Chapter 3: My Lover Who Is the Villainess Is Dead (3)
The searing light from their final clash unraveled slowly, peeling away like the edges of burning parchment, leaving trails of fading embers in the air. When the world snapped back into focus, the courtyard of the Northern Palace lay transformed into a desolate scar on the mountainside—a fractured mosaic of splintered stone, upturned earth, and swirling drifts of gray ash that clung to everything like guilty secrets. Puddles of melted snow steamed in the cold, sending lazy wisps of vapor curling upward, while one entire section of the great outer wall had collapsed into a jagged heap of rubble, exposing the inner sanctum to the indifferent sky.
Geomma Seonin stood at the heart of the devastation, one knee pressed into the churned ground for support, his sword plunged deep into the frost to act as a crutch against the tide of exhaustion threatening to pull him under. Blood oozed from a deep gash along his ribs, tracing hot rivulets down his side to pool in the snow at his feet, turning the white to a vivid, accusing crimson. A dozen paces away, Baek Ilhwa knelt in a similar pose of weary defiance, her once-pristine white armor spiderwebbed with cracks like faults in flawed marble. Her breaths came in sharp, ragged bursts, fogging the air before her, but her eyes—those clear, unyielding eyes—remained fixed on him, a storm of confusion and reluctant respect brewing in their depths.
Neither spoke. Words felt too small, too fragile for the raw ache hanging between them. The only sound was the faint, ominous hiss of cooling qi, like the dying sigh of a forge after the hammer's final blow.
Then, cutting through the hush like a blade through silk, came the horn—a low, resonant wail that rolled down from the ridge beyond the broken gates. It lingered in the air, cold and mournful, echoing off the peaks as if the mountains themselves were weeping.
Seonin's head lifted slowly, his dark hair matted with sweat and flecked with blood falling across his vision. Through the haze of pain, he made out the first stirrings of movement: banners unfurling like ghosts from a forgotten tomb, pristine white silk emblazoned with the golden sigil of the Orthodox Alliance—a blooming lotus cradling a sword, symbol of purity forged in fire. They crested the mountain road in an inexorable wave, a tide of armored figures spilling downward with mechanical precision. Spears glinted like a forest of silver thorns under the gray sky; talismans affixed to their belts and pauldrons flickered to life, inscribed scripts glowing with divine incantations that hummed in the air. The atmosphere thickened, heavy with the sanctified weight of holy qi, a palpable pressure that made the skin prickle and the lungs tighten.
'So they come again,' Seonin thought, a bitter amusement flickering through the fog of fatigue. 'Like locusts to a feast, blind to the poison in their own honey.'
A faint, crooked smile tugged at his bloodied lips as he glanced sidelong at Ilhwa. "Poor Ilhwa," he rasped, his voice roughened by the strain but steady as ever, carrying over the crunch of approaching boots. "You summon reinforcements just for little old me? Is this the depths the mighty Orthodox Alliance has sunk to—needing an army to handle one battered demon?"
Ilhwa's eyes snapped wide, shock rippling across her features like a stone skipped over still water. She shook her head vehemently, strands of her ponytail whipping free. "I didn't call them, Seonin. By the heavens, I swear it. I came alone—to end this madness between us, not to drag the sects into another bloodbath."
The words hung there, brittle as cracking ice, underscoring the fragile truce their duel had briefly forged. But the world of murim cared little for personal oaths or fleeting understandings; it was a machine of sects and grudges, grinding forward without pause.
The front line of the reinforcements fanned out with practiced efficiency, encircling the courtyard in a ring of steel and resolve—monks in flowing saffron robes clutching prayer beads that pulsed with inner light, sword masters in lacquered armor drawing blades etched with purifying runes. At their head stepped the commander, a towering figure whose face was concealed behind a mask of polished bronze, its features an impassive echo of ancient guardians. His voice boomed like thunder trapped in a bell, amplified by a surge of qi. "By heaven's unyielding decree! The demon Geomma Seonin is marked for immediate execution. Slay him without mercy—raze these witch's ruins to ash and salt the earth!"
