The lingering dust of battle still churned above the massive crater torn into the center of Astrea Academy's main courtyard. The black smoke trailing from the ashes of the dark sect commander gradually dissolved into the howling, freezing night wind. Rian stood tall atop the fractured marble ruins, his breathing slightly elevated, yet the shadow-mana circulation across his frame thrummed with steady discipline, maintaining his Awakened State as obsidian-black wings flared wide across his back.

He had assumed the death of the field commander would signal the end of tonight's invasion. But his cross-world combat instincts instantly shrieked a violent alarm when the surrounding atmosphere abruptly plunged into suffocating density. A mana pressure far thicker, more ancient, and infinitely deadlier began bleeding out from the shadows of the main academy hall's grand entrance.

Creak... creak...

The unhurried cadence of footsteps echoed through the quietude of the blood-stained battlefield.

From the shroud of nocturnal gloom, a figure emerged clad in immaculate white robes embroidered with fine gold thread—the official raiment of a high-ranking kingdom aristocrat and grand royal advisor. A subtle, elegant smile curved across his face, clashing violently with the utter devastation framing his path.

Rian narrowed his eyes to razor slits. He recognized him instantly. Lord Sterling—one of the kingdom's supreme elites, a fixture of the academy's honorary board, and the principal benefactor behind the illicit mana-cloning projects.

"Magnificent... Truly a magnificent performance, Rian," Lord Sterling’s voice drifted calmly across the plaza, rich with a sickening veneer of mock praise. He offered a slow, solitary round of applause. "I never imagined that a wretched brat from a desolate border village—one who somehow slipped through the cracks of the massacre a decade ago—would blossom into an absolute monster of darkness capable of effortlessly butchering my field commander."

Rian didn't flinch. The tip of his shadow blade remained locked dead-center on the nobleman, his gaze chilling and merciless. "So you're the brain behind this dark sect. The architect who engineered Oakhaven’s slaughter and the foul experiments rotting beneath this academy."

Lord Sterling smiled faintly, adjusting his crisp white sleeve with the nonchalant air of someone strolling through a palace parlor rather than standing atop a mountain of corpses and school rubble. "The brain? Ah, such a crude, unrefined word, Rian. I prefer to view myself as an architect of destiny."

Sterling took a few unhurried steps forward, his eyes locking intently onto Rian's blood-red pupils. A strange, uncanny glint flickered within the noble's gaze—an awareness stretching far beyond the native boundaries of this world.

"You know, Rian? Ever since the day you shattered that crystal orb during the entrance trials, I sensed something deeply amiss with your soul," Sterling continued, his tone dropping into an intimate, psychological purr. "That energy... that tactical discipline... those are not the traits of an eleven-year-old boy born in a rural farming hamlet. The way you shift your weight, the way your eyes dissect an opponent's blind spots... those are the unmistakable hallmarks of a seasoned professional from another world."

Hearing those words, Rian’s brow twitched imperceptibly. His heartbeat remained locked in a steady, controlled cage, but a sharp wave of surprise flashed through his consciousness. He figured out my reincarnation secret?

Lord Sterling chuckled softly at Rian’s stillness. He closed the distance further, leveraging psychological warfare to fracture the protagonist's mental focus. "Ah, surprised? You aren't the only soul to cross the dimensional threshold, Rian. In my past life, long before I was reborn in this magical realm as a royal noble, I was a fellow refugee from Earth—a scientist who specialized in parallel soul-transfer dynamics."

Sterling's expression hardened, a sneer of absolute superiority twisting his features. "In your old world, I was the one who cast you aside through a quiet, calculated betrayal on the battlefield. And in this world, I've returned to ensure your existence doesn't disrupt my grand design to unify the realms under absolute darkness. You can never defeat a destiny I have personally authored."

The psychological assault was meticulously engineered to destabilize Rian's mind, driving a wedge of doubt straight into his meridian pathways. Yet Sterling was catastrophically mistaken if he believed an elite mercenary who had danced with death and betrayal could be broken by cheap nostalgia and petty psychological games.

Rian didn't waver. Instead, a cold, predatory smirk curled across his lips.

"My past on Earth died with the first bullet that took my life," Rian spoke, his voice layered with a heavy, echoing resonance of shadow-forged power. "And your greatest mistake in this world... was letting me live long enough to sever yours."

Lord Sterling’s tranquil mask instantly fractured. The polished smile vanished, supplanted by a flash of raw, unadulterated fury as he realized his mental intrusion had slammed violently against an unyielding fortress of willpower.

"Impertinent little wretch!" Sterling shrieked, his voice climbing an octave. He threw both arms wide toward the heavens, violently unleashing a torrent of synchronized white and black mana.

In a heartbeat, the capital sky—previously choked by storms of black lightning—warped into a colossal, blood-red dimensional vortex. A massive, ancient magic rune hundreds of meters wide inscribed itself automatically across the firmament, blanketing the entire academy grounds and the student capital below.

Lord Sterling was activating Judgment of the Abyss—a devastating, high-tier mass-annihilation spell engineered to vaporize the entire city, alongside its thousands of students, civilians, and structural foundations, wiping away every shred of evidence of his failure tonight.

Rian's eyes widened as he grasped the apocalyptic scale of the mastermind's desperate gambit. He snapped his obsidian wings outward, preparing to launch himself like a missile to disrupt the casting, but the rune lattice above had already reached its terminal phase.

The bleeding heart of the crimson vortex blazed blindingly bright, poised to rain down cataclysmic hellfire that would flatten the entire city to ash in a single, merciless second.