Villainous Instructor at the Academy
Chapter 173: Man with two names

Chapter 173: Man with two names

The world didn’t feel right when I woke the next morning.

It was like someone had swapped out my bones for glass copies—hollow, echoing, ready to shatter with the wrong move. My reflection in the basin confirmed it: a glimmer in the pupils that wasn’t quite mine, faint aura whorls leaking from my skin in unpredictable rhythms.

The Grimoire lay half-open on my desk, humming like a lazy predator with a full belly. I didn’t dare touch it.

Not yet.

My hands trembled as I laced my boots. Not from fear.

From absence.

There’s a sort of gravity we all take for granted—the anchor of knowing who we are. After the ritual, mine had split. Cross. Drelmont. The shell and the soul. They circled each other now, like wolves unsure who deserved the kill.

I didn’t know which part of me had chosen to wear this coat, slick my hair back, or smirk at the mirror. But I did it anyway. Habit, maybe.

Or performance.

The halls were quiet as I stepped into them. Too quiet.

That was the first warning.

The second came when I passed the garden walkway outside the east tower—usually full of gossiping students skipping lectures. Empty. Not even birds. Just the rustle of wind through charred hedges.

The third hit when I opened the door to Classroom C.

No one was there.

I froze.

My class—the disaster brigade, the walking chaos parade—gone.

Desks undisturbed. Chalk tray full. Scrolls neatly rolled up. The only sign of life was a folded note placed dead center on my desk.

I crossed the room in five slow steps, each one tighter than the last.

The handwriting was unmistakable. Flourishes, dramatic loops. Definitely Felix. Which meant he was the scribe, not the mastermind.

___

Professor,

We’ve gone ahead to the Dorne estate. You said "vacation," and we decided to take initiative. Mira’s portal was stable, probably. Garrick carried Leo because he wouldn’t stop whining. Julien left you a bottle of something in the drawer—he says it’s either wine or alchemy fuel. He’s not sure.

Sincerely, your slightly-less-than-incompetent class,

~The Future Corpses

___

I stared at the note for a full thirty seconds.

Then I laughed.

Loud, bitter, and real.

They’d gone without me.

Without permission.

Little monsters.

I dropped the note and opened the drawer.

Sure enough, a dark glass bottle nestled between forgotten papers and chalk dust. No label.

I didn’t drink it. Not yet.

Instead, I reached for the Grimoire and opened it to a fresh page.

It had already written something new.

"Calibration Stable."

"Environmental Reassessment Complete."

"Notice: Emotional Echoes Detected. Source: 6 linked patterns. Scanning..."

I didn’t understand at first. Then it clicked.

My students.

The Grimoire was syncing to them. Not like familiars—but like nodes in a system. It saw them not just as people, but as variables in a live simulation.

And one of them was flaring.

[Warning: Subject Dorne, Felix – Pattern destabilization at 43%. Local anomaly detected: "Ancestor’s Echo." Recommend observation.]

"Of course," I muttered. "Of course his swamp house is cursed."

I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose.

No rest for the wicked. Or for me.

I closed the Grimoire and strode for the teleport chamber. Roderick would have a stroke, but the wards recognized my authority.

I keyed in the coordinates from the envelope Felix had left attached to the bottom.

In hindsight, the bloodstain should’ve been a bigger red flag.

Arrival at the Dorne Estate

Teleportation always felt like drowning while on fire.

One moment: cold stone and blue sigils.

The next: wet heat, thick air, the croaking of frogs the size of dinner plates.

The swamp was alive.

And angry.

Moss-draped trees loomed like dying sentinels. Water sloshed underfoot, hiding roots like skeletal hands. The path forward was marked only by shattered lanterns and a string of cloth talismans—Mira’s handiwork. Protective wards, though most were flickering out.

I followed the trail.

Found Garrick’s footprints first. Deep, deliberate. A little to the left, Julien’s lighter steps danced like he was skipping.

Further on, a charm burned itself out as I passed. Something nearby growled in a voice that wasn’t an animal’s.

The Grimoire twitched against my hip.

"Pattern resonance increasing. Host presence stabilizing area. External anomaly repelled."

Good.

Because I’d just seen Cassandra.

She stood at the edge of the tree line, barefoot, staring at the black water like it had spoken to her.

"Professor," she said, without turning.

"How deep are they?" I asked.

"Deep," she replied. "And listening."