The phrase witch's ruins landed like a poisoned dart, twisting deep in Seonin's gut. It wasn't just an insult; it was a desecration, spitting on the memory of the woman who'd poured her soul into these stones. His fingers tightened around the hilt of his sword, and with a slow, deliberate rasp—shhk—he wrenched the blade free from the earth, snow and dirt cascading from its edge. Silver-black qi ignited along the length, flickering like bottled lightning beneath smoked glass, hungry and alive.
"Again," he murmured, the word a vow more than a question, his eyes hardening to chips of obsidian, "you dare call her a witch."
Ilhwa lurched to her feet, ignoring the protest of her battered body, one hand outstretched in desperate mediation. "Wait—hold! He's wounded, vulnerable. This isn't the time for—"
But the commander was beyond reason, his palm thrusting forward in a blur. BOOM! A concentrated blast of golden qi erupted from his strike, a battering ram of sanctified energy that warped the air with heat and light.
Seonin slid backward across the slick ground, his boots gouging twin furrows in the snow, his cloak snapping behind him like a tattered banner in a gale. The impact rattled his bones, reopening the gash in his ribs with fresh fire, but he absorbed it, channeling the momentum into a pivot that brought his sword arcing up in retaliation.
Then the flood broke. The rest of the force descended like a biblical plague.
Whsssh! Clang! Thwack!
Swords rained down in coordinated fury, arcs of steel whistling through the chill. Talismans detonated in sequence, birthing pillars of blinding light that seared the eyes and scorched the soul. The air itself screamed, rent by the unleashed torrent of orthodox techniques—waves of purifying flame, chains of ethereal binding, bursts of concussive force that shattered stone and bone alike.
Seonin became motion incarnate, a shadow weaving through the onslaught with the grim poetry of a man who'd long ago made peace with his grave. His blade sang its dirge—a low, resonant hum that cut through the cacophony like a lament for the lost. One step forward, one economical cut: clang! A sword master's guard shattered, the weapon cleaving in two with a spray of sparks. Thwack! A monk crumpled, his prayer beads scattering like forgotten beads of rosary across the bloodied snow, widening circles of red blooming beneath him.
Yet numbers were the great leveler, the silent assassin that felled even immortals. A spear lanced from the flank, punching through his shoulder with a wet crunch; he barely flinched, twisting the shaft to disarm its wielder before ripping it free in a gush of crimson. Another grazed his thigh, embedding barbs that burned like acid-etched runes; he snapped the haft over his knee and pressed on, limping but unbroken. Arrows sleeted from the rear ranks, their tips humming with blessed curses—thunk, thunk—burying fletchings-deep in his back, quivering with each labored breath he drew.
Pain layered upon pain, a symphony of agony that would have felled lesser men. But Seonin stood, a lone oak in the hurricane, his qi a defiant flare against the encroaching gold.
"Retreat! He's still standing—fall back and regroup!" a lieutenant cried, voice cracking with dawning fear, only for Seonin's blade to silence him mid-sentence, a silver arc erasing the plea in a mist of red.
Ilhwa watched from the periphery, her face a mask of horror, hands clenched into fists at her sides. This isn't justice, she thought, bile rising in her throat as the snow churned to mud under the press of boots and bodies. It's butchery. And I'm letting it happen. "Stop! All of you, stop this now!" she bellowed, her voice raw, injecting her own qi to carry it over the din. "He's no threat—not like this!"
But the soldiers were lost to zeal, their faces twisted in fervent prayer as they charged anew, staves whirling, blades flashing in litanies of light.
Clang! Boom! Whsssh!
A sword carved a shallow trench across Seonin's chest, parting flesh and spilling fresh blood that steamed against the cold. He caught the attacker's wrist mid-follow-through, crushing bone with a dull, sickening crack!, then used the limp, ruined hand as a grotesque shield to parry the next incoming strike. White-hot pain bloomed in his arm, but his grip only vise-tightened, hurling the man into his comrades like a discarded rag.
"You think pain will stop me?" he muttered through gritted teeth, more to the ghosts in his mind than the living. "I walked through hell itself to kneel at her grave. This... this is just the path back."
A dozen blades struck as one then, a synchronized storm of steel that bit deep—slicing across his arms, his sides, his legs. Sparks burst where qi clashed against qi, his robe shredding into blood-soaked tatters that fluttered like dying moths. His body became a canvas of wounds, red lines intersecting like a brutal map of endurance. Yet his feet remained rooted, unmoving, a bulwark between the horde and the silent, broken heart of the palace behind him.
