Preparation and Contempt
Kaelen stood by the sunlit window of his expansive Academy dorm, the antithesis of the dark, crumbling cell where his last life ended. He wore the uniform of the Azure Star Academy—a fine, dark-blue blazer trimmed in silver—but it felt like a costume. He was no longer the foolish, failed noble of his first life, nor the conquering, blood-soaked Tyrant of his second. He was simply the Regressor, a mind armed with absolute foresight and powered by the silent, pulsing malignancy of the Dark Heart. The Heart, which pulsed beneath his ribs with a steady, insidious rhythm, felt less like an organ and more like a volatile, caged universe of pure shadow. It was an engine of chaos, and it demanded to be used.
Seven days until the Hero party arrives. That was the temporal deadline. Lyra, the future Grand Mage, was his first crucial piece. In the original timeline, her intense desperation to escape poverty and her family's crippling debt drove her to seek refuge and power under the Hero Orion. That desperation also blinded her to the toxic environment Kaelen, as the Trash Noble, had fostered—his sneering public rejections pushing her into the arms of "righteous" protection.
But Kaelen knew the full, wretched truth. Lyra's downfall began not with Orion, but with a secret, crippling magical flaw. She was born with an exceptionally high mana reserve, but her control pathways were malformed, leading to violent Synaptic Backlash whenever she attempted to fuse elemental spells above Tier-One. This failure was a secret humiliation that would, in the original timeline, cause her to be expelled by the end of the month, making her desperate enough to join Orion's ragtag group as a common mercenary, where her raw power was valued more than her precision.
That debt is her weakness. Not poverty, but the crushing sense of failure and the accompanying sense of obligation. Kaelen knew exactly how to exploit it. He wouldn't let her be expelled. He would give her the solution—a solution so tainted she would never truly be free of him. He needed her powerful, but he needed her brokenly dependent on his continued existence.
He walked over to his writing desk and pulled out a fresh parchment. It wasn't needed for spells; it was needed for scripting. He was orchestrating reality now. He used an expensive ink mixed with a single, controlled drop of his own Stygian Mana, ensuring the final document carried a faint, almost subliminal trace of abyssal power.
The Archive and The Flaw
The Academy Library was a cathedral of knowledge, its upper levels restricted to only the highest-ranking students. Kaelen, thanks to his family's vast, but now largely irrelevant, donation, had access to the rarely used subterranean archives.
He descended the spiral staircase, the sound of his bespoke leather shoes echoing on the ancient stone. The air down here was thick with the scent of old paper and suppressed mana, making the very atmosphere feel heavy with forgotten secrets. He knew exactly where the artifact lay, stored not for its magical value, but its historical curiosity.
He stopped before a dusty, unmarked iron gate leading to a sub-section labeled: Obscure Dialectical Systems. A forgotten lock combination, easily recalled from the Temporal Echo, clicked open with a satisfying, metallic sigh.
Inside, resting on a pedestal, was a scroll encased in darkened crystal: the Primal Rune of Corrupted Synthesis.
The scroll itself was innocuous, but the knowledge it contained was toxic. It didn't teach the clean, balanced elemental fusion taught by the Academy. Instead, it taught an accelerated method using negative energy—not Stygian Mana, but the latent, chaotic energy in the environment—to force elements to merge. It was a brute-force approach that was faster and infinitely more powerful than traditional methods, but which left the user's mana core brittle and inherently susceptible to corruption and outside influence. It was, in essence, a high-octane shortcut to power, disguised as an elemental breakthrough.
As Kaelen touched the crystal, the Dark Heart in his chest pulsed, responding to the scroll's subtle, chaotic energy. The abyssal mana instantly resonated with the Primal Rune, allowing Kaelen to imprint the complex fusion formula onto the new parchment using an inner script only visible to a mind under duress. This ensured that only Lyra, desperate and searching, would find the subtle instructions hidden within the surface text.
The fee for this knowledge is small, Lyra, Kaelen thought, sealing the parchment into a simple wax envelope marked only with the crest of a forgotten scholar. Only your destiny.
The Coercion
Lyra wasn't supposed to be in the restricted wing, but Kaelen's presence here was part of his precise foresight. He knew she would be here tonight, desperately searching for any forgotten text that might explain her crippling mental block, risking expulsion just to look.
He found her huddled in a dark corner, illuminated by the feeble glow of a single, poorly sustained light orb she had created. She looked exhausted, her fingers tracing the titles of high-level texts she couldn't afford to check out. She was so engrossed in her shame and desperation that she didn't hear him approach.
