The Villain Professor's Second Chance

"Hours might be enough."

"If you don't overexert." He poured a single drop onto the back of her hand. The liquid spread, traced sigils along her veins, then sank in with a whisper. "That will sting."

She hissed. Fine arcs of static jumped from her scalp and died. "Understatement."

Draven recapped the vial. "You remain combat-capable?"

A laugh half made of static fizzed in her throat. "I'm breathing, aren't I? Raëdrithar's wings are itchy for the sky. We'll manage."

He met her gaze, cold appraisal under calm lids. Inside, calculations shifted, branching. He would need her in the air—no one else wielded storm-glass arrows with the same precision—but the risk of her resonance shattering mid-flight was non-trivial. Still, necessity outranked caution.

Outside the tent, voices rose—a medic barking for more bandages, a Justiciar swearing as sutures snapped. Draven ignored them, kept his attention on Sylvanna. "Rest for one hour," he said. "In that time I'll finalize the strike order. When I return, you fly."

"And if I say no?"

"Then I sedate you," he replied without heat, "and strap you to Raëdrithar anyway. Either way, the wyvern leaves the ground before sunrise."

Despite herself, Sylvanna chuckled, the sound brittle but genuine. "There's the charm."

He rolled up his instruments, slid them beneath his coat. Before turning away he rested two fingers lightly on her forearm, not quite a gesture of comfort, more a diagnostic reaffirmation that the mercury had taken hold. Sparks no longer leapt where he touched; the field had dampened. Good. A thin margin, but margins were all wars were made of.

He rose, drew the tent flap aside. Mist drifted in like a lost spirit, cooled his face. Raëdrithar made a low rumble in the back of its throat—question, concern, vow. Draven met the creature's gleaming eye. "She will fly," he said, voice pitched so only the beast would hear. "See that she does not fall."

The wyvern exhaled a thread of blue firefly sparks. Agreement.

Draven stepped into the ashen dawn, coat snapping behind him. Somewhere a bell clanged—two measured strokes signaling a shift change, though no one bothered to switch; they merely stood, bones locked, until someone shook them. Above, the sky lightened from iron to pewter, showing no hint of sun, only a grim promise that time was still moving.

He moved with it, a silent vector threading through the wounded camp, already assembling contingencies in his mind.

And behind him, within the infirmary's dim canvas walls, Sylvanna let her eyes close for exactly the sixty minutes he had allowed, refusing even in sleep to waste the gift of time he had bought her.

Draven unrolled his slender toolkit with the exacting care of a jeweler exposing diamonds to light. Witch-steel calipers gleamed against the dim lantern glow, their blades honed thin enough to shave spirit-threads. Beside them lay a runic stethoscope: a copper spiral no broader than a coin, etched with sigils so fine they looked like frost. He positioned the tools on a folded cloth, each angle precise, before turning back to Sylvanna.

The cot's canvas sagged under her weight, creaking whenever another tremor rippled through her storm-sick muscles. Sweat beaded at her temples, then flashed to steam in tiny hisses. She tried to mask a shiver, but lightning still snapped across her skin, tracing filigrees of blue fire beneath her collarbone. Her eyes followed Draven's movements with the wary calm of someone who knew pain was coming and had already decided not to scream.

He spoke once—soft, emotionless. "Lift your hair."

She obeyed. Fingers that could string a bow in a gale now fumbled, pushing damp strands over one shoulder. The motion revealed a thin white scar behind her ear, a souvenir from their first raid together. Draven noted the quickened pulse at her throat, the way her breath caught whenever sparks crawled too near her jaw. Weakness catalogued, threat assessed.

He pressed the silver-laced plate of the stethoscope between her shoulder blades. Cold metal met fevered flesh; Sylvanna sucked air through her teeth but did not flinch away. The runes brightened in a slow, sickly rhythm, mimicking the chaotic fire under her skin. Draven closed his eyes, allowing the vibrations to travel through his fingertips and into his mind as numbers.

Pulse variance: six beats irregular, then two sharp spikes.

Charge decay: 11 percent per minute—too slow for safety, too fast for stability.

Primary frequency: missing. A silent note where resonance should sing.

He opened his eyes. "Storm-core asymmetry confirmed," he murmured. "Amplitude imbalance, rotational drift at fifteen degrees. The gap is widening."

Sylvanna swallowed. "English, please."

"Your magic's spinning like a wheel with one spoke sheared off. Each rotation jars the rim until the whole thing shatters."

She drew a shaky breath. "I can feel it. Like hooks tugging from the inside."

