Transmigrated as the Villain Between the Heroine and the Villainess

He knelt in the silence, his arms holding nothing.

The spot where she had been was just cold air. The glittering black dust that was once her body, her soul, had faded into the dirt.

He was holding nothing at all.

Tears, hot and sharp, fell from his eyes. They traced paths through the blood and grime on his face.

Drip.

They hit the sand, making dark spots in the dirt.

'Why?' The question was a raw, silent scream in his mind.

'Why am I crying? For her? A person I just met? A character I drew with my own hands? She was just a collection of lines and ink I brought to life for a paycheck.'

He remembered sketching her face. The cold arrogance in her eyes. The sharp, proud line of her frown.

She was supposed to be a villain. A stepping stone for the hero.

But the girl who had died in his arms wasn't a drawing.

She was the one who had seen the cage he was in. She was the one who had stood in front of him.

She was the one who had taken a sword meant for him. The ink on the page had been his, but the blood on the sand had been hers.

'Why does it hurt so much? Is this my pain? Is this what it feels like to lose someone? Or is it just the lingering ghost of the original Azrael, crying for someone he never even got to know?'

He couldn't tell where one began and the other ended. He just knew the loss felt real.

It felt like a piece of him had been torn away, a wound that had no name and no cure.

'I lost someone close to me.'

The thought was a shock. A truth so simple and so painful it stole the breath from his lungs.

He looked up.

Zagan, his borrowed body crumbling to ash, was charging. His crimson eyes burned with a desperate, frantic hunger.

Azrael's teary eyes met his. And the grief, the confusion, the pain it all twisted into something else.

Rage.

A pure, black, all-consuming rage that tore through his soul.

[ALERT! Host's emotional stability is critical!]

[Host is losing control over the seal!]

A wave of raw, suffocating power erupted from Azrael's body. It wasn't his Aether. It was something else. Something ancient, dark, and impossibly vast.

Zagan, who had been a blur of motion, skidded to a halt. He stared, his crimson eyes wide with a terror that went beyond simple fear.

He was petrified.

[Control Lost: 5%]

Azrael was no longer in control. He was a passenger in his own body. The rage was the one at the wheel, and it had only one destination.

Tear him apart.

[Control Lost: 15%]

[DANGER! DANGER! The chains are breaking!]

Azrael took a single step forward.

CRACK!

The sand under his foot didn't just shift. It shattered. The ground spiderwebbed outward, a sound so loud it echoed across the entire academy.

[Control Lost: 40%]

Zagan began to tremble.

He looked at the boy across the arena, at the impossible, godly power rolling off him in waves. This wasn't a fight anymore.

He fell to his knees.

"How?" Zagan whispered, his voice a cracked, disbelieving sound. "How are you still alive? No… that can't be possible… Who are you?"

Before he could say another word, a hand wrapped around his neck.

Azrael had crossed the distance in an instant, a ghost of pure vengeance. He lifted the demon lord off the ground with one hand, his grip like iron.

In desperation, Zagan called upon his power. Hundreds of skeletal warriors burst from the ground, a legion of the damned.

Azrael didn't even look at them.

His gaze, now glowing with a terrifying, violet light, swept over the undead army.

They dissolved.

They didn't shatter or burn. They simply turned to dust, erased from existence by the sheer pressure of his aura.

The few remaining students and professors, the last of the demon followers—they all fled, a stampede of pure, animal terror.

[Control Lost: 80%]

Azrael turned his glowing gaze back to Zagan.

He brought him down.

He slammed the demon lord into the ground with a force that shook the entire arena. Zagan's decaying body tore apart, blood and ash flying everywhere.

Then came the punches.

One after another. A relentless, brutal storm of blows that shattered bone and tore flesh.

He didn't stop until Zagan's face was no longer a face.

A faint, smoky wisp of black energy tried to leak from the ruined corpse, to escape.

Azrael raised his hand. A beam of fire, so dark it was almost black, shot from his palm and incinerated the last remnant of Zagan's soul.

He stood there, his chest heaving, his body radiating a power that was not his own.

