The Villain Professor's Second Chance
Chapter 770 - 770: Half a Face, Half a History (2)

Azra held out the ruined mask. "He didn't blink," she said, as if those words alone explained the chill burning inside her bones. "I drove for his eyes. He watched the strike like he'd already memorized its weight. Felt… unnecessary to move."

Orvath's chuckle rasped up from deep in his chest. "He will blink when the altar sings. They all will." He turned to the iron slab in the room's center—a map etched with rune-ink that still glistened wetly. Ribs representing the leviathan curled across parchment, each notch marked by a shard-symbol. A scattering of crystal tokens glimmered at key joints. The layout resembled a monstrous spine, and at its heart a burning core-glyph pulsed amber-red, matching the valley beats above.

"Petrichor proceeds," he said, savouring the consonants like spice on his tongue. "Every memory we harvested, every fear wrung from the dead—ready for infusion. We feed the shards into the cocoon tonight. By dawn the altar will have legs."

Azra's knuckles tightened around the mask. "The reflux in your veins says you won't survive the binding."

Orvath flicked a hand. "Mortality is a gate, not a wall. My voice will echo through the leviathan long after this flesh is compost." Something like wonder glowed in his sunken eyes. Or perhaps that was just glyph-light refracting through tears he was too proud to shed.

Azra stared at him—her mentor, her last tether to a house that crawled out of grave-dust—then down at her palms. One hand held the broken mask. The other hovered over the map, fingers shaking an inch above the glowing spine. She felt an ache where Draven's garrote had brushed her throat—a whisper of death. He could have taken her head; he chose to let her breathe. The mercy stung worse than the wound.

Orvath misread her hesitation as devotion. "Take heart," he whispered, words slipping between them like oiled gears. "When the altar rises, we will rewrite their names. Drakhan will be spoken again." He reached for her arm; his grip was unexpectedly gentle, papery skin warm with fever.

Her mouth opened—no words, only the ghost of a question. Then heavy stone overhead groaned, dust sifting into the lamps. A distant pulse shook the floor, stronger than the last. Both of them looked up. Orvath grinned, manic delight sharpening the hollows of his face.

"Listen," he breathed. "It's waking."

**

Deep in the fissure, Korin's small boots skidded on a quartz shelf slick as mirror glass. The boy caught himself, lantern held aloft. Its violet fire flickered to a strange blush of pink, bathing the passage in cotton-candy glow. The color felt wrong—too gentle for rock that bled sap and echoed with unseen whispers.

Ahead, Draven planted another piton, the soft thunk of steel into crystal carrying farther than normal in the cramped tunnel. His movements never hesitated—hammer, twist, tug—like notes in a practiced song. He tested the rope tension, then signaled the nearest scout to clip in.

The walls murmured. At first it sounded like wind caught in tiny hollows. Then discernible syllables peeled from the crevices—ragged, child-like imitations of the words just spoken.

"Don't fall," Draven had cautioned a minute earlier.

"Don't fall," the tunnels now chorused back, voices overlapping in dissonant mockery.

The scout's eyes went wide. He stumbled, boot slipping on frost-lit stone, and a high, startled note escaped his throat. The echo bruised the air: "Don't fall… don't fall…"

Three leeches, pale as moon milk and translucent enough to show their empty gut-sacks, oozed from a crack. Their maws unhinged, shaping that cry into wet gurgles as they lunged toward the scout's exposed throat.

Draven reacted before thought. Twin blades slithered free, metal catching flecks of rosy lanternglow. He stepped once—smooth, no wasted momentum—and the first arc severed two leeches in mid-air. The second cut came so close to the scout's chin he smelled oil from the blade, but the strike only cleaved the last parasite before it latched. Jelly flesh splattered against the wall and melted, hissing like fat on iron.

Silence. Then the walls breathed again, this time in a moan of disappointment that slid into new words: "Keep the rhythm…"

Startled, one panicked scout began to hum, hoping to confuse the echo. The tune broke high, off-key. Instantly fresh leeches crawled from the stones, drawn by the ragged melody, mouths widening to copy the tune.

Korin slammed into the man, shoulder small but determined. They tumbled, avoiding the strike. "Keep the rhythm!" the boy hissed, voice hoarse. "Low and steady or it calls them!"

