Chapter 2: My Lover Who Is the Villainess Is Dead (2)
The wind tumbling down from the northern peaks carried the sharp tang of iron and charred wood, a bitter reminder that even the cleanest snow couldn't wash away the stains of war. Geomma Seonin trudged onward, his boots sinking into drifts that had long lost their pristine white. What lay beneath was a graveyard of shattered steel—broken spear tips, crumpled shields, and the jagged remnants of swords that had once sung through the air with deadly purpose. The ruins of the Northern Palace stretched out before him like the skeleton of a forgotten dream: toppled pagodas leaning drunkenly against each other, walls pockmarked by blast craters and scorched black by unholy fires, faded banners limp and ragged, their silver snowflake crests barely visible under layers of soot and frost.
Once, this had been a sanctuary of serenity, bathed in the soft glow of moonlight filtering through paper screens, where the air hummed with quiet chants and the distant laughter of disciples practicing under the stars. Now, it was just bones—cold, exposed, and silent.
Seonin came to a halt in what had been the main courtyard, his breath fogging the air in slow, measured puffs. The grand gate, half-swallowed by a drift of ice, still bore the elegant characters etched into its wood by a woman's steady hand: The frost does not mourn. The letters had weathered the siege, the blizzards, the years, but they couldn't hide the faint cracks spiderwebbing from the edges, like veins of sorrow beneath the surface.
His throat constricted, a knot of grief tightening like a vice. 'You liar,' he thought, the words echoing in the hollow chamber of his mind. 'You always mourned—for the fallen, for the lost, for the world that never gave you a fair shake.'
A subtle shift in the air prickled his senses, a ripple of qi as delicate as a dewdrop on a leaf. He turned slowly, his hand resting lightly on the hilt of his sword.
From the shadow of a cracked pillar, a small figure emerged, hesitant as a fawn stepping into open ground. She couldn't have been older than sixteen, her frame swallowed by the frayed remnants of a Northern Palace uniform—once pristine white silk, now threadbare and patched with mismatched furs scavenged from the wilds. Her hair, cropped short for practicality, ended in tips bleached ghostly white, as if the endless winters had seeped into her very roots. She bowed low, her fists clenched at her sides, trembling not from the cold but from the weight of the moment.
"Master Geomma..." Her voice cracked like thin ice underfoot, barely above a whisper. "You... you really came."
Seonin's sharp gaze softened, the hard lines of his face easing into something almost paternal. He recognized the echo of Seoryeon in her wide, storm-gray eyes—the same quiet strength, the same unyielding spark. "You're one of Seoryeon's disciples," he said, his tone gentle, as if coaxing a skittish bird from hiding.
The girl straightened a fraction, nodding vigorously. "Disciple Han Areum. The last one." Fresh tears welled in her eyes, glistening like jewels before the chill turned them to tiny frozen beads on her lashes. She blinked them away fiercely, as if ashamed of the weakness. "I kept the palace as she commanded... sweeping the paths, mending what I could, waiting... until you returned."
Seonin's brow furrowed slightly. "She told you I'd come?"
Areum swallowed hard, her gaze dropping to the snow at her feet. "She said you'd come when the snow stopped falling. That the north would know peace only when its guardian walked these halls again."
He tilted his head back, eyes tracing the sky overhead. For the first time in months—perhaps years—the perpetual veil of flurries had lifted. What remained was a vast expanse of gray, endless and unyielding, like a slate wiped clean but waiting for the next storm to inscribe its fury. "Then it seems I'm late," he murmured, a wry twist to his lips that didn't reach his eyes. 'Or right on time for whatever fresh hell fate has brewing.'
Areum bit her lower lip, worry etching deeper lines into her young face. "I heard the whispers from the traders down the mountain passes... that you fought them all. The Orthodox Alliance, the Evil Faction—both armies shattered on the plains of Haseong. Is it true? Did you... end it?"
Seonin considered her for a long moment, the wind tugging at the edges of his tattered robes. Truth was a slippery thing in the murim world, twisted by victors and survivors alike to suit their tales. "Truth," he said at last, his voice low and even, "is whatever the living choose to believe. The dead don't get a vote."
Her eyes darted to the sword at his waist, its sheath scarred from battles that had etched themselves into the leather like memories into flesh. "Then... what will you do now, Master? The sects—they're regrouping, whispering of a new crusade. Against you."
