Romance

I opened my eyes in a novel I once read — as Emilia Evelisse Valmont, the villainess destined to be abandoned, accused, and condemned. They called her the Ice Queen: flawless, untouchable, and unloved. Her engagement shattered, her reputation ruined, her end inevitable… unless I chose to live differently.

But this is not my story.

From the Crown Prince’s eyes, she was only ever cold — until the day he saw her laugh. To the world, she was a villainess. To him, she became something else entirely. His curiosity turned into fascination, his mask began to crack, and the ‘Ice Queen’ who was meant to fall became the woman he could no longer look away from.

A reincarnated villainess. A perfect noble mask. And a romance told from the man who never expected to find his heroine in her.

Reborn as a scorned noble with “useless” plant magic, she inherits a salt‑bitten coast riddled with pirates and bad soil. Everyone calls it hopeless. She calls it paradise.

So she does what botanists do: test, train, and grow. Mangroves and windbreaks. Rain traps and smarter drills. Krav Maga for thirty‑five stubborn soldiers who don’t trust her yet.

And love interests who can’t help but be drawn in: an illegitimate son with grudges, a foreign prince, a shrewd count, and the archduke’s heir—the empire’s most eligible bachelor, hiding secrets of his own.

In the original story, she was meant to die in obscurity. This time, she’ll make the march a kingdom, one root and one fight at a time.

He made it! Naruto Uzumaki, the number one unpredictable ninja, has just graduated! The world is at his feet, the ramen tastes like victory, and his path to becoming Hokage has finally begun.

Just when he thinks his incredible story is about to begin, BAM! A semi-transparent blue screen appears right in his face. Wait… is this a video game?

The system calls it [Falna], and its function is insane: it can turn his friends into legendary heroes! Leveling up, gaining skills and chakra that would make the Third Hokage weep! It’s the ultimate tool to become incredibly strong! The plan is perfect.

There’s just one problem…

To “update someone’s status,” he needs… for them to be a girl? And to use his own blood to draw?
Naruto’s path to becoming Hokage has just taken a complete 180. Forget about hard work; his new mission is to survive puberty, assemble the best team in history, and convince Konoha’s strongest kunoichi to let him draw on their backs!

The kingdom of Orovia bleeds.

Every harvest season, the Frost royals send their imperials to strip villages bare. Gold. Crops. Heirlooms. Even lives. Everything claimed in the name of the crown.

Alexandra Beaumont has lost enough.

When the king opens the army to new recruits, she seizes her chance. Not to serve, but to steal.

Beneath the armor of a royal soldier, she hides a secret mission: infiltrate the castle, reclaim what was stolen, and return it to the people who were robbed of everything.

But she is not alone.

A band of outcasts forms at her side, bound by vengeance and hope.

By day, they wear the king’s colors.
By night, they become shadows on the sea.

Pirates who raid treasuries, kingdoms, and crowns themselves.
Rebels carving justice out of theft.

Yet betrayal stalks the rebellion as closely as the royals do.

And when Alexandra’s heart tangles with Asher Knight—the general’s son, her greatest threat, and her greatest ally—loyalties blur, danger sharpens, and every stolen heartbeat could be her last.

In a world where rebellion is treason and love is forbidden, Alexandra must decide how much she’s willing to sacrifice to take back a kingdom drowning in frost.

After her father was framed for poisoning the Prime Minister’s son to death, Ning Qingyu was hit on the back of the head by the “officers” who came to arrest their family.

Upon waking up, she feigned madness in order to escape persecution.

Later, she married the comatose Marquis of Zhenbei, whose birth charts matched hers perfectly.

A halfwit thus ended up marrying a comatose guy.

Xiao Yu seemed to hear someone calling him from the darkness. That voice was saying: “If you want to live, hold on until I can make the antidote.”

Twenty-year-old Julia is a masterpiece of mediocrity and an expert on the predictable patterns of Rofan novels. She found comfort in their clichés—a welcome escape from her lonely life in Paris.

She just never imagined becoming one.

