Villainous Instructor at the Academy
Chapter 187: Reflections lie

Chapter 187: Reflections lie

The thing wearing my face stepped forward, and I realized something immediately:

It wasn’t copying me.

It was remembering me.

That smirk, the slight cant of the head, the way it tapped its fingers against the spine of a book that didn’t exist—those were all Allen Cross’s old habits. Not Lucian’s. Not anymore.

"...Who are you supposed to be?" I asked, keeping my tone flat. Calm. My fingers itched toward my satchel. The Grimoire inside pulsed with agitation, like it was itching to write something. Or scream.

My reflection shrugged. "Call me... Echo. It’s easier than explaining."

"Echo, huh." I stared at it. Him. Me. "You a glitch? An AI? Some kind of manifestation?"

It—he—smiled wider. "I’m what’s left when you break the rules too often. When you dive too deep. When you treat this world like a game, even when it’s trying to forget it ever was one."

I took a step back, the mirror beneath my boots creaking like glass under strain. Around us, shifting fragments of memories swirled like dust caught in sunbeams—some mine, some not. I saw my old cubicle. Saw a classroom burning. Saw Julien’s laughter echoing through the training yard.

And behind it all... that humming again.

Faint. Female. Familiar.

"Why now?" I asked. "Why show yourself now?"

Echo tilted his head. "Because the Tower listens. And you brought it something new. Something it hasn’t tasted in a long time."

His eyes flicked downward—toward my chest. The Grimoire pulsed again.

"It remembers Patterns."

I don’t know why that word struck such a nerve, but I flinched. Maybe it was the way he said it. Like it wasn’t just a skill, or a system. Like it was a name.

"I didn’t come here to be dissected," I muttered.

"No," Echo said. "You came here because you think you can change things."

He stepped forward again. Close enough that I could see the faint cracks running across his skin. Not scars. Not damage. Fractures. Like the world itself had tried to break him apart and failed.

"You’ve been meddling," he whispered. "Saving people who should’ve died. Interfering with events locked in code. Pretending you’re clever enough to rewrite fate just because you read a wiki page and overachieved in a trash mechanic no one else cared about."

His voice dropped to a hiss.

"You don’t belong here."

My jaw clenched. "Neither do you."

He smiled like I’d passed a test.

"Then let’s see who lasts longer."

He raised his hand, and the mirrors shattered.

The world convulsed, folding inward—and I was falling.

I hit the ground hard.

Stone. Cold. Familiar.

I gasped, rolling onto my side, coughing dust from my lungs.

I was in a courtyard. The Academy courtyard.

But it was wrong.

Too quiet. Too empty.

Statues lined the walls—twisted versions of people I knew. Garrick, headless. Mira, split in half, her mirror-eyes still watching me. Felix, frozen mid-scream.

Each one wore a plaque.

Each one said the same thing:

"Died due to Instructor Lucian Drelmont’s negligence."

I stared.

And something inside me whispered:

This isn’t the Tower showing you a trial.

This is it showing you the ending you’re heading toward.

Unless you change the pattern.

I stood there for a long moment. The plaques didn’t change. The statues didn’t blink. The silence didn’t let up. No wind. No birds. Not even the hum of ambient mana.

Just me.

And my ghosts.

I walked slowly past Garrick’s statue. His broad shoulders were hunched like he’d been trying to protect someone. The missing head was a cruel detail. I remembered how he’d blocked a blow for Julien once without thinking. How he always picked up the gear left behind by his classmates, muttering that someone had to be responsible.

I touched the stone. It was cold.

The next statue was Mira. Her expression was frozen mid-sentence, like she’d been casting something when the end came. Her twin mirrors—those cursed, clever eyes—were cracked but still gleamed faintly. I could almost hear her snark in the back of my mind.

"Is this your plan, Professor? Hope the chaos kills someone else first?"

"No," I whispered. "Not anymore."

My steps slowed at Felix’s statue. Of all of them, his was the worst.

He looked so betrayed.

Mouth open. Arms outstretched. Not in defense—reaching.

Reaching for someone to save him.

The plaque below read:

"He asked for help. You looked away."

I fell to my knees. The words hit deeper than any blade.

Not because they were true—but because I knew they could be.

