The gold of the Nine Heavens was supposed to be a sanctified light, but to Seraphina, it tasted like copper and old lies.
She stood upon the Star-Catcher Platform, her silver pauldrons cracked and her white cape tattered from the three-hundred-year war she had just finished winning. Below her, millions of soldiers cheered the name of the man beside her. Lucian. Her Emperor. The man who had whispered promises of a shared throne while she was busy stitching her own flesh back together on a hundred different battlefields.
"It is finished, Seraphina," Lucian murmured. His voice was as smooth as the silk he wore, a stark contrast to the rough, scarred texture of her sword-calloused hands. "The ascension is prepared."
"We did it," she whispered, her chest swelling with a rare, fragile hope. She turned to him, expecting the warmth of his gaze.
Instead, she found the cold, sharp point of the Laws of Absolute Piercing.
Lucian's hand didn't reach for hers. It drove straight through her chest.
The sound was a wet, sickening thud that echoed louder than the cheering crowds below. Seraphina's breath hitched, a spray of hot crimson coating Lucian's perfect, unblemished face. She looked down, her violet eyes trembling, to see his fingers buried deep in her thoracic cavity. He wasn't aiming for her lungs. He was aiming for her Origin Heart—the source of her Saintess divinity.
"Lucian… why?" The word was a broken wheeze, bubbling through the blood rising in her throat.
"The Heavens are a jealous mistress, Seraphina," he whispered, leaning in so close their foreheads touched, an intimate parody of the lovers they once were. "They only allow one to ascend to true immortality. Two is a crowd. And frankly, your reputation as a War-Saintess is far too intimidating for the 'peaceful' era I intend to rule."
He twisted his hand.
Seraphina let out a scream that tore her throat raw. It wasn't just physical pain; it was the feeling of her very essence being shredded. She had given this man everything. She had slaughtered innocent sects for him. She had burned her own conscience to cinders to light his path to the throne. And now, he was harvesting her like a crop.
"Don't look at me with such regret," Lucian remarked, his voice devoid of even a shred of remorse. "You should be proud. Your heart will fuel my eternal reign. You'll be a part of me forever. Isn't that what you wanted?"
With a brutal, upward yank, he ripped the pulsating, golden heart from her ribs.
The world tilted. Seraphina fell to her knees, her hands clutching at the gaping, blackened hole in her chest. Her silver armor, once a symbol of her invincibility, felt like leaden weights dragging her toward the marble. She watched through a red-tinted haze as Lucian held her heart toward the sun. The sky fractured, a golden rift of divine energy opening to welcome him.
"Emperor!" A soft, melodic voice chirped.
Clara, the 'Merciful Saintess'—a girl who had spent the war hiding in the rear under Seraphina's protection—stepped forward. She looked at Seraphina's dying form with a flicker of disgust, as if she were a piece of refuse cluttering the beautiful platform.
"Is she dead yet?" Clara asked, stepping over a pool of Seraphina's blood to avoid staining her slippers.
"She is a nuisance," Lucian replied. "Get rid of her. The Abyss is hungry today."
Two of Seraphina's own palace guards—men she had promoted, men she had saved from the executioner's block—stepped forward. They didn't look at her. They grabbed her by her shattered shoulders and dragged her toward the edge of the platform.
The friction of the marble against her raw, exposed skin was a final, petty torture. Her blood left a jagged, dark smear across the white stone—a map of her wasted loyalty.
"Lucian!" she shrieked, the effort forcing a fountain of blood from her lips. "I curse you! I curse the Nine Heavens! If there is a hell, I will crawl out of it to rip the throat from your body!"
Lucian didn't even pause. He walked into the golden rift with Clara on his arm, the doors of divinity closing behind him.
The guards reached the edge. Without a word, they heaved her over.
The fall was an eternity of screaming wind and freezing dark. Seraphina tumbled through the clouds, leaving the light of the Solaris Empire behind. She plummeted into the Abyss of Eternal Night, a place where the laws of physics and mercy did not exist.
The pressure began to crush her. Her remaining bones snapped like dry twigs. The darkness felt like thousands of tiny, invisible teeth, gnawing at her soul.
I regret it, she thought, her consciousness flickering in the void. I regret every sword I swung for him. I regret every mercy I showed my enemies. If I had been the monster they called me, I would be on that throne. I would be the one holding the knife.
She waited for the end. She waited for the silence to take her.
Instead, a sharp, crystalline chime rang out in the center of her mind. It was high-pitched, digital, and utterly mocking.
[Ding!]
[Scanning Soul... Initializing Vengeance Protocol.]
[Compatibility with 'Holy War-Saintess'... 0%.]
[Compatibility with 'Ruinous Villainess'... 100%.]
A violet screen, glowing with a neon intensity that hurt her fading eyes, flickered into existence in the pitch-black void.
"Well, well," a feminine voice drawled, sounding incredibly bored and bitingly sarcastic. "Look at you. Ripped open, tossed out like last night's trash, and still trying to curse the sky. You really are a special kind of stupid, aren't you, Saintess?"
Seraphina's soul jolted with a spark of renewed fury. "Who... what are you?"
"I'm your new best friend, honey. Or your worst nightmare. It depends on how well you can move that pretty little waist of yours," the voice snickered. "Welcome to the 'Villainess's God-Tier Conquest System'. Your current status is: 'Completely Pathetic.' Do you want to die as a memory, or do you want to live as a catastrophe?"
[System Initialization: 10%... 40%... 100%]
[Warning: The Host is about to enter a 'Trash-Tier' mortal vessel. Brace yourself, Empress. Rebirth is a bitch.]
The violet light exploded, and for the second time that day, Seraphina felt her world shatter.