You will not touch it again, he thought, the vow steeling his spine as the ruins loomed in his peripheral vision—the toppled arches, the frost-rimed hearths, the faint outline of the pine where he'd laid her to rest. Not one stone. Not while my heart still beats.
He drew a shuddering breath, and from his core erupted a roar of qi—silver-black fury uncoiling like a dragon roused from slumber. The snow around him detonated outward in a cataclysmic shockwave, a dome of rippling light that hurled the nearest attackers tumbling like leaves in a blizzard. Armored forms dented against unyielding stone, bones snapping with sharp cracks that echoed like thunderclaps. Men screamed, prayers turning to pleas as they skidded across the ground, weapons flying from numb fingers.
The commander reeled from the edge of the blast, blood spraying from his lips in a fine mist, his bronze mask cracked like an eggshell. "He's... he's burning his life force! The demon's trading his essence for power—kill him before he ascends further!"
It was true. The air around Seonin warped with impossible contradictions—shimmering heat warring with crystalline frost, his veins glowing faintly beneath translucent skin like rivers of molten silver. Each heartbeat thundered in his ears, a forge-hammer pounding against the anvil of his will, accelerating as he siphoned deeper from the well of his cultivation. It was a desperate art, one that devoured the self to fuel the storm, but desperation was an old friend.
Ilhwa pushed forward through the chaos, her hand raised high, golden qi flickering at her fingertips in a plea for parley. "Seonin! Enough—for the love of the ancestors, stop this! If you keep pushing like that, you'll tear yourself apart. Your meridians, your dantian—they can't hold it!"
He turned his head just enough to meet her gaze, his eyes distant and calm, as if viewing the world from the far side of a veil. "Then I'll tear apart standing, Ilhwa. Better that than on my knees to your 'justice.'"
"Why?" she demanded, voice cracking with frustration and something perilously close to empathy. "Why guard these empty ruins? The people are gone—Seoryeon's disciples scattered or slain. It's just stones and echoes now!"
"They are hers," he replied, the words simple, unadorned, carrying the weight of a lifetime's devotion. "Her laughter in the halls, her frost in the gardens, her light in every crack and corner. As long as I draw breath, no one—no one—will defile that memory."
The commander, recovering his footing, let out a guttural roar that shook the snow from nearby eaves. "Blasphemer! Defiler of the pure path! Face heaven's judgment and be purged!"
Golden qi coalesced above his palms, spinning into a volatile sphere that whined like a caged storm, building velocity until the air itself screamed in protest. With a bellow, he unleashed it—BOOM!—a comet of incandescent energy streaking forward, trailing sparks that ignited the drifts in its wake.
Seonin swung his sword in a rising arc, channeling the last reserves of his faltering core. "Silver Demon Art—Seventh Moon Cleave!"
The ground fissured beneath him, a yawning chasm splitting the courtyard as silver arcs erupted skyward, weaving into a lattice of razor moonlight. The forces met mid-air in a deafening KRAAASH!, gold and silver birthing a maelstrom that consumed the space between them—a tidal wave of clashing power that uprooted flagstones, vaporized snow, and hurled debris in a deadly cyclone.
When the blinding flare guttered out, the commander's body lay bisected in the epicenter, halves smoking and charred, his mask split to reveal eyes frozen in final shock. Seonin remained at the collision's heart, chest heaving like bellows, blood dripping in steady patters from a score of wounds that refused to knit.
But the ridge echoed with fresh footsteps—heavy, relentless. More banners crested the horizon, more figures in white and gold, their qi a swelling chorus that drowned out the moans of the fallen.
Ilhwa's fists clenched at her sides, nails biting into palms. "They won't stop, Seonin. Not until you're dust or they are. This is madness—the Alliance's pride devouring its own."
"I know," he said, wiping a trickle of blood from his chin with the back of his hand, leaving a smear like war paint.
"Then run!" she urged, stepping closer despite the peril, her voice laced with urgency. "Take to the peaks—live to fight another day. Vengeance isn't worth this!"
