Ashes of the Elite-Chapter 59: Victim

I walk towards him.

Calm and unhurried.

Each step echoes louder than the last in the courtyard's silence. My sword hangs low at my side, glinting with morning light. I watch him struggle to breathe under the weight of my illusions his breath hitching, muscles locking, eyes wide and unfocused. He's somewhere else now. Somewhere very dark. The crowd of first years every single one stands frozen just inside the train station, staring with wide, horrified eyes. They're beginning to understand I don't plan on letting this monster off with a lesson.

A voice breaks through the silence—shrill, desperate. "Stop! You've won! He's finished!" I recognize it instantly: the same House Askert brat, her arrogance curdled into panic.

I glance her way. My eyes meet hers.

"Shut up," I say.

I flick my fingers, sending a ripple of illusion crashing through her mind. She staggers back with a scream, clutching her head, eyes wild as she's briefly swallowed by a world that isn't real.

The crowd recoils as one.

They're not cheering anymore. No one's laughing. No one's stepping forward. They're staring at me in horror and awe. As I approach, Alaster's monstrous form begins to shrink, the warped mass of muscle and bone collapsing inward. His veins of light receding beneath his skin. By the time I reach him, he's basically fully human again just a trembling boy, laying injured on the cracked stone. I smile, cold and joyless, and release the vise of illusion that's been ravaging his mind.

He looks up at me, tears cutting tracks through the grime on his face, terror carved into every line. His lips quiver as he tries to form words, stuttering out a pitiful, "I'm... I'm sorry, please, I—" but I don't care. Compassion isn't in me. I grab him by his hair, yanking him upright. He doesn't resist.

The crowd is still deathly silent. A few desperate voices crack through the hush, calling for the professors, for anyone to stop this. "This isn't a duel anymore!" someone pleads. "He's finished! Don't—please!"

I glance up at the cluster of white-robed figures standing like statues near the Crown building. The realization hits: professors. Some of the first years are even shouting to them now, begging for intervention. But none of the professors move except for one older woman, a jagged scar running from eyebrow to jaw, her eyes an unnatural, vivid pink. Her eyes lock with mine. There's no alarm in them. No disapproval.

Just a single nod.

Permission.

A slow, wicked grin spreads across my face.

Alaster is blubbering now, barely coherent. "Please—I didn't mean to—I didn't know—please, I'm sorry, I don't wanna die, please.. I surrender.." He's full sobbing now, voice breaking as he begs and pleads for mercy, but it only makes the laughter in my head swell. I lean in close, voice so low only he and the voices can hear.

"You have a mark," I say, voice quiet, voice cruel. "One that turns you into a giant, snarling monster. You used that power to try and kill me."

He flinches.

I lean in even closer, my lips near his ear.

"You failed, because you are weak, stupid and clumsy."

I step back and level my blade at his chest.

"Your sadism, directionless. Your performance was mediocre."

Then I drive it forward.

Then, with a single, smooth motion, I drive my blade through his chest. The steel sinks in, hot blood blooming across his heart. The voices in my mind shriek with glee, an endless, echoing cackle. I let him fall, lifeless, to the stones at my feet.

When I look up, the professors in white are all smiling some with thin, predatory satisfaction, others with a kind of twisted delight. The older woman with the jagged scar and those unsettling pink eyes is grinning widest of all, a demented gleam flickering in her gaze. She starts down the steps toward me, her movements slow, deliberate, almost hungry.

For a moment, the whole world seems to hold its breath, and I realize the truth I've known all my life. These people aren't here to stop monsters. They're here to make them.