Villainous Instructor at the Academy
Chapter 197: The hollow flame

Chapter 197: The hollow flame

We didn’t speak for hours. Only the crunch of boots in snow and the low howl of distant winds kept us company.

The terrain had changed. The trees thinned into skeletal silhouettes—branches like claws, bark riddled with frost rot. Even the snow was wrong here. It didn’t melt, didn’t compress beneath our steps. It whispered.

Every few minutes, someone would look over their shoulder. No one said what we all felt: something was walking with us. It just didn’t have a body.

Roderick called a halt by a glacial ridge. The sun hung frozen above, unable to pierce the clouds.

"Camp here. Minimal fire. No magic unless absolutely necessary," he said, his voice hoarse. "We’re in a place that remembers too much."

Garrick and Felix began setting up a perimeter. Mira was sketching sigils in the snow with a cold-gloved hand, curses laced into every angle. Leo, pale and jittery, muttered to himself near the fire.

Wallace tried to complain, but even he had gone quiet since the dream.

Cassandra hadn’t spoken once.

I sat beside her on a flat stone near the fire. "You knew."

She didn’t respond.

I tried again. "The thing in the dream. That door. The Rift. You’ve seen it before."

Her fingers twitched. Then, finally, she turned to me, face unreadable. "This place is older than the kingdom. Older than the Academy. Even older than the gods this world pretends to bury."

She looked out over the ice.

"It’s the scar from a god’s final scream. That’s what the Frostwind Wall really is. Not a barrier. A burial."

I exhaled slowly. "And the thing that marked me?"

Cassandra’s eyes flicked to my face. "You heard it. That’s enough. It will follow you now."

"Forever?"

"Until you understand what it wants. Or die trying."

The fire snapped. I clenched my fists, heat building in my palms—but I didn’t draw the runes. Not yet.

I felt the Grimoire pulse. A pattern uncurled across the page:

___

Decoy Construct: Sigil-class mimic. Activation cost: High.

Estimated Delay: 20 seconds of confusion.

___

It wasn’t a solution. Just a stalling tactic. But sometimes stalling was enough to live.

Suddenly, a scream tore through the camp.

Felix.

I was up in an instant, rushing toward the sound—Garrick close behind. We found Felix slumped beside one of the trees. His breathing was ragged, eyes wide with terror. A symbol had been carved into the bark above him.

I recognized it instantly.

A Rune of Grief.

Mira appeared behind us. "That’s not one of mine."

"I know," I said.

Wallace knelt beside the symbol, inspecting it with trembling hands. "This... this is ancient script. Like pre-Akaran era. What the hell is it doing here?"

I didn’t answer. I was staring at Felix’s face. He wasn’t blinking.

"Felix," I said. "Snap out of it."

He shook violently. "I saw... I saw my family. All of them. Dead. In the marsh. The water was red."

"It’s the Rift," Roderick said, stepping into the circle. "It doesn’t kill you outright. It makes you relive your worst days. Over and over. Until you break."

"But why now?" Garrick asked.

Cassandra finally stood. "Because the door is opening. That thing—the Observer—wants through. It’s testing us."

Roderick’s face hardened. "Then we make sure it fails."

I pulled out the Grimoire again. A new page had formed:

___

Command Pattern: Exile the Dreamform. Cost: 1 Anchor.

___

My stomach sank. An anchor meant a person. A life. Either I’d have to sacrifice someone... or convince the Rift that someone already didn’t belong.

It was a cruel spell. But it worked.

I closed the book slowly and looked at my class. At Felix, Mira, Wallace. At Garrick and Leo. Even Cassandra, her gaze as distant as the mountains.

And I thought—

Would they abandon me, if it were the other way around?

No one spoke.

But the question hung in the air.

We stayed in a ring around the fire that night, backs to each other. No one dared dream.

The Rift had already started peeling us apart.

Morning didn’t come.

There was no sunrise, only the dim, gray-blue glow of a sky too tired to change. The fire had burned low, our breaths forming clouds that drifted like spirits above our heads. No one had slept.

