Villainous Instructor at the Academy
Chapter 189: The swamp

Chapter 189: The swamp

The sun rose like an accusation—red, low, and angry behind a veil of fog. It didn’t feel like morning. It felt like a fever dream with the colors all wrong.

We broke camp with grim efficiency. No one joked. Even Leo stayed quiet.

The trees had gone from pine to skeletal. Twisted, leafless things with bark like burned skin. Wallace muttered something about "ghost roots" and how certain fungi could absorb memories from the dead.

He wasn’t wrong.

Felix moved with tension in every step. I watched him. He wasn’t just worried about the estate. He was afraid of it.

We reached the Dorne family grounds by mid-afternoon. No banners. No guards. Just a stone bridge crossing into a manor surrounded by sinking fields and blackwater. The estate sat like a corpse on a raft, surrounded by weeping willows and stagnant rot.

It should have been abandoned.

It wasn’t.

I felt the wards before I saw them—ancient, rotting, but still pulsing with old blood-bound magic. Felix froze at the edge of the bridge.

"...They weren’t this strong before," he whispered.

I rested a hand on his shoulder. "That means they’re scared too."

He didn’t ask who they were. He just nodded and stepped forward.

The bridge groaned with every footfall, and the water below shifted, as if something vast moved beneath the muck.

"Do not fall in," I warned.

"Wasn’t planning on it," Leo muttered.

Halfway across, the air changed again.

Cold. Not wind-cold—soul cold. The kind that drags memories up from your ribs.

That’s when the whispering began.

Not around us. In us.

"...failure..."

"...left him..."

"...unworthy..."

The students winced. Garrick clenched his jaw. Wallace whispered a protection charm under his breath. Cassandra, still quiet, glanced at me. Her eyes had changed.

Not fear.

Recognition.

I filed that away.

The manor doors opened on their own.

Dust choked the air. The entrance hall was dim, lit only by the sickly light of the swamp filtering through stained windows. Cobwebs stretched like veins across the ceiling. A portrait on the far wall depicted a pale man with red eyes and a forced smile.

"Is that—?" Julien asked.

Felix nodded. "My father."

"Cheerful fellow," Mira said.

Felix didn’t reply.

We moved through the halls like intruders. The floorboards didn’t creak. That was the worst part. It was too quiet, like the manor didn’t want to alert something sleeping inside it.

Eventually, we found the drawing room.

And the boy.

He sat in a wooden chair, pale as snow, wrapped in blankets that looked like they hadn’t moved in days.

Felix stepped forward.

"...Rin?"

The boy stirred.

His eyes opened.

Red. Just like Felix’s. But dull. Hollow.

He didn’t blink.

"...Brother," he rasped.

"Gods," Felix breathed, rushing forward. "What happened to you?"

Rin’s gaze drifted to the window. "It came from the mire. It spoke through mother. Then father. Then the servants."

He turned his head slowly toward me.

"It’s learning now. Getting smarter. It wants out."

My hand tightened around my cane.

Mira moved to Felix’s side, checking Rin’s condition. Her expression turned grim.

"He’s infected," she said. "But not with mana corruption. It’s something else. It’s alive."

Rin gripped her wrist suddenly.

"No," he croaked. "It’s a lie. It doesn’t infect. It invites."

A silence fell.

Then the manor groaned.

Not the wood. The walls.

Like something inside them was stretching.

I felt the grimoire on my hip heat up.

A new glyph formed.

Pattern: Hollow Crown.

For when a throne is empty but still rules.

I stepped toward Rin. "You said it wants out. Out of where?"

He looked past me.

"No," he whispered. "It wants in."

The attack came as night fell.

The fog outside turned black. Figures emerged from the water—limping, gurgling, not alive but not corpses either. Swamp-born, twisted by memory and grief.

The wards held for a moment.

Then failed.

I took charge.

"Wallace! Activate the traps! Mira, with me! Leo, stay with Rin—cast wards if anything touches the door!"

Julien grinned like a devil. "Finally."

He and Garrick stormed the front entrance, clashing with creatures that moved like broken puppets. Their limbs cracked but kept moving. Blood didn’t slow them. Fire barely worked.

Mira whispered a curse. Her shadow stretched and devoured two of them.

Wallace’s trap exploded in blue flame, buying us time.

I carved a rune into the floor with my cane—Bind. Anchor. Sever.

The grimoire flared.

Grimoire of Patterns—Invocation Accepted.

I shouted the name.

"Severance Form: Wakebreaker Arc!"

The blade of my cane roared with energy and cleaved through three of them in one stroke. Their screams didn’t come from mouths. They came from the walls.

