I Became the Villain Alpha's Omega (BL)

Chapter 288: The Ice That Bought Time

"What do you mean, Princess Iryna has been poisoned?!"

The doors of the royal study rattled against their frames as King Alderon slammed his palms flat onto the desk. The monarch’s face was a map of sheer disbelief, his breathing ragged as he stared at his son.

Yerel stood perfectly straight before his father, his posture unyielding despite the absolute disaster currently unfolding under their roof. "The ballroom has been successfully sealed, Father, and the guests are being escorted to the palace’s private guest wings as we speak. But the immediate crisis is not in the hall. It is in the eastern wing. Princess Iryna collapsed, and the state of her condition is... catastrophic."

King Alderon didn’t waste another second demanding details. With a sharp wave of his hand, he signaled his personal elite guards, and the two royal figures sprinted down the corridors of the palace, their heavy capes billowing behind them.

The moment they threw open the doors to Princess Iryna’s private guest chamber, the heavy, metallic stench of fresh blood hit them.

The room was in total, frantic disarray. Princess Iryna was still wearing her gorgeous silk royal gown, but the once-pristine fabric was now ruined, drenched in deep, sickeningly dark crimson. She was lying across the bed, her entire body violently convulsing as another agonizing spasm wracked her frame.

"Iryna! Stay with me! Look at me!" Prince Gillian roared. The usually easygoing, charming Solaric prince was entirely unrecognizable. His formal doublet was torn at the collar, his hands and sleeves completely covered in his sister’s blood as he desperately tried to hold her steady against the pillows.

Beside the bed, the elderly royal physician was trembling, his hands shaking violently as he tried to mix a neutralizing potion, only for the glass vial to shatter against the silver basin.

"Step aside!" one of the mages commanded, pushing past the panicked physician. He raised his ornate staff, his hands glowing with a dense gold aura as he channeled a high-grade imperial purification spell directly over Iryna’s chest. "Purge!" The holy light washed over the princess, attempting to forcibly isolate and extract the foreign substance from her bloodstream.

But the moment the magic connected with her skin, the golden light violently turned a sickening, corrupted shade of pitch-black. A harsh, concussive backlash of raw mana snapped outward, shattering the crystal components of the staff and sending the head mage stumbling backward into his assistants, his palms severely blistered from the magical rejection.

"Explain this at once!" King Alderon demanded, striding over to the bedside.

The physician instantly dropped to his knees, his forehead practically touching the floor. "Y-Your Majesty! We have tried every high-grade purification spell and universal counter-toxin in our reserves! But... but the poison isn’t behaving like any known substance! It is actively rejecting our magic! Her internal organs are being destroyed faster than we can heal them. If she continues to lose blood, she will not survive the hour. She... she won’t survive the hour!"

"No!" Gillian snarled, his eyes flashing with desperation. He lunged forward, fiercely grabbing the chief physician by the shoulders of his robes and hauling him to his feet. "Save my sister! Do your job! If she dies in this place, I will personally ensure your entire lineage burns to the ground!"

"Prince Gillian, control yourself!" Yerel snapped, stepping forward to pull the Solaric prince back.

Suddenly, a terrifyingly sharp, piercing whistle echoed through the room.

Iryna’s eyes flew wide open, completely vacant of their usual vibrant light, turning entirely, starkly white. A massive, violent surge of raw, elemental energy suddenly erupted from her core, radiating outward in a freezing shockwave that made the wood of the bedposts groan under the sudden drop in temperature.

Crack crack crack

"What is happening?!" King Alderon barked, instinctively throwing an arm up as a layer of heavy frost rapidly spread across the floor, creeping up the legs of the bed.

Before anyone could move, a thick, crystalline layer of solid, shimmering ice violently surged over Iryna’s body. Beginning at her fingertips, it raced up her arms, encased her torso, and wrapped completely over her face and hair. The violent convulsing stopped instantly. The desperate, shallow gasps fell completely silent. She lay there, covered in a thin layer of shimmering ice.

"What... what did you do to her?" Yerel asked, his voice dropping into a rare, breathless whisper as he stared at the frozen princess.

Gillian slowly let go of the physician’s robes, his chest heaving as he stumbled back against the wall, staring blankly at his sister’s frozen face beneath the ice. "I didn’t do anything... This is Iryna’s magic. It’s a subconscious defense mechanism that activates entirely on its own only when her life is in imminent danger. Her magic is freezing her body from the inside out to preserve her system, halting the progression of the toxin."

After a moment, he reached out and gently touched the ice covering her cheek.

"But it’s only temporary. The poison is still in her body, frozen right alongside her cells. Her mana reserves are draining rapidly just to maintain this shell. The very second her magic runs out and the ice melts..."

A silence fell over the chamber. No one spoke. The absolute helplessness of the empire’s mages and physicians hung heavily in the freezing air, the only sound being the faint, rhythmic hum of the unstable magical ice covering the princess.

Then, the heavy silence was violently shattered by a commotion out in the corridor.

"Step back! You do not have..."

"Get out of our way."

"No, you can’t get in! Stand down.... ah!"

The frantic, muffled protests of the imperial guards guarding the door suddenly cut off into sharp groans of pain. Before King Alderon or Yerel could even demand to know who was daring to breach security, the golden latches clicked violently, and the double doors were abruptly thrown wide open.

The imperial guards at the entrance instinctively reached for their swords, but they were smoothly bypassed as the doors swung wide open. Zarius calmly strode into the royal chamber, his towering frame stretching a long shadow across the frost-covered floor, with Cherion and the others following closely behind.

"Zarius? Cherion?"

"Forgive the intrusion, Your Majesty," Zarius spoke calmly. He stepped to the side, his eyes taking in the frost-covered room before landing on the frantic Solaric prince. "Given the weight of the situation, we simply could not sit idly by in the guest quarters. We were deeply worried about Princess Iryna’s condition."

Cherion didn’t look at the King, nor did he look at Yerel. He stepped right past Zarius’s protective shoulder. scent of blood, the shattered vials, and the thick magical ice covering the princess were the first things that greeted them.

"How is she?" Marielle asked.

"She isn’t ’alright,’ Lady Marielle," Gillian replied, his voice completely hollow, stripped of every ounce of its usual royal warmth. He didn’t look up from the bed, his knuckles turning white where they pressed against the frost-bitten mattress. "She is dying."