The Villain

THE PREFACE

I was not born a monster. I was made into one.

The world I entered was already broken, cracked and splintered in ways no child should have to understand. Love was a lie they fed me in whispers, only to rip it away when I reached for it. Kindness was a weakness, punished with bruises and silence.

They say villains choose their path. That we wake up one day and decide to be cruel. But tell me, where was my choice when they pushed me into the dark and locked the door behind me? When they made me watch as everything I loved burned to ash?

They call me wicked. A villain who drips in venom and vengeance.

But tell me—where were they when I was nothing? When my cries were swallowed by the dark, when my hands bled against locked doors, when the ones who claimed to love me looked away? They pretend to be righteous, yet their justice never came for me.

They call me heartless, but I remember when my heart was full—when it beat with hope, with trust, with love. Before it was shattered. Before the world taught me that kindness is a weakness, that mercy is a noose, and that to survive, I had to become something else.

So, I did.

I became the shadow that lingers in their golden halls, the whisper in the dark that keeps them awake at night. I became the storm they cannot outrun. They built their kingdom atop my suffering, but the cracks are showing. They think their hands are clean, but I remember the blood they spilled.

Now, it is my turn.

I will take everything they cherish, the way they once stole everything from me. I will make them beg, the way I once begged for someone—anyone—to save me. And when they finally see me—not as a ghost, not as a forgotten child, but as the reckoning I have become—they will understand.

I was never their villain.

I was their consequence.