Ascension Of The Villain-Chapter 269: Anatomy of Dark Magic

"Oh, how amusing…" Vyan flipped through the pages of Transcendence. "... and how utterly useless."

This book on time travel was utterly irrelevant to his current problem—yet somehow... fascinating. The kind of uselessly extraordinary thing one only stumbled upon when not searching for it.

He flipped a few more pages, lips pursed. "I'll forget you exist in a week if I don't take you with me."

The library's wards would never allow it. The books here weren't meant to be owned or taken. They were meant to be feared. Studied. Revered from a distance.

But then again…

"Well, that's why I put the librarian to sleep, isn't it?"

He slipped the book carefully under his coat, the enchantments woven into the fabric concealing the trace of it. He resumed his search. Finding useful books on dark magic was his original goal, after all.

———

It was far past midnight. It was raining.

The kind of slow drizzle that painted the skies a sorrowful grey and made the world feel like it was quietly mourning. The steady rhythm of raindrops tapped against the windows like a lullaby sung by the storm itself, weaving a cocoon of calm around the room. Inside, the fire crackled low in the hearth, casting flickers of orange against the walls. It was warm. Safe.

Almost too gentle for the kind of truth Vyan was reading.

He sat upright on the bed, legs stretched out and back against the headboard with a mound of plush pillows, a heavy book of forbidden knowledge resting open on his hands.

Iyana lay beside him, her head nestled gently against his thigh, hair falling in silken waves across his lap. She had drifted to sleep hours ago, lulled by the rain and the quiet intimacy of his presence. Vyan occasionally ran his fingers through her hair, slow and soothing, as his eyes continued to scan the dark ink on the pages before him.

Dark magic.

He had always misunderstood it. Like many others, he assumed it was simply magic used with bad intent—meant to summon demons, to curse, to corrupt.

But this book, this cursed tome… it unveiled something far more grotesque. Dark magic wasn't just used for evil. It was fed by it. It needed it.

This chapter is updat𝙚d by freeweɓnovel.cøm.

It thrived on the destruction of the soul.

Not just any soul—suffering souls. Those steeped in pain, loss, despair so deep that even light refused to reach them. That was how the affinity for dark magic was born—not from talent, not from training, but from the bottomless void carved inside one's spirit.

It started with internal ruin. A soul desperate enough would unconsciously cry out for darkness—and darkness always, always, answered.

But that was only the beginning.

Dark magic demanded more. It thrived on sacrifice. The shedding of innocent blood. The extinguishing of life. The greater the pain inflicted on others, the greater the power harvested.

Unlike pure magic, which bloomed from the soul's essence and whose affinity was fated, black magic had no such beauty. It was parasitic—stealing power from the life force of others. It consumed. And the deeper one fell into it, the more it demanded.

To summon a demon, one's blood was never enough. It required at least three lives. Three hearts to stop beating. Three people to become fuel for the spell. And to bind a demon, to command it, one had to meet its appetite—feed its grotesque desires with offerings, often in the form of flesh, fear, or entire lives. The more powerful the demon, the heavier the price.

Vyan shivered.

His mind instinctively wandered to Sienna.

How many had she sacrificed? How many lives had she stolen to gather the monstrous strength she now wielded? The thought made his skin crawl. All those knights who had served Iyana—loyal, protective, brave—who disappeared without a trace after quitting… They weren't missing.

They were used.

They were murdered—turned into offerings to feed the hellish creatures she served.

And Iyana… his Iyana… had borne the blame. Branded a witch. Feared. Shunned. Hated. Not because she did anything wrong, but because Sienna needed someone to cast her shadow on.

Iyana was only able to prove her innocence after achieving Aura—which someone with dark magic could never.

His heart clenched as he looked down at the woman curled up against him. She'd shifted slightly in her sleep, instinctively wrapping her arms around his waist and nuzzling her face closer to his stomach. Her expression softened in slumber, the sharp coldness she wore while awake replaced with something heartbreakingly peaceful. Vulnerable.

Vyan leaned down and pressed a kiss to her forehead. A gentle, wordless promise.

She stirred, barely, and snuggled even closer.

He returned to the book, his eyes dragging over the notes—on the only known counter to dark magic.

Purification magic.

An ancient and blessed force that belonged solely to the imperial bloodline.

With just one touch, it could strip dark magic down to its bones, cleanse corruption from flesh, and burn demons out of existence. It was divine. Absolute. A single strike of it could unravel an entire ritual of dark power.

But…

Only one person in the empire possessed it.

Easton.

And Easton had married a dark witch.

Vyan's jaw clenched, fury rising like a tidal wave just behind his ribs. How could he stand her presence? How could he share a bed with a woman reeking of death and decay, whose magic fed off murder?

Was he ignorant? Or was he… complicit?

Vyan didn't know. Or had no need to know.

What he did need to know was something that continued to haunt him like a ghost gnawing at his spine: Why was he so sensitive to dark magic?

