The Villain Professor's Second Chance

Twilight bled slowly into the blue hush of false dawn, and with every heartbeat the camp's color shifted—ashen grays giving way to bruised violet, violet thinning toward a promise of silver that still felt impossibly far off. Men and women haunted the lanes like half-formed ghosts, their breath puffing into the air in ragged bursts that glittered briefly where watch-fires smoldered. Somewhere a cookpot rattled on its chain, forgotten over dying coals; the smell of scorched barley drifted through the cold and mixed with pitch, steel oil, and the unmistakable tang of fear-sweat.

Near the cliff rail, Azra knelt beneath Raëdrithar's massive chest, the wyvern's lungs expanding and collapsing like blacksmith bellows. Each exhale unfurled steam across the barding plates she was still bolting in place—a woven hide the color of thunderheads, braced with channels of bright copper. Tiny sigils along those channels flickered whenever her rune-torch kissed them, soldering wire to stud in crackling pops. Sparks shot into her braids; she ignored them, murmuring nonsense comfort in the sing-song dialect of her desert childhood. Raëdrithar tilted his head, one gold eye swiveling to keep her in sight, and only then stilled his restless wing joints.

"Easy, big cloud," she whispered, palm brushing the hot line of his sternum. "You'll get your sky soon enough."

A dozen paces off, Helyra sat cross-legged on a splintered crate that once carried mirror glass. Quartz rods, thick as saplings, rested across her lap; each was threaded with bronze rings engraved so densely they looked like scales. She struck a tuning fork—clear, bell-bright—and held it near the rods. When a chord throbbed too high she rolled the offending ring a hair's breadth, absorbing the dissonance. Tiny motes of violet bled from the runes, drifting away like noctilucent spores. She tasted one on her tongue to judge pitch, then spat it with a grimace. "Too sharp," she muttered, adjusting again. In her mind, the plateau's heartbeat, the sea's breathing, and the sky's tension all formed a single, fragile chord; these rods would have to match it perfectly or else split it wide open.

Draven paced between their work without comment, cloak sweeping like the shadow of an unmarked hour-hand. His gaze skated from tool to talon, from quartz glow to Azra's solder arcs, from the restless shuffle of Ironbark pikemen to the thin green flame that still guttered atop the far beacon. Each detail nested itself inside a branching ledger of possibilities: if a barding plate cracked under lightning surge, if a rod's harmonic wavered, if a scout stumbled into the wrong culvert and broke an ankle—every if blossomed into contingencies that clicked and spun behind his eyes. Time bled away; he counted it not in minutes but in heartbeats remaining before the world might drown.

Boot crunch behind him—deliberate, uneven. He pivoted; Sylvanna approached, her limp pronounced but disciplined, as though she'd rehearsed exactly how far each step could sink before it betrayed weakness. Pale skin stretched tight at her jaw; a sheen of mercury-fire glimmered in branching veins up her wrist, proof that the suppressant still worked. Her quiver rode high against her spine, storm-glass arrowheads glimmering like captive stars; every step sent faint light scattering across the frost-dusted ground.

"I'm leading Ember," she said, voice a low drawstring pulled taut.

Draven's eyes slid to the tremor in her fingers—subtle, but sufficient for recalculation. "You're not stable," he observed, tone as level as a spirit-level laid across stone.

"Neither are you," she countered, mouth twitching in an almost-smile that died when a spear of pain lanced her shoulder. She refused to wince, riding it out as a sailor rides green seas.

He folded his arms, leather creaking softly. "Difference is, I plan around that."

"Then plan around me," she insisted, lifting the quiver a fraction. "You know I'm the only one who can arc those arrows into a mirror seam without ricochet. Azra's charges need a gate; I'm the key."

A hush stretched between them. The low clang of distant hammering punctuated it like iron punctuation. Draven's fingertips tapped once against his bicep—an unconscious habit when variables threatened to drift. At last he produced a small polished disk the size of a coin, its mirrored face segmented by hair-thin runes. He pressed it into the inner brace of her gauntlet; magnets caught, clinking soft as a locket closing. The enchantment sipped a sliver of her aura, calibrating to her pulse.

"If you fall," he said, words almost tender in their clinical certainty, "I will know."

Something warm flickered behind her eyes—gratitude, defiance, fear, it was hard to parse. She swallowed them into a single crooked smile. "If I fall, catch me."

"Don't fall," he answered, and stepped back.

From the cliff edge the sea resembled a dark lung half-emptied of breath. The usual moon-drawn rhythm was gone; water had peeled away from land like a retreating animal, baring reefs that should never smell air. Razor-lined barnacles glittered under starlight, and stranded fish flopped in glimmering arcs before succumbing. The exposed seabed pulsed with faint heat, as though some monstrous forge rumbled far below.

