The roar of the dining hall's gossip was a distant, static hiss. I sat frozen, the echo of Damien's praise, "a truly exquisite harvest," ringing in my ears. He was beaming, not with the overt, boisterous pride of a fool, but with the deep, quiet, and profoundly chilling satisfaction of a master craftsman admiring his work.
My work.
"You see, Lucian," he murmured, picking up his fork and returning to his meal as if nothing had happened, as if a girl's soul hadn't just been shattered a hundred feet away. "The difference between a butcher and a surgeon. The power of a perfectly applied lever. A single, well-placed word, a single, well-timed push, and the entire structure comes crumbling down. No mess, no evidence. Just... a result."
He was teaching me. He was mentoring me. He was looking at the psychological ruin I had orchestrated and seeing it as a lesson plan.
I felt a sudden, violent urge to be sick. I couldn't breathe the same air as him. Not now.
"Excuse me, Damien," I managed to say, my voice a strained, hoarse whisper. I pushed my chair back, the legs scraping loudly on the stone floor. "I feel... unwell."
His golden eyes snapped to mine, the satisfaction replaced by a flicker of sharp, analytical concern. "Indeed," he said, his gaze sweeping over my pale, clammy face. "It seems the... intensity of the result was more than you anticipated. Go. Rest. Do not let your new talents overwhelm you, Lucian. We have much more work to do."
I didn't reply. I turned and walked out of the dining hall, my strides stiff, my back rigid. I could feel his gaze on me, and beneath it, the burning, hateful glares of a hundred other students who had just witnessed the prelude to Mara's breakdown. They didn't know the cause, but they had all seen her and Leonidas, and they had all seen me sitting at Damien's table, the enemy's camp.
I didn't go to my room. I fled to the one place on campus so vast and so silent that I could be truly alone: the Grand Library. I found a remote, dusty alcove in the highest levels, a place where the light of the enchanted ceiling barely reached, and I sank onto a wooden bench, my head in my hands.
My body was shaking, a fine, uncontrollable tremor. I did this. I did this. I did this. The words were a relentless hammer against my mind.
This wasn't a story anymore. This wasn't a game. These were not characters. Thomas Fell, his Mana Core in psychic shock, was a real person I had crippled. Mara Stonecroft, her mind shattered by terror for her brother, was a real person I had broken.
I, Aiden Verne, a passive, drifting coward from another world, had become an architect of human suffering.
A different, colder voice inside me, the part that was now purely Lucian, whispered back, And what choice did you have? Die? Let him do it anyway?
The self-loathing was so profound, so all-consuming, that I felt like I was drowning in it. The two halves of my soul, Aiden and Lucian, were at war, and the battlefield was being soaked in the blood of innocents.
This cycle had to stop. This... me... had to be stopped. But the only way to stop Damien was to survive him. And the only way to survive him was to serve him. It was a perfect, inescapable trap.
No. I would serve him. I would be his scalpel. I would become the most brilliant, most ruthless, most valuable asset he had ever possessed. I would do his bidding, I would plan his atrocities, I would earn his absolute, unwavering trust. And when the day came, when the moment was right, when he was over-extended and he leaned on me, his most trusted tool, I would use the scalpel he had so carefully sharpened to cut his throat.
The thought was not a comfort. It was a new, cold, and terrible vow that sealed my fate. It was no longer about survival. It was about vengeance. It was about atonement, even if it cost me my own soul.
As I sat there, a new, horrifying realization dawned on me, a consequence of my own "elegant" plan that I hadn't even considered.
Leonidas and Mara couldn't just leave.
The Aldren Royal Academy was not a normal school. It was a magically-shielded fortress, floating thousands of feet in the air. Students were not permitted to leave the grounds without a formal, written pass from the Headmaster's office, or a direct, magically-sealed writ from the head of their noble house.
Mara was a commoner. She had no house. Leonidas, while a favorite of some professors, was also a commoner in the eyes of the administration. They would not be granted a pass for a "family emergency" in the Lower District without a mountain of proof and bureaucratic process.
They were trapped. Mara was trapped on this island, miles above the brother she believed was in mortal danger, unable to help him, unable to even see him.
My plan... it was even more perfect, more monstrous, than I had designed. I hadn't just lit a fire; I had locked her in the room with it and barred the doors.
I left the library, my dread now mingled with this new, sick understanding of my own thoroughness. I needed my courtyard. I needed the weight of the sword in my hand, the familiar pain of my training, the one thing in this world that felt real.
I walked the secluded paths, the sun beginning to dip toward the horizon, casting long, bloody shadows. I arrived at the hidden, ivy-covered opening.
And I stopped.
Someone was already there.
Seraphina Vael was standing in the center of my secret training ground, her arms crossed, her expression unreadable. She was not looking at the sunset; she was looking at the entrance, as if she had been waiting for me.
My blood ran cold. This was my sanctuary. No one knew about it.
"I followed you," she said, her voice quiet but carrying in the stillness. It wasn't the curious, academic tone from the library. It was cold. "The other day. I saw you come here. I wondered what secret you were hiding in a place like this."
I stood frozen, my hand still on the ivy.
She took a step towards me, her sapphire eyes sharp and piercing, filled with a deep, chilling disappointment.
"I was in the dining hall, Lucian," she said, her voice dropping. "I saw Mara's breakdown. I saw Leonidas's rage. And after they fled, I saw Damien. He leaned over to you. He was... congratulating you."
She took another step, her gaze unwavering. "He was smiling, Lucian. And so were you."