Transmigrated as the Villainess Princess - Chapter 262

Chapter 262: Seal (2)

The road through the Vale of Myrrh was silent.

Miraen, Aeliana, and Lira moved cautiously beneath the ancient boughs, their footfalls muffled by dew-soaked moss. Ever since they’d crossed through the Convergence Grove again, time felt wrong—slower in some places, skipping in others. Birds sang backward. Shadows rippled ahead of light.

Miraen paused and placed her hand on a mossy trunk. It was warm.

“The trees are remembering us,” Aeliana murmured behind her, eyes flickering silver. “They carry fragments of the echo.”

“The echo?” Lira asked.

“Each place we step now holds layers of what we’ve been. Where we’ve failed. Where we’ve triumphed. The boundaries are wearing thin.”

Miraen let the words settle in her bones.

Something was watching them. Not with malice—but with the weight of expectation.

As they reached the heart of the vale, the mist lifted, revealing a ruin—once a temple of the Old Flame, now overgrown and broken open to the sky. At the center stood a statue: faceless, but unmistakably Aeliana. One arm extended skyward, the other reaching toward an unseen twin.

Miraen stepped closer. “I don’t remember this.”

“You wouldn’t,” Aeliana said. “It’s not from our world. It’s from another thread. One where I chose differently. One where I burned the world to save a single life.”

Lira drew her cloak tighter. “Then why is it here?”

“Because the Veil no longer holds.” Aeliana gestured toward the sky. “The stars you see aren’t ours. That one?” She pointed at a blood-colored sun barely visible through the clouds. “That’s the Wound Star of Serevan. It belongs to a world that was devoured.”

Miraen felt her stomach twist.

“How many of these echoes are bleeding through?”

“All of them,” Aeliana whispered. “And she’s drawing them closer.”

“She” needed no name. Elydrith, or whatever remained of her, was building something. A chorus of grief. A lattice of broken selves.

“She doesn’t want to destroy this world,” Aeliana continued. “She wants to merge them. All of them. Collapse every version of us into a single song of mourning.”

Lira sank to her knees, pale. “If she succeeds—”

“Then there’ll be no difference between dream and memory,” Miraen finished. “No distinction between truth and regret.”

For a moment, none of them spoke.

Then Aeliana stepped into the ruins.

“There’s a way to stop it,” she said. “But I can’t do it alone.”

She knelt before the statue, her fingers touching the base of the stone. The air shimmered, and a sigil appeared—one they hadn’t seen since the Eclipse Spire.

“The Sigil of Reflection,” Miraen breathed.

“Three are needed to awaken it,” Aeliana said. “Three with blood tied to the ember.”

“I thought there were only two of us,” Lira said, eyes narrowing.

Aeliana’s eyes flicked toward the trees.

And Elyon stepped out of the mist.

Older. His eyes lined with shadows. A deep scar slashed across his jaw, and the light in his gaze flickered like dying coals. But he was still Elyon.

Miraen ran to him, throwing her arms around his shoulders. “You’re alive.”

“Not entirely,” he said, voice hoarse. “But enough.”

Lira looked to Aeliana. “How long have you known?”

“Since I returned. He’s been tracking the collapse from within. Walking the worlds between. His soul is fragmented—but not lost.”

Elyon approached the sigil, and placed his hand on the stone. “Let’s finish this.”

Aeliana followed.

Miraen hesitated—but then stepped forward, adding her palm to theirs.

Light erupted.

The world shattered.

—

They found themselves in the Lattice.

A space between realities. Neither dream nor substance.

Here, every version of themselves lived in overlapping echoes. Miraen saw her other selves—some warriors, some mothers, some tyrants, some dead too young. Aeliana wept as she passed a child version of herself still holding a broken music box. Elyon gritted his teeth as he stepped through an echo of himself standing alone on a battlefield of bone.

They moved through memory and what-could-have-been.

Toward the center.

Where Elydrith waited.

She did not look as they remembered.

She was neither woman nor wraith, but a being composed of countless reflections—shifting, flickering. Her face changed with every heartbeat. One moment, she was a girl clutching a book of stars. The next, a burning queen. Then, a hollow shell.

“You came,” she whispered, voice layered with a thousand timbres. “You always come. You always fail.”

Miraen stepped forward. “Not this time.”

“There is no ‘time,'” Elydrith said. “Only recursion. You kill me. I return. You forget me. I remember. You split me. I become more.”

“You don’t have to be this,” Aeliana said, her voice breaking. “We can stop this cycle.”

Elydrith laughed—a sound like shattering mirrors.

“I am the cycle.”

Elyon unsheathed his blade.

But Miraen held out a hand.

“No.”

She turned to Aeliana.

“You said she wants to merge us all. To unify every version. What if we give her what she wants—but not with despair. With wholeness.”

“You mean…?”

“Yes. A harmonic convergence. But on our terms.”

Aeliana nodded. “I can anchor it. But it has to come from choice. From all of us.”

Elyon stepped beside them. “Then let’s rewrite the ending.”

They linked hands.

And reached into the Lattice.

They called their echoes.

One by one, across the infinite layers, versions of themselves stepped forward.

Miraen the mage. Miraen the mother. Miraen the dying child.

Aeliana the conqueror. Aeliana the healer. Aeliana the broken.

Elyon the traitor. Elyon the priest. Elyon the forgotten.

Each version offered a piece of themselves.

Each fragment added light.

Elydrith screamed, the sound shaking the fabric of the Lattice. “You dare offer mercy?”

“No,” Miraen said softly. “We offer remembrance. You were never meant to carry it all alone.”

Aeliana stepped into Elydrith’s light—and instead of rejecting her, embraced her.

And the reflections stilled.

For the first time in eons, the echo was silent.

And then, it sang.

A song of mourning.

Of endings.

Of beginnings.

The Lattice unraveled.

—

They awoke beneath the stars.

Real stars.

The sky was whole.

The rivers ran clear.

And when Miraen stood, she saw only one shadow—her own.

Aeliana rose beside her, blinking against the new dawn. “We’re still here.”

Elyon groaned and rolled to his side. “Barely.”

They laughed.

For the first time, truly laughed.

They had not destroyed Elydrith.

They had healed her.

She was gone now—not erased, but at peace. Her chorus had become a melody—woven into the stars.

And though they knew threats would come again—of war, of power, of corruption—they faced it not as fragments.

But as one.

Whole.