Draven flicked gore from a blade, already mapping angles. "No songs," he ordered. "Breath counts only."

The scouts obeyed, inhaling and exhaling in measured sevens. The walls mimicked the pulse but produced no new leeches—unsure how to weaponize silence.

Minutes later, the narrow crevice widened into a vault of hanging crystal teeth. At its center lay a lake of impossibly clear water, still as molten glass cooled mid-pour. Through it they saw the cocoon.

Even Draven halted.

The thing slept beneath the water like the fossil of a myth—ribs taller than siege towers arched over a swollen core that pulsed slow amber. Veins of pale blue light traced each bony arc, converging at a nodule the size of a manor house. At every pulse the glow rippled outward, coloring the water, staining the ceiling crystals with a bruised aurora.

Sylvanna's breath caught. "It's beautiful," she whispered, though awe carried a tremor of dread.

Draven said nothing, but his gaze darted—measuring depth, counting ribs, calculating how many charges to fracture a joint. Strategy layered over wonder in the space of a heartbeat. Above them a balcony of violet quartz offered a vantage. He tapped a silent command: ascend, observe.

Hook lines hissed. The team climbed. As Korin hauled himself onto the platform, he paused, lantern fire turning soft rose. His eyes reflected the leviathan like twin mirrors. "It sings different down here," he murmured. "Sad, almost."

Draven knelt, one palm to the crystal, eyes narrowing. He picked out two heartbeats—one the familiar valley rhythm, the other slower, wearier. A thought crossed his face—faint, regretful, gone in an instant.

"The altar's core."

Draven's voice cut across the vaulted chamber, iron-flat, yet underneath the chill certainty there ran a thin current of awe, as though even he could not pretend the sight was ordinary. The words echoed off quartz buttresses, rebounded along ribs of crystal and bone, and came back to them sounding older—an announcement, a verdict, perhaps even a warning.

The others stood in a loose arc behind him at the balustrade of violet glass that ringed the overlook. Cold mist rose from the lake far below, carrying whorls of sap-scent and wet minerals that tasted like old coins on the tongue. Down in the depths the thing slept: a half-formed leviathan cocooned in lattices of fracture-grown gem. Ribs the height of towers arched over a swollen heart-node that kept its own impossible time, amber flashes rolling through translucent cartilage, flaring, dimming, flaring again. Each pulse was strong enough to make the catwalk tremble. Loose shards rattled like teeth in a cup.

Sylvanna edged forward until the metal of the railing pressed the seam of her glove. Her breath swirled silver. The faintest hum travelled through the barrier, vibrating her bones in sympathetic reply. She lifted a hand—hesitated—then set her fingertips to a vein of quartz that jutted from the rail. The stone felt warm, alive, like muscle tensed beneath skin.

Lightning slid out of her pores in soft filaments, not violent but curious, tracing the grain of the quartz as if reading Braille. The air tasted of rain and cedar smoke. In the periphery of her vision shapes flickered: vaulted silver-oak halls lit by moonstone sconces; a hush of winter petals drifting through high clerestory windows; a woman with starlight hair leaning over a cradle, singing in a tongue older than seasons. The memories weren't fully her own—too distant, too crystalline—but they resonated in her marrow like a lullaby half-forgotten.

Draven's head turned a fraction. He watched the way the stormlight danced her knuckles, the way her pupils widened until they threatened to eclipse the iris. In those seconds he took inventory: body tension rising in her neck, shoulders rolling as if to bear some invisible weight, jaw unlocking so a single tremor of breath could slip past her lips. Signs of overload. He knew them all.

He moved—two steps, no sound—reaching to intercept before the power could spike. But the vault picked that instant to quiver. A fresh tremor rippled through the dais, and amber surged toward gold. The ripple passed under their boots like the world exhaling in pain.

Sylvanna's fingers clenched involuntarily. A snap of blue-white arced across the rail and punched into a crystalline buttress. The support took the hit without cracking, but the discharge ricocheted up her arm, making muscle cords jump beneath leather. She hissed, jaw tight.

Draven's hand shot out and pressed flat to her wrist, palm absorbing the residual static. "Ground it,"

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