Chapter 930: Senior Sister ?
"If that’s how you want to play it," she thought, the words biting even in her own mind, "then we’ll see."
Because she would be responsible for him.
That was the reality. Like it or not, the academy’s new quota structure had placed all commoner scholarship students under her jurisdiction—her direct oversight. That was the agreement. The price of the reforms. The compromise struck behind gold-veined doors in council chambers full of inherited names and empty sympathy.
Lucavion was under her.
Officially.
Strategically.
And unfortunately.
But if he thought that meant she’d let him coast forward wrapped in mystery and deflection—thought he could glide past scrutiny just because he was clever and calm—he was mistaken.
Since you’re begging for it, she thought with a narrowing of her eyes, I’ll give it to you.
She moved to her filing shelf, pulled out a narrow crystal slate, and activated the internal tracking ledger tied to student assignments and performance logs.
Lucavion’s name pulsed into view.
Assigned to her.
A flashing notice beside it: "Pending Behavioral Review – Awaiting Faculty Commentary."
A smirk ghosted across her lips.
Good.
That meant she had access.
Control.
And more importantly—leverage.
She tapped the entry, eyes unreadable.
"If you won’t explain yourself to me," she murmured under her breath, "then you’ll show me."
Because Selenne didn’t like enigmas. She didn’t respect them. She unraveled them.
And if Lucavion wanted to make this some cryptic dance of ideals and deflections, so be it.
He would dance on her floor.
Every step.
Every move.
Watched.
Measured.
Documented.
And if—just if—there was something worth believing in beneath all that maddening calm, she’d find it.
But if there wasn’t?
Then Lucavion wouldn’t just face the council’s wrath.
He’d face hers.
And hers was the kind that didn’t shout or rage.
It reshaped people.
The door was still shut. The air still quiet.
But Selenne’s presence filled the space now, like pressure building behind glass.
Her voice was a whisper, more to herself than to the room:
"...You shouldn’t have said that line, Lucavion."
She turned back to her desk, eyes glinting like distant stars.
"You just gave me a reason."
*****
Lucavion stepped out into the corridor.
The door clicked shut behind him—quiet, elegant, final.
And for a moment, the hall was still.
Then—
A grin curled at the edge of his lips.
Not wide. Not smug. Just... content.
The kind of smile worn by someone who’d planted a seed in the soil and already felt the roots stretch beneath the surface.
He exhaled through his nose, soft and amused, brushing a speck of imaginary lint from his collar.
’Well... that went better than expected.’
He strolled forward, unhurried. The academy’s marble corridor gleamed under the light of floating crystal sconces, their glow casting soft gold across polished stone. A few other students passed—none close, none brave enough to approach the infamous "special admission" so soon after Selenne had summoned him.
Lucavion didn’t care.
He wasn’t thinking about them.
He was thinking about her.
The look in her eyes.
That damn starlight—tight, controlled, sharpened like glass—but undeniably cracked when he said that line.
"I didn’t act with an assumption that anyone would be helping me anyway."
’Hit a nerve, didn’t it?’
He chuckled under his breath.
’Of course she’s pissed.’
Not just irritated. Not simply annoyed at tardiness or protocol breaches. But pissed. The kind that didn’t burn hot, but cold. Quiet. Methodical.
The kind that brewed beneath a surface for days before acting.
He could see it.
In the set of her jaw.
In the way she didn’t shout—because shouting was beneath her—but everything about her said you will regret this.
’If I were in her position,’ he mused, ’I’d be furious too.’
A teacher. A mentor. Responsible for students like him. Charged with holding together a paper-thin reform while the nobles sharpened their knives in their dormitories and dinner halls. Then he walks in—aloof, dismissive, maddeningly detached.
’Yes... I’d want to slam me into a wall too.’
And yet...
That had been the point from the start.
’After all, I don’t want such a good person to die this time.’
Lucavion’s steps slowed.
The grin remained—but it softened. Muted. Faintly tinted with something else now.
He mumbled, barely loud enough for the empty corridor to hear:
"...Before the first semester ends."
His gaze lowered. Not to the floor. But somewhere below thought. Memory, maybe.
’That Chapter came out of nowhere.’
He remembered it too vividly.
Selenne’s name had appeared in gold ink for the last time just a few hundred pages in—on a page that started soft, ordinary. A quiet moment. A lecture scene, Elara looking out the window while Selenne guided a discussion on starlight harmonics. Nothing unusual.
And then—
The arc.
The spiral.
The attack.
The moment where politics became blades, and her name became history.
She hadn’t screamed.
She hadn’t begged.
She had, even in the final paragraph of her life, stood straight—just as he saw her now. Back tall, voice cold, presence sharp as her magic.
And then she was gone.
Not with grandeur.
But quietly.
Brutally.
Effectively.
No prophecy.
No lingering will sealed in a letter.
Just her body found in the inner sanctum, light still flickering along her skin like a dying constellation.
And for a romance fantasy?
It was a knife.
A beautifully written, delicately wrapped, heartless knife.
’Because she mattered. And she still died.’
Not in a blaze of redemption.
Not after fulfilling her role as a mentor to the heroine.
But early.
Senseless.
Systemic.
’That’s the part no one ever talks about when they praise the story.’
They mention the betrayal.
The masks.
The romance.
The bond between Elara and her master.
Even the Academy politics.
But no one ever lingers on Selenne.
Because she wasn’t the heroine.
She wasn’t the love interest.
She wasn’t even the tragic centerpiece of Elara’s grief.
Just... a loss. A weight in the air. A necessary hole the plot refused to patch.
Lucavion’s hand drifted to his side, brushing where her Starlight had cracked his ribs earlier.
’That’s why I said it.’
"I didn’t act with an assumption that anyone would be helping me anyway."
It wasn’t just a jab.
It wasn’t even meant for her, not entirely.
It was to remind her.
That people like her didn’t get saved.
That people like her were always playing by rules that killed them quietly.
And that if she didn’t get angry—if she didn’t move—then she’d just play the same role all over again.
The same noble, silent death.
’Not this time.’
Lucavion’s fingers curled faintly.
The corridor curved away behind him, voices dimming, footsteps fading. Morning light poured through the tall arched windows—clear, warm, brilliant.
Too brilliant for stars.
And yet...
He looked up.
Past the marble sill. Past the carved frame. Past the veil of sunlight draping the skies like a golden cloak.
And there they were.
Faint.
Defiant.
Distant pinpricks of silver against the cerulean wash—almost imperceptible, almost imaginary.
But there.
Lucavion’s lips parted, just slightly.
"You wont get to die this time."
His voice was soft. Not a murmur to himself—but not meant for the world either.
For someone in-between.
Someone who had, in another life, stood just a few steps ahead of him.
He closed his eyes briefly, then tilted his head back again—gaze steady on those stars.
"Senior Sister," he said.