Villainous Instructor at the Academy
Chapter 192: Tomb and the tide

Chapter 192: Tomb and the tide

I didn’t sleep.

How could I, after what Cassandra showed me?

She hadn’t answered all my questions—hell, she’d barely answered any. Just stared into the broken mirror like it was counting down the seconds to something I couldn’t see.

The Reflection Tomb was sealed again now. She said only I could open it next.

Convenient.

It felt like she’d passed a curse into my hands with a polite little smile.

When dawn came, I taught my classes like normal. Explained tactical pattern disruption and cursed rune misfires with all the flair of a tired jester. My students noticed, of course.

Julien was the first to call me out.

"You look like you’ve seen a ghost," he said, spinning a practice blade lazily. "Or maybe you’ve become one."

Mira narrowed her eyes, clearly sensing something. Felix didn’t even try to hide how worried he was.

I brushed it off.

"Just indigestion," I muttered. "Now pair up. If I don’t see at least two of you limping by the end of class, I’ll be very disappointed."

Later – Faculty Briefing Hall

Roderick slammed a rolled-up map onto the war table. Dust scattered. Most of the faculty were already seated—some annoyed, others genuinely alert. Vaughn’s tone was different this time. Urgent. Heavy.

"We’ve confirmed abnormal mana activity along the Northern perimeter," he said.

Lucian—or rather, I—leaned forward slightly.

"What kind of abnormal?"

"Decay. But not natural. It’s spreading through the deep root channels. Even beasts are avoiding certain zones now."

He unrolled the map further. Several points were marked in red ink, like bloody claw prints.

"And here—this one." He tapped a location etched faintly in old ink. "Used to be a sealed crypt. A failed Akaran experiment. Now it’s wide open."

I didn’t like that.

Roderick looked up, eyes sharp.

"We’re forming a scouting party. Limited personnel. I’ll lead it myself. I need one other instructor."

I already knew who he’d ask.

And I already knew what I’d say.

That Night – Packing for the Mission

I stood in my quarters, staring at the armor I hadn’t worn in months. The real kind—not the showy instructor uniform. The battle-worn coat from my days as Lucian the Blade of Cindral.

"I thought you were trying not to get involved," a voice said behind me.

Cassandra again. She entered without knocking. I’d stopped caring.

"I was," I muttered, fastening the last buckle. "But something’s pulling strings, and I’m not a fan of being a puppet."

Her gaze lingered on the runes etched across my gauntlets.

"You know you might not come back."

"Then I’ll make sure someone does."

She didn’t argue. Instead, she placed a vial on my desk. The liquid shimmered silver-blue, almost metallic.

"What’s this?"

"Essence drawn from the Seventh Mirror. Drink it when you’re surrounded by echoes. It’ll show you what’s real."

I stared at it for a moment, then tucked it into my pouch.

"Thanks."

"Lucian," she said quietly, "be careful. If you see the mirror crack again, don’t look into it. Look through it."

That made no sense. But when had anything in this world ever made sense?

Three Hours Later – Edge of the Northern Forest

The forest loomed like a god’s ribcage—twisted, silent, and ancient. My boots touched dead soil. Even the wind was afraid to blow here.

Roderick stood beside me, grim and ready.

He looked at me once, just once, and said, "This time, we don’t die."

I nodded.

But something in the distance—something watching—seemed to disagree.

The forest opened its mouth.

And we stepped inside.

They say the Northern Forest is cursed.

They’re wrong.

Curses have rules. This place doesn’t.

It doesn’t hate you—it simply forgets you were ever real.

Hours In – The Northern Forest

We moved through fog like ghosts. Roderick took point, blade in one hand, rune-lantern in the other. Behind us, a scout pair from Class A’s combat division watched the treeline, eyes wide, bows drawn. They were good kids. I tried not to remember their names.

I kept my own senses sharp. My Grimoire of Patterns floated behind me like a nervous pet, its pages twitching at irregular intervals. The forest’s magic was... unstable. Like something had dug a needle into the veins of the land and left it there to rot.

The decay wasn’t visual—it was conceptual. The idea of things being "alive" didn’t stick here. Trees forgot to grow. Rocks forgot to be solid. At one point, we stepped onto a clearing that repeated itself three times before we forced our way out.

"Spatial recursion," I muttered. "A ripple loop. We’re not just walking into the forest—we’re walking into a thought."

Roderick grunted. "Whose thought?"

That was the terrifying part.

We found the crypt by accident.

It had no door, no proper entrance—just a jagged wound in the earth, as though some ancient beast had torn its way out from below. Cracked stones framed the descent like broken teeth. Violet mist oozed from within.

We descended.

The moment my boots hit the stairs, the Grimoire flipped violently to a blank page and bled ink.

Patterns formed without my command. One was a rune I hadn’t seen before. At first glance, it resembled a null glyph—a rune that meant absence. But no, it was twisted, layered, personalized.

It was mine.

Not Lucian’s.

Not the game’s.

Mine.

Roderick noticed my hesitation. "What is it?"

"Something that shouldn’t exist," I said. "Something watching back."

Inside the Crypt

The air was thick with memory. Not smell, not dust—memory. It pressed against the skull like a migraine. Echoes whispered through the cracked murals lining the walls. Old, Akaran-style carving, but distorted. Faces without eyes. Kings without crowns. Scholars bleeding from the ears.

