The Villain Professor's Second Chance
Chapter 760 - 760: Ashfall and Echoes (2)

Morning seeped into the grove in hesitant strokes, silver light collecting first on frost-rimmed ash before creeping up the blackened roots like forgiveness arriving too late. Where the heartwood titan had stood, a crater yawned—charred soil veined with brittle lacework of iced sap. Thin mist curled from the depression, ghosting through candles that still burned at the periphery. Their flames dotted the battlefield in miniature constellations, each barely a thumb's width high, yet together they suggested a sky stubborn enough to rise from the ground.

Two formations gathered beneath that pale dawn. On the northern flank, Vaelira's companies assembled beneath banners hastily mended overnight—tattered cloth now stitched with white thread where lightning had ripped seams apart. Spear tips glimmered weakly; helms showed fresh polish over dented ridges. War-priests murmured along the ranks, touching blood-chalk symbols to foreheads, anointing courage with the scent of iron and pine resin.

To the west, Draven's cadre was the opposite of pageantry—no standards, no shouted roll call. Half a dozen scouts in dusk-colored leathers checked crossbow strings with practiced flicks. A pair of quiet blade-twins—twins in function, not blood—moved shoulder to shoulder, trading silent signals as they adjusted the straps on throwing-knife bandoliers. At the edge, Sylvanna counted arrows by touch alone, lips moving in some private litany while Raëdrithar's wings unfurled with a hush like pages turning. The chimera shook once, scattering frost in a glitter-spray before settling to groom a cracked pinion.

Between those two forces, the grove's scar stretched like a wound refusing to knit. Draven stood at its rim, sharpening one of his twin blades against a whetstone no larger than a coin, each stroke exact, economical—steel singing a thin, severe note that carried farther than voices dared. He paused occasionally to test the edge against a frost-curled leaf, slicing it in mid-air so the halves spun away on different currents.

His glance lifted just once, back over his shoulder. In that moment the miniature galaxy of candles seemed brighter; faint memory of children's song drifted across the clearing, half imagined, half still echoing off cold bark. He nodded to no one, acknowledging the dead as witnesses, then slid the blade home in its thigh sheath.

A rustle of cloaks announced Vaelira's approach. She stepped over a fallen banner pole, boots grinding ice crystals underheel, and halted before a slab of bark laid flat on two shield-boss stones. The makeshift table bore a smeared scrawl of chalk lines—rivers reduced to zigzags, mountain passes rendered in blunt peaks, and a red X pulsing at the western frontier like a wound that refused cauterization.

"Orvath fled west," she began, tapping that crimson mark as commanders closed in around her. Her voice was hoarse from the night's hard orders but carried the clipped cadence of a soldier who had rehearsed her own doubts into silence. "He has the glyph relics. If he reaches the western ruins, he could entrench himself deeply enough that no force will dislodge him easily."

No one argued the premise; the ruin's reputation preceded itself—a labyrinthine vault drowned by salt floods and old magic, a sanctuary for secrets best left buried. The murmurs instead showed worry: shoulders tightening, gauntlets flexing, the soft grate of teeth on leather straps as helmets were cinched a notch tighter.

Draven moved into the half-circle, cloak flicking ash off his boots. With one fingertip he traced a pale arrow from the grove westward, bending along the canyon-shaped scribble Vaelira had marked. "We split here," he said, voice knifing through uncertainty. "You lead north, secure the river crossing. Winter's near—control the river, and you control supply lines. Sylvanna and I will take a disruption cell west, shadow Orvath, keep him moving. A fox can't dig a den if hounds nip at his heels."

A lieutenant with soot-black mail frowned. "That canyon is narrow enough for an ambush but too wide for two to bottle."

Draven's head tilted, calculating. "We don't bottle. We bleed. Force him to abandon wagons, over-extend his reapers. Separate the glyph relics from his scholars, break the chain of translation. You'll have time to fortify the north without glyph storms tearing your ramparts apart."

He spoke like a man sliding chess pieces none of them could see; each sentence repositioned an invisible pawn, sacrificed a knight here, threatened a queen there.

Vaelira's gaze tracked the imaginary board, brow furrowing. "You fought that tree, Granger. I saw what it fed on. How do we trust you won't break?" Her tone was steel, but a wisp of something softer—concern or dread—lurked beneath.

Draven lifted the piece of chalk, snapped it in half, and tucked one fragment inside a fold of his gauntlet. "Orvath's glyphs—they're arcane, yes, but still just patterns. I've decoded them, partially. Modern logic can break what ancient mysticism can't. The rest I'll improvise."

