Villainous Instructor at the Academy-Chapter 204: Feast of the broken

The path after the monolith led downward.

Not metaphorically. Literally. The cracked earth gave way to a spiraling staircase of bone and obsidian, slick with condensation and writhing with runes that squirmed if I looked directly at them.

With every step, the air grew thicker. It pressed against my lungs like I was breathing through wet cloth. My heartbeat sounded distant. Like it was coming from outside my body.

Six left.

But there was no time here. No direction. No logic.

Only the Wager.

Only the weight of the blade on my back, and the hunger in my blood.

I don’t know how long I walked before I saw the next one.

She was sitting on a throne of broken memories.

That’s the only way I can describe it.

Old parchment, shattered lenses from my runic goggles, melted pieces of a tea kettle I’d once repaired for Felix—all fused together into a jagged seat that pulsed with forgotten warmth.

And she...

She wore my face. But hers was younger. Too young.

She looked barely eighteen. Before the academy. Before the name "Professor Lucian Drelmont" meant anything.

Before I started lying to survive.

She smiled. "You remember me."

I didn’t draw my blade.

I didn’t need to.

The air told me she wasn’t here to fight.

Not physically, at least.

"Are you another contender?" I asked.

She shook her head. "No. I’m what you left behind. The last time you were honest."

She gestured to the space around us.

Suddenly, I was standing in my childhood bedroom.

Books stacked everywhere. Stars drawn on the ceiling with chalk. A broken wand snapped in two beside my pillow.

My hand twitched.

I hadn’t seen this room in decades. Not since...

"You died here," I said quietly. "That version of me. He died in this room."

She didn’t argue.

She only whispered, "So why are you still dragging his corpse around?"

The room collapsed.

Not all at once.

But in pieces. Like a jigsaw puzzle unraveling in reverse. The stars fell from the ceiling. The floorboards peeled back to reveal void. My old wand shattered into dust.

And still, she sat.

"Is this guilt?" I asked.

She tilted her head. "No. You’re past guilt. This is anchor. The version of you that remembers why you started learning the runes in the first place. Why you never gave up, even when you should’ve."

I turned away from her.

Because I couldn’t look her in the eye anymore.

Because I knew she was right.

She stood.

Walked toward me.

And for a moment, we were the same height again.

Same voice. Same body.

Just years apart.

She reached out and touched my forehead.

"You still know love. You still know fear. That means you haven’t lost everything."

I blinked—

And she was gone.

In her place, a rune pulsed.

Different from the others. Brighter. More... human.

I felt it etch itself into my skin.

Not on my back. Not on my sword.

But over my heart.

A rune that meant: Remember.

I don’t know how long I stood there.

But eventually the path opened again.

This time, not down—but sideways.

A long bridge of shattered hourglasses stretched into the distance, suspended over a sky full of falling stars.

The Wager wasn’t just a tournament.

It was a crucible.

And it wasn’t just testing my power.

It was testing if Lucian Drelmont still deserved to exist.

Meanwhile, at Noctis Ardentis...

"Is this what you wanted?" Roderick hissed, throwing the smoking scroll across the chamber. "You pushed him, Vaughn. Pushed until he cracked."

Mira knelt beside the broken circle where Lucian had vanished. "He didn’t crack," she murmured. "He made a choice."

"Then why can’t we follow?" Julien snapped. "Why can’t we reach him?"

Wallace was the one who answered—quiet, almost afraid.

"Because I think... he’s somewhere that only monsters or gods can go."

Cassandra, staring at the sky through a broken pane of glass, whispered:

"Or those who have been both."

The stars were screaming.

I know how that sounds. But it’s true.

Each one that fell from the void above the hourglass bridge left behind a whisper—a voice. Some cried, some laughed, others chanted riddles that crawled under my skin like insects.

I kept walking.

There was no other choice.

The bridge crunched underfoot, fragile and brittle. Time itself felt... wrong here. Sometimes my footsteps echoed a second before I took them. Sometimes shadows of me walked ahead, disappearing just as I reached them.

Then I saw it.

A banquet table stretched across the bridge, impossibly long, lined with empty chairs.

At its head sat a figure.

He wore red robes lined with gold script. Runic tattoos bled across his arms like living scars. His face was familiar. Too familiar.

It was me.

But gaunt. Hollow-eyed. With a smile stretched too wide to be sane.

"Lucian Drelmont," he greeted, gesturing to the empty seat across from him. "Take your place."

I didn’t move. "Let me guess. You’re another version of me?"

He laughed. "Not quite. I’m who you pretend not to be."

His hands tapped against the table. Plates began to fill. Not with food.

But with moments.

The day I lied to Mira and told her she didn’t have what it takes. The time I let Wallace take the fall for an experiment that I pushed too far. Every betrayal. Every calculated cruelty. Every time I played the villain because it was easier.

He raised a glass. "To survival."

I didn’t sit.

