The Villain Professor's Second Chance
Chapter 765 - 765: Lines That Don’t Erase (2)

"Three nexus runes—north, east, west—keep the conveyor alive. Kill those, the heart-wood stops feeding the core. I'll work from above." A short gesture traced his chosen path: up the nearest column, across two beams, down a chain.

Two scouts nodded, lips thin. They were still pale from the tunnel shock, but their hands were steady. Draven's confidence lent them backbone.

Sylvanna's attention drifted to the cages ringing the altar—delicate filigree globes no larger than a man's torso, each holding a drifting soul-wisp. The wisps looked fragile, skin of moonlight wrapped around nothing, yet every pulse of the furnace yanked transparent tendrils from them like silk ripped off a cocoon. The glow in their chests dimmed with every tug. Her knuckles tightened on the bow grip.

Orvath commanded from a raised dais, robes stiff with dense embroidery. The half-mask of hammered silver concealed most of his face, but arrogance radiated off him in waves. He moved his fingers as though plucking harp strings, altering rune frequencies with gestures too subtle for untrained eyes. The taller figure beside him—armor lacquered obsidian, mask featureless—mirrored each motion half a beat later, playing conductor to Orvath's composer.

Korin breathed a curse in root-speech so soft it was little more than vibration. His lantern flame flared a brighter violet, reacting to whatever dread saturated the room. Draven held up two fingers: wait.

"I'll handle the rafters," he whispered, barely sound at all. "Sylvanna, gutter route. Lantern boy with you. Scouts, stagger on my mark."

They split. Draven drew free a coil-hook and sprang upward, boots finding hairline seams in the stone with impossible precision. He moved spider-quick, limbs folded close, cloak fading into gantry shadows. Above, the metal beams trembled with furnace vibration, but Draven wove through them like thread through a loom.

On the floor, Sylvanna glided toward a drainage trench etched into the flagstones—a narrow gutter meant for excess sap. Raëdrithar crouched at her shoulder, wings compressed to reduce profile. Sparks flitted between its feathers and the glaive runes carved along her back, a silent conversation of storm-language neither scout understood. Korin followed on hands and knees, lantern shuttered except for a hairline crack that leaked just enough violet to keep the fear out of his eyes.

Draven reached the first nexus rune. It was no bigger than a dinner plate—just a spiral of symbols glowing the color of fresh embers—yet every crate on the track shivered in sympathy to its beat. He knelt, palmed a vial of powdered iron etched with a sever glyph, and tipped a thin line across the rune. The glow faltered, guttered, died. An iron crate groaned to a halt mid-track, sparks dripping from its wheels.

One. He mouthed the word, already shifting to the next.

Far below, Orvath continued his litany, unaware. "Phase-Three Catalyst," he intoned, voice low but carrying above machinery hiss, "married to the piece Granger left behind. The memory scar strengthens resonance—"

Draven's gloved hand slid to the pocket over his ribs, feeling glass press against skin: the seed. A failsafe crafted by darker minds than Orvath's, meant to invert power if misused. Of course Orvath wanted it—and of course Draven had left just enough rumor for the magister to believe it lost.

Up ahead, a scout froze at the edge of a strut. Draven recognized the posture: hesitation, not fear— the man was gauging a leap across a three-foot gap. He made it clean, but a pebble kicked loose, pinged off a girder, landed with a betraying clink against a pylon.

Draven's heart did not speed up, but calculation raced. He hissed a warning too late.

Runes flared scarlet along the conveyor, alarm glyphs waking like bloodshot eyes. A shrill siren shrieked, high and sharp. Soul-wisps quivered, cages rattling. Orvath's head snapped around, mask catching the amber so his eyes looked molten.

"INTRUDERS!"

Everything sprinted to violence.

_____

Draven dropped like a guillotine blade, cloak snapping open to slow the fall at the final instant. His boots hit the conveyor with the muted thunk of oiled leather; before the groan of metal echoed back, both blades were moving. A single slash—silver fire along rune-etched steel—bit through the glowing track. Sparks spat upward, sizzling as they met resin-tainted steam. The rune went black, and the iron crate above it ground to a halt with a moan like a wounded bull.

Reaper handlers shouted in three different dialects, confusion twisting commands into snarls. Draven didn't bother to translate. He pivoted, dug a grappling spike into the nearest support column, and yanked. Thin cords of braided wire hissed out behind him, ricocheting off pulley wheels and anchor rings overhead. With a sharp tug he cinched the line; razor-wire sprang across a ten-pace span, humming like a plucked harp. Three mages darted straight into it. Their black robes fluttered, then shredded as tiny barbs bit deep, stopping their charge in a sudden chorus of gasps.

