Chapter 194
Ilux chose a seat near the corner, far from the center of attention, yet still within the line of sight of the teacher who would likely sit at the end of the table.
Placing his belongings down calmly, he felt once again like part of a scene, yet detached from its main current.
The other students sat in groups, speaking in low voices, still sharing the remnants of their collaborative energy.
Soft laughter could still be heard from time to time, a release after the pressure of assembling the assignment.
They exchanged glances, reinforcing one another before the presentations began.
Amid that almost palpable wave of togetherness, Ilux sat upright, his hands folded atop his documents.
He was an island of silence in the middle of a gently pulsing social sea.
From behind his glasses, he observed the room, noting the position of the door, the small window on the side wall that showed only an increasingly gray afternoon sky, and the way the light fell across those busy faces.
This observation was his defense mechanism, a way to divert his thoughts from the strange echoing voice still lodged in his mind and from the private silence that would soon be brought before the forum.
This special room, with all its official and isolated atmosphere, became the perfect stage for the contradiction he lived.
Being part of an institution, yet remaining a definitively separate entity.
In that secluded and silent space, the final stage of his assignment as a one-person team was about to begin.
'Calm down. Listen to the presentation, not that voice.
After all—'
"Ilux."
'The tone has changed.
No longer calling, more like—'
"Ilux!!"
'…Cursing.'
"Ilux Rediona. Ilux Rediona."
'Please don't call me by that name.
I don't know why, but every word feels as though it's gnawing at me from the inside.'
"Ilux Rediona. Ilux Rediona."
The mini classroom inside the library slowly transformed into a rigid presentation theater.
One by one, group after group stepped forward.
Their voices, initially confident or trembling with nerves, filled the coldly inhabited room as they presented the results of discussions, graphs, and conclusions they had compiled together.
Each presentation was a small monument to cooperation, to compromise, and to group dynamics that might have been winding but ultimately produced something whole.
The projector's light illuminated drifting dust particles, creating a temporary canvas on the wall filled with words and images.
Amid the flow of legitimate, acceptable human voices, Ilux remained seated in his corner.
His body faced forward as if paying attention, yet his true presence had split in two.
In his right hand, a pen moved constantly, spinning between his fingers in a nervous, unending rhythm.
That motion was the only outward sign of the storm raging within him.
The pen spun, fell, was caught, and spun again—a mechanical cycle mirroring an anxiety he could not extinguish.
That anxiety stemmed from a voice not born of this room, yet growing ever more intense inside his head.
With each presentation, with every brief round of applause that followed, the voice resembling Aldraya's gained a terrifying strength and clarity.
It was no longer merely a faint call.
It had transformed into a charged invocation, a dark mantra relentlessly chanting his name—Ilux Rediona—with shifting pressure.
The name was no longer spoken in the flat tone of a teacher, but exhaled with a hiss of boiling anger, wrapped in an intonation of curse that felt deeply personal.
Each syllable of his own name seemed corroded by acid hatred, becoming something alien and frightening to him.
The voice cursed not through structured words, but through waves of pure rage, using his name as its target.
Ilux fought to keep his facial expression neutral, yet there was a fleeting flicker in his eyes, a tension in his clenched jaw, whenever the inaudible curse seemed to reach its peak.
He felt as though he were sitting between two colliding realities.
The bright, tangible reality of the presentation room, and the dark, curse-filled auditory reality within him.
The presentations from other groups flowed like water, but for Ilux, time felt frozen and heavy.
Each minute stretched into an hour.
The spinning pen in his hand became his only true marker of time, a metronome for his growing anxiety.
He tried to focus on the material being presented, hoping to steal useful concepts or structures for his own presentation later, but his concentration was continually hijacked.
The curse-like voice was intrusive, piercing every attempt to think clearly.
He began to question his own sanity.
Was this a form of extreme mental exhaustion?
Or was something actively trying to reach him—something angry, something originating from Aldraya, or from the memory of Aldraya—that felt betrayed, abandoned, or perhaps something he did not understand at all?
His unease swelled into a freezing fear.
In a room filled with people, under bright lights meant to banish all shadows, he felt more exposed than ever, more vulnerable, as though the curse were invisible ultraviolet light shining on him alone.
Cold sweat dampened the palm of the hand not holding the pen, and for the first time since sitting there, he truly felt the urge to flee.
Yet his legs and body felt anchored to the chair.
He could only sit, hearing the legitimate voices of presentations and the cursed voice unheard by anyone else, while the pen continued to spin, spin, and spin, like a top dancing at the edge of madness.
'That voice is too close, far too clear.
If I step forward recklessly, I will lose control.'
"Excuse me, Ma'am. May I ask for a moment?
There's something disturbing my thoughts."
The name "Ilux Rediona" was finally spoken by the teacher, cutting through the murmur of the room that had briefly fallen silent after the last group's presentation.
The teacher's voice was flat and procedural, nothing more than an administrative announcement.
But for Ilux, hearing his name spoken aloud felt like a trigger, a code that opened floodgates he had been struggling to hold shut.
Another voice—one not of this world—immediately lashed out with a soul-deafening intensity.
Aldraya's voice—or something perfectly masquerading as her—no longer cursed from afar.
Now it sounded terrifyingly close, as if flowing directly through his ear canals, loud, clear, and filled with uncontrollable destructive intent.
It was not merely angry.
It intended to behead.
Those words were not metaphorical.
Ilux could feel a cold, sharp pressure at the base of his neck, a phantom sensation of a guillotine blade forged from pure hatred.
The voice also compelled him, yanking at his soul, to force words out of a throat that suddenly felt dry and locked.
The presentation he had prepared with such desperate effort evaporated, swallowed whole by this auditory terror.
The real world of the classroom and his ravaged inner world collided violently, and Ilux was trapped squarely between them.
Before his body could move to obey the teacher's instruction, another instinct caught a different wave from the room.
He did not see it, his eyes fixed on the wood grain of the table before him, but he felt it on his skin, along his spine.
A gaze.
To be continued…