The Villain Professor's Second Chance

On the surface plateau the two fractured armies—Iron Justiciars on one ridge, rebel irregulars on the other—were trading exhausted glances across a no-man's-land of cooling blood. Six heartbeats earlier they had been mortal enemies once more, each side regaining its wind to resume the slaughter that Vaelira's light-cage bombs had only postponed.

Then the first Brine-Wraith broke through the waves.

It rose vertical, glistening, an aurora made serpent. Ribbed echoes of children giggling shimmered down its flank, followed by the thunder of old war drums, followed by the hush of a thousand bedtime secrets never heard again. A ring of hoarfrost spread wherever its tail lashed. A second serpent followed, then a third, a fourth—until eleven glimmering phantoms twisted above the sea like pillars in a shrine built for nightmares.

Every living eye on the plateau turned in synchronized terror. Pikes dipped. Bows sagged. No one remembered grievances, only survival. Somewhere on the rebel flank a wounded man croaked, "New saints preserve us." On the Justiciar side a sergeant spat the same prayer, never noticing the treason of shared words.

Lines shifted. Shields that had faced rebels pivoted to form a single battered wall toward the shore. Archers from rival cohorts shuffled together, exchanging nods that bruised pride but steadied hands. It wasn't an alliance—just a cease-fire forged by primal understanding: us against that. Still, fear alone would never be enough.

On the ridge above them a small brass timer in Draven's gauntlet clicked to its final division. The sound was feather-light, yet he felt it in his bones the way sailors feel a change of weather. Far below, the quartz-rod choristers Azra and Helyra had planted commenced their death song.

One rod shivered first, emitting a subharmonic rumble that rattled the fillings of anyone within a mile. A second joined, pulsing out a major third above the first. A third produced their perfect fifth. Together they formed a chord heavy enough to sink islands. The plateau vibrated; grains of shale rolled in tidy waves across the ground.

Then all three rods shattered.

The detonation was sound more than shock—pure cancellation unleashed. A hemispheric pulse rippled outward, warping the air into visible rings. When it hit the open Gate the jagged maw convulsed, its glow dimming from diseased teal to chilled bone. Calcite spider-webbed across the wound, knitting shards into a brittle crust.

Draven watched it with analytical distance even while sprinting downhill. He did not allow relief; too many variables remained. One of them plummeted overhead as a silhouette against broken starlight.

Sylvanna spun through open sky—limbs limp, a rag doll suspended by invisible thread. White sparks crackled across her skin, jumping nerve to nerve, stitching pain she was too dazed to feel. Raëdrithar spiraled beneath her, wings still stunned by the pulse. The wyvern's pupils were blown wide, reflecting a universe that suddenly refused to obey flight.

Below, Draven measured fall speed against distance to reef, against the new oscillation frequencies in the Gate's crust, against his own maximum sprint velocity over broken terrain. Calculations piled into a single imperative: now or not at all.

He hit the Gate valve as it cycled through destabilized rhythms—six hammered contractions followed by one slow open. Timing became a heartbeat duet: valve, stride, leap. He launched himself from the final shutter a split second before it closed again, boots scraping sparks off nacre.

Air howled. Sylvanna tumbled into reach. Draven caught her by the forearm, ribs jolting as her velocity transferred. Lightning seeped from her pores, trying to rebound into anything grounded. His silver-inlaid manacle chain hissed across his wrist; he wound it twice around both of them, metal runes flaring pale gold as they tasted raw current.

Then he speared the chain's hooked end into a rib of the Gate's exterior crust. The runes inverted, forming a siphon. Energy poured through the silver like rain down guttering, crackling along impartial pathways until it bled harmlessly into the bone of the Gate. What remained inside Sylvanna dimmed to soft electric blue, more glow than fury.

Momentum had its own argument, though. They struck a sunken reef just beneath the outwash lip—hard granite cloaked in razor barnacles. Draven twisted mid-fall, turning his body into a shield. The impact hammered breath from his lungs, searing pain across scapula and spine. Water geysered around them, cushioning the second bounce but throwing salt into every new scrape.

