Villainous Instructor at the Academy
Chapter 184: Headmasters Gaze

Chapter 184: Headmasters Gaze

I heard her before I saw her.

The faintest rustle of sheets. A sharp inhale, as if someone had just remembered how to breathe after drowning.

I turned from my desk.

Cassandra was sitting up.

Awake.

But not blinking.

Her eyes—those unnerving, mist-glass irises—glowed faintly in the moonlight streaming through the infirmary window.

I rose slowly.

"Cassandra," I said, carefully. "You’re awake."

She turned her head toward me. Moved like a doll whose strings had just been pulled for the first time.

Then she spoke.

Only two words.

"It’s loud."

The room chilled.

"What’s loud?"

She pressed her hands against the sides of her head. Not in pain. In confusion.

"Everything."

Her voice was wrong.

Still hers, but... echoing. Like someone else was whispering beneath it.

"I can hear the stones humming," she murmured. "The wards breathing. The Grimoire. It sings."

I didn’t realize I was holding my breath.

She looked at me then.

Really looked.

"Professor," she said. "Why are you made of broken fire?"

I froze.

And for the first time in years, I felt true fear.

She passed out moments later.

Not unconscious.

Just—shut down.

As if her body couldn’t hold the awareness for more than a few seconds.

I called Lysaria. She came without questions, ran a half-dozen diagnostic spells, and gave me a grim look.

"Her soul’s been overwritten," she said. "Not replaced. But... rethreaded. Like something used her as a loom."

"That’s not a metaphor I like," I muttered.

She ignored me.

"Her core is stabilizing, but if this continues—she may become something we can’t predict."

"She already is."

Lysaria looked at me. "Are you going to tell the Headmaster?"

I was silent.

Augustus Evercrest was many things. Wise. Powerful. A relic of the old world still pretending to be human.

But he would not view Cassandra as a person anymore.

Only as a threat.

"No," I said. "Not yet."

The next day, I called a class meeting.

Not in the training yard. Not in the library. Not even the war hall.

But in the old clock tower. My domain.

It was cramped. Cold. And full of humming devices and etched wards they didn’t recognize.

Perfect.

They arrived one by one. Felix. Garrick. Julien. Mira, arms folded. Wallace with bags under his eyes. Leo trailing at the back, muttering under his breath.

"Where’s Cassandra?" Julien asked.

"She’s recovering," I said. "But we need to talk. All of you."

I looked each of them in the eye.

"You crossed into something last week. A part of the world that doesn’t obey rules. The Vault changed her. And if you’re not careful, it’ll change you too."

Wallace raised a hand. "You’re saying we’re cursed?"

I gave him a thin smile. "No. I’m saying you’ve seen behind the veil. And once you do that, the veil sees you too."

A long silence.

Then Garrick, bless him, said what they were all thinking.

"So what do we do?"

"You learn. You train. You grow sharper," I said. "Because whatever is waking beneath this Academy, it’s only the beginning."

I paused.

Then activated the Grimoire.

Runes flared to life across the floor. New ones. My own.

They formed a ring around the students. Not a prison—an invitation.

"A Rune Circle?" Mira asked.

"Something like that."

"This looks nothing like what we’ve learned."

"That’s because I made it."

Felix swallowed hard. "Is this... safe?"

I smirked.

"Of course not."

And with that, I began the lesson.

Three days since Cassandra’s awakening.

Two since I taught them my first "unsafe" rune.

And one since the Grimoire pulsed like a living heart beneath my bed.

I didn’t know what scared me more—that the world was changing...

...or that I wanted it to.

Noctis Ardentis had always hidden secrets beneath its polished marble and gothic towers. But I’d thought I knew where they ended.

Now?

Not even close.

The Grimoire of Patterns—the one Skill this body carried with it—had started showing me fractures in reality. Not cracks in walls. Not tears in magic.

No.

Patterns. Running under every hallway, every stone slab, every carefully woven spell-structure layered by centuries of Headmasters.

It was like watching a spider’s web suddenly pulse with blood.

And something was crawling through it.

I stood at the edge of the catacombs.

Technically forbidden. Realistically ignored.

"You’re early," came a familiar voice.

Lysaria. Department Head. One of the few who could keep pace with me—and still outdrink me.

She leaned against the archway, lantern in hand, wearing robes half-unbuttoned and an expression like she’d already regretted showing up.

"You said you needed a second pair of eyes. You didn’t say why."

"I didn’t want you saying no."

She snorted. "I’d have come anyway."

I held up the Grimoire. "It’s been marking things."

"You mean ’it’s been acting on its own again’."

"Semantics."

I flipped the cover open. Symbols fluttered across the pages, rearranging faster than a mortal mind could follow. But mine wasn’t mortal. Not anymore.

Not completely.

Lysaria peered closer. Her lips moved soundlessly as she traced the lines.

Then she froze.

"This rune..."

"Yeah."

"It’s a map."

I nodded.

"To something buried beneath the Academy."

The descent wasn’t easy.

Even with Lysaria’s light and my precautions, the tunnels fought us. Old wards reacted to our presence like a body rejecting an organ.

Twice I had to burn emergency sigils to unstick time.

