The Devil Is The Villainess (✔)

Side Story #1: That Day, Those Eyes

SIDE STORY 1
THAT DAY, THOSE EYES

Note: This special side story will revolve around Caelus's perspective. Enjoy reading, moonlits!

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The sky was dark, but it wasn't night. Above me, swirling clouds crackled with bolts of violet and silver, casting a dim, ghostly glow over the vast empire below.

Genovia, sprawling and silent, lay at my feet, yet it felt further away than ever, almost alien to me. I could see the shimmering rivers, the mountain ranges piercing through the horizon, and the distant lights of cities dotting the land like faint stars.

All of it was mine, or so I had once thought.

In the distance, an echo began-a whisper carried by an unfelt wind, calling my name in a language that resonated with something buried deep within me.

The whisper grew louder, more insistent, morphing into words I could barely comprehend yet somehow understood.

I reached out, trying to grasp the intangible, to summon the unseen source of this strange voice, but my hands closed around nothing but air.

My memory always began in silence, stretching into the endless void, heavy and suffocating.

I was simply a human, an ordinary man in a world that seemed colorless and uninspiring compared to the one that had come before. Even then, though I tried to ignore the weight of my past life, it kept clinging to me.

Because I wasn't just Caelus, I wasn't just a man living in a quiet city with an ordinary job.

Beneath that unassuming exterior, I carried the soul of another Caelus, one who had once ruled over mysteries and wielded powers beyond mortal understanding.

In those first years, I tried to lead a normal life, convincing myself that the memories of my past existence were just remnants of vivid dreams. But I couldn't deny them. Every night, there will be snippets of my other life would flash before me.

I remembered holding secrets that no one else could touch, and most of all, the silent, soul-crushing loneliness that came with absolute power. Those memories haunted me like shadows at dawn.

One day, the weight of it all drove me to write. I poured my recollections into a book, attempting to make sense of the labyrinthine memories of my past life.

I called it the Elysium. I crafted a narrative about the Genovian Empire, and without realizing it, I began to write not only my story but an entire world-the world I had once called home.

It was in this quiet life, years after I thought I had severed myself from the past, that a mysterious figure found me. She appeared before me as a fragile old woman, though her eyes gleamed with a wisdom that reached far beyond any mortal life.

She seemed kind, her presence gentle and almost motherly, yet something about her gaze made me feel small as if she could see through me down to my very soul.

This was the Divine Deity herself, the creator of everything. She carried with her the book I wrote and crafted and even a spell over it.

It was a binding spell, one that intertwined my soul with the world I had penned, a world I had only thought to preserve as a relic of memory. And just like that, the book became my gateway back to Elysium.

I felt the pull, an overwhelming force that blurred the edges of reality, and I was swept into the very world I had created.

When I awakened in the world I believed I lived in before, it was as if I had stepped into my own mind, but everything was tangible, painfully real.