Felix wouldn’t speak. Mira sat beside him, her hand resting lightly on his shoulder. Garrick kept watch, eyes scanning the mist that never quite touched the ground. Wallace was sketching a device into his journal with frantic, scratchy strokes, as if the act of inventing could protect him.

Leo tried to hum once—some tavern song he half-remembered. It died in his throat.

I hadn’t moved all night. I just kept turning the pages of the Grimoire of Patterns, hoping—praying—there’d be another way.

But the Anchor remained.

___

Command Pattern: Exile the Dreamform. Cost: 1 Anchor.

Anchor: A being must be claimed as unworthy, unreal, or already severed from fate.

___

One sacrifice to save the rest. And I was the one holding the knife.

I stood up.

Roderick’s eyes were already on me. "You’re thinking about using that cursed book again."

"It gives us a chance."

"It gives you a choice. And once you make it, you don’t come back the same."

"I was never meant to be here in the first place," I muttered.

He frowned. "Lucian—"

"I’m not Lucian," I said. It slipped out without meaning to, but the weight of it pressed into the air.

Everyone looked up.

Cassandra tilted her head. "Then who are you?"

I should’ve lied. I wanted to lie. But the Rift was listening. And if I was going to play against it, I had to gamble with truth.

"I don’t know anymore. But I remember things no one else should. And that book—this Grimoire—it listens to me. It listens because I’m already half-unreal."

Mira’s voice cut through the silence. "So you’re saying... you’re not even supposed to be alive?"

"Maybe," I said. "But I’m here. And I can’t let it take one of you."

Leo scoffed. "So your big plan is to throw yourself into the Rift?"

"I’ll use the spell," I said. "It requires someone the world no longer recognizes. That might be me."

Cassandra stepped forward. "That’s not how the spell works."

My stomach turned. "What do you mean?"

"The Anchor isn’t about being out of place. It’s about being forgotten. The Rift doesn’t just take the body—it erases the idea of them. Memories. Names. Legacy. Everything."

I looked at her. "So if I use it on myself..."

"You won’t be saving us," she said. "You’ll be erasing yourself. Even from our memories."

Garrick stepped closer. "No. No way. That’s not happening."

Felix, still pale, finally whispered, "I don’t want to forget you."

I didn’t realize how much that hurt until I heard it.

A flicker from the Grimoire caught my eye. Another page turned.

___

Alternative Cost Triggered: Substitute Anchor with Bound Remnant.

Remnant: Must be willingly offered. Partial memory loss expected.

___

My hands trembled.

"I can bind a remnant. A memory. An idea. Something precious."

"But it has to be willing," Cassandra reminded me.

I looked at the fire. At the cold sky. At the people I’d come to know not just as students, but as something I never thought I’d have again—

A reason to stay.

I reached into my coat and pulled out a scrap of parchment. Old. Faded.

It was the last letter my mother had written before I died in my old world.

I hadn’t opened it since waking here.

"I offer this," I said.

The page lit up. The fire twisted into blue patterns. The snow recoiled. The Rift watched.

A voice like rusted bells echoed in the back of my skull:

___

Remnant accepted.

Dreamform exiled.

Anchor deferred.

___

And just like that, the symbol carved into the tree exploded in a burst of black frost. The pressure that had been hanging in the air lifted. Felix gasped, color returning to his face. The others slumped in relief, the oppressive weight finally gone.

But I...

I looked at the parchment again.

It was blank.

No words. No ink. No message.

Just paper now.

Whatever that letter had said—whoever I’d once been before Lucian—it was gone.

"Professor?" Mira asked. "Are you okay?"

I smiled.

"I’m fine."

But I wasn’t.

And the Rift knew it.

There’s a kind of silence that feels like the aftermath of a scream—raw, ringing, and aching in places you didn’t know existed. That’s what lingered after the Rift’s curse was lifted.

We broke camp at dawn, what little of it we could call that. The sky remained smudged with ash-gray clouds, the sun no more than a pale smear behind them. Still, we moved.

No one mentioned the ritual.

No one asked what I gave up.

But I knew the question sat on all their tongues.

