The Essence Flow

Chapter 185: Unmaking The Mask

Sera Vellmont.

The name rippled through the third-class dorms like a shield’s echo.

Especially among the girls.

She’d been the unbroken wall between them and the chaos—the one who planted herself at their doors during the takeover, her daggers a silver promise to anything that dared step closer.

The faculty offered her First-Class status afterward. A reward. A pardon.

She’d declined with a smirk.

"I’ll wait until midterms," she’d said, voice dripping with deliberate irony. "To earn it like anyoneshould."

A jab at the system.

A challenge.

And now—

She shadowed Towan through the halls, her steps soundless, her presence a blade yet to be drawn.

He walked wrong.

Not hesitant. Not lost.

But turning down corridors that didn’t exist, pausing at classrooms that had been demolished years prior, his path a ghost’s itinerary of a long-dead academy.

Then—he turned.

A pivot so abrupt it cut the silence like a knife.

"Why are you following me?"

Sera’s pulse jolted—just once—as she stepped from behind the pillar. No one ever detected her. Her steps left no sound, her breath no trace, her presence a shadow even shadows forgot.

Yet he’d known.

"Nothing special," she lied, voice smooth as poisoned silk. "Just curious about you."

Towan’s eyes narrowed, his gaze scraping over her like a whetstone on steel.

"Your Essentia is different."

No hesitation. No doubt.

An instant diagnosis.

"What is it?"

Sera’s mask almost slipped. (Did he just—?)

No one guessed her Intent Essentia. Not without seeing it in action. Not without bleeding for it first.

A playful smirk curled her lips, but her fingers twitched, betraying her.

"Oh, it’s just a natural affinity," she purred, closing the distance with deliberate, swaying steps. "Lets me feel the emotions that carry Essentia."

Her brow furrowed, a calculated show of confusion.

"You don’t know of it?"

For the first time since he’d returned—

Towan looked surprised.

"Thought it was erased," he said, absolute certainty lining every word.

A beat.

Then, quieter:

"Must be another difference."

As if this world was a flawed echo.

As if hers was another deviation.

Another?

How many differences does he see?

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...How many of us are wrong?

He lifted his hand.

A single, effortless snap of his fingers.

The air rippled, a shockwave of Essentia unspooling in a silent detonation. Not to harm. Not to destroy.

To unmake illusions.

Sera’s body jerked as if struck by a live wire. Her eyelids fluttered shut—then snapped open.

Her silver eyes—polished, cold, the perfect disguise—shattered like stained glass.

Beneath them, red.

Deep as a fresh wound.

Vibrant as embers in the dark.

Towan didn’t react. Just studied her, his voice flat, unimpressed:

"Who are you hiding from?"

It had taken him seconds. A glance. A few careless words.

To see what no one else had.

Sera staggered to a nearby mirror, her fingers hovering just shy of her reflection. It had been years since she’d seen her true eyes—years since she’d let herself remember.

The girl in the glass stared back, a stranger.

"You… are truly amazing," she whispered, the words laced with something between awe and dread.

Then, sharper:

"What happened?"

Towan paused. The question hung in the air like smoke.

"I lost," he said finally, the admission weighted with centuries.

No elaboration. No regret.

Just a fact, simple and devastating.

Then he walked on, his steps carrying him toward a hallway that hadn’t stood in decades, a corridor only he could see.

Sera followed.

Not out of curiosity.

Out of recognition.

For the first time in her life—

Someone else knew what it was to wear a dead girl’s face.

Towan sat on a bench, its wood weathered and cracked, tucked away in a corner of the academy long forgotten by most.

Sera leaned against the backrest, her arms draped lazily over the top, her chin propped on her wrists.

"Why don’t you speak with Elliot and Sylra?"

The question wasn’t curious. It was a prod. A challenge.

"They’re kind of scared of you, y’know?" she added, her voice laced with false lightness.

Towan’s expression flickered—genuine confusion, sharp and almost childlike in its rawness.

"Why?"

Like the idea was unthinkable.

Sera arched a brow. "Well… you’re usually way friendlier. Yell a lot. Crack jokes all the time."

A pause.

"Is that so…?" Towan murmured, his voice distant, as if sifting through centuries of fog. "It’s been so long, it’s hard to remember."

A beat.

Then, softer:

"I’ll check on them later."

“You really don’t remember, huh?”

“...He would've run there first.” Sera muttered

Sera pushed further, her tone deceptively casual. "And… would you like me to tell you about your other friends? Rellie, Len, and Alira?"

Towan’s gaze sharpened. "I know who Alira is."

(So she was on his timeline?) Sera’s mind raced, filing the detail away.

"The Verestra girl should have died in a terrorist attack," Towan said, matter-of-fact.

Sera’s lips curled into a smirk. "Oh yeah… you saved her."

A flicker of something crossed Towan’s face—not recognition, but calculation.

(But how did I meet her?)

The question hung unspoken.

This wasn’t his world.

Of course things deviated.

Of course people lived who shouldn’t have.

And yet—

The thought gnawed at him.

Not with guilt.

With something far colder.

"The other girl is your—"

Towan’s words cut off abruptly as Sera whirled on him, her usual smirk shattering like glass.

"You don’t need to say it." Her voice was a blade pressed to his throat—low, lethal, barely contained.

"She doesn’t know." A pause. "And doesn’thaveto know."

For the first time since they’d met—

Her mask slipped.

Just for a second. Just enough.

But Towan saw it.

And worse—

He understood.

His gaze locked onto hers, unflinching. "Are you afraid of what she’ll say if she sees what you’ve become?"

No theatrics. No judgment.

Just a scalpel to the bone.

He didn’t need to elaborate. Didn’t need to name the blood, the lies, the shadows that clung to her like second skin.

Sera knew.

Of course she did.

A slow, jagged smile curled her lips, all teeth, no warmth.

"I guess you don’t need Intent Essentia to understand people, huh?" She shrugged, the motion too casual, too practiced.

Then she turned, her boots echoing against the stone as she walked away.

One last toss over her shoulder—

"Anyways. Be nice to them."

A beat.

"As you’vealwaysbeen."

The words hung in the air, dripping with irony.

And then—

She was gone.

Leaving Towan alone with the weight of truths neither of them dared speak aloud.

Professor Kaen’s footsteps echoed through the library’s hollow silence, his muttering a low, familiar refrain.

"I knew it was a bad idea to let students do what they wanted."

His fingers brushed the spines of ancient tomes, the motion absent, his mind weighed down by bureaucratic dread.

"I warned them… and now I have to do a ton of paperwork."

A sigh.

Then—

His body locked mid-step.

"So you’re still alive?"

The voice cracked through the stillness, sharp as a blade dragged across stone.

Kaen turned, slow, deliberate—

—and his face split into a smile, warm and unexpectedly genuine.

"It’s been a while."

Towan emerged from the shadows, his steps soundless, his presence a paradox—both foreign and familiar.

"Where did you hide?"

Their hands clapped together, the impact firm, lingering, a silent language of reunion.

"Finally… someone I do know," Towan said, the words laced with something like relief.

A beat.

Then, patting Kaen’s back with rough affection:

"That trick of not being Essentia worked, huh?"

Kaen barked a laugh, the sound startling in the quiet.

"Yeah," he admitted, shaking his head. "It was a risky move—but here I am."

The words hung between them, heavy with unspoken history, with shared secrets, with the weight of survival.

For the first time since his return—

Towan didn’t feel like a ghost.