The Villain Professor's Second Chance

Ash-gray mist curled over the plateau in loose skeins, drifting low enough to kiss the tent ropes and snag on splintered pikes. It had the sour tang of half-quenched fire: charcoal, wet sailcloth, a memory of fat and flesh burned hurriedly to keep contagion at bay. The pyres themselves were no longer flames but heaps of red-eyed coals, giving off the occasional sigh that sounded uncomfortably like a body settling deeper into a grave. Around them, broken mirror shards glittered in sullen islands—jagged, soot-smudged, edges drooping as though heat had wilted the very glass.

Draven—moving beneath the borrowed name Dravis Granger—took in every detail with a glance that seemed casual but measured distances, angles, and potential threats as automatically as a veteran gambler counts cards. The clone wore a travel-stained coat the color of dark embers; it blended almost perfectly with the smoke, and his footsteps were mere rumors on the stone. Where others slogged with shoulders rounded by fatigue, he held himself straight, chin raised just enough to survey the field without appearing to search. A predator's walk, invisible until the moment it mattered.

To his left, a pair of rebel medics crouched beside a collapsed signal post, arms slick with a mixture of blood and cheap liquor that served as antiseptic. One handed the other a bone saw with a twitch of fingers so numb the gesture lacked force; the tool nearly slipped before the partner clamped down. Neither looked up. A Justiciar surgeon—once their sworn enemy—knelt opposite, stitching crimson thread through a pale thigh. No ceremony marked the collaboration, yet the silence that surrounded them was thick with the knowledge of how new, how fragile, the cooperation was. Exhaustion might have dulled their hatred, but it had not erased the years spent sharpening it.

A few paces farther on, a Justiciar chaplain pressed fingers to a soldier's throat. The patient's pulse pattered beneath parchment-thin skin, a trapped moth beating weakly against a lantern. The chaplain murmured a prayer to the Four Currents, voice no louder than the sigh of the tide, and the soldier's eyelids fluttered in answer. A rebel courier paused, watched, then offered his own canteen. The chaplain hesitated only a heartbeat before accepting. Tiny gestures—small braids binding a camp that still felt split along hidden seams.

Draven noted each exchange, reading them the way others read weather. Shared water meant grudging trust. Trembling hands meant dwindling stimulants, and therefore slower response time if the camp was attacked. He filed the knowledge away. Every number might matter before dawn.

He passed a stack of shattered mirror plates, the silvering inside them spoiled by rain and ash. One piece still showed a warped reflection—a distorted half-profile of his narrow face, pale and sharp around the eyes. For a moment he studied it. The glass had bowed inward, making him appear older, colder, the expression on the reflection's mouth hovering somewhere between scorn and pity. He considered that and then moved on, leaving the shard to reflect nothing but mist.

Near the ridge he slowed. The plateau sloped toward shale, its surface scattered with sea-salt crystals that crunched softly underfoot like thin ice. From here the beach was a slate ribbon, the surf held far out by an unnatural ebb. The ordinary rhythm of tide had been replaced by a long, uneasy indrawing—as if the ocean itself were holding its breath in anticipation.

He crouched, rested two fingers on the rock, and waited. Thirty seconds passed, measured by the precise ticking of his pulse. There—a tiny swirl just beyond the calcified mouth of the Gate, scarcely more than the twitch of a single eddy. To anyone else it might have looked like the harmless dance of a school of fish. But Draven saw the pattern beneath: concentric ripples winding the wrong way, pulling heat in where cold water should have spilled out. He felt warmth rising from the sea—a faint exhalation, like a giant lung stirring beneath a stone lid.

The crust is re-warming.

He straightened, brushed dust from his gloves. A regrettable confirmation, but at least it was clarity. Clarity was useful.

Bootsteps approached, crunching deliberately so he would not mistake them for an ambush. Vaelira Morn-Banner, cloak snapped by salt breeze, joined him at the precipice. Her eyes were rimmed red—grief, smoke, and the kind of sleeplessness that eats through nerves like acid. Yet her spine remained iron. Draven respected that economy: the woman allotted herself no more sag than she could afford.

"You've seen something," she said without greeting.

"Heat lines in the surf," he replied, voice as even as leveled steel. "The Gate's crust is waking again."

She stared out across the gray water. Wind combed silver threads through her dark hair. "How long?"

