The Villain Professor's Second Chance

Chapter 694: Dialogue With The Elves (3)



"I see." He studied the arch's grain, reading ancient chisel marks now softened by moss. "You want me to find her."

"No." Velthiri's pale eyes reflected starlight that hadn't yet appeared. "We want memory. A scrap. A phrase. Something real. If you claim to walk among our sorrow, walk where our grief grows. Alone. No blade drawn."

Draven inclined his head. He wouldn't surrender both swords—symbols mattered—but letting them hang undrawn was concession enough. Sylvanna, who had followed at the edge of the clearing, stepped forward, bow lowered yet ready. "Then I'll—"

Velthiri raised one palm, slim fingers spread like a leaf's veins. "It must be alone," she repeated. Not command, not plea—simple fact.

Draven looked back at Sylvanna. Her jaw flexed, a silent protest swallowed. She gave him a single, curt nod. Come back. No need to voice it.

He nodded once to Velthiri. Agreement set, he crossed beneath the stone bell. The evening breeze slipped through the arch as though exhaling for him. He left after dusk.

The trail began as a narrow track of pressed earth between pillars of living bark. Mushrooms—small, bulbous caps—clustered along the edges, each pulsing amber every few seconds. They cast no real light, yet the faint glow traced the path like distant beacons. Draven walked with measured pace, boots soundless on humus. Above, limbs knitted so tightly stars could not find purchase; only an indigo smear hinted at sky.

No birdsong. No insect drone. Just the slowed rhythm of his breath and the occasional soft chime from distant canopy bells stirring in the wind. Twice he paused, convinced another set of footsteps followed. Each time the echo dissolved into hush. Not quite a ghost—more like time itself retracing old strides.

After a quarter-hour, pale stones rose on either flank—markers no higher than his knee. Each bore shallow Elharn glyphs scrolled in a spiral. Memory stones. He'd read of these: placed to tether wandering souls, giving lost spirits a signpost back. They hummed as he passed—barely audible vibrations felt more in teeth than ears. He slowed and touched none. Disturbing them could scatter the memory they guarded.

The trail tightened. Roots arched overhead, forming a living tunnel. Beneath the arch a chill seeped through cloak and linen. Draven let it happen, adjusting breath, counting heartbeats until his pulse matched the forest's subdued thrum. The mushrooms here glowed dimmer—ash rather than amber. He carried on.

Eventually the path opened into a clearing no wider than a modest chapel. A single tree dominated the space, its trunk twisted into the shape of a woman bowed in prayer, limbs clasped together above her crowned head. Moss draped her shoulders like worn velvet. Moonlight—faint and watery—slipped through a break in the canopy, painting the statue-tree in pale silver.

At the foot of the bowing trunk lay a scrap of leaf-scroll, its edges curled, veins fragile. Draven crouched. Every motion slow, deliberate. The leaf felt lighter than paper when he eased it off the moss. Ink, a dark brown nearly vanished with age, traced three uneven lines:

Where the roots forgot their name,

I laid my bow.

Let green remember me.

He read it twice, the cadence quiet as a lullaby. Ithen's own hand? Likely. The script matched older Elharn, feminine, the brushstrokes deliberate yet soft. A farewell written not to people, but to the forest itself.

Wind rustled overhead. He sensed no invisible watchers, yet respect steered him. He laid the leaf back exactly as it had rested, smoothing moss around it. Some artifacts belonged to the place they anchored; removing them would be theft, not proof.

He sat cross-legged on the damp earth. No weapon drawn. Nothing but the slow exchange of breath with the night. Minutes stretched, elastic. A quarter-hour, maybe more. Time blurred into the hush until thought itself slowed.

No visions came. No ghost in white linen stepped forth. Not even the echo steps returned. The clearing seemed content to let him share its stillness without bargaining for anything else.

Eventually he stood. Bowed once—to the tree-woman, to the poem, to the absent spirit. Then he turned back the way he'd come. Mushrooms pulsed softly as he passed, their rhythm faintly quicker—as though acknowledging his departure.

He returned just before dawn.

The court-tree rose in tiered rings, each platform wider than the one above, its bark polished by a thousand cautious footsteps. Dawn's first gray hinted behind the leaves, yet lantern fungi still glowed along every rail, silvering the faces of the elders assembled there. They stood unmoving—robes motionless in the windless dark—like statues cut from moonstone and sap. Only their eyes lived, catching glints of bioluminescence as Draven mounted the final steps.