Seventeen-year-old Aster is a commoner girl living with her Aunt Sally in the capital of Crescentis Kingdom. She remembers nothing from before she was seven—only a boy with brunette hair whom she constantly dreams of, the one who gave her a mysterious crescent moon crystal necklace engraved with the words:

“Once the sun and moon combine,
Realms unite and stars align.”

When her top grades earn her a place at Celentine Academy, a prestigious school for nobles, she meets Ranley, a young noble with the same name and brunette hair as the boy in her dreams. Convinced he might be the one, Aster is determined to get close to him and uncover the truth behind the necklace.

Navigating academy life won’t be easy, especially when the nobles see her as nothing more than a commoner. Along the way, she will find true friends, encounter magic and mischief, and even discover the first stirrings of love.

Yet beneath it all lies a greater mystery: Is Ranley truly the boy she once met, or is fate leading her toward a truth far more extraordinary?

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──

I first wrote this story when I was seventeen, and now I’ve reconstructed it with a fresh perspective. Originally, it was only twenty-six chapters, but with the addition of new characters and a richer fantasy world, it has grown longer—likely around a hundred chapters or fewer. Please note that this is a slow-burn story, with moments of angst, twists, and unexpected turns along the way. I still hope you enjoy it and feel like a part of Aster’s journey as you read. (˶˃ ᵕ ˂˶) ₍^. .^₎⟆

ଘ(੭ˊᵕˋ)੭* ੈ✩‧₊

The world was no longer as peaceful as it had once been. Monsters roamed everywhere, hunter schools had replaced traditional classes, and dungeon portals were popping up at random!

“Alright, everyone,” chirped Professor Grish.

“Your mission is to clear all the dungeon floors. Train hard! Grow strong! And when you finally reach the top floor…” She paused dramatically.

The class fell silent as she pointed at a hologram. An SSS-Class Abomination known as Leviathan appeared.

Lev gulped. That’s……him.

Rayan Lancel, the famous detective of Ruhi Empire, suddenly went missing one day. No, he wasn’t kidnapped. He just stopped showing up to his workplace. The reason?

He realized he isn’t him anymore.

Ann Mackenzie, now possessing the body of Rayan Lancel, thought it was too much of a headache to become a detective. So she, now he, decides to quit and go look for other jobs.

Until one day, a criminal breaks into her house and starts claiming what she thought was hers. Her new life, with a new identity, wasn’t as peaceful as she thought. As a whirlpool of conspiracy into the world of unknown drags her inside the mud she was desperately trying to escape, she must find out who she was, and has become, before more people keep dying.

The time that will bring them together.

Guided by the hand of fate, a random letter written under an alias, could its words lead two strangers, unaware of each other’s existence, toward an eternal union?

I woke up with no memory at all.
“…”
But this man was always beside me. Somehow he could find me anywhere I would go.
“… who are you?”
“I’m your husband”
“…”
So I did what every sane person would do in my place as they confronted an unexpected situation.

I ran away.

“You can’t run around with no memory at all. You need me.”
“Bullshit.”

So I ran away again.

…but why are all those people after me?? Why do they want me dead?!

“Catch the demon! She’s going to kill us all!”
“What? What demon?”

And why is everyone chasing me now?? Starting with the Holy Order, The Royal Knights and even that Immortal Head Mage from that Tower who wants to die??

“Finally, I found you”
“F*ck off, she’s my wife.”
“…”

….Where did you learn to curse like that??

Alina was supposed to be a forgettable noble lady.

But she carries a big secret—she once lived in another world, and after dying of cancer, she woke inside her favorite novel.

Determined to rewrite the story, she sets out to save Isolde, the tragic heroine destined to suffer at the hands of the emperor. But when the empire strikes earlier than she remembers and the princess is captured, Alina’s plans unravel. To change fate, she must ally with the general, Isolde’s doomed lover, whose death she has already prevented.

What begins as devotion to a character twists into something far messier: loyalties tested, bonds she never imagined, and a future that refuses to stay on the page.

Alina thought she had to fix Isolde’s ending. Instead, she might be rewriting hers.

Long ago, a witch’s love made the empire flourish—yet her betrayal gave birth to a curse. Burned at the stake by the man she trusted, she vowed his descendants would never escape her wrath.

