Villainous Instructor at the Academy
Chapter 195: Ghost In the mangrove

Chapter 195: Ghost In the mangrove

The Dorne estate wasn’t supposed to be this quiet.

Even in decay, noble homes usually held onto their noise—maids whispering, boots on cobblestone, arguments behind doors. But here?

Only the croaking of distant toads.

The suck of damp earth.

And the sound of breathing.

Felix trudged down the flooded path with a lantern held high, boots half-submerged in peat water. Fireflies blinked along the edges of the old mangrove groves, but even they seemed hesitant to linger near the main manor.

It had taken days of travel to return home, and longer still to convince the housekeeper to even open the gate.

He hadn’t told anyone—not even Lucian—that the Dorne estate had been cut off from the Academy for weeks.

No letters.

No replies.

No trade shipments.

Just silence.

And rot.

"Felix Dorne," a voice croaked behind him.

He spun, nearly slipping into the murk.

A woman stood barefoot on the path. Her dress was soaked. Mold clung to her hem like dead vines. Her face was... off. Blurry at the edges, like a painting left out in the rain.

"I’m... I’m not talking to spirits tonight," Felix said quickly, reciting a warding charm under his breath.

She tilted her head.

"You came back. We remember."

Felix didn’t wait. He turned and ran.

Splash. Splash. Splash.

Something was in the water behind him.

It wasn’t walking.

It was pulling itself forward.

Meanwhile, at the Academy...

Lucian was tearing through tomes in the restricted archives.

Roderick stood nearby, clearly uncomfortable.

"Runes can’t trap it," Lucian muttered. "And even if they could, it’s already... mimicking me. How do you bind something that’s wearing your soul like a mask?"

Roderick looked pale. "It’s not just wearing you. It’s digesting you. The more you deny who you were, the more room it has to grow."

"So what, I start journaling?" Lucian snapped.

Roderick hesitated.

"That wouldn’t be the worst idea."

Lucian froze. Then let out a dry laugh. "I was joking."

"I’m not," Roderick said. "The Selfless Twin consumes ambiguity. It thrives in forgotten truths. If you want to fight it, you have to define yourself. Fully. No more masks."

Lucian leaned back, rubbing his temples.

Allen Cross had once used spreadsheets and game logs to track every minor character in Sword of Radiance.

He hadn’t needed journals then.

But now?

Now he was a phantom in someone else’s skin, hunted by something that wore his smile better than he ever had.

"Fine," Lucian muttered. "I’ll write a bloody memoir if that’s what it takes."

Back in Dorne...

Felix slammed the manor door shut behind him.

He was panting, soaked, eyes wide.

No one was there to greet him.

No staff. No family.

Just a long corridor with dead candles and fading portraits.

He backed away slowly—until a knock came from the window beside him.

He turned.

The same woman was there, face pressed against the glass.

But now her features were clearer.

Too clear.

It was his mother.

Except she had been buried last year.

Felix screamed.

And the water outside began to rise.

The manor shuddered.

Felix clung to the stair rail as the wood beneath his boots groaned like it might split in two. Water surged under the doors, thick and brackish, pulling in weeds, old leaves, and broken memories.

He stumbled up the stairs, tripping over a warped floorboard.

Behind him, the door creaked open on its own.

The drowned woman stood in the threshold, water rising around her ankles.

Her eyes were white. Not glowing. Just... blank. Like someone had painted over them.

"Where is your shame, Felix?" she asked. The voice was wet. Bubbled. As though she’d been speaking from underwater for days.

He didn’t answer.

Instead, he hurled a lantern down the stairs.

The glass shattered. Fire sputtered across the oily surface of the floodwater—but it didn’t stop her.

She kept walking.

The flames sank into her, swallowed by her presence.

As if the house itself had decided she belonged.

Meanwhile, Lucian wrote.

By candlelight, in the shadowed depths of his quarters, he carved truth into paper.

___

I was Allen Cross.

I hated my job.

I loved the game.

I didn’t think I would ever matter.

And when I woke up in this world as Lucian Drelmont... I lied to myself. Pretended it was about surviving. But I wanted more than that. I wanted to prove I was someone else. That I could be better.

___

The ink bled as his fingers shook.

His reflection in the mirror twitched. A subtle, wrong smile flickered. The Selfless Twin, growing bold.

Lucian struck the mirror with the hilt of his dagger.

Shards flew. Silence followed.

And the reflection remained intact.

It was never the mirror, Lucian realized. It was always the part of me that stayed quiet.