"It's calling to you," Draven said. He switched tools, lifting the calipers. "Your missing braid-hair—Orvath forged it into a harmonic prong. Every tick of his forge pulls your storm-core out of alignment."

Sylvanna's jaw locked. "I knew he'd use it. Just didn't know how fast."

Draven slid the calipers beneath the cuff of her gauntlet. A faint chime rang—the sound of iron tasting lightning. Numbers blossomed in his mind again: waveform distortions, harmonic bleed. "If he seats the shard into a new amplifier," he told her, "this camp becomes the eye of a permanent vortex. Gate seal fractures. Ocean drowns the plateau. The end."

Her lips thinned. "How long?"

"Next dawn." He met her gaze, eyes like twin shards of winter glass. "That is the optimistic clock."

Sylvanna's laugh came out cracked. "Optimism. From you."

"It's a theory, not hope," he corrected. "Hope is for gamblers."

She searched his face, found no tremor of uncertainty, and nodded once. "Then let's stop him."

"That," he said, "is the correct conclusion."

She eased back onto the cot, breathing shallowly as Draven uncorked a vial of spirit-ground mercury—a quicksilver slurry that shimmered like liquid moonlight. "Side effects?" she asked.

"Metallic aftertaste. Numbness." He paused. "Eventual kidney failure, but long after dawn, so irrelevant."

"Comforting," she muttered.

He let a single drop fall onto her wrist. The mercury unfurled into a spiderweb of runes, sinking beneath the skin with an audible hiss. Sylvanna bit down on a knuckle, eyes watering as cold burned along her veins. A heartbeat later the wild sparks around her dimmed, corralled by the binding sigils. She exhaled, muscles unclenching. For the first time since her fall, silence settled over her nerves.

Draven packed away his instruments with mechanical efficiency. "The tether is dampened," he said. "You have maybe four hours before resonance breaches the seal. Use them wisely."

"Four hours is a kingdom," she replied, voice steadier. "Where do you need me?"

"In the sky," he said. "And soon."

By the time Draven strode into the gutted signal-tower, Vaelira had transformed the ruin into a war room. Ash filmed every charred beam; holes in the roof showed ragged teeth of timber against a leaden sky. Yet the long map table was scrubbed clean of soot and pinned beneath iron spikes to keep the parchment from curling in the sea wind. Around it stood the people who would decide whether dawn belonged to the living.

Azra was humming under her breath, grease-black braids swinging as she traced routes across the map with an oil-stained finger. Her sleeves bore smudges of engine soot like stripes of rank. Helyra, gaunt cheeks flushed from a brisk climb to check star positions, held her sextant as gently as a newborn. Edrik, freshly bandaged, stood ramrod straight—discipline holding up exhaustion. Captain Alder hovered at the edge, eyes narrowed, measuring every word spoken by former enemies.

On a stretcher near the wall lay Sylvanna, propped on one elbow now, color returning to her face in faint flashes of pink. Raëdrithar's shadow loomed just outside the doorway, only the wyvern's restless tail visible through the gap.

Draven stepped to the head of the table and, with a piece of charcoal, stabbed three points onto the parchment. "Three fronts," he announced, voice carrying the finality of a slammed vault door. "No redundancies. No retreats."

Quills paused, breaths held.

"First." He tapped the northern mark. "Strike Team Ember. Ingress from above. Raëdrithar can bear three riders if we strip armor weight. Sylvanna leads. Azra—fissure entry charts."

Azra's grin cut bright as a gleaming wrench. "If the ceiling collapses?"

"Then you widen it," Draven said. "Your mines work upward as well as down."

Her grin widened. "Thought so."

Edrik lifted an eyebrow. "And if Sylvanna's resonance fails mid-flight?"

Draven's answer was ice. "She will succeed." He did not elaborate. The certainty brooked no doubt.

He tapped the second point—southwest, near a sketched network of aqueduct lines. "Saboteur Cell Blackwater. Objective: flood the capital's relief gate, choke Orvath's fallback corridor. My clone will command—reactive and expendable."

Helyra's fingers twitched on her sextant. "You trust a copy of yourself more than a man?"

"I trust predictable math," Draven said. "A clone is math wearing shoes."

Captain Alder cleared his throat, voice hoarse. "Flooding that gate will drown two dozen city blocks. Innocents."

"Better drowned homes than a drowned world," Draven replied. No apology.

Silent agreement—or grim resignation—settled over the table.

He aimed the charcoal at the plateau symbol, drawing a crude shield wall. "Third front: Ironbark Line. Vaelira, Edrik. Mixed infantry hold against wraith resurgence."

Vaelira touched the hilt of her sword. "They will come harder this time."