Three years after the destruction of Seraphin Village, a runaway girl named Aveline hides her past beneath a quiet life of labor. But when whispers of the Grand Duke’s household reach her, fate begins to stir once more. Drawn into the shadow of a bloodline bound by the witch’s curse, Aveline must choose between survival, truth, and a destiny written long before her birth.

When Myrren Vale is summoned to the royal palace, she expects suspicion. She expects secrets.
She does not expect him.

In the kingdom of Eirden—where magic hums beneath silk and every smile hides a blade—Myrren serves as a scentcrafter, trained in herbs, toxins, and the silent truths that cling to blood.

The court wants her quiet.
The crown wants her gone.
But Prince Thane… sees her.

Golden, gracious, and far too kind for the thorns surrounding his throne, he draws her into the palace’s glittering heart—offering warmth, safety, and something dangerously close to belonging.

Yet not all eyes in the palace are kind. The king’s ward, Lord Corven, watches her with unreadable silence—as if her very breath carries a truth he cannot ignore.

When nobles begin to die and the scents on their corpses whisper of poisons Myrren once crafted, she realizes the greatest danger is not the court’s corruption, nor the ancient power stirring awake beneath its stones.

It is what love makes you blind to.

They dressed me in white as though the color could protect me. As though purity could shield me from a man whose name the world spoke in fear.

When I walked down the aisle, my groom stood waiting—tall, unmoving, a figure carved from shadow. A silver mask concealed his face, hiding whatever lay beneath. He never spoke, not when our hands touched, not when the priest asked for vows. The silence between us was not emptiness—it was power.

They called him the Silent Groom.

To the outside world, he was a figure of dread. Men stepped aside when he entered a room, and women crossed themselves when they heard his name. But behind that mask was something more dangerous than cruelty.

He had orchestrated everything. The swift, strange courtship. The wedding no one dared to question. Even the veil I wore was his command—so that in his presence, my face would belong to him alone.

The carriage carried me from the cold chapel to his sprawling estate—a gothic manor of towering stone, where shadows clung to the walls like secrets. The rules were simple that his assistant told me: Not to enter his wing. Not to speak to him. Not to appear in front of him or even cross his path.

I thought he wanted distance. But I felt his presence everywhere. In the gifts left on my bed—he knew my size, my favorite colors, the things that I had never told a soul.

In the way the halls seemed to watch me. In the portraits I found hidden in his forbidden wing… all of me, painted long before we met. I often took his silence for absence.

But in this manor, silence was the echo of him, wrapping itself around me.

And though he would not touch me, I could feel his claim in every breath. He was the darkness at my back. The vow unspoken but binding.

I was his from the moment I stepped into the church. I just didn’t know about it.

Marlene was an ordinary office worker, with her usual routine: work, meetings, and endless coffee breaks.

That night, after going out with her friends to forget that her boyfriend had left her for her best friend, she decided to drink a little too much. Between laughs and drinks, she never imagined that an accident would change her life forever: a motorcycle crash would end her entire world… and her life.

When she opened her eyes, she was no longer in her city or her time. She had transmigrated to the novel “Among Hidden Passions,” a world full of intrigue, desire, and secrets she never imagined experiencing.

But there was a problem: she wasn’t the original protagonist, but rather the secondary villain Marlene Volkov, destined to disappear so the heroes’ love could blossom.

Then Kira appears, a system in the form of a talking cat, which grants her stats, skills, and missions like in a video game. Each completed mission unlocks hidden memories of the characters, revealing secrets, passions, and scars from the past that no one knows about.

Among the heroes and villains of this story are:

Dante Inovov, the proud prince with a lonely heart.

Max Smirnov, the protective and noble knight.

Adrian Blackthorn, the dark and dangerous villainous Duke.

Lucien Devereaux, the seductive and manipulative Marquis, another dangerous path.

Valeria Díaz, the original heroine and rival who will do anything to keep her place.

Now, Marlene Volkov must choose: follow her original destiny and die a villain, or use the system, conquer whomever she wants, and rewrite her own destiny, between love, power, and the hidden passion that surrounds her.