Prologue

‘Cold.’

That was the first thing I felt a deep, bone-aching chill that bit through flesh and soul alike. I gasped as frost-laced air filled my lungs, sharp and heavy, the kind that burned on the way in. When I opened my eyes, the sky above burned crimson, streaked with violet clouds. The sun was setting, beautiful and terrifying all at once.

Snow stretched endlessly around me, a pale wasteland beneath a sky of steel. The wind howled across the frozen plains, carrying with it the scent of pine, iron, and something older, the faint feel of aura woven into the very air. The landscape stretched endlessly with jagged mountains in the distance.

"Where am I?"

Unfamiliar voice and unfamiliar setting.

"Who am I?"

A pulsating pain consumes my head every time I try to remember who I was. I pushed myself upright, trembling. My breath came out in visible wisps. My body, it didn't feel like mine.

"I need a mirror or something"

Scanning around, I see a frozen pond in the distance and rushed over before bending over to see my reflection.

"This is...no...why?"

Eyes widen, the realization struck me harder than the wind. Medium-length hair parted in the middle, pale as winter frost, crowned his brow, and framed his face with effortless elegance. His lavender eyes glowed with an ancient stillness. Handsome beyond mortal measure, he carried his silence like a blade, sharp, and unreadable.

"Kain....Valemont?"

Standing up and staring at my hands as I open and close them. Smooth without any callouses. A dark, fur-lined coat trimmed with silver thread. And beneath it, a dull ache in my chest, not from the cold, but from memories that weren't mine.

"Valemont"

The name surfaced in my mind like a ghost. The noble family that ruled the northern territories of Valeris. A world of magic and fantasy. A world I'd only ever known through a story.

'Lightbringer'

The webnovel I used to read. Where the protagonist would rise from nothing, forge bonds with multiple heroines, and conquer all. I had loved it once with the slow romance, the grand battles, the way the world came alive.

But this wasn't fiction anymore because I wasn't the protagonist. I was Kain Valemont, the bitter, envious son. The one who despised the hero for his strength. The one who would be cast out and die nameless in the snow.

A cruel twist of fate. To wake up as a villain destined to fall. But as I looked toward the distant fortress on the icy cliffs. The ancestral home of House Valemont, its spires cloaked in frost, something inside me hardened.

Kain had been weak, arrogant, shallow.

But now, he was me.

And I wasn't going to die the way he did.

I won't follow your script. I am Kain now and I plan to make the most of it."

"Not this time."

The storm raged on, but I stood still, the snow gathering at my feet. Somewhere deep within this frozen world, destiny shifted, for the villain who refused to play his part had finally awakened.