He stepped forward, his gloved hand brushing away a crust of snow from a nearby stone marker. It was a shattered pillar, half-buried, its surface carved with flowing script: Eun Seoryeon, Eternal Frost of the North. The letters seemed to shimmer faintly under his touch, or perhaps that was just the qi lingering in the air, her essence refusing to fully fade. "I came to see her home one last time," he said softly, more to himself than to the girl. "To say goodbye properly. Or maybe just... hello, in the quiet way the dead prefer."
They stood there in companionable silence, the only accompaniment the wind's low, mournful sigh weaving through the skeletal eaves of the ruined halls. It was Areum who broke it first, her voice sharpening with sudden alarm. "Master... behind you."
Whsssh—
The air split with a razor-sharp whine, like silk tearing under a hidden blade. A streak of silver qi lanced through the drifting motes of snow, aimed with lethal precision. Seonin tilted his head just enough—the attack whispered past his ear, close enough that he felt the heat of displaced air graze his skin. It buried itself in the frozen ground with a resounding thwack!, the impact splitting the stone beneath like an axe through rotten wood, sending fissures snaking outward in a web of destruction.
He didn't whirl around. Didn't even draw his sword. Instead, he exhaled slowly, the tension in his shoulders easing into resigned amusement. "I wondered," he murmured, pitching his voice to carry over the settling crunch of ice, "how long it would take for the Heavenly Swordsman to make her entrance. The north must feel emptier without your spotlight."
Boots crunched into the snow behind him, deliberate and unhurried, each step echoing with the confidence of someone who knew the world bent to their will. "Geomma Seonin," came a woman's voice, smooth and unyielding as polished steel fresh from the forge. "You tread on forbidden ground. The Alliance has sealed these ruins. Leave, and perhaps we'll call it mercy."
Only then did he turn, pivoting on his heel with the fluid grace of a man who'd danced with death too many times to startle easily.
Baek Ilhwa stood there, a vision of martial perfection forged in the fires of destiny. Her armor gleamed stark white, reinforced with intricate gold threading that caught the muted light like veins of sunlight trapped in cloud. The insignia of the Orthodox Alliance—a radiant lotus blooming from a sword—adorned her chest, polished to a mirror shine. Her long black hair was bound in a high ponytail, swaying like a banner of midnight silk, and her sword rested sheathed across her back, its hilt shaped like a crescent moon wreathed in flames. But it was her eyes that commanded the space—clear and piercing as ice over a rushing river, holding his gaze without a flicker of doubt or fear.
Seonin's lips curved into a faint, sardonic smile. "So the protagonist graces us at last. Tell me, Ilhwa—have the heavens dispatched their golden child to mop up the mess their 'justice' left behind? Or is this just another chapter in your legend, the part where the hero slays the lingering shadow?"
Ilhwa's expression remained a mask of serene resolve, though a muscle twitched faintly in her jaw. "I came to end the cycle you ignited, Seonin. The blood you've spilled—it's poisoned the land from the central plains to these frozen wastes. Lay down your arms, and face judgment in the light of day."
"The cycle I ignited?" He let out a soft laugh, the sound hollow as wind through empty halls, gesturing broadly at the desolation around them—the charred skeletons of beams, the frost-rimed corpses half-buried in drifts. "This endless war churned long before my blade tasted blood. Sects clawing at each other over scraps of power, calling it divine will. I was just the fool who picked up the pieces."
"You could've chosen peace," she countered, her voice steady but edged with steel. "Joined the Alliance, lent your strength to the righteous path. Instead, you turned it into a river of slaughter—orthodox and demonic alike."
He spread his arms wider, encompassing the ruins in a sweeping arc, his voice dropping to a growl that carried the weight of unspoken accusations. "And what of your righteous brethren, Ilhwa? The ones who marched here under banners of purity, torches blazing, spells flying? They burned this palace to the ground, slaughtered children barely old enough to hold a training sword—all because a whisper of 'demonic taint' clung to their qi from these mountains. Was that your idea of harmony? Or just another sin dressed in saffron robes?"
Her jaw clenched, the first real crack in her composure—a fleeting shadow of sorrow crossing her features, chased by a glimmer of guilt that she quickly schooled away. Resolve hardened her eyes like quenching steel in ice water. "Even if the Alliance erred—even if hands were stained that shouldn't have been— it doesn't absolve the demonic path. It twists everything it touches, Seonin: hearts, minds, the very flow of qi. You're proof of that. End this. Lay down your blade, for her sake if not your own."