"Wasting time in the shadows, aspiring Grand Mage Lyra?" Kaelen's voice cut the silence, low and laced with practiced contempt.
Lyra jumped, scrambling to her feet, her light orb flickering violently and nearly dying. Her blue eyes widened in fear, recognizing the infamous Trash Noble, Kaelen Varrus. She quickly bowed, her pride already bruised and battered by days of failure. "Lord Varrus. I… I was simply reviewing research for my upcoming thesis."
Kaelen scoffed, the sound entirely believable as noble disdain. "A thesis on Failure Theory, perhaps? I heard the rumors, Lyra. The Synaptic Backlash in your Tier-Two fusion. Your mana flow isn't clean. You can summon power, but you can't control it. A fatal flaw for a mage, one that leads directly to the Expulsion Register."
Her face flushed crimson, a painful mix of shame and fear. The rumors were supposed to be locked away within the professors' inner circle. "You have no right to—"
"Right?" Kaelen interrupted, stepping closer, his shadow falling completely over her small frame. "I have the right of a fellow student who knows precisely what happens to failures in this Academy. You will be expelled. Your family debt will be called in by the bank holding your estate's deed—an estate, by the way, that is now worth less than the paper the deed is printed on. You will become a nameless commoner in the slums, never mind a mage. The Hero Orion won't even know your name until you're begging for scraps."
He let that sink in, watching the defiant spark in her eyes extinguish, replaced by pure, cold despair. This was the true magic of the Dark Heart—understanding and exploiting the darkness already present in human nature.
"However," Kaelen continued, his voice dropping to a confidential murmur that was somehow more threatening than his earlier scorn, "I enjoy collecting resources before they become utterly worthless. And your raw power is not worthless."
He placed the wax-sealed parchment on a nearby, carved wooden table. It was non-magical, seemingly insignificant.
"That parchment contains a fragment of forbidden knowledge, Lyra. Not for clean, conventional mages. But for those like you who need a shortcut—a different path. It resolves the Synaptic Backlash issue with the Elemental Synthesis. You will be able to fuse Tier-Four spells instantly, and quietly. You will exceed your peers. You will be safe from expulsion."
Lyra stared at the plain envelope as if it contained a poisonous snake. Her breath hitched. "Why? Why would you give me this, Lord Varrus? You hate me."
"Hate is a fleeting emotion, easily dismissed," Kaelen replied, straightening his coat. "I am merely practical. I hate wasting potential, and I enjoy watching desperate people struggle to pay their debts. This is not a gift, Lyra. It is a loan."
He leaned in again, his eyes flashing with the faint, crimson light of the Dark Heart, a light only he could see, but which carried an immense psychological weight. "You will not tell anyone you received this from me. You will achieve the rank of Grand Mage, and you will owe every ounce of that power, every future success, and every drop of fame to me. When I call upon you—when I need that power—you will answer without question, without hesitation, and without morality. You will be my silent asset."
He didn't need a formal contract. The weight of the secret, the humiliation of needing his dark help, and the soul-deep fear of expulsion were the unbreakable bonds of his contract.
Lyra's hand trembled as she reached for the envelope. Kaelen could see the internal war—the noble girl's principles fighting against the desperate survival instinct. Survival always won. Especially when fueled by desperation and the promise of escaping lifelong shame.
She grasped the parchment, clutching it like a lifeline, her eyes wide with a combination of relief and utter terror. "I… I understand, Lord Varrus. I swear my silence and my future obedience."
"Good," Kaelen concluded, his voice cold and final. "Now, go and prove that my investment was worthwhile. And remember: your power begins with my gift, and that debt is eternal."
Lyra fled the archive without another word, the envelope clutched to her chest. Kaelen watched her go, then retrieved the crystal-encased scroll, his Dark Heart resonating with victorious satisfaction.
First piece secured. The Heroines need their power source. I just ensured that power source is a poisoned well, and I hold the bucket. He had successfully corrupted the Grand Mage's foundation before the Heroes' righteous bonds could even form. His chess game had begun.
He turned his thoughts immediately to his next target: the gentle, devout Saintess Elara. Her strength was not in magic, but in her moral clarity and spiritual purity. A purely magical coercion wouldn't work. For Elara, the revenge must be surgical, targeting the one thing she cherished more than her divine light: her reputation and her faith.