Chapter 1223. I Do Not Operate on the Currency of Worth

Chapter 1223: 1223. I Do Not Operate on the Currency of Worth

The headmaster’s office at the Grand Academy had always been a sanctum of controlled power, a room that smelled of ancient parchment, expensive ink, and the quiet, unshakable authority of centuries of tradition.

Now, that authority felt like a hollowed-out husk. The silence in the room was no longer peaceful; it was oppressive.

Dust motes danced in shafts of sickly, filtered light that struggled to pierce through the haze still hanging over the northern district.

The tremors from the cataclysmic clash earlier had left their mark: fine spiderwebs of cracks spidered across the marble floor, and small fragments of debris lay scattered in the corners like forgotten bones.

Along the far wall, the portraits of past headmasters, great wizards who had shaped the course of history, hung askew, their painted eyes seeming to watch the room with silent judgment.

One frame, depicting a legendary archmage, was cracked clean down the center, bisecting his face in a grotesque parody of the violence that had recently torn through their world.

Valentina sat behind her massive obsidian desk, but she no longer commanded the space. Her usually impeccable posture, the spine of a woman who had weathered decades of political and magical storms, was slightly bent, as if under an invisible weight.

Her hands were clasped so tightly atop the desk that her knuckles had turned a bloodless white, a desperate attempt to conceal the fine, uncontrollable tremors that still wracked her body.

Every muscle felt frayed, every nerve ending raw from the magical backlash of the day’s horrors.

She had been waiting for an eternity.

The summons had arrived less than an hour after Rex’s speech, a brutal, efficient message delivered by an Underlayer soldier whose eyes held the dead stare of someone who had seen too much blood.

There had been no explanation, no courtesy, only a location and a time.

In the hour she had spent alone, Valentina’s mind had been a battlefield of its own. She had run through every possible scenario, each one more devastating than the last.

Would he come to demand surrender?

Would he come to claim the Academy as his own twisted monument?

Would he come to execute those who dared to oppose him?

None of her calculations brought comfort; they only brought different flavors of terror.

Crack.

The sound of the office door opening without a knock reverberated through the room like a gunshot.

Valentina flinched, but she did not cry out. She simply froze as the temperature in the room seemed to plummet.

Xerollion stepped across the threshold, the very air around him warping under the sheer pressure of his presence.

The mask covering the upper half of his face glinted dully in the dim light, obscuring whatever emotion or lack thereof lay beneath.

His authority didn’t just fill the room; it invaded it, pressing against Valentina’s lungs until each breath felt like swallowing glass.

The weight of his power was physical, a crushing gravity that made the hairs on her arms stand on end. She rose to her feet reflexively, a muscle memory of protocol born from years of institutional respect, but her legs felt weak, her body betraying her.

She despised this forced deference, hated the way her soul recoiled from his proximity, but she was not a fool. To refuse acknowledgment to a force of nature was not courage; it was suicide.

Xerollion didn’t look at the portraits. He didn’t acknowledge the dust or the damage.

His focus was singular, absolute, and terrifying. He moved to the center of the room with the silent grace of a predator that has already won.

"Sit," Xerollion said.

His voice wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be.

It carried the absolute certainty of a command that could not be refused, echoing in the hollow space of the office.

Valentina sank back into her chair without argument, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. The audience had begun.

A suffocating silence stretched between them, thick as blood and twice as heavy. Xerollion did not immediately acknowledge her presence or her defiance.

Instead, he turned his back to her, walking with slow, deliberate strides toward the grand window overlooking the city.

Valentina watched his broad shoulders, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs. Through the glass, the view was a nightmare rendered in shades of charcoal and ember.

Thin, serpentine trails of black smoke continued to coil upward from the charred remains of the outer districts, staining the sky like ink bleeding into water.

Below, in the streets that had once bustled with life, the citizens moved like ghosts, their heads bowed, their shoulders slumped, shuffling through the rubble in a collective display of broken spirits.

He was studying them not as a ruler studying his people, but as a predator studying a herd it has already cornered.

Finally, the silence broke.

"Was this worth it?" Valentina asked. Her voice was fragile, cracking slightly at the edges, but she forced it to hold.

She reached for a reservoir of courage she didn’t truly possess, pulling it from the depths of her grief. "All this destruction... The screams that haven’t stopped echoing in my dreams."

"The lives extinguished like candles in a storm..."

"Apollo. Veylor. Calivara. Eryndra... all gone."

"Was it truly worth it, Xerollion?"

"To force a city that never raised a hand against the Underlayer into submission? To break a people who only wanted to live in peace?"

Xerollion remained motionless for several seconds, his silhouette framed by the dying light of a wounded world. When he finally turned, his movement was unsettlingly smooth, devoid of any human hesitation.

The mask caught the dim light, revealing nothing of the eyes beneath.

"An interesting question," he said, his voice carrying the flat, terrifying neutrality of a tombstone. "But you have asked the wrong question, Valentina."

"You approach this with the bleeding heart of a scholar who clings to the obsolete concept of ’justice.’"

He took a step closer, the leather of his boots creaking softly on the marble. "I do not operate on the currency of ’worth.’"

"I do not care whether this atrocity aligns with your fragile moral standards."

"I am not concerned with the sentimentality of loss." His gaze locked onto hers, cold and absolute. "I care about outcomes... And the outcome has been achieved precisely according to my design."

Valentina flinched as if struck. She looked down at her desk, her jaw clenching so hard her teeth ached. A hot surge of fury rose in her throat, warring with a paralyzing grief, but she strangled it.

She knew the arithmetic of her own powerlessness; she was a queen of ashes, holding court in a house built of splinters. To rage now would be as futile as shouting at the tide.

"Now," Xerollion continued, his tone shifting to something almost conversational, which made it infinitely more chilling. "Let us dispense with the posturing and discuss matters of actual substance."

"I require information, Valentina... And you are going to provide it."

Valentina lifted her head, her eyes narrowing despite her fear.

"What information could you possibly need from me?" she asked, her voice laced with a new, sharp wariness. "You have taken our armies."

"You have shattered our defenses... What is left to take?"

Xerollion pulled the chair opposite her desk, the legs scraping against the stone with a harsh, grating sound skreeeeee that set her nerves on edge.

He sat with a casual, terrifying ease, as if he weren’t a conqueror in the office of a broken enemy but a patron visiting a colleague.

"The world beyond these walls," Xerollion answered, leaning forward slightly.

The shadows seemed to deepen around him. "Aethelgard is not an island... It is merely one piece of a much larger puzzle scattered across Erosyne."

"And I intend to complete the picture."

He began to list them, each name falling like a guillotine blade.

"I want everything..."

"The Valdric Sovereignty to the north."

"The Thornweald Collective to the east."

"The Aurelian Compact to the west."

"The Sable reaches to the south."

"I want their power structures mapped... I want their military capabilities dissected."

"I want to know which Apostles they shield behind their borders, what their magical thresholds are, and most importantly..." He paused, his voice dropping to a whisper that felt like ice sliding down her spine. "...I want to know their weaknesses."

"Every crack in their armor... Every flaw in their foundation."