"To what?"

She glanced back.

Her eyes shimmered like mirrors.

"To you."

I should’ve known the moment I saw Cassandra.

Whenever she stood still too long, the world bent slightly around her. Shadows leaned closer. Sounds echoed twice. She didn’t belong in places like this.

Or maybe places like this belonged to her.

I stepped beside her, boots squelching in half-solid mud. She didn’t look at me again, just continued staring into the murk.

The black water shifted.

Not rippled. Shifted. Like a sheet of glass deciding to remember it was liquid.

Then she spoke.

"He screamed your name."

I stiffened. "Who?"

"Felix."

My stomach dropped.

Cassandra raised a hand and pointed.

The path ahead wound deeper into the heart of the Dorne estate. Past broken fences, moss-choked statues, and trees whose bark oozed sap like blood. She didn’t wait for me to move. She just walked, vanishing between twisted boughs like a ghost returning to its grave.

The Grimoire pulsed with cold heat against my side. Its pages fluttered open to a new line.

"Subject Dorne, Felix: Emotional spike—guilt, shame, fear. Ancestral Echo confirmed. Environment resonating. Intervention recommended."

I didn’t need a book to tell me that.

The deeper I went, the more I remembered why most noble families in this country had private priests.

Blood doesn’t fade here. It settles.

After ten minutes, I found the others.

Or rather, they found me.

"Professor!" Julien’s voice cracked like a whip from behind a boulder. "Thank the gods—you’re not dead!"

"...Yet," Mira added from behind a half-burned charm post. She looked like she’d been digging through a crypt—and knowing her, she probably had.

Felix wasn’t with them.

"What happened?" I asked.

Julien shrugged. "We were exploring. You know—like you taught us. Then Felix started acting weird. He said he heard something calling him. Said he needed to ’repent.’" He made air quotes. "Which is never a good sign."

Mira crossed her arms. "He went alone into the estate’s old shrine. It’s sealed. Supposedly cursed. I tried to follow but the wards reacted badly to my mana. Garrick and Leo went around to find another entrance."

"And you two?"

"We argued over what wine to offer the swamp spirits in exchange for not dying," Julien said. "He won."

Mira sniffed. "Barely."

I took a breath and tried to focus.

The Dorne family. Right. Swamp nobles. Old blood. Not very magical, but steeped in spiritual rites. They believed their ancestors could punish descendants who shamed the bloodline.

And Felix? That boy carried enough shame to fill a mausoleum.

I turned toward the heart of the estate. Moss-coated stone walls loomed from beneath thick vines. The shrine’s front was cracked open, a wound in a world already dying.

"I’m going in," I said.

"Alone?" Julien frowned. "That seems very not-you."

I paused.

"Fair point. Mira, with me. Julien—circle wide. If something moves, stall it."

He gave a salute that was 70% mockery.

We stepped into the shrine.

The air changed instantly.

Cold.

Not temperature—but memory.

The kind of cold that sat in your bones and whispered the names of people you’ve failed.

It was dim, lit by glowing runes etched into the walls in an older dialect of the Drelmont family’s language. A dead tongue. I recognized it anyway.

It said: "Those Who Shame the Blood Will Be Judged."

Mira stood still beside me, her fingers twitching. She was weaving a curse net around us. I didn’t stop her.

We found Felix in the main chamber.

He stood at the center of a sunken altar, shirt torn, blood on his knuckles, eyes unfocused. His lips moved silently, muttering names.

His own.

Over and over.

"Felix."

He didn’t react.

"Felix Dorne."

Still nothing.

"Felix, you little idiot—if you die here, I will forge a rune that punches you in the afterlife."

His head twitched. Just barely.

Then the altar lit up.

A massive symbol flared beneath his feet. A Dorne family sigil—but warped, dripping, rewritten.

The Grimoire hissed open.

"Warning: Echo binding underway. Legacy curse in progress. Host reformation imminent."

Felix gasped—and collapsed.

I reached him just in time to catch his body.

But something else rose from the altar.

A shape. Smoke and blood and bone, forged from regret. It looked like a man. It felt like hate.

I shoved Felix behind me and drew a blade I hadn’t carried five seconds ago.

The Grimoire had given it to me.

A severance blade. Temporary. Carved from pattern-stabilized myth.

"Professor—" Mira whispered, eyes wide.

"I know."

The Echo surged.

I stepped forward.