He grabbed the broken shard and dug it into his palm, drawing a circle of blood across the floor. A crude ritual. Not elegant. Not clean.

But honest.

"Let’s talk," he whispered to the thing in the room.

The lights flickered.

The blood steamed.

And across from him, Lucian Drelmont sat down in the circle.

Not the real one.

Not him.

But a version without the cracks.

"Finally," the doppelgänger said. "You’re starting to understand."

Back at the manor...

Felix reached the attic.

The only dry place left.

The rain had started again—soft at first, then pounding. The kind of rain that made it hard to breathe, heavy and angry.

He barricaded the door with furniture, panting, soaked to the bone.

And then, from the far wall, a voice spoke.

"Felix. You shouldn’t have come back."

It wasn’t his mother.

It was his father.

Or the thing wearing his face.

One by one, figures stepped from the shadowed corners of the attic—faces of the dead Dorne bloodline, half-drowned and weeping.

Their words were broken hymns. "He left us. He ran. He fled to the Tower."

Felix backed into the wall.

He knew this trial.

Not from the world.

But from stories whispered in hushed tones at the Academy.

This was the Trial of Return.

The Water remembers who you were.

And it drowns who you pretended to be.

"I don’t understand," I said, staring at the man across from me.

He looked like me. Moved like me. But his eyes... they were colder. Calmer. The kind of calm that comes after setting a house on fire and walking away.

"You’re not supposed to," he replied, rolling his shoulders. "Understanding is for the living. You? You’re a placeholder. A temporary vessel."

"I’m not Lucian Drelmont."

"No," he agreed. "But you’re doing a convincing impression. Right down to the guilt."

The ritual circle hissed as my blood sizzled against the cold floor. The room grew dimmer, like something unseen had drawn in all the warmth and air. My heartbeat slowed, dulled.

"You’re the real Lucian," I muttered. "Or a piece of him. The part I killed when I came here."

"No," he said again, smiling gently. "I’m what’s left of you. Allen Cross. The part you buried under swords and sarcasm."

I felt sick.

"You’re lying."

"If I were, you wouldn’t be shaking."

I stood abruptly. The shard in my hand flared with crimson light—the last of my blood fueling the rune I’d scrawled behind the mirror. A glyph of binding, unstable but desperate.

The Twin didn’t move.

"You think a rune can hold me?" he asked. "You think that ink and intention mean anything down here?"

His fingers reached past the circle.

I should’ve stopped him.

But I didn’t.

Because I was too busy seeing my own reflection in his eyes—tired, afraid, and willing to burn everything just to stay in control.

"I’m here to help," the Twin said.

"Help?"

"Kill the mask," he whispered. "And wear something better."

Elsewhere...

Felix was crying.

He wouldn’t admit it. Not even to himself. But the tears ran hot down his cheeks, even as the attic turned colder with each ghost that stepped forward.

Uncles, cousins, siblings never born. People who shared his blood. People who hated his weakness.

"You left us," one said, voice thick with rot and memory.

"You’re not a Dorne," said another. "You’re a stain on the crest."

He clutched a single rune stone in his fist—old, cracked, uncharged. The one Lucian had given him after their first disastrous training day.

"Throw it," a voice whispered. A real one this time. Human. Behind the shadows.

Mira.

She emerged from the trapdoor, soaked and panting, dark magic already bubbling around her fingertips.

"Throw the damn rune, Spineless!"

Felix didn’t think.

He just obeyed.

The rune smashed against the floor—and for a moment, nothing happened.

Then: light.

Bright, wild, runic. A single ward Lucian had carved into that worthless stone, one the ghosts couldn’t pass.

Felix collapsed into Mira’s arms, sobbing.

"Thanks," he muttered.

"Yeah, yeah," she said, glaring at the ghosts as they hissed and withdrew. "Next time you have a haunting, invite me sooner."

"I didn’t think it was real."

Mira looked at him. Really looked.

"Your whole life is a haunted house, Felix. Time you started admitting it."

Back in the quarters...

I watched my Twin burn.

The circle, flawed though it was, had caught.

Runes glowed white-hot. The shard cracked. My blood boiled.

But the Twin only smiled.

"You can’t kill what you deny," he said, flames licking at his sleeves.

"No," I whispered. "But I can replace you."

His mouth opened to argue.

I lunged.

The last of the rune energy surged through me—and I consumed the image.

The doppelgänger vanished into smoke, drawn into the brand on my hand.

For a long moment, I stood in silence.

Then I sat back down and lit another candle.

The mirror was still broken.

But my reflection was mine again.

For now.

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