Chapter 9: A Mournful Night
The world beyond the Blackstar mansion had surrendered to hush, its vast expanse folding into the velvet arms of midnight, where even the city's restless pulse softened to a murmur. The moon hung sentinel in the star-strewn vault, their pallid glow seeping through the tall window of Lucian's chamber like a lover's tentative caress—cool, unasked for, spilling across the marble floor in pools of silver that danced with the sway of gossamer curtains. The night wind, sly and soft as a thief's whisper, slipped through the cracks, rustling the heavy folds of velvet and brushing them against the stone like secrets traded in the dark.
Lucian perched on the edge of his grand bed, still clad in the day's shadowed finery—coat unbuttoned, sleeves rumpled as if the hours had worn him more than any labor. His hands rested loosely in his lap, fingers interlaced like fragile bridges over an uncrossable chasm, pale against the dark wool. In the corner, the clock stood vigilant, a slender tower of brass and glass, its pendulum slicing time with a steady, unyielding tick—a rhythm that mocked the chaos in his chest, each second a pebble cast into the well of his unrest. Sleep had eluded him since the hill's quiet vigil, chasing him back to these walls like a specter unwilling to fade.
No matter how fiercely he shuttered his eyes, willing the darkness to claim him, the same fragment replayed—a relentless loop etched in the marrow of his soul.
Lucia's voice, gentle as spring's first rain. Her tone, a soft harbor amid the storm. Her question—innocent as a child's wonder, piercing as a blade slipped between ribs.
Who is Eun Seoryeon?
He exhaled then, a slow unraveling of breath that trembled on the edge of fracture, his palm pressing flat against his chest as if to still the wild flutter beneath—the ghost of a heart that remembered how to break but had forgotten how to mend.
That name should never have breached this realm, this tapestry of gilded thrones and scripted sins. Eun Seoryeon—a whisper too tender, too utterly foreign for a world drunk on lavish titles and divine decrees, where names were forged like swords in the fires of legacy: Celestia Silveria Van Lumina, radiant as a crown of thorns; Draven EverBlack Von Blackstar, unyielding as midnight's forge; Damon Altheron Blackstar, sharp as a heir's ambition. They rang with the weight of empires, carved to command awe and obedience.
But hers... ah, hers was a melody of quiet grace, fragile as the first flake in a winter's hush, carrying the simple beauty of untrodden paths—snow drifting lazy on a mountain breeze, the sigh of a life woven without the greed of gold or the chains of cruel fate.
Lucian eased back against the bedpost's unyielding frame, the wood cool and smooth as a confessor's palm, cradling his head in its indifferent hold. His eyes remained open, fixed on the ceiling's labyrinth of carvings—vines twisting into serpents, stars blooming from thorns—yet the grandeur dissolved before his gaze, yielding to visions etched deeper than any artisan's chisel.
He saw her.
Her smile blooming beneath the snow's relentless veil, warm as hidden fire against the frost's bite. Her voice threading through the blizzard's roar, a lifeline calling his name amid the howl. Her fingers, once strong as winter's grip, slipping from his blood-slick hold, warmth ebbing like a river claimed by the sea.
His chest constricted then, a vise of iron bands tightening around the hollow where his heart once thundered, squeezing until breath came in shallow, stolen sips.
'I said I'd stay by your side, Seoryeon... even in death,' he thought, the vow a silent echo in the chamber of his mind, heavy as the sword he'd buried in her throne's shadow.
A quiver touched his lips, faint as the wingbeat of a moth against glass—poised on the brink of a sob, yet no tears rose to breach the dam. His body knew the shape of ache all too well, the dull throb of wounds long scarred over, but weeping? That fragile release had been spent lifetimes ago, poured out in crimson rivers on distant fields.
He laughed once—quiet, fractured, a sound like dry leaves skittering across a grave. "So this is what's left of me," he whispered to the empty air, voice cracking like thin ice underfoot. "A man who can't even mourn properly—too hollowed out for the flood."
He shifted then, gaze drifting to the window's arched embrace, where the city's distant lights twinkled like fallen stars trapped in mortal coils—shimmering towers piercing the night like defiant lances, floating sky rails threading between them in luminous arcs, glowing spires clawing at the heavens with veins of enchanted stone. This world was a poem of beauty laced with sorrow, a canvas where wonder and waste bled into one: mana engines thrumming like the hidden pulse of gods, their neon glow tracing the capital's arteries in electric blue; holographic runes flickering across the skyline, weaving illusions of forgotten myths; beyond the veiled horizon, the low hum of arcane reactors, colossal hearts feeding the empire's insatiable hunger.
It was achingly familiar, this splendor—a siren song that had lured him once before, only to dash him on rocks of scripted doom.
His fingers dug into the fabric of his knee, knuckles blanching like frost on midnight petals, anchoring him against the tide of recollection.
The Chronicles of Eden's War: Crimson Fate.
The name surfaced unbidden, a title from a bygone storm that had swept the mortal realms like wildfire—the gacha harem dating sim, four glittering game installments unfurling chaos upon chaos, where players pulled heroes from ethereal banners, wove romances like spider silk, and toppled villains with a swipe of fate's finger.
And this... this was its cradle, the glittering genesis where it all ignited.