He shook his head, the motion sending fresh droplets scattering. "If I flee, they'll raze every last stone here, grind the foundations to powder to 'prove' their righteousness. Salt the earth so nothing grows in her name again. I won't allow it. Not while I can still swing a blade."
A new volley darkened the sky—arrows in a black cloud, tipped with incendiary seals that bloomed into holy fire mid-flight. Seonin raised his sword in a weary whirl, spinning it once in a defensive kata. Shhk! Shhk! Shhk! Crescents of silver qi bloomed with each revolution, shattering shafts in mid-air with bursts of splintered wood and fizzling light. But the barrage was thicker now, more relentless; some slipped the net, punching into his arms, his back, his unyielding guard.
Blood sprayed in fine arcs, warm against the encroaching numb. His knees buckled for a heartbeat, vision swimming, but he locked them straight, drawing on reserves that tasted of ash and iron.
"Poor souls," he murmured, almost pitying, as the next rank formed up, their faces pale masks of fanaticism. "You chase holiness down rivers of slaughter, blind to the shadows in your own mirrors. How far you've fallen from the light you preach."
He advanced then, dragging the tip of his sword behind him like a plow through fallow earth, leaving a glowing streak of qi in the snow—a trail of defiant intent. The wave met him headlong, spears thrusting, swords slashing in a frenzy of righteous fury.
Clang! Thwack! Boom!
A monk's staff shattered under his parry, the man screaming as the blade tore through wood and into flesh. Another assailant was flung aside by a point-blank burst of qi, crumpling against a ruined pillar with the force of a felled tree. Spears splintered like dry reeds against his guard; talismans ignited prematurely, their booms muffled into harmless flares by the vortex of his aura.
They carved into him again and again—slices across his forearms, punctures in his flanks—but each wound seemed only to stoke the silver storm enveloping him, the light thickening to opacity, swirling like the eye of a typhoon.
"Monster!" a soldier shrieked, voice breaking as he swung wildly, desperation cracking his form.
"No," Seonin whispered, the correction soft amid the roar, almost lost to the wind. "A guardian. Her guardian."
With a grounded thrust, he drove his sword into the earth once more. The mountain shuddered in response, a deep quake rumbling up from the depths. From beneath the snow erupted a forest of thin, needle-like blades—condensed qi forged into silver grass, sharp as shattered diamonds. They lanced outward in a whispering shhhhk!, impaling dozens in a heartbeat, bodies jerking like puppets with severed strings. Screams ricocheted off the cliffsides, a chorus of the damned echoing into the valleys below.
Still, the tide swelled. More poured from the passes, faces set in grim determination, qi flaring anew.
Ilhwa pressed a hand to her mouth, body trembling not from the cold but from the horror unfolding. The man before her was scarcely human now—skin ashen and pale, eyes aglow with inner luminescence, wounds gaping and unstaunched, qi leaking from him like steam from a cracked cauldron. Yet beneath the terror, she glimpsed the unyielding core: the same fierce love that had shielded Seoryeon, now a pyre consuming its bearer.
He glanced her way once, amid the fray, a ghost of a smile ghosting his blood-smeared features—tired, defiant, achingly human. "Tell your heaven, Ilhwa," he called over the din, voice steady despite the red bubbling at his lips, "that the North still stands. Her light... it endures."
The reinforcements regrouped with mechanical resolve, forming a tighter circle around the beleaguered courtyard, their combined qi flaring brighter than the dying sun—a radiant noose of gold closing in.
Seonin lifted his sword once more, fingers slick with his own blood, the hilt slippery but unyielding in his grasp. The wind howled through the skeletal ruins, carrying the distant, mocking peal of clashing steel from the lower slopes—more foes ascending, drawn by the horn's call.
He whispered to himself, the words gentle as a lover's farewell, "Come, then. Let's see how much righteousness it takes to bury one man's love."
The circle tightened.
Clang! Thwack! BOOM!
The Northern Palace vanished once more beneath a tempest of light and thunder, steel and screams.
And when the blizzard of qi finally settled, a single silhouette remained etched against the chaos—motionless, sword aloft, the snow at his feet blackened to a sea of ink—facing down an army that could not fathom why he refused to yield.
The battle was not yet over.