Villainous Instructor at the Academy

I've seen ghosts before.

Specters, phantasms, shade-cloaked memories. I've fought them, taught students to banish them. Hell, I've even become one in the eyes of a few survivors from my past life.

But this?

This wasn't a ghost.

This was Cassandra, split like a riddle sharpened into steel.

The girl I knew stood beside me—silent, alert, breathing slowly through her nose like she was keeping something inside from escaping.

The other Cassandra—the one rising from the cradle—wasn't breathing at all.

Her eyes fluttered open.

No whites.

Only ink.

Living ink, shifting across her sclera like moving script. She didn't blink. Didn't need to. The moment she locked eyes with me, my knees threatened to buckle. My Grimoire hissed in protest, closing itself.

"Lucian Drelmont," she said—not like she was speaking to me, but naming me. Like an archivist dusting off a forbidden entry.

"Still corrupt. Still unfinished. Still trying."

My mouth went dry. "Who... are you?"

Cassandra—the one beside me—answered, though her voice was faint.

"She's me," she said. "The part that stayed behind."

"Stayed behind where?"

"In the Pattern."

The rune-cradle cracked further, roots withdrawing as if terrified. The air warped with pressure, like the very space was begging not to exist. The second Cassandra—no, the Echo—descended to the floor. She walked like gravity was a polite suggestion.

"You were never meant to find me this early," she said, stepping forward. "But your interference with the B-Class guardian, and that... display at the Dorne estate, accelerated everything."

She looked at me, almost curious. "You're trying to change the Pattern. You think just because you remember it, you can bend it."

"I'm not trying to bend it," I replied, voice low. "I'm trying to break it."

The Echo smiled. A brittle, cracked smile.

"Good."

She turned to Cassandra, the living one. "And you. You woke early."

"I didn't want to." Her fists clenched. "But he pulled me into his story."

The Echo cocked her head. "Yes. He's good at that. The Pattern likes him. Which means it will hate him soon."

They stared at each other, twin mirrors—one breathing, one barely real.

"I'll take your place for now," the Echo said. "You're not ready for what comes next."

Cassandra didn't argue. She simply walked past me, eyes hollow, as if she'd just buried herself.

She didn't say goodbye.

The Echo stepped forward and extended her hand toward me. "If you still want to break the Pattern," she said, "you'll need me."

I didn't take her hand.

But I didn't walk away either.

Above us, the nursery was already gone.

Not collapsed.

Erased.

Like it had never been.

And beside me stood a version of my student who wasn't born, but preserved. Not as a backup plan.

But as a failsafe.

For what, I didn't know yet.

But I could feel it.

The Pattern was beginning to unravel.

And somewhere in the far north—beneath the Frostwind Wall—the dead had begun to speak.

It's easy to pretend you're brave when you've read the story before. When you think you know how it ends.

But this?

This wasn't in the book.

The Cassandra beside me wasn't my student. Not anymore. The shape was the same—same silver eyes, same eerie calm—but the air bent around her differently. Less like a person, more like a loaded spell. The Echo didn't breathe. She didn't blink. She simply was.

And the silence she brought with her felt unnatural. Not empty. Expectant.

Like something was listening.

Like someone was writing this scene down as I stood in it.

"So," I said finally, my voice the only real sound in the dark, "What now? You're not the real Cassandra. She just walked out of the room like she left her soul in your hands."

The Echo tilted her head—not confusion, not offense. Just curiosity.

"I'm real enough," she said. "Real enough to matter. Real enough to break things, if I wanted to."

She walked across the room, trailing her fingers along the worn edge of a rune-inscribed console, and every sigil dimmed in her wake like they recognized her. Or feared her.

"I was a possibility," she continued, "One of thousands. But when you started changing things—Felix surviving the training ground incident, Roderick still breathing, Wallace not blowing himself up with that unstable alchemy set…"

She turned back to me.

"You opened a door."

I crossed my arms. "I've kicked open a few."

"No." Her voice sharpened. "You opened it. You let something out. And that something... woke me up."

I didn't like where this was going.

I'd faced demons in the form of men. I'd faced beasts that forgot they were once human. I'd faced nobles with more ambition than sense. But this? This was metaphysical.

This was Pattern-deep.

"You keep using that word," I muttered. "Pattern. As if it's some divine script."

"It is," she said. "Or close enough. Sūyara spins on threads. Not of time, but of memory. Myth. Things that should happen. Most people are too small to change it. They live. They die. They repeat. But people like you..."

She stepped closer.

"People like you create ruptures."

I met her gaze. "Then help me tear it open."

A beat of silence. Then the faintest curve of her lips. Not a smile—an acknowledgment.

"I can. But first, you'll need to understand what breaking the Pattern actually costs."

She gestured, and the room twisted.

Literally.

The nursery, once silent and cold, warped into something else. A memory? A vision? I wasn't sure.

Suddenly, we were standing atop the cliffs above the Dorne estate. But it wasn't now. It was before. I could see Felix, a younger version, barely thirteen, standing by a woman who wore his eyes but none of his fear. His mother. Proud. Unbending. Dead within the year.