I turned to Felix.

"Get Rin. We’re ending this. Now."

The door to the old catacombs wasn’t hidden.

It was sealed.

A slab of blackened stone in the cellar floor, carved with runes that looked more like scars than script. It pulsed faintly—red, like blood through cracked porcelain.

Rin guided us there after the battle.

He couldn’t walk on his own, so Felix carried him. His frame was light. Too light.

"The crypt was never meant to be opened," Rin whispered. "But father broke the seal. He said the Dorne blood was owed a favor."

I looked at Felix. "Did he ever mention to whom he sold your family’s legacy?"

Felix didn’t speak. His jaw clenched so tight it trembled.

Cassandra crouched near the seal and touched the stone. She didn’t flinch.

"...The runes are trying to rewrite themselves."

Wallace hissed a breath. "What does that mean?"

"It means something down there doesn’t like being named."

Rin coughed. "It will lie to you. It will use voices you trust. Faces you remember."

"Wonderful," Julien muttered. "Another charming family tradition."

I tapped my cane against the seal. "Stand back."

The grimoire opened without me touching it. Pages turned on their own until it landed on one lined in deep red ink.

Pattern: Labyrinth Sigil.

To walk through madness without becoming it.

I etched it into the air. It hovered, spun, then sank into the stone with a heavy chime.

The door opened.

The air that rose from the darkness below was cold.

But not dead.

It smelled like wet parchment and rot, like old stories that should’ve stayed buried.

We descended with torches and silence. Even Julien didn’t quip. The walls narrowed around us until we were walking single file, the shadows clawing at our heels like jealous fingers.

Then... the singing started.

Low. Wordless. Beautiful.

Cassandra whispered, "Don’t answer it."

Julien blinked. "Answer what? There’s no—"

Mira slapped a hand over his mouth. "It’s not singing for you. It’s testing us."

I saw it then.

Not with my eyes.

With the Grimoire.

The tunnel had bent.

Not physically. Pattern-wise.

We were walking into a memory. One stitched from Felix’s bloodline.

And it wanted him.

We entered the heart of the crypt.

The chamber was circular, with roots hanging like nooses from the ceiling. In the center: a stone dais with a throne made of bones. Not human. Too long. Too sharp. Too old.

Something sat on it.

It wore no face. Just a veil of marshwater and shadows. But it spoke in Felix’s father’s voice.

"You brought him back, my son. The key."

Felix trembled. "You’re not my father."

"No. But he offered me your name. That’s what matters."

It stood.

"I am the Debt. The Memory. The Hunger that waits when the feast is over."

Mira raised her hands, channeling. "What is that supposed to mean?"

I stepped forward.

"It means it’s a forgotten god. A broken one."

It tilted its head toward me. "Ah. The teacher. The one who doesn’t belong."

The veil shifted.

"You wear another man’s life like a coat. Tell me, Lucian Drelmont—do you remember your own name yet?"

Silence.

Then a snap of pressure, like the world blinking.

It knows.

Not everything. But something.

I didn’t let my voice shake. "I’m not here for you."

"No," it whispered. "You’re here for him."

It pointed at Rin.

"Then take your brother. But leave the rest. They are mine."

Cassandra stepped beside me.

"I’m tired of ancient things trying to take what isn’t theirs."

She raised her hand.

And the torches went out.

The fight that followed wasn’t a battle.

It was a test.

We weren’t striking a creature. We were fighting a memory that didn’t want to be erased.

Every blow we landed, it countered with emotion. Regret. Grief. Rage. The longer we stayed, the more real its lies became.

Julien saw his sister, who’d died in the Academy’s first trial.

Garrick saw his old commander, begging for help.

Leo saw a version of himself who had never been a coward.

I saw...

My old apartment.

My desk.

The place I died.

It whispered, You were never meant for this world.

And for a second... I agreed.

But then Felix screamed.

And I saw the thing reaching for his heart.

That was enough.

I carved the Wakebreaker Arc again. But this time, I added the new Pattern.

Labyrinth + Severance = Path of No Return.

I struck.

And the chamber shattered.

The memory cracked.

And the thing howled.

Not in pain.

In fear.

When we returned to the surface, dawn had broken.

For real this time.

Rin was sleeping. Peacefully.

Felix sat by his side. Silent. Pale. But... lighter.

He looked up at me.

"Thank you," he said.

I didn’t respond.

Because for the first time since arriving in this world... I realized something.

It’s watching me.

Whatever broke in the crypt?

It wasn’t the monster.

It was the world.

And now it knows I don’t belong.