"If the rate matches last night's amplification? Hours. If it's steeper—" One corner of his mouth moved, a shrug carved in the air. "Minutes."

Vaelira inhaled, held it, exhaled. The breath formed a ribbon of steam, instantly snatched away by the wind. "We can't dither," she said. "Not with the camp like this."

"Agreed."

She glanced sideways, studying him as though gauging whether the figure beside her was man or blade. "You've planned contingencies."

"I plan them while I breathe," he said. There was no bravado in it, merely arithmetic. "Strike, seal, distract. All dependent on moving now."

Her gloved hand settled on the pommel of her sword—a gesture equal parts resolve and restlessness. "Then we move."

He nodded once. No salute, no flourish. He turned on his heel, coat flaring slightly, and strode back toward the heart of camp.

The infirmary lay beneath a sagging canvas that still stank of smoke. Inside, lanternlight flickered with a nervous pulse—one flame snagged by draft and fear. Cots lined the ground in uneven rows, some occupied by soldiers breathing too shallow, others by bodies already cooling. Over it all drifted the low buzz of pain swallowed for the sake of stoicism.

Sylvanna occupied one of the rear pallets. Even at rest she looked coiled, a spring half-compressed. Pale strands of hair clung damply to her forehead, shot through with subtle sparks that leapt skin to blanket in restless firefly arcs. The gauntlet on her stomach twitched now and again, as if the metal itself were remembering battle.

Raëdrithar, her indigo wyvern, crouched just beyond the tent flap, head angled to fit, wings folded so tight they trembled. Every few seconds electricity crackled across his scales in ripples that matched Sylvanna's shallow breathing. A guardian bound by storm.

Draven stepped inside. The air smelled of iodine, ozone, and something brittle—fear disguised as disinfectant. A medic looked up, opened his mouth as if to object to the interruption, then caught Draven's eye and decided a second time. He busied himself with a mortar and pestle, leaving the visitor unchallenged.

Sylvanna's eyes cracked open. They were the color of sky just before lightning splits it—pale, luminous, edged with storm. "You're late," she rasped. The words cost her effort, but sarcasm seemed to cost less than silence.

Draven raised a brow. "You're alive. Impressive."

"Was that admiration?" She tried to smirk; it came out a crooked grimace. "Careful. People will think you have…feelings."

"I have excellent feelings," he said, setting down a leather roll of instruments. "Efficiency, pragmatism, disappointment. On special occasions, mild approval."

She huffed, a weak exhalation. "I figured you'd say something charming."

He selected a pair of witch-steel calipers, their tips gleaming a muted blue, and held them up to the lantern. Runes along the arms lit like embers, reading ambient arcane residue. "I save charming," he said, "for people who don't get themselves nearly killed."

Her eyes flickered—some mix of annoyance and gratitude. She wet her lips, waited as he set the calipers against her wrist. The metal ticked once, twice, collecting the frequency of the lightning still trapped in her veins. Numbers sprouted in his head: pulse irregularity, oscillation lag, the yawning gap in harmonic resonance that pulled at her core. The missing braid-hair—he felt its absence like a missing tooth. The space it had occupied was now a hollow sounding chamber, echoing Orvath's distant forging.

Outside, Raëdrithar chuffed, the noise vibrating the tent poles. Sparks danced down the wyvern's flanks, shedding harmlessly into the sand. The beast's anxiety mirrored its rider's incomplete rhythm.

Draven replaced the calipers with a runic stethoscope—twisted copper lines shaped into a coil. He pressed the disc to Sylvanna's sternum. The faint hum of power thrummed under his fingertips, erratic, like a young violinist scraping out the right note but missing the octave.

She winced. "Feels like spiders under my skin."

"More like centipedes," he corrected. "Spiders don't writhe so uniformly."

"Comforting." Her fingers tightened on the blanket. "Tell me the prognosis."

He listened another second, removed the scope. "You're an open circuit. Your hair shard is acting as a tuning fork for Orvath. Right now it's pulling your storm-core toward resonance with his forge. If he connects that key to an amplifier, the Gate's seal fractures before the next dawn."

Her throat bobbed as she swallowed. "Can you cut the link?"

"I can muffle it." He produced a slim vial containing translucent fluid that shimmered silver. "Spirit-ground mercury. It will shorten the tether, buy you hours. Not freedom."

"Hours might be enough."