Villainous Instructor at the Academy

The dawn broke pale and gray over the Dorne family estate, as if the sky itself mourned something that hadn’t yet been spoken aloud. A chill wind blew in from the northern hills, brushing over the narrow, misty roads of the marshland and creeping through the worn bricks and stone gates of the estate.

We had been here for three days.

And in those three days, I had seen more silent glances, more half-said words, and more grim-faced retainers than I cared to count.

Felix, unsurprisingly, had said little since our arrival.

He guided us through the halls of his ancestral home like a ghost returning to a haunted house—familiar, yet ill at ease. Whenever he looked at the crests carved into the walls or the old portraits staring down from their frames, a flicker of something would pass through his eyes. Not nostalgia. Something heavier.

I didn’t pry. Not yet.

Instead, I did what any responsible instructor-slash-temporary babysitter would do: I kept the rest of Class C from burning the place down.

Julien had tried to duel a suit of armor that he claimed "disrespected his aura." Wallace had gotten lost in the cellar and almost died of boredom. Garrick mistook a decorative spear rack for an enemy ambush and punched a sconce off the wall. Mira and Cassandra kept themselves relatively tame—the former by locking herself in the guest library, and the latter by silently haunting the misty courtyards like a well-dressed ghost.

But Felix? He spent most of his time alone. Or pretending he was.

So when he finally came to me that morning with the expression of someone about to perform emotional surgery without anesthesia, I set down my tea and gave him my full attention.

"Professor," he said, hands clenched at his sides, voice taut. "There’s something I need to show you."