They settled on the reef's flatter slab, half-submerged. Storm-silk filaments—thin threads of solidified electricity—still laced their joined wrists. Each spark popped with the scent of rain on hot stone.

Draven pulled his breathing back into order. Sylvanna coughed seawater, eyes glassy, then focused on his face as though making sure the world was not a hallucination. No words yet; only the heavy percussion of hearts forced to beat along someone else's rhythm.

A voice intruded—sibilant, too near for either to misplace. "Name the price, Daughter of Storm," it murmured, more promise than question. The tone carried echoes of wind through mine shafts and doors cracking under siege—a flirtation with doom.

Sylvanna's jaw tightened. Tiny arcs danced along her molars but did not escape. She shook her head once, firm. "No."

Silence reclaimed the air. The voice retreated like a tide discovering deeper secrets to stalk.

Above, the battlefield's panic ebbed as the Brine-Wraiths faltered. With the Gate's mouth crusting shut, their stream of borrowed memories lost coherence. One serpent folded back on itself, loops dissolving into loose prisms that twinkled and died. Two more rammed the calcifying maw in confusion, leaving gouges of faint music rather than claw marks.

The rebel-Justiciar shield wall advanced in staggering formation, spears angled upward to meet impossible anatomy. Where flesh should have been, there was only lament; where bone should have braced, there was only echo. Yet iron tips found purchase in those echoes, embedding runed steel into shimmering guilt. Each strike dispelled a shard of collective sorrow, and the serpents shrank with every wound.

Draven watched from the reef, judging the Choir's demise against the slow sealing of the Gate. Both processes edged forward like rival glassblowers shaping the same vase. He silently congratulated Azra and Helyra—their rods had bought precious minutes.

The ocean, meanwhile, remembered itself. Instead of crashing walls, tides flowed in measured breaths, sluicing around new ridges of calcite as if obeying a gentler moon. The terrifying blue radiance that had tinted every froth-curl faded to a bruised lavender, then slipped away entirely.

On the plateau Helyra consulted the woven sky. Constellations that had drifted out of ancient alignment snapped back one by one, like paint strokes corrected by unseen brush. She released a pent-up sigh. "Constellations stabilized," she said, half disbelief, half relief, as if the stars themselves had been drunk and now found sobriety.

An envoy from the battered Justiciar command staggered forward, white flag improvised from a medic's bandage. His left arm dangled uselessly; blood soaked the front of his jerkin. Yet he still carried himself with the stiff dignity of bureaucracy. "The capital riots," he croaked toward Vaelira's line. "We ask for truce until order prevails."

Vaelira's face wore no expression, only exhaustion pressed into a shape resembling authority. She looked past him toward the sea, toward Draven and Sylvanna on their distant reef. Her silence stretched seconds into something weighty.

Draven did not answer either. He stood, water sheeting off his cloak, Sylvanna steadying beside him. Both studied the envoy like historians assessing whether this moment belonged on bronze or should be left to rust.

Far below them all, in the hollow quiet of the sealed Gate chamber, Orvath walked among cooling ridges of calcite. His steps left slick footprints of bloodied seawater. Light from residual wraith-shards painted his pale skin violet and green.

He reached the fused seam where the maw had once gaped. For a moment he merely observed—head tilted, fingertips hovering as if to feel heat without courting burn. His lips curled in something that was not a grin and not a grimace. Then he drove a fingernail between two plates, worrying at them until a splinter the size of a dagger hilt cracked free.

The fragment he prized out was jagged, edged with instincts of lightning. Inside the translucent shard floated a single braid-hair—blonde shot with silver—that twitched with residual electricity whenever his pulse neared it. Orvath regarded the captured filament as one might regard a precious gem cut from the crown of a living god.

Static crawled across the shard. Tiny arcs leapt, tasting the iron in his blood. He rolled the fragment between thumb and forefinger, listening to the faint sizzle that sounded like distant laughter.

His own smile widened, a slow crescent of anticipation.

"One dawn remains," he said.