The Villain Professor's Second Chance
Chapter 762 - 762: Ashfall and Echoes (4)

"Yet," Vaelira murmured, tracing a fingertip from the river curve to a cluster of triangles etched as mountains, "we've learned 'impossible' is just a lull before the next catastrophe."

Draven lifted the lead-sealed vial, tilting it so the seed inside thunked gently against metal. "Two days ago everyone believed heartwood couldn't be poisoned into birthing a soul-eater, yet here we stand in the ashes of corrected assumptions." He set the vial down with a click that made more than one officer flinch. "Orvath's west. That much is clear."

"Then you agree with me," he added, steely amusement threading the remark.

Vaelira bristled, but kept her tone measured. "I didn't say that. I said you can't go alone. West is a maze of canyons. Supplies thin fast; morale even faster."

Draven lifted a brow, a single punctuation mark of dry humor. "I won't be alone."

Before Vaelira could retort, Korin moved. He seemed to glide more than walk, lantern handle brushing the map edge. His voice—soft as moth wings—nonetheless cut the gathering hush. "The roots say west," he told them, small fingers spreading over a patch of bark like he could feel veins pulsing underneath. "They're still whispering. One of us must go."

The pronouncement fell into silence that felt weighty and final, as though an unseen arbiter had sealed it with molten wax. Ash drifted down between them like punctuation dots.

Vaelira exhaled slow, then drew a deliberate line westward with her charred stick, the tip leaving a dark groove in the bark. "Then it's decided." She traded quick glances with her lieutenants. "I lead the main force north to hold the pass. Draven forms the pursuit cell west. Sylvanna, you're his second. Korin accompanies as interpreter." She scanned the scouts—three stiffened, knowing what the look meant. "And you."

Draven's nod was slight, eyes already mapping distances, water resupply points, where a canyon wall might funnel quarry into kill-lanes. "Bring back what he's using," Vaelira finished, voice so resolute the bark seemed to tremble under its authority. "Or burn it."

____

Evening settled in layers—first lavender, then charcoal, then star-freckled indigo. Fireflies stitched yellow-green constellations among the trunks, as if trying to replace the canopy stolen by flame. At the edge of camp, a portable forge rig—coil burner, small bellows, a battered anvil the size of a fat tomes—glowed like a tooth of sunset set into earth.

Draven crouched beside it, sleeves rolled to forearms still marred with sap burns. Sparks sprayed as the engraving chisel bit into salvaged glaive metal, following stencilled converter glyphs he had sketched with chalk: tight interlocking triangles to draw skyward mana, nested diamonds to vent excess charge safely along the metal's length. Each incision was the width of a hair, each angle judged by instinct honed from carving runes in battlefields where a mis-stroke meant an explosion rather than a weapon.

He paused only to quench the tip, steam hissing, before turning the shaft to begin the next line. Around him, the hush was disrupted only by distant hammers where Vaelira's armorers patched plates and rivets, and by the low growl of Raëdrithar dozing on a branch above the forge.

Sylvanna approached with footsteps muffled by the mossy ash. She lingered at the edge of the forge's golden circle, as though heat were a curtain she feared to part. The object in her hand—a thin braid of silver-black hair shot through with threads of storm-touched metal—twisted in nervous loops around her fingers. She cleared her throat.

"You're not going to say goodbye to her?" The question slipped out gentler than she intended.

Draven didn't look up. "Goodbyes are just borrowed guilt." The file rasped again, accenting the words with metal's rasping sigh.

Sylvanna inhaled, nose filling with forge heat and iron tang. She stepped forward, letting sparks dance across her boots. "Then here. Borrow this." She extended the charm, palm up, the braid glowing faint where the silver threads caught the forge-light.

Draven's hand paused. The chisel stilled. For a heartbeat the only sound was the soft pop of a coal shifting in the brazier. He set the tool aside, turned, and reached for the braid as though accepting a blade in truce. His thumb brushed the strands; the metallic filaments pulsed with a static charge that sparked against the callused pad of his thumb.