And out at the horizon, where the Gate squatted like a jagged tooth, calcified lips convulsed. A seam that days ago would have been invisible now crawled wide enough to admit a man's fist. Sickly teal light bled between plates, chasing cracks in quick pulses, as if liquid lightning sought every fracture. When the next surge rippled outward, the ground beneath Draven's boots warmed a fraction—an omen only he recognized.

He looked down; the glow painted a pale halo around his soles. "Orvath has begun," he told the void—and the void answered with silence that felt taut as spun steel.

Behind him, an electric thrill spilled through ranks like wine through thirsty cloth. Soldiers straightened, exhaustion forgotten. Armor straps were cinched with final yanks; leather palms flexed around pike grips polished by worry. Vaelira strode the line, crimson mantle snapping. She raised one gauntleted arm, and along the ridge towers of shields tipped and locked, overlapping into a single iron rind. Pikes angled, quivers clacked, the Ironbark wall breathed as one creature ready to meet the night's hunger.

Below, at the plateau's root, three cloaked figures melted into the drainage culvert—Blackwater's vanguard. The narrow arch swallowed their footfalls. Draven's clone came last, pausing exactly once to survey the stars, as though indexing their positions against some internal chart. Then it dipped into darkness, steps silent, shoulders squared in perfect imitation of the original's posture.

Above, wind spiraled cold from the sea. Raëdrithar answered with a shriek that vibrated ribs. The wyvern's wings unfurled in a single thunderous gesture, membranes glowing faint cobalt where enchantments threaded. Azra clung at the saddle's rear girth, whispering final checks; Sylvanna swung up front, fingers closing around the yoke carved of driftbone and silver nails. The third rider—a lean scout named Deren, chosen for slight weight and fearless grin—checked the demolition satchel and slapped the wyvern's flank.

Raëdrithar launched. The first down-stroke cracked the air; tents along the ridge snapped, fires guttered flat. Sparks from Azra's solder seams scattered like constellations flung across leather. In three beats the beast cleared the ridge, tail scything a spiraling contrail of frost and ember dust. Cloud tatters swallowed them, and their roar became a sonorous echo that passed over the plateau, leaving gooseflesh on every neck.

Helyra, still kneeling, slammed the final quartz rod into bedrock. Each spike hissed where iron met stone. She spoke a word—unintelligible, older than written rune—and violet filaments sprang from tip to tip, weaving a glowing net that curved above the Ironbark line like a half-formed halo. The light cast strange shadows, making helmets look horned, eyes hollow.

Vaelira marched along that barrier, sword trailing sparks off shattered flagstone. Here and there she touched a trembling shoulder or offered a nod to a soldier whose lips were moving in frantic prayer. When she looked up and met Draven's gaze, the message was clear as daylight: Hold—at any cost.

Draven inclined his head, a gesture more intimate than a salute between these two. They did not need to speak. Strategy had already spoken for them; all that remained was execution.

He pivoted toward the aqueduct. Cloak whirled around armor plates, edges lined in faint silver that matched the manacle at his wrist. His footfalls faded into the thinning dark as if he stepped into a different realm—one where the universe existed solely as angles, leverage, and consequence.

The ocean answered with thunder. A roar built from the fracture line, low at first, then rising until it rattled pikes against shields. Froth burst from the Gate's maw; within it writhed shapes—Brine-Wraiths, but swollen, coalesced, torsos twice the width of before, arms braided from drowned memories and broken oaths. Their eyes were lamps of lonely blue fire. As they surged onto the reef, the temperature dropped; ice filmed over exposed rock, cracking under their weight.

Archers loosed the first volley. Arrows stitched into spectral flesh, detonating pockets of mist that howled like grieving widows. The creatures faltered, but only to reform around shafts now dangling uselessly. Some opened mouths lined with swirling vortex teeth and shrieked—sound that made every man's molars ache.

Vaelira shouted orders. Ironbark's wall advanced a half-step, planting shields deeper. The ground shook as Wraiths hit the front; ghostly limbs wrapped shields, leaching memories from the wood. Soldiers screamed names of mothers they hadn't thought of in years, a payment torn from mind to feed the enemy. But the wall held.

In that maelstrom, Draven disappeared down a slope glazed with frost. The path to the aqueduct yawned like a wound in the cliffside. He did not slow; every foot of descent was timed to coincide with the Gate's pulses, sliding him between tremors as if surfing the world's own heartbeat.

Wind tore his cloak, flinging it out like a banner of night. Above, clouds churned in bruised spirals around Raëdrithar's ascending silhouette—tiny flashes marked arrow releases, each one a spark of hope arcing toward Orvath's hidden forge.

The war for one more dawn had begun. The board shifted with every cry and clash, every heartbeat and breath spent. Pieces moved in shadows and in sky, in tunnels and on ridges, each driven by a will to survive or a hunger to devour.

And so had he.