He studied her then, his dark eyes unreadable pools reflecting the gray sky. The wind picked up, flurrying snow around their feet like restless spirits. Then, slowly, a smile touched his lips—not mocking, but weary, as if the weight of a thousand battles had finally bowed his shoulders. "You speak as if the sword is some separate beast, Ilhwa. A monster I can chain and walk away from. But it's just an extension of the hand... and the heart that guides it."
Her fingers flexed toward her hilt, the subtle shift of muscle telegraphing her intent. "Then there's nothing more to say. Only steel."
The snow at her feet erupted in a geyser of white, propelled by a surge of golden qi that lit the courtyard like dawn breaking early. Whsssh! Her sword cleared the sheath in a blinding flash, a comet-tail of pure, radiant energy screaming through the air toward his throat.
Seonin's blade met it mid-strike with a resonant clang! that vibrated through his bones like a struck gong. Sparks exploded between them, golden flecks scattering like shooting stars against the gloom, sizzling as they melted into the frost.
He pushed off the ground with a twist, his body coiling midair like a spring unleashed, robes billowing around him like the wings of a raven in flight. Thwack! His counter slashed downward, carving a furrow through the icy ground that sprayed shards of frozen earth in a deadly arc.
Areum yelped, stumbling back several paces, her arms flying up to shield her face from the flying debris. "Master!"
"Stay back!" Seonin barked over his shoulder, eyes never leaving his opponent. "This dance is between her and me. Find cover—now."
Ilhwa pressed her advantage without pause, her steps precise and flowing, each one a testament to years of orthodox training under temple bells and dawn meditations. "Your technique... the 'Heaven-Piercing Sword,'" she said, her voice even amid the flurry, circling him like a predator measuring its prey. "I pored over the scrolls in the Alliance archives. They say it draws from the depths of hatred, fueling each strike with the black fire of resentment."
Seonin chuckled, low and dry, parrying her next thrust with a casual flick that belied the effort it took to match her speed. "Then your scholars were as blind as the rest. Hatred's just the spark—it's grief that forges the blade."
Their swords clashed in a furious rhythm—clang! clang! shhk!—each impact sending shockwaves rippling outward, etching glowing scars through the snow and splintering loose stones into gravel. He could feel her qi pressing against his own: pure and searing, like the unfiltered blaze of a summer sunrise, infused with the disciplined harmony of the righteous sects. His countered in kind, a turbulent swirl of silver threaded with black—a tempest born of demonic raw power tempered by orthodox clarity, cold as a winter abyss yet fierce as a storm-lashed sea.
"Your blade trembles," Ilhwa observed between exchanges, her breath steady even as sweat beaded on her brow. She feinted high and struck low, forcing him to leap back. "Even now, in the heat of it, you doubt. The weight of what you've become... it's cracking you."
Seonin's riposte grazed her guard, drawing a thin line of red across her armored pauldron. "My blade trembles because it remembers, Ilhwa." Clang! He drove her back a step, his voice rising with each word. "It remembers the screams your 'righteousness' silenced in these very halls." Thwack! Another clash, qi blooming in a flash that lit their faces in stark relief. "Every tear that froze on her cheeks while your Alliance branded her a witch and drove the knife home."
"Enough of your ghosts!" Ilhwa exploded upward in a graceful arc, her sword gathering ambient qi into a blazing pillar of gold. The air hummed with building power, the light intensifying until it hurt to look upon. "Heavenly Sword Art: Ninth Radiance!"
The beam descended like divine judgment, a roaring cascade of light that scorched the snow to steam and shook the foundations of the ruins.
Seonin rooted himself, feet spreading wide for balance as he raised his sword horizontally, the flat of the blade catching the onslaught. Dark qi erupted from his core, surging upward in a protective crescent that pulsed with absorbed shadows. "Demonic Moon Formation."
The two forces collided in a cataclysmic BOOM!, the impact birthing a shockwave that howled through the courtyard like a vengeful spirit. Snow vaporized in an instant, stones shattered into powder, and weakened walls groaned before crumbling into fresh rubble. Areum cried out as the blast hurled her backward, her body tumbling across the ground until she fetched up against a fallen beam, dazed but unharmed.