The scouts began to panic. One muttered a prayer. The other stared too long at a wall and began mumbling about time folding in on itself.

Roderick steadied them. "Keep moving."

We reached the inner chamber.

There, floating above a black altar, was a cocoon. Not silk or flesh. Something in between. It pulsed softly, like a heartbeat heard through water. Around it were broken shards of mirrors—shards that reflected things not currently in the room.

I saw a version of myself, older, bloodied, laughing.

I saw Cassandra, standing atop a tower of ash.

I saw my students—Julien, Felix, Mira—kneeling before someone wearing my face, but with black eyes.

Roderick drew his sword. "We’re not alone."

The cocoon stirred.

And then it spoke.

???

"Why do you wear that name, little echo?"

The voice came from everywhere. A child’s lilt wrapped around a beast’s growl.

I didn’t answer.

The Grimoire of Patterns flared open. Runes surged up my arms. I reached deep into the spell lattice—through theory, through knowledge—and into instinct.

I carved a new rune midair.

REJECTION.

A glyph of severance.

I cast it forward—

The cocoon screamed.

Not in pain. In recognition.

It knew me.

It remembered me.

Collapse

The tomb began to shake. The scouts fled. Roderick cursed and moved to cover me.

I turned to run—

But the shards began to rise. Each one a floating window into another possibility. One showed the academy burning. Another, Garrick crying over Wallace’s corpse. Another, Mira holding the Grimoire, alone, eyes dead.

I had to choose.

I refused.

The essence Cassandra gave me—silver-blue—shimmered in my pouch.

I drank it.

The world bent.

The mirrors shattered.

And I saw—

Not one future. Not one death. But a pattern.

A sequence.

An enemy.

A shape beneath all mirrors.

The Hollowed.

Return

I don’t remember how we escaped.

I woke in the infirmary two days later. Roderick sat beside me, arm in a sling.

"You drew something back with you," he said grimly. "Something’s hunting now. And it knows you."

The academy had begun whispering.

About vanishing students.

About reflection wounds.

About shadows walking during daylight.

And me?

I just stared into a glass of water.

My reflection didn’t blink when I did.

I didn’t return to class immediately.

Not because I couldn’t.

Because I wasn’t sure I was me.

Roderick told me I’d been out cold for nearly forty hours. The healers had tried everything—mana infusions, soul stabilizers, even a Whisper-Seal from the Church of Lumeria. None of it worked. Until the Grimoire opened on its own and wrote the word: Return.

Then my pulse came back.

My students visited the infirmary. Not all at once.

Mira came first. She didn’t say anything. Just stood at the edge of my bed, arms crossed, eyes dark and unreadable.

Then she asked, "Did you see it?"

I blinked. "See what?"

She didn’t answer. Just smirked faintly and left behind a charm in the shape of a fox’s tail, tied in black string.

Later, Felix and Wallace arrived. Felix tried to act like he hadn’t cried. Wallace looked like he’d aged five years. They argued quietly in the corner—something about a rune trap misfiring in class without Lucian to regulate the room’s ambient field. I almost laughed.

Julien barged in next.

"You absolute bastard," he said, flopping into a chair. "We thought you died. I almost cried. Imagine that."

"You did cry," Felix’s voice echoed from the hallway.

Julien ignored him. "You look like shit, by the way."

"Thanks," I croaked.

"Welcome back, Professor."

And then—surprisingly, or maybe not—Cassandra arrived last.

She sat beside me without speaking. Just... stared. Her presence felt like cold rain on a fire that had been burning too long. Her eyes flicked to the Grimoire hovering behind me, pages slightly ajar.

Finally, she whispered, "The mirrors aren’t done with you."

I didn’t answer. Couldn’t.

Because deep inside, I already knew.

Later – Roderick’s Office

I sat across from him, sipping tea I didn’t remember pouring.

"You said it spoke," he said, voice low.

"Not just that. It... knew me."

"From before?"

"From underneath."

He didn’t flinch. The man had seen enough to understand vagueness sometimes protected sanity.

"We’ve been detecting anomalies near the eastern dorms. Reflections acting wrong. Students hearing whispers when they look into still water."

I glanced at the mirror behind his desk. It was covered in a velvet cloth now.

"We brought something back," I said.

"No," Roderick replied. "You did."

Elsewhere – A Mirror Cracks

In a dormitory basin, a student leaned over to rinse her face.

She didn’t notice her reflection blink out of sync.

Didn’t notice the second face forming beside her own.

Didn’t hear the whisper.

Not yet.

Back in Lucian’s Quarters

That night, I sat by candlelight, the Grimoire of Patterns spread across my lap. I traced the rune that had appeared in the tomb. The personalized glyph. The one that looked like a denial of existence.

I drew it again. Once. Twice. Each time it throbbed slightly in the air, like a heartbeat.

Then I layered it over a mirror shard I had secretly taken from the crypt.

The reflection inside twisted. Warped.

And for one moment, I saw him.

Lucian Drelmont.

The original.

The real one.

He looked back at me with disappointment.

And something worse.

Pity.

Search the lightnovelworld.cc website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.