He didn’t seem to mind.

"You’re wondering what this is," he said, lifting a fork and stabbing into a memory of Julien collapsing in training, coughing blood, while I watched and said "keep going."

"This is the Feast of Justifications. Every monster feeds on it."

He ate.

I didn’t flinch.

"You think I’m ashamed?" I said quietly. "I’ve done worse than lie. Worse than manipulate. And if I could go back—"

He interrupted. "—you’d do it again. Because deep down, you believe the ends justify everything."

The bridge shuddered.

The stars wept harder.

He leaned forward. "So here’s your choice."

He pointed at the chair.

"Sit. Admit it. Embrace me. And ascend as the monster you were always meant to be."

Then he pointed over the edge of the bridge.

"Or jump. Let this broken path end. Let Lucian Drelmont die."

I stared at both options.

Then I did neither.

I picked up a plate. Held it.

Looked him in the eye.

"You’re wrong," I said. "You’re not who I pretend not to be."

I crushed the plate in my hand.

"You’re who I outgrew."

He bared his teeth. "Then why do I still exist?!"

I stepped closer. Face to face.

"Because a monster remembers. But he learns."

And with that—I burned him.

Rune after rune tore free from my skin, lighting the table, the bridge, the stars themselves with searing white light.

The false me howled as he dissolved into cinders.

And when he was gone...

The chair remained.

But this time, it was empty.

A seat not of guilt—but choice.

I walked past it.

And the bridge didn’t break.

Elsewhere...

Cassandra stood alone in the Academy’s observatory.

The glass dome above her shimmered, reflecting no stars—only ink. The sky had turned black.

She whispered to herself, voice tinged with something not her own.

"He’s reached the Feast."

Behind her, a ghost flickered into shape.

A boy with horns. A silver bell around his neck. And eyes older than time.

"He’ll need help soon," the ghost said.

"I know," Cassandra replied. "I’ll be ready."

She looked toward the sealed vault beneath the Academy.

Where the last rune—one that even Lucian had forgotten—waited.

The Rune of Regret.

The observatory was colder than usual.

Not the chill of winter or the creeping dusk. This cold came from deeper places—between moments, behind names. The kind of cold that whispers.

The kind that remembers you.

I stood in the center of the ritual circle, barefoot, the hem of my uniform already soaked with ink and crushed flower ash. Moonlight filtered through the cracked dome above, but it wasn’t moonlight from this sky. It was something borrowed. Something owed.

The ghost boy sat cross-legged at the edge of the chalk lines, bell around his neck tinkling in time with my heartbeat.

"You’re too early," he said.

"I’m already late," I answered.

My hands trembled as I traced the last symbol. The old tongue hurt to write. It resisted me. It wanted to forget itself.

I bit the inside of my cheek. Blood spilled across the rune, and it accepted me.

One step closer.

"Why do you care what happens to him?" the boy asked, flicking a bit of ghost-light between his fingers. "Lucian wouldn’t bleed for you."

I didn’t answer.

He tilted his head. "Ah. So it’s not about him. It’s about the one before."

The air thickened.

"Be quiet."

The bell chimed again. "He died screaming, didn’t he?"

My hand shook.

I pushed the memory down.

Now wasn’t the time.

Lucian Drelmont had reached the Feast. That meant the Wager was nearing its end. And when it ended—so did he. Unless someone intervened. Unless someone broke the pattern.

So I offered a part of myself.

The ritual demanded more than mana. It needed memory. Truth. Names I had buried so deeply they rotted beneath my skin.

The ghost watched as I removed the final seal.

My true name spilled from my mouth in a whisper. Seven syllables. None of them human.

The glass above cracked.

The stars blinked.

And the Vault beneath the Academy stirred.

When the door opened, I expected darkness.

I found her instead.

She was older than I remembered. A skeleton draped in violet threads and time, her eyes hollow and gold. The First Arcanist. The one who gave the Academy its foundation.

"You shouldn’t have come here, child," she said. Her voice was two voices, layered. "You were meant to observe, not act."

I bowed my head. "I’m breaking that law."

"You’ll be erased."

"Then erase me."

She studied me, silent for a long time.

And then, slowly, she extended her hand. In it—a fragment. A sliver of light shaped like a snowflake, trembling with regret.

The Rune of Forgotten Futures.

It pulsed against my palm like a fading heartbeat.

"This can only be used once," the Arcanist warned. "And only for someone who has already been condemned."

"I know."

I took it.

The observatory groaned.

The dome cracked wide open.

And the sky screamed.

Elsewhere — Lucian

I gasped, stumbling on the next bridge.

Something had shifted.

A ripple in the world’s breath.

A whisper that someone had reached for me.

I looked up.

And for the first time since stepping into this nightmare trial...

I saw a light not born of fire or pain.

A sliver of something that shouldn’t exist here.

Hope.

No.

Cassandra.

You absolute little enigma.

What did you do?