This was a memory of a future that hadn’t happened yet. A punishment wrapped in prophecy. The Tower—or whatever sick force nested in this illusion—wasn’t trying to test me.

It was trying to convince me.

Convince me that this world couldn’t be changed. That I was nothing more than a puppet reenacting someone else’s tragedy.

No.

I rose.

"I won’t let this happen," I growled. "Not to them."

My voice echoed in the courtyard. And something shifted.

From the center of the courtyard, a ripple passed through the stone. A shadow pulled itself free from the ground—fluid, humanoid, flickering like a bad connection.

It had my face again.

But its eyes weren’t mine.

They were empty sockets filled with flickering runes.

"You still don’t understand," it said, in my voice. "There’s no saving anyone. This world doesn’t want you to succeed. You are not the hero. You are not the savior."

It raised a hand.

"You are the villain who lived too long."

Wrong.

My hand snapped to the Grimoire.

It opened itself—pages unfurling with a violent flutter.

Symbols burst into the air, white-hot and angry. A weaving of half-broken Patterns I’d cobbled together from forgotten systems and insane ideas. Runes that shouldn’t have worked.

But did.

Because I made them.

I stepped forward.

"I’m Lucian Drelmont now. And I know I’m a bastard. A fraud. A cheat."

The light from my Grimoire pulsed, twisting reality around us.

"But even villains can change the ending."

I lunged.

And the world tore open.

The world convulsed around us.

As I charged, the ground beneath my feet fractured into glowing glyphs—echoes of my own experimental patterns, carved by desperation and stitched together with sleepless nights and spite. The Grimoire responded like a loyal hound starved for war.

The shadow-Lucian didn’t flinch.

It raised one hand, and the sky above warped. Threads of corrupted runes bled out across the air, forming mockeries of my own designs. Each glyph was twisted, mutated—every line a cruel reminder of the risks I’d taken with forbidden forms.

My first thought?

I would’ve been proud. If it wasn’t trying to kill me.

A searing lance of energy tore through the courtyard. I rolled aside, planting my palm on the ground. From my fingertips surged a ripple—Pattern: Divergence Line—a rune that split mana flow in two directions.

The beam missed. Just barely.

I laughed. A little too loud. A little too close to unhinged.

The shadow tilted its head. "You laugh at your own death?"

"I laugh," I spat, "because you’re using my work against me, and you still can’t land a hit."

It blurred, vanishing and reappearing behind me.

I moved without thinking. Severance Form – Fourth Gesture: The Fall of Silence.

My sword hissed as it cut a downward crescent through the air. The shadow met it with a blade of jagged glyphs.

Steel met spell.

The clash sent out a shockwave, knocking statues from their pedestals. They shattered on impact—Julien, Wallace, Cassandra—stone pieces scattering like broken promises.

The shadow grinned with my face.

"You can’t save them. Not with tricks. Not with scraps of a game you never finished."

My grip tightened.

"Maybe not. But I’ll still try. I’ll learn what I don’t know. I’ll make the system bleed for keeping secrets."

I spun, sweeping a glyph behind me—Pattern: Redirection Loop—pulling mana from the shadow’s own attack and flinging it back at him like a coiled snake.

The impact was glorious. It staggered. The mask cracked.

And in that crack, I saw it.

Fear.

Not mine.

His.

The vision had rules. It had limits.

It wanted me to break.

But I wasn’t the same man who’d laid in a tiny apartment bed, playing Sword of Radiance at 3 a.m. to avoid the crushing silence of his life.

I was Lucian Drelmont now.

And I was angry.

I drew a final rune in the air—sloppy, unstable, stolen from a half-functioning sigil found in a side quest no one remembered.

"Let’s see if you handle failure as well as I do."

The rune detonated.

Light and static and pain swallowed everything.

I woke with a gasp.

Back in the training hall. Or what was left of it.

The runes I’d scrawled around the circle had burned black. The air stank of ozone and scorched parchment. My head felt like I’d headbutted a mana reactor.

But I was alive.

And something new pulsed within my chest. A Pattern—half-formed—etched into my core.

Not a spell.

Not a rune.

A vow.

I whispered it aloud.

"I won’t let them die."

My hand trembled.

But I would not.

Let.

Them.

Die.