"This is the version of events you never saw," the Echo whispered. "The one you changed when you stepped in."

Below, shadowy figures emerged from the forest—bandits, not monsters. A different threat. Felix ran, tripped, and the woman turned to face them alone.

This time, no Professor Drelmont arrived.

And she died screaming.

The vision shifted again.

Now it was the northern pass—Roderick Vaughn, sword in hand, fending off a frost-beast beside two terrified students. I knew what came next. I remembered.

But this time?

He survived.

Because I'd warned him. Because I'd meddled.

But the students he was supposed to save?

They died instead.

Two names I hadn't even learned yet, because they never mattered in the Pattern before.

And now, they did.

I fell to my knees, breath fogging.

"Every thread you cut," the Echo said, crouching beside me, "bleeds into another."

"So what?" I rasped. "I let the Pattern run? Let people die because it's cleaner?"

She looked at me—not with judgment, but with a strange softness.

"No. I'm telling you: if you keep ripping, you'll have to decide which version of the world survives."

We stood in silence again.

I clenched my fists. "Then show me the rest. Show me the damage."

"No," she said.

"Why not?"

"Because there's something else you need to see first."

She extended a hand.

For the first time, I took it.

The world fractured.

Not shattered—peeled.

Layers of it unfolded like ancient papyrus, each one bearing a version of me. Drelmont the tyrant. Drelmont the savior. Drelmont who died in his first year at the academy. Drelmont who never remembered the past life at all.

And beneath it all…

A version who wasn't Drelmont at all.

A boy with red hair. Hollow eyes. A name that had long since faded—his, not mine.

The original.

The one who died. Who fell. Who thought he'd gone to hell.

And who, somehow, still breathed at the core of it all.

"Who is he?" I asked, voice hoarse.

The Echo squeezed my hand.

"You."

And suddenly, I remembered.

Not just the noble mask.

But the boy behind it.

And for the first time since I reincarnated—

—I screamed.

I was cold.

Not the kind of cold that comes from wind or water, but the kind that starts inside your chest and spreads until everything feels brittle. Until even breathing sounds like it might crack something loose.

And yet I breathed anyway.

Because I couldn't die.

Not again.

The world I woke into wasn't one I recognized. Stone floor. Faint red light leaking through broken windows. An old cathedral, maybe, but gutted—half-consumed by vines, ash, and time.

I stood in the center, barefoot, dressed in scraps. There was a mark burned into the ground beneath me: a circle, incomplete. A rune I had drawn in the dark, hoping for salvation.

Instead, I got silence.

"Hello?" I called out, voice rasping like it hadn't been used in years.

Only echoes answered me.

Figures.

I remembered fire.

And pain.

I remembered a tower collapsing. Not metaphorically—literally. Something ancient breaking, and something inside me breaking with it.

And then… waking here.

Who was I?

My hands were small. Calloused. Familiar.

Red hair. Sunburnt skin. Cheap gloves stained with ink and ash.

My name was—

No.

Not yet.

Names had weight. And I wasn't sure if I was still carrying the right one.

The cathedral had a door. It groaned when I pushed it open, revealing a world washed in scarlet mist.

Blood Mist.

The same from the stories. The same from the nightmares. It choked the sky, crawled along the ground, whispering things in a voice that didn't use words.

This wasn't a dream.

It was the Eclipse.

My first one.

And I was alone.

I moved.

Not because I was brave, but because I had no choice. The Mist wouldn't wait forever. And I could feel it already—prodding at my skin, poking at my memories.

I had to find a weapon. A shelter. A clue.

Anything.

The town around the cathedral was in ruins. Statues with blank faces. Broken carts. A corpse slumped against a fountain—flesh gone, just bone wrapped in what looked like academy robes.

My stomach turned.

I kept walking.

Then I found the mirror.

It stood where no mirror should have been—right in the middle of the square, propped up by nothing. Its frame was silver. Runed. Familiar.

And when I looked into it, I didn't see myself.

I saw him.

Platinum blonde. Cyan eyes. Arrogance in every breath.

Lucian Drelmont.

He stood inside the glass, staring back at me like I was the reflection.

And then—

He raised his hand.

And mouthed a single word:

"Remember."

It hit like lightning.

Suddenly I was drowning in memories that didn't belong to me—but did. I saw the academy from behind a teacher's desk. Saw students who hated and admired me. Saw my blade slicing through lies, through cowards, through fate itself.

And at the center of it all?

Me.

Not Lucian.

Me.

The boy who had died and been reborn in his place.

The boy who used to think he was worthless.

The boy who now had the power to break the Pattern.

I fell to my knees, panting.

The mirror shattered.

Not with sound—but with finality.

The last thread between who I was, and who I had become.

And in its place—

A figure stood.

No face. No voice. Just a presence.

Tall. Cloaked. Holding a chain of red runes that pulsed like veins.

It didn't speak.

But I understood.

The first Trial had begun.

"Come on, then," I whispered, standing shakily.

My voice trembled, but my hands clenched into fists.

"I didn't survive hell just to die in its waiting room."