Once, I think we walked through a moment from the past—saw a shadow of a woman running, barefoot, blood in her hair.

She didn’t notice us.

She didn’t even look real.

Finally, we reached a door.

No handle. No keyhole.

Just stone, veined with gold, carved with a single, ancient rune.

Not one I recognized.

But the Grimoire did.

It opened on its own.

The chamber beyond wasn’t a tomb. Or a vault.

It was a nursery.

Rows of stone cradles. Empty.

Floating above each—shards of glass, hovering, humming with sealed runes too delicate to read.

And at the center?

A pillar.

Cracked.

Bleeding mana.

Not leaking. Bleeding.

The flow oozed into the air like mist, and I felt something rise in my throat.

Not nausea.

Recognition.

I stepped closer.

There were carvings along the base. Not Aetheric. Not Noctian. Something older.

Something that remembered me.

Lysaria touched the pillar, and immediately recoiled. Her hand smoked. "This isn’t just a power source," she whispered. "It’s... a memory bank."

"A what?"

Her eyes widened.

"They used to store spells like this. Back before the Reweaving. Back when spellcraft was grown, not taught."

"That’s forbidden magic."

"No," she said. "It’s forgotten magic."

And then the chamber groaned.

No—not the chamber.

Something beneath it.

Something waking up.

I pulled Lysaria back, shoved the Grimoire into my coat, and activated a return glyph. It snapped into place—

—and flung us out of the room just as the nursery began to scream.

Not aloud.

In runes.

Back in my quarters, I sat in silence.

Lysaria was gone. Ordered back to her tower by Augustus himself, likely tipped off by the spike in the ambient mana field.

He didn’t call me in.

Yet.

But he would.

And when he did, I needed answers.

Because something was stirring beneath Noctis Ardentis.

Something ancient.

And somehow...

Cassandra had heard it first.

I didn’t sleep that night. Not because I couldn’t—but because I didn’t want to.

The Grimoire had gone silent.

The runes in my room dimmed to a soft, amber flicker, like fireflies holding their breath. Even the wind outside had paused, as if the world was watching and waiting.

Waiting for him.

A knock echoed through my quarters at precisely dawn.

Not the sharp rap of a messenger.

Not the hesitant tapping of a student.

A knock that expected to be answered.

I rose, not bothering with a coat. If I was about to get executed, might as well look like I crawled out of a battlefield instead of bed.

The door opened before I could touch it.

And there he was.

Augustus Evercrest.

Archmage. Headmaster. Living relic.

He looked younger than his titles would suggest—shoulders straight, hair untouched by age, robes that shimmered with threads of stars. But his eyes...

His eyes were the oldest thing I’d ever seen.

"I trust you’ve slept well, Professor Drelmont," he said.

I gave him a smile that wasn’t one. "I’ve had better. What brings the Headmaster to my charming corner of the Academy?"

He stepped inside without permission. Of course.

"You trespassed into the buried chambers."

Statement, not question.

"You triggered a ward glyph not seen since the Akaran Collapse."

Again, just fact.

"You brought the Head of Runic Studies with you, didn’t log it, and then covered the entryway with a cloaking rune illegal in three provinces."

I raised a brow. "You forgot the part where I also insulted a demon and made tea with a cursed kettle."

He didn’t laugh.

Of course not.

"Why?" he asked.

I thought about lying.

But then... what was the point? Evercrest didn’t ask questions unless he already had three answers.

"I followed the Grimoire," I said.

"It led you there?"

I nodded. "The nursery. The pillar. The memory structures. You already know what’s under the Academy, don’t you?"

Evercrest’s lips twitched. Not a smile. Not quite. "Do you think we built this institution here by accident?"

I exhaled, steadying myself. "You built it on a blood-vein of ancient spellcraft. You’re feeding on it."

"We are protecting it," he said, voice firm. "Because what lies beneath Noctis Ardentis is not merely forgotten magic."

He turned toward my bookshelf, gazing over the spines. "It is an echo. A curse. A whisper from a time when spells devoured minds, and language alone could unravel gods."

He turned back to me.

"And you, Lucian, are standing too close to it."

The silence that followed was sharp.

I didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink.

"I didn’t ask for this," I said.

"But you were chosen for it," he replied. "Don’t pretend the Grimoire is just a toy. It called to you. You answered. Now, you’re bound."

I felt the cold certainty settle in.

Bound.

Like a tether. Or a leash.

"I’m not your hound," I muttered.

He finally smiled. "No. You’re something far more dangerous."

Evercrest reached into his robes, pulled out a sealed envelope, and handed it to me.

"Then what do you want?" I asked.

He opened the door to leave.

"To see what you do next."

And then he was gone.

I didn’t open the envelope right away.

I waited until the sun rose over the academy’s towers, casting gold across the bloodied sky. Then I peeled the wax and read it.

It was a single line.

___

"Keep an eye on Cassandra. Her aura is shifting."

___

The note wasn’t signed.

It didn’t have to be.

I looked out my window, toward the East Wing dormitories.

So.

Even the Headmaster was watching her.

I set the note down. Picked up the Grimoire.

And whispered: "Show me the pattern around Cassandra."

The book obeyed.

And what I saw...

Wasn’t human.

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