Chapter 1. The Villainess’s Prisoner

It was the early hours of the morning, and a heavy downpour was falling.

Hurried footsteps echoed through the western storeroom of the Bailia Grand Temple.

Marian climbed the cracked, uneven stairs with barely contained urgency. The maid following close behind struggled to keep up with her pace.

At last, Marian stopped in front of a worn, weathered door.

Boom.

Lightning split the sky beyond the broken window. Her chest rose and fell in deep, unsteady heaves.

‘All of this happened despite your sacrifice…… I’m sorry, Ella.’

A flash lit up Marian’s face, hollow and on the verge of collapse, then swallowed it back into darkness.

“Your Highness, why have you come here?”

“That’s none of your concern. Stay here.”

Marian gestured firmly at the maid and stepped inside.

The door swung shut, and the rusted hinges let out a sound like a scream.

Ella lay on the old bed, asleep in the grip of a fever.

Marian crossed to her sister in a single stride. Words full of sorrow slipped through her chapped, dry lips.

“Ella……”

The child who had never been allowed a single step outside this dark place because of her. A pitiful soul who had withered away little by little as Marian’s holy power grew stronger. And yet, through all of it, the one family member who had loved her without wavering.

“Ella, open your eyes! Now!”

Hearing Marian’s voice after so long, Ella forced her eyes open with great effort.

“……Sister?”

She looked up with a dazed, confused expression.

Marian stroked her sister’s cheek and smiled a sad smile.

“I came to say goodbye, Ella.”

Her voice, deliberately bright, trembled at the edges.

Marian had grown terribly thin. The dark grief sunken beneath her hollow eyes made her look nothing like she once had. The red veins threading through her eyes made her look like the one who was ill, not Ella.

“Goodbye…… what do you mean?”

Ella asked again, uneasy. Marian leaned over her, her cold upper body pressing close. When Ella’s frail hand came to rest on her trembling shoulder, the sobs Marian had been holding back finally broke free.

“Ugh, huh……”

She pulled her sister tighter, her sister who only patted her back without understanding, and bit down on her lip.

“Sister, what’s wrong.”

Ella sensed something was deeply wrong and asked, but Marian gave no answer.

She could not bring herself to tell her sister that she, the saintess of the Grand Temple and crown princess of the Becarto Empire, was to be executed come morning.

“Ella…… I’m sorry. For everything.”

Instead, she was going to leave Ella one last gift. The thing she had always wanted to give but never could.

What are you sorry for? Even as Ella asked, Marian raised her hand and covered her sister’s eyes.

“There’s no time, Ella.”

Voices outside the door called for the princess. The hand over Ella’s eyes filled with a cold, sharp current of power.

Ella began to convulse.

Her body, nothing but skin and bone, lurched and shook. A strangled, choking sound tore from her throat.

Still, Marian did not stop. The blue light pouring from her hand only deepened.

“Live your own life, Ella. Don’t let yourself be trapped in the cage of sainthood the way I was.”

The moment those last words left her lips, Ella’s breathing stopped completely. The erratic beating of her heart, the exhausted rasp of her breath. Gone.

The pale light filtering through the foggy window fell across Ella’s ashen face.

Watching her, Marian finally broke. Tears streamed endlessly from eyes stained with guilt.

“Ugh…… I’m sorry…… Ella.”

Just then, urgent knocking came again from outside the door.

Marian wiped her tears, and a quiet, hollow sigh escaped between her teeth. It was pathetic, being chased even through her final farewell.

“Your Highness. You must go now.”

At the maid’s urging, all expression drained from Marian’s face.

Before leaving that room, she looked at Ella one last time. Her sister’s face was so identical to her own, and all the more heartbreaking for it.

Her purpose fulfilled, Marian walked willingly toward death.

“Let’s go.”

Her cold voice faded, and the empty space she left behind filled with a terrible, hollow darkness. As though nothing had ever been there at all.

***

A night where moonlight shattered white across the ground.

Leaning on that pale light, a woman stepped into the shadowed forest path.

