I Became the Villain Alpha's Omega (BL)

Cherion stalked down the underground tunnel, his boots going tap-tap-tap like a nervous tap dancer trying to stay subtle.

He had expected another dead end or a collapsed wall, but instead, the hall gradually sloped upward until it met a narrow, winding set of stone stairs. He took them one at a time, keeping one hand pressed against the cool wall for balance as the flickering light of the wall torches faded into the quiet gloom behind him.

At the top of the stairs stood a heavy wooden door fitted with simple iron hinges.

Cherion paused, holding his breath to listen. No voices. No footsteps. Just absolute, dead silence on the other side.

He carefully turned the brass handle and pushed. The door swung open smoothly, without so much as a squeak, letting in the faint smell of paint thinner and wet varnish.

Cherion peeked out first, scanning the shadowy room from the threshold before fully stepping through.

The space was completely empty. High, arched windows lined the far wall, though they were entirely covered by heavy, dark velvet drapes, allowing only thin slivers of diffuse daylight to cut across the dust motes in the air.

He let the wooden door click shut behind him, turning around to figure out where he was. The moment he looked back, he blinked in mild surprise. The door he had just walked through wasn’t a standard entryway at all, it was seamlessly built into the back of a massive, floor-to-ceiling wooden bookshelf, completely invisible unless you knew exactly which row of faux leather spines to pull.

A secret passage behind a bookshelf, Cherion thought with a dry, internal smirk. Classic. It’s always the damn bookshelf.

He walked quietly over to the heavy curtains to figure out where the hell he actually was. Finding the edge of the curtain, he carefully pulled it aside just half an inch, peeking down through the tall glass panes.

His breath hitched in his throat.

Below the window lay a manicured courtyard filled with trimmed hedges, white marble fountains, and patrolling royal guards pacing around in matching white-and-gold uniforms. Beyond the garden walls rose the distinct, towering spires of the royal palace compound.

What the hell? Cherion dropped the curtain, stepping back in complete disbelief. The tunnel goes straight into the palace grounds?!

Then he caught himself and internally rolled his eyes. Why the hell was he even surprised?

This was the royal grounds, the entire place was practically a slice of Swiss cheese. When you build a mega-palace for paranoid royals, you don’t just build rooms, you build a hundred panic rooms with sneaky little getaway pipes attached. The place was definitely crawling with secret passages so a few of them could bolt the second a coup started.

Since he was already trapped here, Cherion decided he might as well figure out what kind of room he had landed in. He turned back around, his eyes sweeping over the space properly for the first time.

The entire room was cluttered with art supplies. Wooden painting stands of various sizes stood scattered across the hardwood floor like a miniature forest. Stacks of blank canvases leaned against the walls, while small side tables were piled high with ceramic jars, mixing palettes, and dried paintbrushes.

Dozens of finished paintings were hung on the walls or displayed on stands.

Cherion stepped closer to one of the completed canvases sitting on an easel near the center of the room. It was a landscape painting, a wide, breathtaking view of a mountain range at sunset.

He leaned in slightly, spotting a small, elegant signature painted in dark ink at the bottom right corner of the canvas: Ald.

Cherion tilted his head, his brows raising in genuine surprise. Ald? As in... Alderon?

He looked around the room with a fresh wave of skepticism. The King is a master painter? Wow. If he ever gets overthrown or decides to abdicate, he could literally make a fortune selling paintings in the market.

He moved deeper into the gallery, his curiosity getting the better of him.

The landscape paintings slowly gave way to animal studies, vicious hunting hounds, soaring falcons, and majestic stag elk painted with terrifying realism. But as Cherion walked further down the line of easels, the subject matter shifted again.

Portraits.

First thing to hit his eyes? A giant portrait of Alderon himself. Naturally. The man had a whole gallery, so why not start with his own face?

Cherion then stopped in front of a medium-sized canvas, his jaw tightening slightly. Staring back at him from the frame was a portrait of himself, or rather, the original owner of this body. He was painted sitting near a garden window, wearing a formal high-collared coat, his expression soft, distant, and pale.

Right next to it hung a larger, more elaborate piece. It depicted two people standing side by side in a sunlit garden: OG Cherion and Yerel. Yerel had a hand rested gently over Cherion’s shoulder, both of them smiling like old, inseparable companions.

Ha. Either the OG Cherion had begged the King to paint this, or the King himself had insisted on capturing his son and the guy he’s pretty sure was supposed to be his future son-in-law. Either way, the emotional investment in this room was dangerously high.

A heavy, uncomfortable weight settled in Cherion’s chest. Seeing the old connections of this body laid out so clearly, and painted with such obvious, haunting care by the King himself, made his stomach twist in knots.

Stepping backward to escape the uncomfortable sight, Cherion’s boot clipped the leg of another stand right behind him.

He stumbled slightly, his shoulder bumping into a massive canvas mounted on a heavy frame. The sudden impact knocked a thick cloth draped over the top of the painting, causing the heavy fabric to slide down to the floor with a soft shhhk.

"Damn it," Cherion muttered under his breath, quickly reaching down to grab the dropped drape before anyone noticed the mess.

He pulled the fabric back up, intending to toss it right back over the canvas, but the moment his eyes hit the exposed portrait beneath, his hands froze entirely in mid-air.

The cloth slipped right through his numb fingers, hitting the floor again.

Cherion locked eyes with the painting, and his blood went completely ice-cold.

It was a full-length portrait of a woman. She was standing in a dark, velvet-lined balcony overlooking a moonlit night, wearing a red gown trimmed with black lace. Her posture was regal, her jaw sharp and unyielding, and her long, obsidian-black hair fell in loose waves over her shoulders.

But it was her eyes that made Cherion’s breath catch completely in his chest.

They were a striking, unmistakable shade of deep, burning red, vivid and piercing against her pale skin.

Cherion knew that face. He’d seen it before, hanging in one of the halls of the Valtrane estate all the way up North.

It was the late Duchess of Valtrane.

Zarius’s mother.

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