When the churning dust and steam finally settled, both warriors remained on their feet—clothes torn, shallow cuts weeping blood that steamed in the refreezing air, chests heaving in unison. Their eyes locked across the scarred expanse, twin infernos of will unbowed.
Ilhwa's voice rasped through the haze, roughened by exertion. "Is this the legacy she would have wanted for you? To drown the world in your vengeance, until there's nothing left but echoes of pain?"
Seonin dabbed at the blood trickling from a split lip, his taste metallic and familiar. "She wanted truth, Ilhwa—a world stripped of the pretty lies that let sects like yours hide their claws. I'm just giving it form." He straightened, sword loose in his grip. "One grave at a time."
"She believed in you," Ilhwa pressed, her tone softening just a fraction, laced with an almost pleading edge. "Believed you could shatter the old ways, build something better from the shards. Not this... this pyre."
"I am changing the world," he replied, his smile faint and edged with sorrow. "I'm burning the rot out of it, layer by layer. Starting with the hypocrites who wear halos over their horns."
She stared at him, the wind whipping loose strands of hair across her face, and whispered, "Then you've already fallen farther than any demon. There's no light left in you to save."
"Fallen?" Seonin echoed, his laugh a tired exhale that fogged the air. "Perhaps. But if the heavens themselves conspired to shove us from the cliff—your Alliance with one hand, the Evil Faction with the other—are we truly falling... or finally breaking free of their leash?"
Ilhwa's eyes narrowed, and she surged forward without another word. Clang! Their blades locked, grinding against each other in a test of strength, hilts quivering as qi poured into the steel. Snow swirled into a frenzied vortex around them, caught in the maelstrom of their auras. Silver-black clashed with gold, the colors bleeding into the sky until the gray overhead seemed to pulse with stolen radiance, washing the world in hues of twilight war.
Tucked against the dubious shelter of a shattered wall, Areum huddled, her heart pounding like a war drum in her chest. She peeked through splayed fingers, wide-eyed at the spectacle. Master Seonin... you're clashing with the heroine of fate herself, she thought, terror and awe twisting in her gut like vines. The one the legends say will unite the sects, end the wars. But she's just... like him. Broken by the same world that chews up the rest of us.
The courtyard became a forge of fury, every exchange a hammer blow on the anvil of destiny. Clang! Sparks flew as Ilhwa's thrust glanced off his parry. Thwack! Seonin's riposte carved a smoking trench in the stone at her feet. BOOM! A mutual deflection unleashed a pulse that uprooted frozen clods of earth, hurling them skyward like dark confetti.
"Why won't you listen?" Ilhwa roared over the cacophony, her face flushed with exertion and frustration as she chained a flurry of strikes—high, low, feint to the side. "You cloak your grief in righteousness, but all you're doing is sowing the same seeds of suffering! More widows, more orphans—it's a mirror of the hell you rage against!"
"Perhaps," Seonin admitted through gritted teeth, deflecting her onslaught with economical twists of his wrist—shhk! shhk!—before snapping a kick that caught her mid-lunge, sending her skidding back across the slick ice. "But at least I know whose pain I'm echoing. Yours is blind—dressed up in prayers and edicts, but it devours just the same!"
She recovered in a fluid roll, breath pluming in the frigid air like dragon's smoke, her eyes alight with unquenched fire. "Then I'll carve that arrogance from your bones—leave you with nothing but the truth of your emptiness!"
Her sword began to hum then, a pure, crystalline tone that started low and built like a temple bell tolling the hour of reckoning. It rose in pitch, resonating through the air until the wind itself seemed to hush in reverence. Beneath her feet, the snow melted in a perfect circle, sigils unfurling from the damp earth like lotus petals blooming in ethereal gold—ancient runes of the Heavenly Sword Art, drawn from the deepest archives of the Alliance.
Seonin's eyes narrowed to slits, recognition dawning amid the adrenaline. "The Heavenly Lotus Descent. You've ascended to that realm already—the one where your strikes become judgment incarnate."
"And you," Ilhwa replied, her voice regaining its calm, almost serene quality as the sigils pulsed brighter, "the Blade Demon Immortal, have long since shattered the chains of mortality. Let's put it to the test, then. Whose truth will outlast the other?"