A veteran captain, face cross-hatched with scars like lightning over desert, spat into the ash. "Improvise? You gamble with lives."

Draven met the man's gaze, unblinking. "Every war is a gamble. I count cards faster." He didn't raise his voice; the quiet certainty had the effect of a gauntlet thrown.

Sylvanna stepped forward then, setting the tip of an arrow on the map. "He's right. Wind from the west smells of cut stone and new wards. Orvath's already shaping the land. Wait a week, and it will shape itself around him." Her tone was neither deferential nor challenging—simply factual, like noting storm clouds on a horizon. Raëdrithar echoed with a low rumble, the sound skittering across shields like dry thunder.

The commander who had scoffed at two blades and a bow folded her arms. "And if your disruption cell gets buried in that canyon?"

"Then you'll know the glyphs work on corpses," Draven said, a dark sliver of humor sliding beneath the pragmatism. A few in the circle stiffened; others—those who understood gallows wit—exhaled faint chuckles edged by fear.

Vaelira braced both palms on the bark slab, leaning close enough that the chalk lines blurred beneath her gauntlets. She stared at Draven as though trying to read a language scratched into glass. "You speak of logic," she murmured, "but I watched you erase your own memories to starve that tree. Logic can't bandage a soul when it's stripped bare."

His jaw tightened, and for the first time since the heart-wood's fall there was a crack—hair-thin, vivid as lightning frozen in glass—across Draven's mask of practiced indifference. Lines of exhaustion traced the corners of his eyes; a bead of resin-scabbed blood still clung to his temple, stubbornly bright in the gloom. He did not wipe it away. "Soul can wait," he said, the words clipped as a blade catching stone. "War doesn't." The sentence rang between them, sharp enough that a few nearby warriors flinched though it had not been meant for their ears.

Breath steamed in the narrow space that separated commander from operative, brief puffs crystallising before falling like shards of fragile porcelain. Neither moved. The forest around them seemed to hush in sympathy—the cinder-dust leaves settling, the distant chirr of night insects pausing mid-note—as if the glade itself knew to keep still while two predators measured each other. When Vaelira finally straightened, her scaled leather groaned, the sound reminiscent of an old branch deciding not to break. She rested one palm on the scorched pouch at her hip, feeling the raised edges of the Drakhan sigil inside. The gesture was a silent vote, the weight of charred wood tilting her inner scales from suspicion toward reluctant faith.

A plume of mist curled past her lips. "Fine." The single syllable arrived like a verdict and left the air buzzing in its wake. Beneath the dismissal lurked something fragile—hope was too strong a word, but perhaps the ghost of it, thin as winter sunlight. She lifted two fingers, first toward Draven, then toward Sylvanna who watched from the rim of the council ring. "Take only what you can carry. No wagons, no fires. Move by night, relay by raven. Lose the trail and I swear on every root of this forest I'll seal that canyon with pitch and salt."

Draven inclined his head: acknowledgement devoid of gratitude, almost mathematical in its precision. The motion ended exactly where it needed to, conceding authority without surrendering even a sliver of self-command. Vaelira's stare hardened once more, flint striking steel for a final spark of warning. "If you break again," she said, voice dropping to a tone that could score stone, "I'll break you myself."

The council scattered like birds startled from a carcass. Captains bent over gear lists, healers sorted salves by lamp-glow, and quartermasters bartered arrow counts against dried-meat rations. The grove, moments earlier a mausoleum of candles, became an ant-heap of quiet urgency—leather creaked, buckles snapped, and the metallic whisper of whetstones on edges threaded through the underbrush.

Moonlight sifted through tattered canopy-gaps, glazing everything in pale tin. Vaelira found Sylvanna at the base of a lightning-split spruce, kneeling over an arrow spread like tarot cards across a patch of moss. Each fletching received a measured tug, each shaft a quick flex for micro-fractures. Sylvanna's hair, unbound, spilled silver-black across her shoulders, catching the moon so it resembled molten pewter.

"He's not the villain anymore," Vaelira said, pitching her voice low enough that only the archer could hear. She did not look directly at Sylvanna, as if eye-contact might turn the thought brittle. Instead she inspected the resin stain under her vambrace, picking at it with a thumbnail.

Sylvanna slid an arrow into her quiver with a soft thunk, then another. "But you think villainy is a fixed point," she murmured, letting her hands keep moving so the moment wouldn't freeze into awkward stillness. "I've seen him tilt toward the abyss and veer back before the fall. It's not edges that worry me. It's flat ground—people grow careless there."