It wasn't just mild discomfort or sensitivity. It was pain. Crippling pain. The kind that clawed at his insides, that made his vision blur and his breath stagger when he got too close to it. It wasn't normal.

It wasn't even manageable.

So he searched. Relentlessly.

The mechanics of dark magic weren't simple, but Vyan was no stranger to complexity. He had spent hours, days dissecting its structure. The nature of dark magic was inherently parasitic—it fed on fear, desperation, the fractures of the soul. It wasn't like pure magic, which existed to harmonize with its wielder.

Dark magic dominated.

It latched on to flaws, widened them, then made a home in the very marrow of your being.

But that still didn't explain why Vyan's body rejected it like poison in the blood.

Was it because he was an Ashstone? Were all Ashstones this vulnerable?

He didn't know. He couldn't know. Not when the only other Ashstone left alive was Aster. And Aster... Aster was in no state to answer anything.

That meant Vyan would have to do it the hard way. He'd have to dig into his family's personal history, through dusty, half-burned records and biased court documents that wanted the Ashstones erased more than remembered.

With a quiet sigh, he looked down at the woman sleeping peacefully beside him—his anchor in this maddening world.

Gently, he shifted Iyana's head onto the pillow, tucking her in with almost ridiculous care. He lingered a second longer than necessary, watching her breathe in her sleep. Then, gathering his books, he slipped away into the cold corridors, his mind heavy with the burden of answers he did not yet possess.

The home library was silent at this hour, the kind of silence that didn't comfort—it questioned. Challenged. Taunted.

If there was a pattern, a legacy, a curse—anything—it had to be buried somewhere in the story of his family. But as the hours dragged on, and he flipped through page after page filled with the names and fates of long-dead relatives, his shoulders only grew heavier.

Nothing.

None of them had been documented as having sensitivity to dark magic. No notes on unusual weaknesses. No cautionary tales. No signs of vulnerability.

Just stoic, stubborn Ashstones, etched in ink and glory. Cold like the stone they were named for.

Was it just him, then?

Was he the broken one in a family of ghosts?

He let the book drop shut with a muted thud and dragged a hand down his face, frustration biting at the edge of his control. His jaw clenched. The back of his throat burned.

He tried to trace it back, combing his mind through the brittle terrain of memory. His childhood? No. There was no exposure to dark magic back then. He had been under his father's suffocating seal from the age of five—mana-less, useless. Before getting separated from his family, he was always sheltered and protected. So that couldn't be it, either.

Sienna hadn't even entered his life until his teenage years, and even then, he kept his distance.

Mostly.

Then it hit him.

Like a slow, cruel tide dragging in the pieces of a long-forgotten nightmare.

The possession.

The day Sienna controlled him.

The day she took over his body and turned him into a weapon.

The day everything started.

The day she used his body to attack Prince Izac.

The incident that painted a target on his back. The event that birthed this bloody spiral of revenge.

His eyes widened slightly.

That was it.

That was the root.

When she possessed him, when her cursed mana surged through his sealed body—a body that had no defenses, no mana of its own to fight back—something must have snapped.

His mana circuit, starved and fragile under the seal, had never handled power before. And then came her, flooding it with darkness.

He was nothing but an empty shell at the time, and the sudden, violent presence of her dark magic must have left behind a fracture. A scar. A permanent vulnerability.

But even that explanation didn't satisfy him.

Should a simple nick in his circuit be enough to reduce him to this?

To have him fighting for breath just standing near dark magic?

To drag him to the edge of death if exposed for too long?

He clenched his fists, the anger bubbling in his chest—not rage at anyone else, but the helplessness. The cursed feeling of being at the mercy of something he couldn't even see.

The mana circuit wasn't like a bone you could splint. It wasn't a wound you could stitch. It wasn't something you could bleed or burn out.

It pulsed beneath the surface, ethereal and unseen. Only those proficient with magic could even sense it. And healing it?

He scoffed aloud.

"What the hell am I supposed to do… patch it with good intentions and fairy dust?" he muttered bitterly.

Another dead end.

And he couldn't afford one.

Not now.

Not when the day of reckoning loomed ever closer.

Not when the prediction from the novel still whispered his death—his end—on that very day.

He'd planned every piece of his revenge down to the blood and the breath. His plan was perfect.

But this weakness… this crack in his soul—it could be the thing that unraveled everything. It could kill him even after he won.

Vyan exhaled shakily, gripping the edge of the desk.

He wasn't afraid of dying.

But he was afraid of leaving her behind.

Of Iyana waking up to an empty side of the bed, not knowing it would stay empty forever.

Of her blaming herself.

Of her carrying that grief like she carried her sword—every day, without rest.

He couldn't let that happen.

He wouldn't.

"No more dead ends," he whispered to himself.

He would tear open the heavens if he had to. Learn forbidden magic. Rewrite the rules of mana circuits. Sacrifice pieces of himself, if needed.

Because if death came knocking again, Vyan would not answer the door.

Not when she was still waiting for him to return.

———

The next morning, Vyan was jolted awake with the dramatic burst of doors.

"Vyan! There has been a prophecy!"