He didn't yet close his fingers around it. Instead, his gray gaze lifted to Sylvanna's—searching for something that might make sense of a gift offered out of trust he felt he'd done little to earn. The intensity of that scrutiny made her pulse stutter, but she didn't look away. The braid trembled between them.

"Then here. Borrow this."

The silver-black braid quivered between Sylvanna's fingers as if alive, storm-threads sparking dimly in the forge-glow. Draven's calloused hand closed over it at last. Static jumped from metal filaments to the scar on his knuckle, stinging—but he never flinched. He folded the charm once, twice, sliding it into the inner lining of his coat where maps, lockpicks, and other small, important lies already hid.

No spoken thanks. He turned the glaive shaft in his palm and resumed etching, as though the exchange were nothing more than changing a whetstone. For several breaths only the chisel's rasp filled the circle of light.

Sylvanna scraped soot from a nearby crate and sat, boots tucked beneath her like a wary cat. "I've been seeing more of her," she began, eyes fixed on Draven's steady hands. "The woman with the white hair." Ash motes drifted through the brazier's column like slow fireflies, punctuating each sentence. "She calls me storm-child. Holds me close. Hums a cadence older than the court hymns. The scent is always elderflower." Her mouth twisted, half-smile, half-ache. "A flower I can't remember ever smelling in this life."

One of Draven's shoulders dipped—just enough to reveal he was listening even if his gaze never left the metal. She took courage from the movement, pressing on.

"I think she was my mother."

The chisel paused in mid-arc. Molten metal hissed at the hesitation, but Draven did not lift his head. Shadows from the forge danced across the sharp lines of his cheek, making him look carved from dusk.

"And I think," Sylvanna whispered, voice thinning under its own weight, "that she knew you."

At that, Draven set the glaive down across his knees. The weapon still glimmered with half-finished runes, heat rippling up the shaft in shivering waves. Slowly—like a door he preferred remain shut—he met her gaze.

Moonlight from a puncture in the ruined canopy streamed through the forge's roof flap, cutting a pale divide between them. She saw something swim behind his eyes: recognition? grief? It flickered out before she could name it, shuttered by discipline so practiced it felt mechanical.

Without comment, he reached into a tool roll and produced a collapsible rod of tempered steel. With a click-and-twist he extended it into full glaive length, its double-edged blade catching the forge light in violent color. Storm channels—newly carved—spiraled the haft like silver veins. He offered it hilt-first.

"It converts skyward mana," he said. "Loud. Inconvenient. You'll like the noise."

Sylvanna accepted as though receiving a crown. When her fingers curled around the leather grip, latent energy hummed through the coils and met the storm-spark already coiled in her blood. Hair on her arms rose, not from fear but delighted resonance. "I already like the noise you make," she murmured, voice barely above the smoldering coals. "Even when you say nothing at all."

The forge brightened as if embarrassed for them. Draven's jaw tensed—either at the compliment or the vulnerability it risked—and his eyes flicked past her to the dark sweep of the grove beyond. Smoke still drifted there, carrying the smell of sap and funeral candles.

A crunch of boots shattered whatever fragile thread had formed. Vaelira strode into the circle of light, shaking fresh ash from her hair. The general's eyes flicked once to the braid now hidden in Draven's coat, once to the weapon in Sylvanna's lap, then settled on Draven with the precision of an archer bracing a shot. She produced a sealed envelope, wax impressed with the crescent leaf of the royal house, and tossed it into his lap. It landed soft, yet the impact rang like a gavel.

"If you die, burn it," she ordered, tone leaving no room for sentiment. "If you live, deliver it to the High Princess."

Draven weighed the letter with two fingers. He didn't look at the crest, only at Vaelira's pale, exhausted face—searching perhaps for irony. He found none. The envelope slid into a side pouch alongside the braid, as casual as sheathing a knife.

Vaelira pivoted to Sylvanna. "Don't let him drag you into his spiral," she said, voice raw from too many eulogies. "Some of us still have names worth keeping."

Sylvanna's grip on the glaive tightened, but she offered a small, respectful nod. When Vaelira's footsteps faded, moonlight reclaimed the quiet.

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