He raised his sword in a slow, deliberate arc, silver qi coiling at the tip like smoke from a hidden fire—alive, writhing, hungry. The ground quaked beneath him, fine cracks spiderwebbing outward from his stance, the earth itself protesting the gathering storm.
"Silver Demon Sword—Eighth Heaven Slash!"
Their battle cries rent the sky as one, a harmonious thunder that shook the mountains to their roots.
BOOOOOOM!
Light and shadow erupted in a helical spiral, gold and silver devouring each other in a frenzy of annihilation. The vortex climbed skyward like warring dragons locked in mortal coil, the raw force ripping through the last defiant tower of the Northern Palace. Massive stone blocks tore free, whirling through the air like deadly hail, shattering against the cliffsides with muffled booms.
Areum threw herself flat, arms over her head as fragments pelted the ground around her. "Stop! Both of you— you'll obliterate everything! The palace, the mountains—all of it!"
But her plea dissolved into the roar, unheard amid the apocalypse of their clash.
Through the searing blaze, Seonin caught a glimpse of Ilhwa's face—fierce brows furrowed, lips pressed into a determined line, her features a haunting echo of Seoryeon's own resolve in the face of inevitability. For a heartbeat, his swing faltered, the memory slicing deeper than any edge: her smile in the snow, soft and secret, a promise stolen too soon.
Ilhwa perceived the hesitation like a shark scents blood. She lunged through the maelstrom, her blade thrusting like a spear of dawn. Thwack! It pierced the veil of qi, the tip grazing his shoulder in a hot line of agony. Blood welled, spraying in a fine mist that hissed against the cold.
He clamped his free hand around her wrist in a vise of iron, halting her momentum inches from his chest. Their faces were close now, breaths mingling in the eye of the storm—his ragged with pain and fury, hers steady but laced with the same unspoken doubt. "You hesitate," he hissed, qi crackling between them like bottled lightning.
"So do you," she shot back, twisting against his grip, her eyes searching his for the man beneath the demon.
They sprang apart in a tangle of limbs and steel, circling once more in the refreezing snow, chests laboring, wounds throbbing in time with their pulses. Flakes began to drift down again, lazy and serene, as if the sky itself mocked their frenzy with its indifference.
Ilhwa spoke first, her whisper cutting through the hush like a drawn knife. "If the heavens won't punish your sins... then their will flows through me. I'll be the blade that ends this."
"And if they forged you as their instrument," Seonin countered, lifting his sword once more, the silver edge gleaming with fresh purpose, "then I'll shatter the forge itself. Heavens, sects—I'll cut them all down to reach the truth."
Their qi ignited anew, silver-black and gold flooding the firmament until the gray sky bowed to their colors, the world fading to a canvas of clashing light. Areum clutched at her chest, fingers digging into the fabric over her heart, hot tears carving salty paths down her cheeks only to crystallize mid-fall.
Master... please, she thought, a silent prayer lost to the gale. Don't die here. Not again. Not when we've only just begun to remember how to hope.
Whsssh—clang! BOOM!
The duel blurred into phantoms, the two figures winking in and out of visibility amid flares of power. Each collision birthed ripples that warped the air, the ruins shuddering as if gripped by the fist of some ancient colossus. Snow whipped into a blizzard of their making, veiling the chaos in white veils torn asunder by golden lances and silver scythes.
In the heart of the frenzy, Seonin glimpsed her again—Seoryeon's smile flickering in the swirl of flakes, her voice a phantom caress at the edge of hearing: Seonin-ah... even demons can love.
The words ignited something primal. He roared, a guttural cry born from the depths of his soul, channeling every ounce of buried fury into his swing. "Then watch me love, Seoryeon! Watch me burn it all for you!"
Their blades met in a final, apocalyptic union—an eruption of light and thunder that banished the encroaching dusk, turning the northern wilds into a forge of noonday blaze.
The mountain groaned in protest, ancient ice fracturing in jagged lines that spiderwebbed for miles down the slopes.
And as the glare swallowed the world whole, their silhouettes hung frozen mid-strike—one wreathed in defiant gold, the other in unyielding silver-black.
The world went silent.
Only the wind stirred, bearing the faint, overlapping echoes of two voices: one pleading for salvation, the other demanding release.
Then—crack!—the light splintered.
And the chapter ended there, suspended in the blinding brilliance of their clash, as heaven and earth held their breath to see who would fall first.