Sylvanna stopped at the lower platform, ordered back by a silent gesture of the guards. Alone, Draven advanced across living wood that flexed under his weight. The center of the ring was bare save for one low table of root and amber resin, its surface polished mirror-smooth. Around it, nine elders arranged themselves in a crescent. Their cloaks faded from deep pine to frost-gray, marking lineage and discipline. At their apex stood Velthiri, her ceremonial sash now pinned with a shard of pale quartz that pulsed to the rhythm of her heartbeat.

Draven halted three paces away and drew the soft bundle from his cloak. Mist clung to the leaf-scroll as though reluctant to surrender it. He knelt, back straight, head neither bowed nor lifted—a posture of poised respect rather than supplication. The silence deepened until even the night insects stilled. He laid the scrap upon the table, arranging the edges carefully so the brittle veins would not crack.

Lantern light stroked the inked lines, and the elders leaned nearer as one, their breath rustling sleeves that smelled of cedar. Velthiri reached out. Long fingers, steady despite the faint tremor of memory, unfolded the leaf. When she read, her voice spread through the air like low flute notes:

"Where the roots forgot their name,

I laid my bow.

Let green remember me."

The final syllable frayed. She cleared her throat, but a raggedness lingered. For one heartbeat her eyes shone bright with water that never fell. Then the elder beside her—silver-browed, stern as cliffstone—exhaled a sigh too soft for reproach, too heavy for comfort.

Velthiri gathered herself, spine unbending. "You found Ithen," she said. Her tone aimed for declarative, but sorrow leaked between the words like sap from a cut.

Draven's gaze held hers, the color of tempered iron catching lantern fire. "I found what she left behind."

"And what did you leave?" another elder pressed. This one's voice crackled like dry leaves; he wore a circlet of woven reed older than Draven's lifetime.

"Nothing," Draven answered. The single word rang precise, the echo of blades on discipline. "That place already remembers."

Silence followed—thick, palpable. The leaf-scroll fluttered, though no wind stirred. Then something shivered through the wood beneath their feet, a tremor too gentle to be danger. Leaves high above rattled as if greeting a distant stormfront.

A breeze unfurled across the platform, cool and wet with dawn. It rolled down the treeline, swirled between the elders' robes, and slipped past Draven's shoulders, tugging at the frayed edge of his cloak. Somewhere in the canopy a rope bridge sighed.

The hollow bell—stone and silent since sunset—answered. A single note, low and resonant, drifted through the glade. No hand struck it; the sound felt coaxed from the very air, the way a shell sings when the tide turns. The tone lingered, washing over bark and moss, until it dissolved into a hush so profound it seemed the forest held its breath.

In that hush, birds greeted morning for the first time in weeks. One melodic chirp, tentative, then another. The elders closed their eyes. Draven heard tension release—shoulders settling, bowstrings slackening above. He had felt many victories; few were quiet enough to fit inside a sigh.

Velthiri placed the scroll on the table as reverently as sacred scripture. "The bell rings only for souls set free," she murmured. "Maybe she walks green paths again."

Draven rose. Wood beneath him flexed, accepting his weight as though acknowledging debt repaid. He inclined his head, neither shallow nor deep—exactly enough.

They did not bid him speak further. Instead, the eldest of the council lifted his reed circlet and dipped it to Draven, a fractional movement signaling closure. Two guardians stepped forward—not to escort him under blade-point now, but to guide him with torch-staffs glowing soft blue.

On the lower platform Sylvanna waited, eyes wide, shoulders held with disciplined stillness. Draven descended. Guards offered no barrier. As they passed, one young sentinel tapped fist lightly to breastbone—a salute seldom granted to outsiders. Sylvanna caught the gesture, a spark of cautious hope lighting her gaze.

They emerged onto the outer walkway that ringed the court-tree—a broad perch open to dawn. Sky burned rose at the horizon; dew beaded on cables of vine and shimmered like glass beads. Archers who had shadowed their steps earlier now dwindled, slipping back toward higher posts. The tension that had fouled every breath the night before had thinned to wary curiosity.

An hour later—after Draven submitted politely to a final inspection, after Sylvanna retrieved her bow and returned it to shoulder guard, after guardians dispersed—she found him leaning on the rail of a side platform. Mist ghosted through branches below, hiding the forest floor in rolling cotton.

She walked to his side, boots quiet on polished bark. Her voice, when it came, floated just above the hush. "So… what's next?"

Draven didn't glance over. He watched the sun's edge ignite emerald crowns, each leaf trembling in sudden gold. A reluctant breeze slipped its fingers along his coat hem, lifting the fabric before letting it fall. Somewhere unseen, the bell tongued again—soft, content, as though confirming his reply before he gave it.

"We see where the rot reached next."


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