Villainous Instructor at the Academy
Chapter 178: Things that hunt silence

Chapter 178: Things that hunt silence

They say some fates are written in the stars.

But I’ve learned that the cruelest ones are etched in stone—quietly, stubbornly, and always in blood.

Roderick Vaughn’s name had appeared at the top of the Grimoire’s next pattern. Not as a threat. Not as a puzzle.

But as a warning.

He was going to die. And I had less than a month to stop it.

The problem was: fate wasn’t a blade you could just parry. It was a noose—subtle, tightening, patient. You had to cut it before it noticed.

I found Roderick behind the dueling yard, sharpening his saber in the late autumn light. Crimson leaves fell around him like dying embers.

"Professor Drelmont," he said without looking up. "You rarely visit unless someone’s misbehaved."

"Not this time," I said. "I’m here to make you an offer."

He raised an eyebrow. "An offer?"

"I want to accompany your next field mission to the Northern Forest."

Roderick’s eyes narrowed. "That’s not protocol."

"I’m aware."

"And why the sudden interest in beast-ridden woods?"

Because I saw you die in them.

Because I watched your name fade from the pattern like a flame snuffed out.

But I didn’t say that. Instead, I offered him a smile—a brittle, sharp-edged thing.

"Call it... a professional hunch."

He stared at me for a long moment. Then slowly nodded.

"You’ll regret it," he said. "That forest takes more than lives. It takes faith."

Later that night, I stood at my desk in the gloom of my quarters, sketching runes by candlelight.

Each line felt heavier now. Each symbol trembled with quiet consequence.

The Severance glyph—my family’s legacy—refused to stay still on the page. It writhed. Not out of rebellion, but anticipation.

It wanted blood.

Not yet, I told it. Soon.

I needed to prepare. Not just spells or swordwork—but the students.

Felix had grown sharper. Julien, too. Mira had begun leaving shadows where she stepped.

They were no longer children.

And yet, I feared the forest wouldn’t care.

Three days before the departure, Augustus Evercrest summoned me.

The headmaster’s office smelled of rain and old parchment. He sat behind a desk carved from black oak, eyes steepled beneath a crown of white-gold hair.

"You’ve requested to join Vaughn’s mission," he said. "Why?"

"Because I believe it’s necessary," I replied.

"Necessary for whom?"

"For the Academy. For the students. For the survival of the next generation."

He studied me, those pale eyes colder than any blade.

"Lysaria thinks you’re changing," he said. "That you’re becoming dangerous."

I didn’t flinch. "She’s right."

A flicker of surprise crossed his face.

"But I’m only dangerous to the things that would destroy us," I added.

Silence.

Then: "Very well. You may go. But know this, Lucian—if you disrupt the balance I’ve worked to maintain, I’ll erase you myself."

I left without answering.

Because balance was a lie. And sometimes, to save someone, you had to tip the scales so far they broke.

That night, as the students slept, I walked into the training grounds alone.

I drew my sword.

Not to spar.

But to carve a promise into the earth.

Roderick would not die.

Even if it meant I had to.

I once believed that war was a battlefield.

But that was a lie.

War is a forest.

Quiet. Watching. Full of things waiting to tear you apart the moment you look the other way.

And the Northern Forest was no exception.

We entered its perimeter under a dawn sky, twenty students, three faculty members, and one ticking time bomb—me. The beasts hadn’t stirred yet. The trees loomed overhead like the ribs of a dead god. And Roderick, ever the vanguard, marched forward with that damnable steadiness of his.

Julien muttered behind me, "Creepy place. Even the squirrels look like they want to mug us."

Felix shivered. "Do squirrels even live this far north?"

"If they do," Mira said, "they’ve got fangs."

I didn’t correct them.

Didn’t have the heart to say that there weren’t any squirrels in the Northern Forest anymore.

Just imitations.

We set up camp by a broken shrine around midday. Moss-covered statues lay half-sunken in the soil, faces cracked and blind. The students treated it like a rest stop. I knew better.

This was a graveyard. And something had been feeding on the prayers left behind.

"Five-hour rotation," Roderick ordered, tossing me a copy of the patrol chart. "We move again at dawn. Don’t light any fires after dusk."

Julien whined. "Why not?"

"Because the things out here don’t need light to see you," I replied. "But they like it when you make it easier."

That shut him up.

Later, as night crept down and the trees became silhouettes, I wandered toward the edge of camp. The Grimoire of Patterns pulsed faintly in my coat. Not a warning.

Yet.

I knelt near a pile of disturbed leaves. Fresh claw marks marred the dirt. Too deep for wolves. Too sharp for bears.

Not beasts.

Hunters.

I activated a silent warding glyph, etched into a brass coin I’d threaded behind my belt.

"Don’t get cocky," I whispered. "You’ve survived worse. You’ve endured."

A voice behind me said, "Talking to yourself, Lucian?"

Roderick.

He stood with arms crossed, sword slung casually over his shoulder.

"You don’t trust me," I said.

"I don’t trust this forest. But you? I’m not sure yet."

There was a pause. Wind in the trees. Somewhere, a twig snapped—too far to matter. For now.

"Do you believe in fate, Vaughn?"

"I believe in cause and effect. Why?"

I met his eyes. "Because I’m here to change yours."

His brow furrowed.

