Transmigrated as the Villain Between the Heroine and the Villainess

The fight between Kaelen and Selvara was not just a duel. It was a disaster.

Golden light crashed against black ice. The ground between them looked wrecked. One side was covered in dark frost that made the air cold. The other side was burned black, with small embers where the hero's power hit.

Clang!

Their swords met, and a shockwave of pure energy exploded from the impact, kicking up a cloud of ash and snow.

Kaelen was a roaring fire. His Battleborn Will skill was now fully active. His body glowed with a power that was terrifying to watch. Every swing of his sword was stronger than the last. He was a hero in his prime, a force of nature that could not be stopped.

"You are fast," he grunted, pushing her back with his superior strength. "But you cannot win. My power grows with every second. Yours will fade."

Selvara was a frozen shadow. She did not meet his strength with her own. She flowed around it. She was faster, more skilled. Her blade, coated in a thin layer of black ice, was a blur of deadly precision.

She did not answer him with words. She answered with action.

She spun away from his powerful push and slammed her hand on the frozen ground.

Crack!

The entire battlefield of black ice shattered. A thousand sharp, dark shards flew into the air, a deadly storm aimed right at the hero.

Kaelen's eyes went wide. He did not try to block them all. He just stood there, his golden aura flaring.

The ice shards hit his glowing body and melted into steam, hissing as they touched his power.

Pss. Pss. Pss.

"Your tricks are useless against me," he said, walking through the last of the ice storm, completely unharmed.

Selvara just smiled, a cold, empty smile. 'He is a fool,' she thought. 'He thinks my ice is just frozen water.'

Kaelen suddenly stopped. He looked down at his hands. The golden glow around them was flickering. He felt a strange coldness spreading through his body, a deep, tired feeling in his bones.

"What… what did you do?" he asked, his voice losing some of its power.

"My ice does not just freeze," Selvara explained, her voice a low, chilling whisper. "It drains. It feeds. It takes your strength and makes it mine."

The hero looked at her, a new kind of fear in his eyes. He was fighting a monster that grew stronger by feeding on his own power.

He roared, a sound of pure, frustrated rage, and charged again. He was still stronger, but the gap was closing.

While the titans clashed, another battle was reaching a fever pitch.

"I have seen through you, Elvara," Seraphina said, her voice sharp as she sent a wave of sharp crystals across the ground.

Elvara created a wall of soft, white light, and the crystals shattered against it.

"I pity you," Seraphina continued, her words like poisoned darts. "You had a terrible life, I know that. But you don't understand anything. You just float from one disaster to the next, waiting for someone to save you."

"That is not true," Elvara said, her voice trembling slightly.

"Isn't it?" Seraphina sneered, pressing her attack. "First your family treats you like a burden. Then Azrael treats you like a slave"

Her words hit their mark. Elvara's calm expression began to crack. She had always been told she was a burden. She had always felt weak.

"Your life is your own doing, Elvara!" Seraphina's voice rose, becoming cruel. "You are making it a hell, not anyone else! Your stupidity, your weakness… it will only bring you more tragic ends!"

With a final, desperate scream, Seraphina put all of her remaining power into one last attack.

The ground around Elvara exploded. It was not just a wall, or a spear. It was a dome. A massive, thick cage of pure, glittering crystal that shot up from the ground and closed over Elvara, trapping her completely.

It was her ultimate move. Her Crystal Prison.

'It's over,' Seraphina thought, breathing heavily. 'Now you will listen.'

But she was wrong.

For a moment, there was silence. Then, a soft, white light began to glow from inside the crystal cage. It grew brighter, and brighter.

Cracks began to form on the surface of the crystal. Thin, spiderweb lines of light.

A voice echoed from inside the cage. It was no longer soft and sad. It was cold. It was angry. It was not Elvara's voice.

"Weak?" the voice whispered. "Stupid?"

The light inside the cage exploded.

BOOM!

The Crystal Prison shattered into a million tiny pieces. In the center of the explosion stood Elvara.

But she was different.

BWOOOOOMP! BWOOOOOMP! BWOOOOOMP!

A new sound, a series of three loud, deep horns, echoed through the entire forest. It was a signal. The twelve hours were up.

Isolde, who had just finished her own fight, looked up, a genuinely excited smile on her face. "Ah," she said to herself. "The final phase begins now. One last hour."

The fighting all across the clearing stopped for a second. Everyone heard the horns. Everyone knew what they meant.

But Elvara did not seem to hear it. She was no longer in control. Her power was.

Azrael, who had been watching the hero's fight, felt a cold chill run down his spine. He looked over at Elvara, and his heart stopped.

'No,' he thought, his mind racing. 'Not now. It's too soon. This was supposed to happen at the end of Act Two… The story… it's accelerating.'

Elvara's feet were no longer touching the ground. She was floating a few inches in the air. Her long, silver hair was whipping around her, moved by a wind that was not there.

And her eyes… her eyes were gone. They were just two balls of pure, white, blinding light.

"You want to see weak?" the voice that was not Elvara's whispered. It was a strange, echoing sound that seemed to come from everywhere at once. "I will show you power."

She raised her hand. The air above the clearing seemed to rip open. For a moment, the smoky sky was gone, replaced by a million glittering stars.

Points of pure starlight began to fall from that black sky. They did not fall to the ground. They stopped in the air, right above the heads of everyone in the clearing.

One point of light appeared above Kaelen's head. Another above Selvara's. Another above Azrael's. Every person on the battlefield, friend and foe, had a tiny star floating above them.

Then, all at once, the stars shot towards Elvara. They circled around her floating body, faster and faster, a whirlwind of pure, cosmic energy. The tiny stars began to combine, to merge, until they formed a single, massive, blinding ball of power.

It was a bomb made of starlight. Her Stellar Wrath. Uncontrolled. Unfiltered.

High in a hidden observation post, a senior professor, the man in charge of the test's safety, shot to his feet.

"What is that energy reading?!" he yelled at a technician. "That is not the power of a student! That is a catastrophe!"

He moved to intervene, to teleport onto the field and stop the attack. But he knew, with a sinking feeling in his stomach, that he would not be fast enough.

Seraphina stared, her face pale with a new, deep terror. This was not a skill. This was a god's anger.

She turned and tried to run. But it was too late.

The massive ball of starlight shot from Elvara's hands. It was not a beam. It was a wave. A tsunami of pure destruction aimed right at her.

Seraphina screamed. She put up a wall of crystal, the thickest, strongest wall she had ever made.

It was useless.

The starlight hit the wall, and the crystal did not just break. It turned into dust. It was erased from existence.

The wave of light kept coming, slower now, but still unstoppable.

Seraphina's mind went blank with fear. She fumbled at her neck, her fingers searching for the small, round pendant that was her only escape. Her hands were shaking so badly she could not get a grip on it.

She looked up at the coming wave of white death. Her amber eyes were wide with a single, final thought.

'This is it. I'm going to die.'