A strand of gold-thread hair drifted out from beneath the black hood that covered half her face.

“If my memory is right, this should be the forest.”

The grass was damp with night dew.

Each quiet step her small feet took was swallowed by the wet earth, aiding her careful, soundless movement.

Before long, she reached the heart of the Hooly Forest, a place said to permit entry only to those who carried holy power.

The moment she stepped inside, faint particles of light covered the ground like scattered glass.

The forest path that had been dark only moments ago brightened as though the darkness had been a lie. It was a rare and extraordinary sight, like someone had poured out a handful of tiny glowing beads.

She paused briefly, stared at them with cold eyes, then crushed them underfoot without mercy.

“……Disgusting things.”

The light particles shattered and scattered beneath her contemptuous steps.

These were said to be the tears of the chief god Solea. Any citizen of the Becarto Empire who revered that light as sacred would have been unable to imagine such blasphemy, but the woman kept grinding them beneath her feet as she walked forward.

After pressing deeper into the forest for some time, the lights that had been grating on her nerves disappeared entirely.

Her footsteps stopped at the same moment.

“Yes, this is the place.”

The bloodstains on the ground before a small cave confirmed it.

The woman pushed her hood back and revealed her face.

Moonlight seeped through the tall trees and fell across her features. Pale blue eyes framed by long lashes caught the light and glimmered strangely.

“I found it.”

Her official name was Mariella Tinsley.

The one and only saintess of the Becarto Empire, servant of the chief god Solea, and the crown prince’s official fiancée. In five months, she would become the crown princess, remembered as a symbol of unity between the temple and the imperial family.

More precisely, those were the titles belonging to ‘sister Marian,’ the true owner of this body.

‘There’s no time, Ella.’

Before mounting the scaffold, Marian had poured every last drop of her holy power into Ella and left. She had used a forbidden technique, one no saintess should ever perform, to turn back time. It was an act no different from surrendering her eternal rest. She must have known that a soul which touched the forbidden would be torn apart and scattered, suffering in pieces.

‘That fool……’

Thanks to Marian, who had sacrificed even her soul, Ella had returned. Back to the spring day exactly one month after her engagement to the crown prince of this wretched Empire, four months before the wedding.

‘Fallen saintess.’

‘Reincarnation of a witch from hell.’

‘The villainess who will bring the Empire to ruin.’

The words spoken as Marian’s head was severed rang sharp and clear in her ears.

Marian, who had been Ella’s other half and something close to a god to her, had been murdered like that. Brutally, in front of a prepared audience, with a maliciously staged performance and a carefully written script.

On that final night, fading in and out of consciousness, the voice Ella had heard from Marian had been unusually tender.

‘Live your own life, Ella. Don’t let yourself be trapped in the cage of sainthood the way I was.’

I’m sorry, sister.

‘That wish, I cannot grant you.’

Having seen all of Marian’s memories, Ella could not follow that last request. Every time the terrible things done to her seeped back into memory one by one, she wanted to spit blood.

‘Foolish Marian…… losing your heart to someone like that.’

The crown prince, her husband, had been a bastard who denied even the child in Marian’s womb. A piece of trash who turned his back on her and raised his hand against her, all because his consort said so. The crown prince’s consort, trusting in the crown prince’s love, had committed one cruelty after another and ultimately killed Marian’s child.

The despicable imperial family and nobles had looked down on her, mocked her, and refused to accept her to the very end, all because she was a saintess of common birth.

And then there were the high priests and clergy who had abandoned the saintess, and the citizens of the Becarto Empire who had laughed at Marian as though she were entertainment……

Inside this vast hell, there had been no one on Marian’s side.

‘The Becarto Empire will disappear from the map forever.’

The Grand Temple, the imperial family, this godforsaken Empire…… and perhaps even the chief god Solea, who had stood by and watched it all happen.

Every last one of them was complicit in Marian’s murder.

‘I will sweep them all away.’

Swearing her revenge, Ella willingly chose to become the villainess. The greatest villainess who would bring the Empire to ruin. She had come here today to lay the first stone of that foundation.