I Became the Villain Alpha's Omega (BL)

The woodpile behind the kitchen was down to three split logs and a handful of wet bark, and the sky had been gray since dawn.

Philia adjusted his stance on the damp dirt, wiped a streak of grease from his cheek with the back of his hand, and brought the hatchet down. The blade split the grain with a clean, dull thwack, sending two pale halves falling into the mud. He didn’t pause to catch his breath. He picked up another log, set it on the chopping block, and swung again.

It had been four years since Lord Antel’s regular aid last reached Havenwood’s front gate.

At first, Livya had tried to hide it. She’d cut the bread portions slightly thinner, stretched the vegetable broth with extra water, and told the younger kids that the butcher was just running late with their usual order. But you can only hide an empty pantry for so long. By the time winter rolled around that first year, everyone knew the truth: Lord Antel’s death meant Havenwood was entirely on its own.

Philia stacked the split wood under the narrow overhang of the roof, brushing chips off his patched sleeves. He was taller now, his wrists sticking out an inch past his cuffs, his arms leaner and stronger from carrying water buckets and hauling timber from the lower woods.

"Philia?"

He turned. Nora was standing by the back door, holding a steaming mug in both hands. She was a broad-shouldered woman with silver-streaked hair pulled back in a neat, sensible bun. She had arrived six months ago when Livya’s cough started keeping her in bed till noon, an old friend from the neighboring village who had shown up with a bag of dried herbs, a sack of flour, and no intention of leaving.

"She’s awake," Nora said softly, nodding toward the house. "Drink some of this tea first. You’ve been out here since the sun came up."

Philia took the mug, feeling the warmth bleed through his cold fingers. "How is she today?"

"Restless," Nora sighed, wrapping her apron tighter around her waist. "Her chest is tight again. I gave her the willow bark, but it’s only doing so much."

Philia nodded silently, taking a small sip of the bitter tea before heading inside.

Livya was sitting propped up against two thin pillows, her face pale and sunken against the dark headboard. She looked half the size she had been two years ago, her skin translucent enough to trace the blue veins beneath.

When she saw Philia, her mouth curved into a faint, weary smile. "Look at you," she rasped, her voice barely louder than the wind outside the window. "Always covered in dirt."

"Chopped enough for three days," Philia said, walking over to sit on the low wooden stool by her bed. He pulled a small object from his pocket and set it on her nightstand, a smooth, hand-carved robin with little notch marks for feathers. "Finished this last night."

Livya picked it up, her thin fingers tracing the rounded wings. "It’s lovely, sweet boy. The merchant in the square will give you three copper pieces for this, easily."

"Four if I tell him it’s birch," Philia said with a tiny, fleeting smile.

Selling the carved wooden toys in the village square had kept them in salt, grain, and oil for the past year. It wasn’t much, but every copper meant one more day they didn’t have to beg.

More than that, the market trips gave Philia a reason to walk into town every week. He’d spend hours sitting on the edge of the stone fountain, watching the traveling merchants unload their wagons, listening to the gossip of guards passing through from the main road.

He asked questions whenever he could do it without looking suspicious. He’d ask the fur traders if they’d heard anything about a burned estate, or if anyone remembered a fire from years back. He’d press the ironmongers for any scrap of news, strangers on the road, local crime, or anything unusual passing through.

Every single time, the answer was the same. A blank stare, a shrug, or a gruff warning to stop wasting their time.

"Nobody remembers a fire, kid," a traveling blacksmith had told him months ago, slamming a crate of horseshoe nails onto his cart. "Half the region burned in one war or another over the last decade. If it wasn’t a noble’s estate, nobody kept a record."

Nobody knew. Nobody cared about an old fire in the middle of nowhere. The only name anyone in the valley spoke with any reverence was Lord Antel’s, the great shield of the Crown, the noble hero who had given his life protecting King Alderon.

To the world, Antel was a saint. To Philia, he was a dead end. The only man who might have held the key to his past had taken his secrets straight to the grave, leaving behind a ruined family, an empty estate, and a country full of people mourning a hero.

Philia sat by the fountain for a long time that afternoon, watching the wood shavings drift across the cobblestones as he carved another block of pine. He didn’t even know what his own power was supposed to be, or if the strange, faint warmth that occasionally hummed beneath his skin was anything more than a trick of his imagination. He had no mentor, no family, and no clue where to start searching. Every path he tried to trace ended in ash and silence.

"Philia," Livya’s weak voice broke through his thoughts when he returned home later that evening. She reached out, her cool, dry hand resting over his knuckles as he set a fresh cup of water on her table. "Look at me."

He looked up. Her eyes were milky around the edges, but they were remarkably clear as she stared into his face.

"Nora will stay," Livya whispered, her breath catching slightly in her chest. "She promised me. The children... will be fed. Havenwood will go on."

"I know," Philia said softly.

"You were always searching for something... even when you were just a little boy, sitting by the window in silence. I see it in your eyes, Philia. You’re waiting for a door to open."

Philia swallowed hard, his throat tightening. He didn’t answer. He couldn’t. How could he explain to her that he couldn’t stop looking, because stopping meant accepting that his entire childhood had been erased for no reason at all?

Three weeks later, on a bitter night when the first light dust of snow began to settle on the wooden sill, Livya closed her eyes and didn’t wake up.

They buried her on the small grassy hill behind the house, right beside the garden she had planted three summers ago. Nora stood with her hands resting on the shoulders of the two youngest girls, her face stoic, though tears silently cut tracks down her weathered cheeks. Philia stood a few paces back, holding the spade he had used to dig the heavy, frozen earth.

He didn’t cry. The hollow space inside his chest had simply grown larger, colder, and quieter.

As the others slowly walked back toward the warmth of the kitchen, Philia remained standing by the fresh mound of dirt. He looked down at his hands, scarred from hatchet slips and wood-carving blades, and then out toward the distant, snow-dusted mountains to the South.

The only woman who had held him when he was a terrified, nameless orphan was gone.

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