She Becomes A Passive Villainess-NOT!

The Little Sewer Rat

The loud slamming of the door rang on Iris' desolate, dark and empty room as she leaned her whole weight against the door and slowly slid to the floor.

The red and warm patch on her cheek barely visible against the moonlight that poured in from her windows. The stinging pain taking her back to when she visited her father, who was locked up in jail.

...

"Father, I brought you something you might want to eat. I-I baked it myself."

She timidly offered the sweets and pastry to her disheveled looking father. His hair was tousled messily and his beard had slovenly grown.

Gone were his prim, clean and proud look as a Baron. He had been degraded to such.

Shifting his piercing and angry glare towards his daughter, he swiped everything she made for him off the table and mocked her.

"Instead of doing something this unnecessary, why don't you focus more on seducing the first prince, you useless imbecile?!"

He barked that made the girl flinch and retreat in her seat. He had always been like that. Calling her derogative names and making sure she never forgot her place.

Why she was there and why she was even given the chance to live a luxurious life—far from the life that she used to have that was no better than a sewer rat.

"For what purpose did I create you, you phony Maiden of Light, if you can't even serve your purpose?!"

Yes, that's right. Iris is not the Maiden of Light. In fact, she believes that fabled woman does not exist at all.

She was a product of countless experiments that also claimed countless of women's lives.

The people who made her, a couple of Barons, which of course included her foster father, Baron Latifolia, and Earls and a few Marquess, with which the most well-known was Marquess Devich, exhausted every method they could think of.

Till the Baron stumbled upon a little stray girl with empty eyes and empty mana. She had nothing. No parents, no family, no magic and no love—she was a girl born with nothing. And so, she was perfect.

Then he took her back and they unwittingly performed their series of rituals and experimented on her until they successfully created her.

A girl who can manifest the same fabled light sword magic as the legendary Queen or as the handful of scriptures that spoke of this maiden said.

She was the perfect weapon. She was their leverage. She was their trump card.

Once the people knew of her as the Maiden of Light then surely they would love her, they would worship her and lift her up to take the Empress' throne that's been vacant for decades.

Iris, at first, didn't like being experimented on. Though she had nothing in her, at least she had her individuality and sanity.

But as they told her stories about this woman, how she had everything she was depraved of, she began to want that life. She wanted to be her.

And so everyday, she would tell herself,

"I'm the Maiden of Light—beloved by everyone, the prophesized Queen, the woman who will take it all in the end. I am the legend everyone's been waiting for."

Every single day, she would look herself at the mirror and tell that mantra to the girl reflected in them. It was what kept her going.

Until, she eventually fooled even herself.