A memory flashed in his mind. Selvara's smile. Her kiss. Her last word.

"Live."

The rage didn't stop. It grew.

He threw his head back and screamed.

It was a sound of pure, undiluted agony that shook the very foundations of the academy.

The windows of the dormitories shattered.

The barricades at the gates fell.

The great wooden doors of the main hall broke from their hinges.

[Control Lost: 90%]

And then, his world went black.

He was in a different place. A vast, empty void, stretching into an infinite, starless darkness.

He was alone.

Heavy chains were wrapped around his body, binding his arms, his legs, his very soul. Most of them were shattered, the links broken and scattered around him.

A figure appeared in the darkness.

She was made of starlight, her form a swirling galaxy of soft, silver light.

Her hair was a river of nebulae, and her eyes were twin dying stars, full of an ancient, cosmic sadness.

She was breathtakingly beautiful.

She floated towards him, tears of liquid light streaming down her ethereal face.

She reached out as if to hug him, but her hands passed straight through him.

She was like a ghost. He was a prisoner.

She raised her hands, and new chains of pure, golden light began to form, wrapping around him, trying to repair the broken seals.

But a roar that was not his own tore from his chest. The new chains shattered before they could even fully form.

The woman of starlight vanished, her sad eyes the last thing he saw.

[Control Lost: 95%]

[DANGER! DANGER!]

[Control Lost: 96%… 97%… 98%… 99%…]

[System Integrity Critical. System-destruction in 5… 4… 3…]

But then, a new figure appeared in the void.

It was Selvara.

She wore her simple school uniform, her black hair framing her pale, worried face. She looked just as he had seen her every day.

She walked forward, her steps making no sound in the infinite darkness.

"You're an idiot," she said, her voice soft.

He stared at her, his mind slowly, painfully, coming back to himself.

'You're… you're here.'

"Of course I'm here," she said, a small, sad smile on her lips. "Where else would I be? You didn't think I'd leave you alone to deal with this mess, did you?"

She walked closer, circling him, looking at the broken chains.

"So this is it," she said, her voice a mix of awe and annoyance. "The monster you were keeping locked up. You were hiding things from me as well. I thought I was the only one with secrets."

He could only look at her. Hope, so fierce and so painful it felt like another wound, bloomed in his chest.

'You're not gone.'

"Not completely," she admitted, her smile turning a little wider. "Did you really think I'd die that easily? My soul is a bit more stubborn than that. A demon of my strength doesn't just fade away. Honestly, I never thought I'd still be alive. I never believed I'd be strong enough to carry this demonic blessing and survive. But looking at it now… I think this might be the only truly useful thing I've ever had as a demon"

He realized it then. She might be a high-ranking demon. Her spirit wouldn't just vanish. It would linger. It could come back. A new life.

'You need a host,' he thought, the idea hitting him with the force of a physical blow. 'You can live again.'

"Maybe," she said, her expression growing serious again. "But that's a problem for another day. Right now, you're the one who's about to break the whole world. You need to get this under control."

She stepped in front of him and gently placed her hand on his chest, right where the rage was burning the hottest. Her touch was a cool relief.

"You have to calm down," she whispered. "You have to fight it. You can't let it win. You promised me, remember? You told me you would survive. You told me you would live. So live, Azrael."

He looked into her eyes, the familiar ice-blue depths a calming anchor in the storm of his soul. The rage began to subside.

The woman of starlight appeared again, this time with a small, relieved smile on her face. She raised her hands, and the golden chains wrapped around him, strong and whole this time.

[Control Stabilizing… 80%… 60%… 30%…]

[System Control Restored.]

Selvara's form began to fade.

"Wait," he said, reaching for her, his voice cracking. "Don't go."

"I'm not going far," she whispered, her form becoming transparent. "I'll be watching. I'll be waiting. So don't do anything stupid while I'm gone, you hear me? And Azrael…"

Her voice was the last thing he heard before she vanished.

"When we meet again tell me who you really are..."

Azrael opened his eyes.

He was standing in the center of the arena.