"I know what’s coming," I continued. "The students aren’t ready. This mission isn’t what you think it is. We’re not alone in these woods—and we haven’t been since we stepped past the threshold."

Roderick didn’t argue.

He just asked, "What do you need me to do?"

By morning, half the patrol routes had been redrawn. The students didn’t notice, too busy complaining about the cold and biting bugs.

But I saw the subtle shift in the tree lines.

Something was watching us.

And it didn’t like being denied.

Two days later, the first student vanished.

Her name was Talia. Wind affinity. Sharp girl. Always carried too many charms.

She was supposed to return from a short-range survey.

She didn’t.

And there was no trace of her.

No scream. No struggle. Just... gone.

Mira found her broken charm string hanging from a low branch.

Felix looked like he was about to vomit. Julien tried to laugh it off, but I saw how his fingers twitched near his blade.

I gathered the students near the shrine.

"This is no longer a training mission," I said. "This is survival."

"But what—" Wallace started.

I raised my voice, sharper than a blade’s edge. "You listen and you obey. Or you die. That’s the new curriculum."

They went quiet.

I saw it in their eyes—fear, confusion, a gnawing realization that this wasn’t a classroom anymore. That the man they called "Professor" might be the only thing standing between them and whatever nightmare crept through the trees.

And still, the Grimoire was silent.

Because the real test hadn’t started yet.

It was waiting.

Fear has a flavor.

It’s metallic, like blood on your tongue. But when it sinks into the bones, it becomes something else entirely.

A tension that never unwinds. A prayer that never finishes.

That’s what hung over us after Talia vanished.

We moved.

Not because we wanted to. Because we had to. Roderick took point, grim as ever. Lysaria—the ever-composed head of Runic Sciences—lagged behind the group, whispering to a jade-caged scrying orb that pulsed like a slow heartbeat.

Her presence didn’t comfort the students. It made them more nervous.

Julien leaned closer to me and whispered, "Why does she keep staring at the trees?"

I didn’t answer. Because I knew why.

And I didn’t want to say "They’re staring back."

On the third night, we set camp near a dried-out riverbed. The shrine we found this time was cracked in half, its inscriptions devoured by something too clean to be time.

Roderick arranged the watches.

Felix was on second shift. Alone.

I argued against it. Roderick insisted. Said the boy needed to grow.

But when I found Felix hours later, standing stiff near the perimeter, eyes glazed, mouth open and mumbling...

I knew he’d seen it.

It. The thing the forest had been trying to show us.

He didn’t respond when I shook him. Not at first. Just whispered a word over and over.

"Murmur... Murmur... Murmur..."

It took a minute to snap him out of it.

And when he finally blinked, he screamed so hard his voice cracked.

The other students woke in panic. Swords drawn. Magic flaring. Cassandra stood unnervingly still in the background, eyes locked on something we couldn’t see.

"What happened?" Mira snapped.

Felix just pointed behind me.

I turned.

And saw nothing.

But I heard it.

A hush. A weight.

Like the forest had just inhaled.

Like it was holding its breath.

I grabbed Felix and barked, "Everyone, formation! Quiet magic only. No lights!"

"But we can’t see—" Leo started.

"That’s the point!" I snarled.

Lysaria finally stepped forward. Her expression was unreadable, but her voice was glass—calm, brittle, and deadly sharp.

"They are called Silence-Hunters."

That name shut them up.

"They nest in folds of memory," she continued, "feeding on sound, light, and thought. They are not of this world. Nor the next."

"Are they spirits?" Wallace asked.

"No," I said. "They’re worse."

"Then what are they?"

"Errors."

We didn’t sleep that night.

Not really.

Every few minutes, one of us would hear a branch shift. A soft, mocking whisper.

"Murmur... Murmur..."

Felix eventually passed out from sheer exhaustion. I had to slap a ward on his chest to keep his dreams from drawing attention.

Julien sat beside me near the edge of camp.

"You know," he murmured, "I thought this trip would be a nice break from drills. You know, some bonding, maybe a haunted cave or two."

"Romantic," I said dryly.

"I didn’t sign up to get eaten by... things that don’t exist."

"Welcome to Runic Advanced Field Study," I muttered.

He looked at me sideways. "You’re not scared?"

I didn’t respond.

Not because I wasn’t scared.

But because I’d already been here before.

In the game.

In the late-game northern arc where the Beast Tide was just a decoy.

Where the real threat—an experimental, cut dungeon event—was hidden in unused assets. Glitched files. Unfinished lines of dialogue.

Something the devs never acknowledged.

The Murmur Path.

And I was now standing right in it.

Live.

We moved again in the morning.

Lysaria and Roderick exchanged words in hushed tones. She wanted to turn back. He insisted we go forward, toward the old research bunker buried deep in the woods.

I remembered what was there. Or rather, what wasn’t.

The bunker wasn’t abandoned.

It was a prison.

And the Silence-Hunters?

They were looking for a key.

That night, I sat by the fire with the Grimoire open in my lap.

It bled patterns I didn’t recognize. New ones. Alien shapes that didn’t belong to any school of magic.

But they responded to the forest. To the whispers.

To the thing that had taken Talia.

I scribbled them down.

Because I was going to use them.

Because if I didn’t... this forest would take us all.

And it wouldn’t even leave a scream behind.

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