Mira walked beside me. Every so often, her hand brushed against mine—not on purpose, not quite by accident. A small tether. A quiet reminder: You’re still here. I still see you.

I wanted to say thanks.

I didn’t.

Because even now, I couldn’t remember her name.

I knew her face. Her voice. Her sarcasm. But something was missing. Like a word I once knew and forgot, and now only remember by the hollow it left behind.

The Remnant had taken something more than just a letter.

It had taken parts of me.

We followed the path Felix remembered—deep into the valley, along crumbling riverbeds and old hunting trails. His family’s estate wasn’t far now. Every step brought more signs of decay: collapsed trees, half-eaten carcasses, runes burnt into rocks and bark alike.

"This place used to be alive," Wallace muttered. "There were birds. Squirrels. I made traps when I was little."

"Now it’s just dead things," Garrick grunted.

"No," Cassandra said, walking ahead of us. "It’s not dead. It’s watching."

She stopped suddenly.

We all did.

There, just past a bend in the trail, stood a tree shaped like a person.

Not carved.

Not grown.

Transformed.

Roots where feet should be. Fingers of bark splayed wide. A face frozen in horror, its mouth stretched into a scream that would never end.

Leo choked back bile. "Is that—?"

"Dorne magic," Felix said hoarsely. "Blood-bound. They used to say the trees would protect us. They lied."

"No," I murmured, stepping closer. "They didn’t lie. They just didn’t say what the cost was."

I placed a hand against the bark. It was warm.

A heartbeat pulsed beneath the surface.

The Grimoire trembled at my side.

Another page turned.

___

Entry #91: Rootbinding – Legacy Seal.

Purpose: To preserve the will of a noble house during bloodline decline.

Warning: Effect becomes hostile when ancestral pact is broken.

___

I looked at Felix.

"Your house... who betrayed it?"

Felix lowered his eyes. "My uncle. He sold out our protective rites to a faction in the capital. Traded our ancestral guardian for coin and favor."

"And the forest retaliated," I said.

He nodded.

"Why didn’t you tell me before?"

"I didn’t think it would matter," he whispered. "I didn’t think we’d come back."

The Grimoire’s symbols glowed faintly. A pattern flickered behind my eyes—binding runes laced with something older, wilder. I could mend the seal. Not fully. Not without the original pact. But I could rewrite the pattern enough to keep it from killing us.

"I’ll go ahead," I said. "Alone."

Garrick stepped forward. "Like hell."

"This isn’t a fight," I said. "It’s a conversation. Between the living... and the ones we forgot."

Cassandra’s gaze darkened. "Be careful, Lucian."

I smiled, but it didn’t reach my eyes.

"I’ll try."

The heart of the Dorne forest was a cathedral of twisted trees and whispering leaves. Every step I took echoed with a language I almost understood. Not words. Not quite. Just meaning.

At the center stood an altar made of roots.

And at its foot knelt a woman of wood and flesh. Half-transformed. Eyes filled with resin, staring directly at me.

"You carry the guilt," she said in a voice like wind through hollow bones.

"I carry the name," I replied.

"But not the blood."

"No," I said. "I carry his will. That should be enough."

She rose. Bark cracked. Vines unfurled from her limbs like veins searching for purpose.

"You offer what is not yours."

"I offer myself," I said, and opened the Grimoire.

The pages flipped wildly, caught in an invisible wind. One page tore free, floated between us, and burned into glowing ash.

The runes etched into my skin.

___

New Pattern Carved: Pact Reconciliation.

Memory Cost: 3 Fragments.

___

I screamed.

Pain lanced through my skull like lightning tearing through old wood. Faces blurred. Voices vanished. I forgot the sound of my father’s laughter. I forgot the name of the place I was born in my old life. I forgot—

A hand caught me.

Not hers.

Felix.

He was there.

The others had followed.

"Lucian!" he shouted. "Don’t do it alone!"

The pattern flared.

The guardian-tree-woman stilled. Then she bent, slowly, and placed her forehead against mine.

"Accepted."

The forest sighed.

And we were allowed to pass.