He had walked these paths before, lifetimes woven into one another's seams—his first awakening in this realm of mana and machinations, the body of Lucian Azrael Von Blackstar a ill-fitting cloak thrust upon a soul adrift.
But this return... it hummed with a different dissonance, a melody twisted by the scars of intervening worlds.
Lucian's gaze snagged on the small calendar perched upon his desk—a humble sentinel of vellum and ink, its pages crisp as fresh vows. The date stared back, merciless in its precision, a dagger poised above the heart.
Two months before the Academy Arc unfurled its banners. Two months before the tale's grand overture—the summons of destined lovers, the first betrayals blooming like nightshade, the romances kindled in shadowed alcoves. Two months before his scripted plummet into the abyss.
A soft, hollow chuckle bubbled from his throat, dry as autumn's last leaf. "Two months... before the wheel turns again, grinding all to dust."
He had been hurled back to the precipice, the starting line etched in the sands of inevitability—reborn in the shell of Lucian Azrael Von Blackstar, heir to shadows and scorn, the duke doomed to dust. The villain every tale's hero ground beneath heel, his fall the spark that lit the protagonists' ascent, a punchline in the grand comedy of fates.
'Why here? Why now?' The questions coiled in his mind like smoke from a snuffed candle, unanswered, taunting.
He could almost hear fate's cruel laughter ringing in the rafters—a low, mocking cadence, weaving through the carvings like threads of invisible malice.
Dragging a hand through his ashen locks, fingers tangling in the silver strands, he fixed on his reflection in the window's darkened glass—a ghostly double, pale skin luminous under moonlight, eyes black as the void between realms, hollowed by tempests no mirror could capture.
And yet... the man peering back was no echo of that first incarnation. This vessel had once housed the arrogant scion who reveled in shadowed power, who sneered at frailty like a king at beggars, who played at love as if hearts were mere pawns on a board. But the spirit animating it now bore the freight of centuries: pain etched in the grain of bones, blood that remembered the taste of snow, failures stacked like cordwood against the soul's besieged walls.
He was no longer Lucian the Villain, puppet jerked by plot's strings. Nor Geomma Seonin the Immortal, blade forged in defiance's fire. Just a weary wanderer, cursed to circle back, a thread frayed on eternity's loom.
Lucian's lips twitched, a ghost of amusement flickering like a candle in draft. "A villain... a hero... a demon in the frost—what's the difference anymore? Titles for the living, dust for the dead."
He leaned forward, elbows braced on knees, palm grinding harder against his chest as if to cradle the fragments within—to hold the shattered mosaic of a heart that had loved too fiercely, lost too completely.
'She's gone.'
The thought struck anew, merciless as a winter gale, slicing through the quiet defenses he'd built from silence.
'No matter the worlds I traverse, the veils I tear... she's gone.'
His throat closed like a fist around fragile glass, but still, the tears held back—trapped in reservoirs drained dry by grief's endless drought. His body knew loss as an old companion, the dull requiem of ruin playing on loop; his heart, scarred and steadfast, had learned to endure without the catharsis of salt and storm.
He longed to shatter the hush—to wail against the uncaring moons, to curse the heavens that spun such wheels of woe—but the well ran empty. He had emptied it all into the fray: wars waged in crimson tides, blades kissed by snow, the final vigil at a throne of frost.
Now, only quiet remained—a vast, echoing chamber where echoes of her laughter faded like smoke on the wind.
The breeze toyed with the windowpane then, a gentle rattle like distant applause, evoking the blizzard's savage symphony through the Northern Palace's shattered eaves—how it had howled that final night, bearing Seoryeon's last breath on wings of white fury.
He tilted his chin skyward, drinking in the moons' indifferent gaze, their light pooling in his eyes—those once-arrogant voids now as hollow as the spaces between breaths.
He wanted to weep, to claw at the numbness until feeling bled through. He wanted to feel—the raw burn of sorrow, the fierce ache of love remembered. But even grief had slipped its leash, abandoning him to this barren shore.
The wind veered anew, coiling through the curtains like a phantom's sigh. For a heartbeat, the moonlight wavered, and in its flicker, he could almost conjure her there—framed in the silver spill, her long tresses swaying gentle as snow adrift in zephyr's arms, eyes like storm-cloud mercy meeting his across the veil.
His lips parted on a breath caught in his throat. "...Seoryeon?"
But the vision dissolved, yielding to empty air—only the room's steadfast stillness and the clock's relentless cadence answering his call.
He exhaled, the sound fracturing into whisper. "Even your shadow's gone now... slipped beyond my reach."
He sank deeper into the hush, enveloped by the subtle thrum of a world that churned onward without pause—the empire's lifeblood pulsing in distant veins, airships gliding silent between luminous towers, arcane hearts humming lullabies to the indifferent night.
Outside, the spires gleamed on, oblivious to the fracture in their midst.
"...If there's still a god out there," he murmured, voice faint as motes of dust caught in moonbeam's grasp, "then at least let her forget me—in whatever peace she's found."
His hand fell from his chest, limp as a leaf surrendered to autumn's call.
The room deepened in chill, the quiet thickening like frost on a winter pane.
And as the night stretched on, Lucian sat in that stillness—motionless, hollow, eyes open but seeing nothing.
The clock ticked on. The moons rose higher.
And the night held its mournful silence, bearing witness to a soul that could no longer weep.