"Containment," he murmured—confirmation to himself, nothing more—then slid sideways into shadow, already scouting the next failure point.

Lightning cracked overhead, bright enough to carve every rivet in the ceiling into stark relief. Sylvanna burst from the gutter trench, Raëdrithar riding her shoulder like a thunder-forged crown. The chimera screeched, a rolling, metallic note that vibrated vertebrae. Blue-white arcs leapt from its pinions to the nearest soul cages. Delicate brass lattices flashed, glass spheres ruptured, and motes of colorless light poured out in ribbons.

Freed wisps wailed the way a cold wind sobs through canyon bones, but their fear morphed to fury when they sensed living flesh. They coalesced into needle-thin spears of pale radiance and slammed into a cluster of reapers. Flesh went translucent where the beams struck; memories—childhood smiles, lover's faces, battlefield prayers—tore loose and drifted skyward in glittering scraps. The reapers collapsed, staring up with eyes already forgetting their own names.

Korin planted himself at the foot of a pylon twice his height. He flicked the lantern shutter wide, and the gentle violet flame flared ultraviolet, almost white. Root-speech tumbled from his throat—wet syllables that tasted of moss and deep soil. The glyph pillars lining the vault shivered. Lines of script unthreaded, curling away from stone like parchment caught in a gust. Where they unraveled, the energy lattice that fed the conveyor hiccupped, then began to sag, as though starved of blood.

One of Orvath's lieutenants rallied. He thrust his staff into the floor; a circular ward flared scarlet, forcing the loose wisps to recoil. He raised his voice, shaping a counter-verse meant to weld the lattice back together. Sylvanna reacted first—an arrow already nocked. She loosed, and the shaft glowed azure mid-flight, the storm-runes carved along its grain drinking greedily from Raëdrithar's lingering charge. It pierced the lieutenant's runic circle, split his chant in half, and detonated in a burst of static that crackled across two pylons, leaving the man twitching in a heap of scorched velvet.

Above, one of the trapped mages slashed frantically at Draven's wire with a bone dagger, desperation lending strength. He severed a strand, staggered through the gap—and found Draven waiting on the other side. The adventurer's right blade flicked up, caught the man under the rib cage, and guided him gently to the floor. Draven's eyes never left the next rune junction; he was already moving, boots silent on hot iron.

Alarms shifted pitch, the scarlet glow deepening to bruised crimson. Orvath's voice crashed over the chaos, heavy with incredulous rage.

"STOP THEM!"

He swept an arm, and runic plates sewn into his sleeve spat whips of molten sigils. A coil of burning script arced toward Korin. Sylvanna saw it in the corner of her eye—too far to intercept. Raëdrithar beat powerful wings, hurling a burst of ionized air that bent the whip off course. It slashed a groove in the stone floor a handspan from the boy's boot, spraying sparks that guttered against his lantern glass.

Korin didn't break cadence. Fingers still traced spirals in the air, binding fresh earth-words to the pillars. Powdered mortar sloughed in clumps as the glyphs deformed further, warping like wax under a flame.

Draven reached the second nexus rune, this one nestled on an overhead gantry bracket. Hooks anchored, he let gravity swing him upside-down, ponytail sweeping sparks. With surgical detachment he pressed two conductive pins into the rune, short-circuiting its pattern. Jolts of orange bled out, cascaded along the gantry, and winked out. Another crate shrieked to a halt; belts seized, gears clanged.

Two down.

Metal rungs shuddered beside him. The masked Drakhan aide was climbing the adjacent ladder with lethal composure—staff in one fist, side-blade sheathed along her spine. Even behind the blank mask she radiated purpose. Draven pushed off, flipped, and landed on the catwalk opposite her with a clang.

Below, Orvath finally noticed the figure slipping beneath his spell canopy. Sylvanna's cloak snapped as she advanced up the dais steps, eyes locked on the magister. He flung a rune flare—dazzling orange shot through with black glyphs—straight at her face. She rolled sideways, came up on one knee, loosed another arrow. It skewered Orvath's spellbook, pinning it to a pillar. The blast of parchment and binding leather staggered him; inked glyphs spiraled away like startled moths.

"You're persistent, archer," he growled, ripping the ruined pages free.

She flashed a smile devoid of warmth. "Your aim is sloppy, mage."

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