Succubi Chapter 213. Heart Broken Professor I
Succubi Chapter 213. Heart Broken Professor I
[Mission Accepted]
[Briefing Scheduled: After Classes]
[Location: Academy Mission Office, Private Chamber 3]
[Requester Identity: Pending Reveal]
Before I could read the rest…
The air changed.
Cold.
Not normal cold.
Arcana cold.
The kind that slid across skin and made everyone sit straighter because survival instincts understood authority better than pride did.
The classroom door opened.
Professor Nyx Callahan entered.
But not like before.
No dramatic wind.
No windows slamming shut.
No theatrical darkness rolling in like he paid extra for entrance effects.
This time, he just walked in.
Quietly.
And somehow that was worse.
His black coat moved lightly with each step. His face was calm, but not cool. Not composed in that terrifying professor way.
No.
He looked…
Heartbroken.
Not “my crush rejected me and now I will write poetry badly.”
Solemn heartbroken.
Like a second male lead in a tragic romance who had already lost the heroine but still showed up to protect her from the shadows.
The entire room went silent.
Even Adrian shut up.
That was how serious it was.
Professor Callahan passed our row.
His eyes flicked toward me.
Just once.
A single glance.
And somehow it felt like he was accusing me of breaking his heart, stealing his future, ruining his coffee, and maybe marrying his childhood love in chapter two.
I stiffened.
What the hell?
He continued to the podium and placed his book down with controlled quiet.
No slam.
Just tragic quiet.
Adrian slowly leaned toward me, voice barely above a whisper. “Okay, Evan…”
I didn’t look at him.
“What did you do to him?”
I stared forward, genuinely horrified. “I didn’t do a thing. I swear.”
Felix leaned back slightly, eyes narrowing at Professor Callahan’s back like he was analyzing a rare endangered creature about to collapse from emotional fatigue. “You sure?”
“Yes.”
“Because he looks one step away from vanishing without a trace.”
I glanced at him. “That’s dramatic.”
Felix’s face stayed serious. “I grew up around nobles. I know dramatic emotional disappearance when I see it.”
Kyra’s gaze stayed fixed on Professor Callahan. Her expression softened a little, but her voice was still low enough not to reach the front. “I could see his shadow fading.”
I immediately looked at the floor.
His shadow was there.
Long.
Dark.
Perfectly attached to him like any normal depressed professor shadow.
“It’s still intact,” I whispered.
Kyra slowly turned her head toward me.
“It’s a metaphor.”
“Oh.”
Adrian covered his mouth, clearly trying not to laugh, which was rich coming from someone who had accused me of breaking a grown man’s heart thirty seconds ago.
I folded my arms and stared at the front with all the innocence I could gather, which honestly wasn’t much today. I had maybe eleven percent innocence left, and even that was legally suspicious.
Professor Callahan placed both hands on the podium.
The entire room snapped to attention.
“Good morning, class,” he said.
His voice was calm.
Too calm.
Like a man standing in the rain in a romance drama while pretending the rain wasn’t made of his tears.
“Let’s begin today’s lesson.”
A dark rune flared behind him, projected from the board in smooth black lines. The symbol spread like ink dropped in water, forming layered diagrams of mana channels, emotional resonance points, and shadow-elemental conversion structures.
At first, it looked normal. Impressive, even. Classic Arcana material. Shadow element was tricky because it wasn’t just “darkness.” It relied on absence, distortion, concealment, anchoring, emotional resonance, and mana compression.
Callahan explained how shadow-element users manipulated spaces where light, perception, and intent weakened. He showed us how shadows could become blades, walls, tunnels, bindings, or sensory extensions. He explained mana density, conversion strain, and how overuse could cause sensory backlash.
I started taking notes seriously because yeah, brokenhearted or not, the man knew his stuff.
Then the lesson drifted.
Very slowly.
Like a boat leaving shore without permission.
“Shadow,” Callahan said, writing another rune across the board, “is not merely the absence of light. It is what remains when light chooses somewhere else.”
The classroom became very quiet.
I stopped writing.
Adrian’s pen froze beside me.
Kyra blinked.
Felix’s expression went from academic focus to noble-level concern.
Callahan continued, eyes fixed on the board. “Every heart has a shadow. A chamber where abandoned hopes gather. A place where one stores words never spoken, letters never sent, hands never held.”
Okay.
That was not in the textbook.
Not even close.
My pen hovered above the paper.
I glanced at Adrian.
Adrian glanced at me.
He mouthed,’you did this’.
I mouthed back, ‘shut up’.
Callahan turned slightly, cloak shifting as the rune light painted one side of his face in black-blue glow. “To control shadow, one must understand pain. Not reject it. Not deny it. Pain is proof something mattered.”
Oh no.
Oh no no no.
This was no longer Arcana class.
This was emotional poetry with mana diagrams.
Still, nobody dared complain. Because this was Professor Nyx Callahan. So the entire room did what wise students did when a powerful professor started trauma-dumping through curriculum.
We took notes.
Aggressively.
“Shadow magic responds to restraint,” Callahan said, voice lower now. “To longing. To sacrifice. To the willingness to protect what one cannot possess.”
His gaze moved.
Slowly.
Terribly.
Toward me.
I froze.
That bitter, solemn face hit me directly.
Like I personally stole his sunlight, broke his violin, and married his tragic first love under a moonlit gazebo.
I swallowed.
I did nothing.
I swear to every demon ancestor I did nothing.
Callahan looked away again.
“Power without heart is violence,” he continued. “Heart without power is suffering. But power born from suffering…”
He paused.
The shadow rune behind him expanded like wings.
“…is the blade one raises for the beloved, even when the beloved looks elsewhere.”
A girl in the back sniffled.
I heard it.
Someone actually sniffled.
This man had turned Arcana class into a heartbreak funeral.
Adrian leaned closer, voice barely audible. “You broke his heart.”
“As if I did.”
“He looked at you during ‘beloved looks elsewhere.’”
“That could mean anything.”