Chapter 1226. They Are Not Two Different People, Just Two Sides of the Same Truth

Chapter 1226: 1226. They Are Not Two Different People, Just Two Sides of the Same Truth

"No," Valentina whispered.

The word was fragile, a splinter of glass breaking in the hollow of her throat. "No... that isn’t possible."

"You’re... you’re Rex." Her mind scrambled, clawing at the memories of a boy who had stood before her in the courtyard, whose potential had burned brighter than any candle in the archives. "You’re the student of this academy..."

"You’re the one who saved the eastern gate from the rift... You’re the one who—"

"I am all of those things, Valentina."

Rex cut her off. His voice wasn’t the warm, respectful tone of the prodigy she remembered.

It was something colder, something ancient, a voice that had seen empires crumble and found the experience amusing.

He didn’t flinch at her accusation; he didn’t even blink. The boyish softness she had once seen in his eyes had been replaced by a terrifying, bottomless void.

"I am Tremor," he continued, each name dropping like a guillotine blade. "I am Lord Xerollion..."

"I am the Undead Bringer who walked through the ashes of the fallen."

"And I am... Rex Rexilion." He took a single step forward, the marble floor beneath his boot cracking with a spiderweb of fractures as if the earth itself recoiled from his presence. "All of it is me."

"All along..."

"The hero you saw, and the monster you fear..."

"They are not two different people, Valentina... They are simply two sides of the same inevitable truth."

The revelation hit her with the force of a physical cataclysm. Her breathing became shallow, ragged gasps that sounded like tearing parchment.

’He was there,’ her mind screamed. ’When Apollo fell, when the screams filled the streets and the sky turned crimson with blood, he was there.’

’He wasn’t fighting the enemy; he was watching.’

’He was studying us. He was harvesting our despair.’

The betrayal wasn’t just a sting; it was a poison that flooded her veins, turning her grief into something molten and volatile.

The shock passed, burned away by a white-hot fury that consumed every remaining spark of her exhausted consciousness. Every lesson she had taught him, every moment of trust she had invested in him, felt like a blade twisted in her own gut.

"YOU KILLED APOLLO!" Valentina screamed.

The sound that tore from her throat was primal, inhuman—the shriek of a mother losing everything. She didn’t just attack; she exploded.

With a desperate, convulsive motion of her hands, she tore at the very fabric of the ambient mana in the room.

The magical energy she had been hoarding, the residual power from her failed defenses, coalesced around her palms in a chaotic, unstable sphere of blinding white light.

CRACK BOOM!

The air itself seemed to shatter as she unleashed a torrent of raw, unfiltered spellwork.

"YOU DESTROYED MY CITY!" she shrieked again, her voice cracking as she poured her hatred into the magical assault. "You watched them die!"

"You watched the children scream, you watched the buildings collapse, and you did nothing but smile behind that mask!"

The spell streaked across the office like a comet of pure rage. The desk was vaporized instantly, splinters of enchanted obsidian flying through the air like shrapnel.

The windows exploded outward in a cascade of glittering shards as the shockwave tore through the room.

"YOU LIED TO ALL OF US THIS ENTIRE TIME!" Valentina roared, her eyes bloodshot, tears streaming down her face as she charged toward him, her hands glowing with enough energy to level the tower. "You played us like puppets!"

"You sat at our tables, you ate our food, and you took our praise, all while you were measuring our throats for the blade!"

"How can you stand there?!"

"How can you have the nerve to sit here in front of me with the same face we all trusted the face of a son while you carry the stench of our corpses on your hands!?"

Her magical aura flared violently, casting monstrous, dancing shadows against the walls as she prepared to unleash everything she had left, her entire existence reduced to a single, desperate need to break the boy who had broken her world.

The spell arrived with the fury of a dying star, a compressed bolt of white fire, screaming through the air as it tore at the very oxygen in the room.

It was a desperate, suicidal casting, the kind of forbidden technique Valentina would have condemned in any student, but now she threw it at him with everything she was.

She poured every ounce of her grief, her rage, and her shattered hope into that single arc of light.

WHOOOOOM.

But the expected explosion never came.

Rex didn’t dodge. He didn’t raise a shield.

He simply reached out with one hand. His fingers closed around the bolt of white fire as if it were nothing more than a stray ember.

The magical torrent hissed violently, sparks cascading off his palm like water hitting hot iron, before it collapsed in on itself, imploding into nothingness against his skin.

His sleeve remained unburned; his skin remained unblemished. The silence that followed was deafening, broken only by the ragged, wet sound of Valentina’s breathing.

Her mouth remained frozen open around the unfinished syllable of her scream. Her eyes, wide and bloodshot, fixed on his palm—the palm she had once seen pat a grateful student on the shoulder, now the hand that had just swallowed her last desperate hope.

’It’s impossible,’ her mind shrieked. ’He’s not human. He’s not even... he’s not Rex anymore.’

The shock lasted only a heartbeat before it curdled into something darker. She couldn’t use magic. She couldn’t think.

There was only the animal. There was only the need to feel his bones crack beneath her touch.

Abandoning all dignity, all technique, and all the centuries of refined arcane discipline, Valentina lunged. She threw herself at him with a raw, clawed swipe aimed directly at his eyes, a desperate, murderous lunge born of pure, unadulterated psychosis.

Swish THUD.

Rex caught her wrist mid swing. He didn’t even brace himself.

He caught her with the casual, bored precision of a man catching a falling quill. Valentina’s entire body lurched to a halt, her bones grinding against the sudden stop.

She began to thrash, her free hand scrabbling at his chest, her feet kicking uselessly against his shins as she screamed curses that sounded more like whimpers.

"Enough."

The word wasn’t shouted; it was spoken with the flat finality of a closing tomb. Without warning, Rex drove his free fist into her solar plexus.

CRUNCH.

The sound was wet and sickening, the unmistakable noise of cartilage compressing and ribs bowing under impossible force.

Valentina’s breath didn’t just leave her; it was violently evicted. Her lungs seized, her diaphragm spasming in agony as she was hurled backward.

She staggered, her legs folding like wet paper, before she collapsed onto the cold marble floor of her own office.

Hack cough wheeze.

She lay there, curled in a fetal position, retching up flecks of crimson blood that spattered across the pristine stones. Her vision swam in kaleidoscopic patterns of pain.

Through the haze of agony, she saw his boots approaching. Slow and deliberate.

Each step sounded like a hammer striking an anvil in the silence of her ruined sanctuary.

She tried to crawl. Her fingernails scraped against the stone, skreeeeee,skreeeeee leaving bloody furrows as she attempted to push herself upright.

"Get... away..." she gasped, her voice a broken rasp. "You... monster..."

Before she could gain purchase, a fist tangled in her hair. Rex grabbed her by the scalp, yanking her head back with such brutal force that her neck vertebrae popped audibly.

Crack.

He forced her face upward, dragging her gaze from the floor to meet his.

Valentina looked into the eyes of the boy she had loved like a son, and she saw only a predator looking at prey. There was no recognition.

No remorse.

Just the terrifying, hollow emptiness of an abyss.

"Listen to me carefully, Valentina," Rex said, his voice dropping to a low, dangerous purr that made her blood run cold. "You’re fighting for a ghost."

"You’ve already watched what happened to Apollo..."

"You watched what happened to Elliot..."

"You saw Evelyn burn... And you saw yourself broken mere hours ago."

He leaned closer, his breath warm against her tear-stained cheek, contrasting horrifyingly with the ice in his voice.

"Look around you, Headmaster."

"Look at the ruins of everything you built..."

"You don’t have a single option left."