pierced the sky like a defiant spire. Now, only ghosts lingered there.
"Seoryeon," he whispered to the empty air, "the world you left is still rotten to its roots. Poisoned by the same fools who fear what they can't control."
A ghost of a smile tugged at his scarred lips. Exhaustion clawed at him, heavy as leaden chains, but his voice held steady. "If I must become the demon they dread, the monster that haunts their nightmares... then let it be for you."
He scanned the horizon, where the first feeble rays of dawn clawed through the smoke-choked veil. The light kissed his face, illuminating the weariness etched deep: lines around his eyes from too many sleepless vigils, the pallor of a man who'd traded flesh for power.
In another life, he'd been Lucian Azrael Von Blackstar, the villain who perished to shield his rivals, dying with a smirk and no regrets. In this one, he was Geomma Seonin, the villain who endured because his heroine's light had been snuffed out too soon.
Fate's irony was a bitter vintage, quaffed without choice.
Gritting his teeth, he wrenched his sword free from the ground, raising it skyward in quiet challenge. The tip gleamed dully, pointed at the uncaring heavens. "If you're truly just," he said, his words soft as a dying breath, "then strike me down. End this farce."
Thunder grumbled in the distance, a low rumble like the gods clearing their throats. But no bolt fell. No divine judgment rent the clouds.
He barked a laugh—raw, fractured, scattering into the gale like brittle leaves. Then, with a fluid motion born of endless discipline, he sheathed the blade at his side and turned north. Toward the mountains, shrouded in their eternal mantle of snow.
Each step dragged a crimson footprint in his wake, each exhale birthing a wisp of frost on the chill air.
Somewhere beyond the veil of peaks, a storm stirred to life—faint at first, then building with the fury of old grief. It echoed with traces of her qi, a final, lingering gift.
And in that brewing tempest, her voice brushed his ear one last time, clear as a bell in winter's hush: Seonin-ah… don't forget. Even demons can love.
The wind stole the words away, whisking them into the white.
He closed his eyes, letting the promise settle like snow on his soul.
"Then let that love be my sin."
He vanished into the snow.