The Villainess Wants To Retire

Chapter 579: Meeting pt 2

Soren gave his orders. He didn’t ask for opinions; he dictated reality. The dukes and the duchess were to return to their respective provinces immediately.He outlined a new structure: informant networks that bypassed local governors, temporary administrators to oversee the rebuilding of the scorched earth, and a massive restoration plan for the disrupted trade routes.

He was handing them back a functioning machine, but one that now required their constant, vigilant stewardship.

"The empire owes you a debt— Your Majesty," Konstantin muttered, his voice gruff. It was a rare admission of respect from a man who usually preferred to grumble in the corners. "What you did in thirty days... most men couldn’t do in thirty years."

"The empire owes itself better governance than to need saving in the first place," Soren replied flatly. "Let us not repeat the failures that allowed the rot to spread. Now, go. I expect reports by week’s end."

The council accepted the dismissal. They departed with a newfound sense of purpose, the weight of their tasks serving as a distraction from the lingering fear of the cracks in the sky.

When the heavy doors finally closed behind the last of the dukes, Soren stepped out into the corridor and found Eris waiting for him.

She wasn’t leaning against the wall; she was standing perfectly still, her arms crossed, looking entirely too awake for a woman who had been through what she had.

"I was hoping," Soren said, a smirk tugging at his lips, "you would still be in bed. I seem to recall giving you an order to rest."

"Shut up," she said, though there was no bite in it.

Soren’s mouth quirked into a genuine smile.

He started to say something back, then caught himself and blushed hard again, instinctively covering his mouth with his hand to hide the expression.

"How reassuring," a dry voice croaked from behind them. Aldwin appeared from the shadows of a nearby alcove. "To see the Emperor and Empress in such perfect accord. As ever. It’s almost enough to make an old man believe in romance."

Soren shot him a look that could have curdled milk, but Aldwin merely looked back with the expression of a man who had said exactly what he intended and regretted nothing.

"The library," Eris said, cutting through the tension. Her voice was sharp, all business. "We talk there. Now."

The Mage Academy library was its usual self, a labyrinth of towering shelves and the smell of ancient dust and vanilla.

But Ellyn’s corner was a disaster zone. There were more papers than usual, sprawling across the desks and spilling onto the floor, a testament to a month of frantic, desperate research.

Ellyn saw them enter and nearly jumped out of his skin. He saw Soren, specifically the Emperor, the man who had authorized his existence at the academy, and his hands went immediately to his glasses, adjusting them with a frantic, nervous energy.

"Y—Y—Your—Your Majesty," Ellyn stammered, his face turning a shade of red that rivaled a sunset. "I am, that is to say, it is an honor. I have, we have been working very hard on the assignment. Her Majesty’s assignment. Which is also, in a sense... yours."

Soren looked at the boy, his gaze moving over the scattered charts and the scribbled notes.

"This is Ellyn," Eris said simply. "He is very good at his work, and somewhat less good at talking when it matters. Don’t frighten him; I need his brain intact."

"I can see he’s been busy," Soren said, his voice surprisingly soft. He looked at the research, his eyes narrowing as he saw the diagrams of dragon hearts and elemental ley lines.

"So... What have you found?" Soren asked, bypassing the ceremony.

Ellyn took a breath, the researcher in him finally winning out over the flustered boy. He began to pull papers from the mess, his hands steadying as he dove into the data.

Eris took the lead.

She laid out everything they had discovered while he was gone. She spoke of the dragon research, the realization that the heart was the primary target, and the theory of opposite elements being used to cage a god.

She detailed the discovery of ice mages in Solmire, a fire kingdom, and the haunting question of why they would help their ancestral enemies cage their own elemental deity.

Aldwin added his insights where she left gaps, the two of them moving through the explanation with a seamless ease. It was clear they had been building this together for weeks.

Soren listened with the complete, terrifying attention he usually reserved for battle maps. He processed the information at a speed that made Ellyn’s head spin, asking only a few, precise questions.

"Ice mages in Solmire," Soren repeated, his voice low. "Working with the fire kingdom... against their own people."

He looked at nothing, his mind clearly racing through the geopolitical implications. If the mages of the world were turning against the gods that granted them power, the war wasn’t just physical, it was existential.

"Now you," Eris said, her eyes fixed on his. "Tell us what happened in the void."

Soren hesitated. He looked at the three of them, Eris, the man who had been a father to him, and the boy who had become his wife’s shadow. He decided to tell them most of it.

He left out the fragments of glass. He didn’t speak of the shards that seemed to show Eris’s life, but with a different, darker ending.

He didn’t understand them yet, and they felt too private, too dangerous to share without knowing if they were true or merely a trick of the darkness.

But he told them of the crack. He described the way it spread like a disease through the sky.

He told them of the void, the cold suspension, and the mechanical, grinding sound that seemed to underpin the universe. He told them of the entity, the light without a face that wore the shape of a man.

Eris suddenly remembered what Orrian had told her about Soren wondering into the void.

Soren reached the end of the tale, his voice tight. He looked at Eris, his eyes dark with the memory of the entity’s final words.

"Before it sent me back," Soren said, "it told me that everything was wrong. It said..." He paused, the words tasting like ash. "It said, ’This is all wrong. But do not worry. It shall all be fixed.’"

The room went deathly quiet.