Villainous Instructor at the Academy
Chapter 169: The rune with no key (2)

Chapter 169: The rune with no key (2)

The stone beneath the bloodstained floor was older than the rest of the lab. I could tell by the grooves, by the feel of it when my boots touched down. Someone had carved runes into the foundation, then patched over them—layers of stone, then a thin mesh of illusion. But magic ages. And illusion, especially the lazy kind, peels like old paint.

It took me two minutes to undo the false floor entirely.

Felix stood a few paces behind me, arms crossed, still pale but more steady now. He hadn’t said much since we left the core chamber. Understandable. He’d just destroyed a piece of his family legacy.

"Professor," he said finally, voice low. "That rune... it’s not Dorne work."

"I know."

I crouched, tracing the edge of the circle. The symbols didn’t match Dorne family structure—too delicate, too precise. This was runic architecture of the older schools. Pre-Empire era, maybe older. The style reminded me of something I’d seen in a forgotten annex of the Academy’s restricted library. An old sketch copied from a dig site in the Xuntai Basin.

Rites of containment. Rites of severance.

"You see that anchor line?" I pointed to a faint break in the rune, where the stroke should’ve curled inward but instead cut off mid-loop. "That’s not a mistake. It’s a keyhole."

Felix tilted his head. "A keyhole for what?"

"Not a what. A who."

He frowned. "That makes even less sense."

"Good," I said. "You’re catching on."

I stepped back and activated my Grimoire.

The tome of patterns flickered into view, floating an inch off my palm, pages fluttering as it responded to the energy in the rune below. I didn’t touch the glyphs directly—last time I did that, I woke up seeing static for three days—but I could match their frequency. Let them speak without speaking.

A whisper tickled the edge of my mind.

I didn’t like the voice. It was too calm.

Felix must’ve noticed my jaw tense. "Professor?"

"It’s a door," I said, eyes still on the page. "And someone’s still on the other side."

He went rigid. "Living?"

"No."

But aware. That was the part that mattered.

The rune was not just a lock—it was a seal. A barrier put in place to contain something—or someone—that had no business being beneath a half-collapsed noble estate. And the fact that Felix’s family built this whole lab directly above it?

Either they didn’t know what they were standing on.

Or they did.

"Felix," I said quietly. "You ever hear of the name ’Drevash?’"

He shook his head. "Should I have?"

"Not unless you read about ancient warlocks with a penchant for immortal rituals and burying parts of themselves in other people."

His eyes widened.

I snapped the Grimoire shut.

"Let’s get out of here."

The others were waiting for us back at the estate.

Julien had a bandage on his cheek and a smug grin that meant he’d picked a fight with a painting or a ghost and probably won. Wallace looked sleep-deprived but alert. Garrick was sharpening his axe on the porch, humming something that sounded like a death hymn.

Mira and Cassandra were in the study.

I called for a quick meeting.

We didn’t sit. I don’t know why. Maybe it felt wrong to discuss buried runes and family legacies in plush velvet chairs.

Felix relayed what we found. The lab, the experiments, the array. I filled in the rest—the rune, the voice, the possibility that something older than Dorne blood was watching us from beneath the earth.

Cassandra, of all people, spoke first.

"Severance runes aren’t supposed to speak back."

I glanced at her. "You recognized it?"

She nodded. "We studied them. Briefly. In my old tutelage. You bind a soul, sever it from its anchors, and trap it in echo. It’s not supposed to remain conscious."

"So why is it?" Julien asked, arms folded. "That’s what I want to know."

"Because someone messed up," I said. "Or someone wanted it that way."

Wallace raised a hand. "Wait, hold on. Back up. We’re talking about a rune with a voice, an undead warlock soul, and forbidden magic all under Felix’s backyard?"

"Technically," Felix muttered, "it’s beneath the storage sector near the ridge."

Wallace glared at him. "Not helping."

I ran a hand through my hair and looked out the window.

Morning sun filtered through fog. The marshland shimmered, quiet and heavy.

"We’re not equipped for this," I said. "This isn’t just some back-alley experiment. This has roots. Deep ones. And it may be connected to things far beyond this estate."

"Like what?" Garrick asked.

"The Blood Mist," Cassandra said.

The room froze.

Even I went still.

She looked at me. "I’ve seen sigils like that before. On the walls of a ruin my mother’s people kept warded. We thought they were just warnings. But the designs? They weren’t just barriers. They were holding something in."

Mira was frowning now. "You think this warlock thing is connected to the Mist?"

Cassandra’s expression didn’t change. "I think it was part of it. Or maybe... an early form."

I felt my gut twist.

If she was right—if this rune was a fragment of whatever gave birth to the Blood Mist—then the Dorne family hadn’t just stumbled into forbidden research.

They’d built a workshop atop a living scar.

And that scar had started to bleed again.

I sent everyone to rest.

Sleep was out of the question for me. I spent the next few hours poring over the journals Felix had found, cross-referencing runes with the Grimoire, trying to trace symbols from the base seal.

One pattern kept appearing.

A circle intersected by three downward slashes.

I’d seen that symbol before.

Chapter Eight of The Chronicles of Aetherium. The cult of Red Harvest had used it to mark sites infected by the First Mist. They believed the symbol carried protective properties. But in truth, it was a locator. A brand.

Whoever placed the rune under this house didn’t do it to protect anything.

They did it to find it again.

Felix entered quietly near dawn, two cups of bitter leaf tea in hand.

He set one beside me. I nodded, grateful.

"You’re staying, aren’t you?" he asked.

"Until this is done."

He looked like he wanted to argue. But he didn’t.

"Then I’m staying too."

"Figured as much."

We drank in silence.

The next day, I received a raven.

Black ribbon. Academy seal. Urgent.

Inside: a letter from Roderick Vaughn.

"Reports from the Northern Forest indicate unusual mana activity. Pattern resonance matching former Mist events. Dispatch pending. Need eyes on the ground. If you’re still at the Dorne estate, stay put. This might be related."

I folded the letter carefully.

The net was tightening. Threads I thought scattered were beginning to knot.

The Mist.

The rune.

The voices.

And now, the Academy’s getting wind.

We needed to move.

Fast.

I assembled the students again. No point hiding anything now.

"We’re heading back down," I told them. "This time, we’re not disabling a lab. We’re breaching that seal."

Julien cracked his knuckles. "About damn time."

"Cassandra, I’ll need you on rune observation. Felix, you handle interference. Wallace, you keep an eye out for mechanical failsafes. Garrick and Julien, guard duty. Mira, stay with me. Your eyes catch what mine miss."

They nodded.

No hesitation.

By nightfall, we stood again at the edge of the rune chamber.

The seal pulsed faintly, as if sensing our return.

I drew my blade. Not to fight. Just to remind myself I was still real.

Cassandra approached first, fingers glowing with observation threads. She muttered something under her breath—words I didn’t recognize. Foreign. Heavy.

"It’s not just a seal," she said. "It’s a mirror."

"Explain."

"It doesn’t just hold the spirit. It reflects it. Copies it. Whatever’s down there, part of it’s already loose."

"Where?"

She looked up.

"Everywhere."

And then, the rune flared.

Not with light.

With memory.

A scream echoed through the chamber. A scream not from a throat, but from stone. From time.

We watched in frozen silence as shadows danced across the walls. Visions of people in chains. Of experiments. Of children marked by glowing brands.

Of a man standing in the center, smiling as the world burned.

He turned, and his eyes met mine.

Not in the vision.

In the now.

And then he spoke.

Not with sound.

But in my mind.

"Hello, Lucian. I’ve been waiting a long time."