Vaelira's gaze drifted toward Draven, who stood half-shrouded in shadow at the grove's perimeter, blade angled against a whetstone that flashed with each pass. Sparks winked, bright and fleeting, before being eaten by night. "Edge or plateau, we can't afford a stumble," she said.

Sylvanna paused, palm resting on the final arrow—storm-runes etched so deep they shimmered even without Raëdrithar's charge. She spoke without looking up, her words gentle, almost fond. "Then I'll be the wind that keeps him from falling." She slid the arrow away and rose in one liquid motion, fastening the quiver strap with a satisfying click. Turning to Vaelira, she tapped two fingers to her brow in a half-salute. "You'll have your crossing, General."

Vaelira's replying nod was tiny, but the relief that flickered across her face at having put trust into words—and not having it thrown back—was unmistakable. Without another syllable, she strode off toward her officers, cloak swinging in a ripple of green-and-gold shadows.

Near the crater's rim, Draven let the last ring of steel fade before lowering both blades, satisfied with their keenness. A soft crunch of frost announced small footsteps. He pivoted—not abruptly, but smoothly, ensuring no point of the motion could be mistaken for threat—and found the lantern boy from earlier. The child's lantern had been extinguished; he clasped its cold frame like a reliquary and held up a new offering in his other hand.

"You didn't run," the boy said, lifting the object as though it were a crown. "Even when the tree tried to become your face."

Draven took the token: a crudely carved shield, edges rough, a shallow gouge scarring one quadrant where the knife had slipped. Sap still scented the wood. He rotated it once, reading the grain like a map. "That's because running is for people who still have somewhere better to be," he replied. The words might have sounded harsh, yet his tone rendered them into advice. He pressed the carving into a pocket inside his cloak, high on the chest. A ghost of a smile flickered—small enough to be missed if one blinked, but the boy saw it. His thin shoulders drew back, lantern hand steadying.

"Keep that," Draven added, inclining his chin at the dark lamp. "Night's mouth is wide. Better to walk in with a light than be swallowed whole."

The child nodded so vigorously the lantern rattled. He turned, racing back to his cohort, boots crunching frost, and Draven allowed the smile to finish shaping itself in private before erasing it.

Gray light bled into the sky, spilling over the wrecked treetops and turning sap crystals into brief prisms. At an unheard signal, Vaelira's column began to move. No horns marked their departure, no drum; only the rhythmic hush of disciplined feet and the singular clack of a standard staff touching rock at measured intervals. Their tattered banners caught the breeze, displaying a crescent leaf bisected by a sword—emblem renewed last night with threads of moon-dye. They slipped northward, a serpent of resolve disappearing beneath branches.

Opposite, Draven and Sylvanna prepared wordlessly. She slung a smaller satchel across her chest—jerked the strap twice to check weight distribution—then whistled to Raëdrithar. The chimera swooped low, talons clicking on stone before settling onto her padded forearm. Quick sparks crawled its feathers, then died as she stroked its beak. Draven distributed coils of razor-wire inside his cloak, counting each loop by touch, then checked the hidden sleeve where he'd stowed chalk fragments for breaking ward sigils. They turned west without ceremony, stepping from lantern-lit clearing into a corridor of trees still steaming from heart-wood heat. The forest closed behind them with a sigh; their silhouettes dissolved as though painted over by shade.

Dawn proper arrived once they were gone, painting the grove in reluctant gold. Warriors left behind to bury the dead began tracing shallow graves with spear-butts, and priests wove cedar branches into wreaths. Where candles flickered, wax pooled, hardened, and cracked—tiny glaciers forming among ashes. The child choir sang once more, voices uncertain at first, then stronger, weaving harmony around the grief until melody and mourning became indistinguishable.

Far below, beneath layers of sundered soil and petrified root, something shifted. A jagged shard of heart-wood, no larger than a forearm but slick with potent sap, slipped through collapses of old tunnel earth. It bumped against carved stone, ancient and cold, and the surface woke. Glyphs—long slumbering—flickered lemon-pale, then deepened to hungry amber. Each line of script throbbed as if tasting new blood in the resin's scent.

Whispers slithered from every crack. They were not language so much as impressions: hunger, memory, promise. "We remember him," the echoes hissed, voices overlapping, sharpening. "He will come again."

The glyphs answered, rising in intensity, casting warped shadows that danced like thin fingers across dust-choked altar slabs. For a heartbeat the chamber glowed, illumination pulsing in time with some hidden, rancid heartbeat. Then, as though called back to secrecy, the light guttered. Symbols faded to grey, leaving the shrine in shuddering darkness. Silence pooled thicker than oil, broken only by the subtle drip of sap from the root shard onto the stone—each drop a slow drumbeat counting down to another awakening.

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