The words hung in the air, sucking all the sound and air from the room. "You will be fighting Leonidas val Aris."
It was not a suggestion. It was not an opportunity. It was a death sentence.
My entire body went cold, a sudden, icy plunge into a void. My mind, which had been a chaotic storm of paranoia and self-loathing, went utterly, terrifyingly blank. For a long second, I couldn't hear the hum of the mana-lamps or the distant sounds of the academy. I could only hear the thunderous, frantic beat of my own heart, a drum signaling my impending execution.
Damien was watching me, a faint, curious smile on his lips, as if he were a scientist observing a fascinating chemical reaction. He saw my blood drain from my face, saw the minute tremor in my hands. He mistook my abject terror for stunned excitement.
"You look... overwhelmed," he purred, a note of genuine amusement in his voice. "Don't be. This is a promotion, Lucian. A stage. The one I have been preparing for you."
I couldn't find my voice. I could only stare.
He began to pace, his movements fluid and confident, a general laying out his masterpiece of a battle plan. "He is, as I said, a beast. He is all rage, all unfocused, righteous fury. And you? You are the cause of it. You are the thorn in his paw, the stone in his shoe. He hates you. And in that hatred, he has become clumsy, predictable."
He stopped and looked at me, his golden eyes gleaming with a chilling, intellectual fire. "He will come at you with everything he has, expecting to crush you in a single, emotional blow. But you are not the same weakling from a few weeks ago. You are my scalpel. You are precise. You are cold. While he is swinging a broadsword of rage, you will be slipping a stiletto of controlled, calculated defense between his ribs."
He was insane. He was utterly, dangerously insane.
He was describing a fairy tale. I wasn't a "cold, precise scalpel." I was a terrified amateur who had been practicing with a wooden stick against ghosts in the dark. Leonidas was the protagonist. He was the hero. His rage, in every story I had ever read, would not make him clumsy; it would make him stronger. It would unlock some new, hidden power, and he would vaporize me before the duel-master even rang the bell.
"I... I don't..." I stammered, my throat dry. "Damien, he is... he is far stronger than I am. In a direct fight..."
"A direct fight?" Damien scoffed, as if the very concept were beneath him. "This isn't a direct fight. This is a public execution. His."
He leaned in, his voice dropping, and in that moment, the true, horrifying shape of his plan was revealed.
"You are not expected to win, Lucian. That is not the goal," he said softly. "The goal is to make him lose. Not the duel. His future."
My blood, which I thought couldn't get any colder, turned to absolute ice.
"He is a 'hero,' Lucian. He is the academy's golden boy, the commoner prodigy. The professors love him. The commoners adore him. He is a symbol of hope. And I," he sneered, "am going to tarnish that symbol until it is nothing but a lump of mud."
He put his hands on my shoulders, his grip firm. "Your job is not to win. Your job is to provoke. You will stand in that arena, and you will be the most arrogant, most hate-filled, most insufferable version of yourself. You will remind him of Thomas. You will mock him for Mara. You will do everything in your power to stoke that rage he is holding in... until he can't hold it in anymore."
The trap, in all its diabolical genius, finally snapped shut in my mind.
"He will attack you," Damien whispered, his eyes alight. "And he will be driven by a fury that is not sanctioned in a 'friendly' duel. He will be reckless. He will be brutal. And you... you will let him. You will make him hurt you, Lucian. You will make him beat you so badly, so uncontrollably, in front of the Headmaster, the professors, and the entire noble delegation, that they will have no choice."
"They will see him not as a hero," he concluded, his smile a thin, cruel line, "but as a rabid dog that needs to be put down. He will be disqualified. He will be expelled. His reputation will be shattered. And his 'destiny' will be over. All because he couldn't control himself."
I stood there, paralyzed by the sheer, cold-blooded monstrosity of it.
This wasn't a promotion. This was a sacrifice.
I was the bait. I was the lamb being tied to a post. My purpose was not to fight, but to be publicly and brutally savaged, all to frame the hero. My "success" in this mission would be measured in my own broken bones.
And the worst part... the absolute worst part... was that it would probably work. Leonidas was a good person. The guilt he would feel after crippling me in a blind rage would destroy him as surely as any expulsion.
"You have one week, Lucian," Damien said, releasing me. He was beaming, truly proud. "Prepare yourself. This will be your masterpiece."
I couldn't speak. I could only nod, the automated, subservient gesture of a puppet whose strings had just been pulled so taut they were about_to snap.
I turned and walked out of his room, a walking corpse. The walls, which had been closing in on me for days, had finally, definitively, met.
Seraphina knew my secret. Leonidas wanted my blood. And Damien had just ordered me to stand still, smile, and offer him my throat.
I was trapped. I was doomed. The duel was in one week. And for the first time, in this world or my last, I understood the true, undiluted meaning of despair.