Young Master's Pov: I Am The Game's Villain-Chapter 55: What Fathers Leave Behind

I chose the Garden of Whispers. Not the bench — the seventh terrace, the one Valeria had designated as Mira’s training space, the one she’d prepared before knowing that everything she was preparing was about to collapse.

I chose sunset. Not for romance — for privacy. The seventh terrace was isolated by design, separated from the lower levels by a cascade of night-blooming jasmine that sealed the space in fragrance and shadow once the sun descended past the islands. After sunset, the terrace was functionally invisible to anyone not deliberately seeking it.

I chose to come alone. Nihil was beneath my bed in Room Seven, under strict instructions not to comment, offer advice, or provide sardonic observations about the emotional dynamics of human relationships. The sword had responded with "I make no promises" which, from Nihil, constituted maximum cooperation.

Valeria was already there.

She’d arranged the training space with the meticulous precision I’d come to associate with everything she did — three practice dummies positioned at geometric intervals, a rack of heat-resistant equipment, and a containment circle drawn on the stone in Infernal sigils that she’d either memorized from her family’s archives or invented from first principles. Knowing Valeria, probably both.

She looked up as I approached. Scarlet eyes catching the last amber of sunset. The ruby bracelet on her left wrist. The midnight-blue hair falling in waves that caught the fading light.

She was beautiful. The observation was clinical, not romantic — Valeria Embercrown was objectively beautiful in the way that a perfectly forged blade was beautiful, every line deliberate, every angle calculated to produce a specific effect. But tonight, in the golden light, with the jasmine closing around them like curtains on a stage, the calculation was absent. She was just a girl who’d spent the afternoon preparing to help someone, and the novelty of that experience had softened something in her that the mask usually kept rigid.

"Mira isn’t here," she said.

"I know. I told her tomorrow."

"Why?"

"Because I need to talk to you first."

The softness vanished. Not replaced by the mask — replaced by something sharper. The instinct of someone who’d grown up in a house where "I need to talk to you" preceded bad news with the reliability of thunder following lightning.

"Sit down, Valeria."

"I prefer to stand for conversations that begin with that tone."

Fair. I’d stand too.

"Your father," I said.

Her Aether signature — usually controlled to the point of invisibility — produced a single pulse. Fear. Not of me. Of the topic.

"What about him?"

"He’s been released from custody. You told me that. You also told me he was asking questions about your visits to the garden."

"I told you that as a courtesy—"

"He’s Cult."

The word dropped between us like a stone into still water. The ripples spread outward — through Valeria’s composure, through the garden’s peaceful atmosphere, through the fragile space between two people who’d been carefully, cautiously building something in gardens and corridors and the narrow margins between their masks.

Valeria didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Didn’t breathe, for approximately four seconds.

"Say that again," she said.

"Lord Cassius Embercrown is a member of the Cult of the Abyss. He held the position of Academy Handler — the individual who provided Professor Malcris with access credentials exceeding his clearance level, who met Malcris in the restricted section through a concealed passage, and who directed the ward-tampering operation on the Sealed Floor."

Each sentence was delivered with the clinical precision of an intelligence briefing. Not because I wanted to be clinical — because the alternative was wrapping the truth in cushions and qualifications that Valeria would see through instantly and resent me for.

She deserved the sharp version. She’d earned it.

"He also performed a Soul Binding on a child named Mira Kasun approximately twelve to fourteen years ago, sealing her Infernal core behind a standard fire affinity. Mira was planted as a biological key — her unsealed Infernal energy would resonate with the Infernal component of the Sealed Floor’s containment, weakening it from within. Your father created a weapon out of a child and stored her in the general population for future retrieval."

The garden was silent. The jasmine breathed its perfume into the dark. The last light died behind the islands.

Valeria’s face was — I’d expected tears. Or rage. Or the particular collapse of composure that happened when a person’s understanding of their family was rewritten in real-time.

Instead, she laughed.

Not the polished, controlled laugh of an Embercrown social function. A sound that was raw and ugly and came from somewhere beneath the mask, beneath the composure, beneath the seventeen years of performing the daughter of a man she’d always known was monstrous.

"Of course," she said. The laughter stopped as abruptly as it started. "Of course he is."

"Valeria—"

"You think I’m surprised?" The scarlet eyes found mine, and what lived in them wasn’t shock. It was recognition. The particular expression of someone who’d just been told the name of a disease they’d been living with for years. "My father has been conducting ’private meetings’ in locations my family’s intelligence network can’t monitor since I was eleven. He disappears for days without explanation. He receives correspondence that he burns after reading. He dismissed three servants in one year for ’asking questions,’ and two of them were never seen again."

She paused. Breathed. The Infernal energy in her core — the energy she kept controlled with an iron discipline that made Cedric’s mask look casual — flickered. Not a loss of control. An expression of emotion so intense that even Embercrown training couldn’t fully contain it.

"I’ve known something was wrong since I was thirteen," she said. "I didn’t know what. I suspected embezzlement. Assassination contracting. Political conspiracy. Standard Ducal-level corruption." Another laugh. Shorter. Sharper. "I didn’t suspect he was part of an organization trying to break a cage beneath the academy and release something that would kill three thousand students."

"I’m sorry," I said. The words were inadequate. Two syllables for the destruction of a relationship that had defined her existence. But they were the truest thing I had.

"Don’t apologize. You didn’t do this. He did." She turned away. Looked at the training space she’d prepared — the dummies, the equipment, the containment circle drawn with sigils from her family’s sacred tradition. The tradition that her father had corrupted. "The Soul Binding. The girl — Mira."

"Yes."

"He used Embercrown techniques to seal her."

"The methodology matches."

"Those techniques aren’t just family secrets. They’re the core of what makes us who we are. The Soul Binding arts were developed to protect — to seal away corrupted elements in a cultivator’s core before they could spread. They were healing techniques. And my father used them to imprison a child’s identity."

Her voice was steady. Terrifyingly steady. The steadiness of a structure that was bearing more weight than it was designed for and had not yet begun to crack but knew — with the particular awareness of an engineer’s daughter — that the crack was coming.

"What do you need from me?" she asked.

The question reframed the entire conversation. Not "how do I process this" or "what does this mean for my family" or "how could he." What do you need from me. Valeria Embercrown, upon learning that her father was a traitor and a criminal, had defaulted to the same question she’d asked since I met her: what’s the strategic play.

Except this time, the strategy was hers.

"Three things," I said. "First: train Mira. Teach her control. Her uncontrolled Infernal output is compromising the containment. You’re the only person who can teach her to manage it."

"Already planned. What else?"

"Second: your father has intelligence on the Cult’s larger operation. He knows who else is involved, what the next phase looks like, how deep the infiltration goes. That information is critical."

"You want me to spy on my father."

"I want you to access information that could save three thousand lives."

"By betraying my family."

"Your father betrayed his family first. He betrayed the Ducal system. He betrayed the containment oath that every Embercrown has upheld for seven centuries. He betrayed a child by sealing her soul. And he betrayed you — by being the kind of father who leaves bruises and calls it discipline." 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

The words hit. I watched them land — each one a separate impact, each one finding a target behind the composure that seventeen years of armor couldn’t protect. Not because the words were cruel. Because they were true.

"Third?" she asked. Her voice was thinner now. Not broken — stretched. The voice of someone who was very carefully holding themselves together and was aware that the effort was finite.

"Third: don’t carry this alone."

She looked at me. The scarlet eyes were bright — not with tears, not yet, but with the particular luminance that eyes produced when they were fighting tears with a determination that was either admirable or devastating depending on whether you believed people should be allowed to cry.