The Villain Professor's Second Chance

I poured myself a drink, the amber liquid settling into the crystal glass with a quiet slosh. The scent was sharp, laced with hints of oak and spice, a reminder of the luxuries I rarely allowed myself to indulge in. The first sip burned its way down my throat, but it did nothing to dull the cold weight pressing against my ribs.

I allowed myself to process what I had read.

If the name in that dossier was truly alive, then it meant one of two things. Either the Council had been deceived, or I had failed in a task I had never before questioned. And failure was not something I entertained lightly.

Deception from the Council was unlikely. They were too desperate to rein me in, too determined to keep me leashed. If this was meant to be a manipulation, they would have chosen a different card to play. Which left only the other possibility—one that I refused to acknowledge without proof.

I tapped my fingers against the rim of the glass, my mind unraveling the possibilities.

Resurrection magic? Unlikely. The rituals required were too complex, too dangerous, and would have left behind traces I would have sensed. Such magic was not a simple incantation or a whispered plea to forces beyond comprehension. It was a raw, visceral process—one that demanded sacrifice, blood, and something far more precious: time. Even the most skilled practitioners left behind echoes of their work, lingering remnants that clung to the ether like the scent of charred flesh.

And yet, there had been nothing.

No disturbances. No warping of the arcane fields. No whispers in the aether signaling a disruption in the natural order. If someone had tampered with the grave I had personally ensured would never be disturbed, I would have felt its resonance ripple through the threads of reality like an imperfection in a finely woven tapestry.

Necromantic interference? More plausible, but still improbable. The magic I had used had been absolute, severing more than just flesh and bone. It had unraveled something deeper, something that was not meant to be touched again. Necromancers had their tricks, their ways of raising puppets of the past, but true resurrection was beyond them. They could reanimate bodies, but they could not restore souls. And if the name in that dossier truly belonged to the one I thought it did, then a mere reanimated corpse would not have been enough to cause concern.

The one I killed had been more than just a man.

They had been a certainty.

A life that was meant to end.

I could still recall the finality of it. The cold steel. The slowed heartbeat. The stillness that followed—the kind that only comes when a truth has been made irreversible. I had made sure there was no chance for survival, no lingering trace of them to crawl back into the world.

And yet they were here, written in ink as though history had chosen to rewrite itself.

A mistake? Or a deliberate test?

A deeper scheme? That was the real question, wasn't it? Who stood to gain from this revelation? Was this a message? A warning? Or was it merely another layer to a game I had yet to fully perceive? The Council was not foolish enough to manufacture falsehoods without purpose. If they had placed that name before me, they expected a reaction, a sign that they had found a weakness in the cracks of my past.

I exhaled slowly, my fingers tightening around the glass, the coolness of the crystal pressing against my skin.

And then the title resurfaced in my mind, unbidden.

The Last Executioner of the Drakhan Bloodline.

The words carried weight, more than they should have after all these years. They did not simply exist as a title once given to me—they were a judgment. A definition of what I had been, what I had become, and what I had abandoned.

I had buried that name beneath the years, beneath calculated indifference and the pursuit of something greater. But the past was like an ember beneath the ash, waiting for the right breath of wind to reignite into an inferno.

And now, it burned.

I was younger then. Still bound by duty, by family, by the expectations that had been carved into my very existence. I had not yet seen the world for what it truly was—had not yet understood the chains that bound me, the ones I would one day break.

The mission had been clear, handed down from those who had shaped me into the weapon they needed.
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A necessary removal. A target that needed to be erased to ensure the survival of something greater.

A life that was meant to end.

I had moved swiftly, efficiently. There had been no room for hesitation, no allowance for mercy. I had been taught to strike with precision, to silence doubt before it could take root. The blade had been steady in my hand, the weight of finality pressing against my grip. The blood that pooled at my feet had been nothing more than a consequence of inevitability.

And yet, even then, there had been a moment.

A flicker of doubt. A hesitation too brief to be noticed by anyone but myself. The kind of moment that should not have existed in an executioner's mind.

The adversary had been unexpected. Not stronger than me. Not faster. But they had known something I had not. A sliver of truth hidden behind desperate eyes, a warning that had come too late. I had not understood it then, and so I had done what was necessary.

The deed had been finished, the mission completed, and the past buried beneath the weight of blood and silence.

So why was that name in the dossier?

I had seen it only for an instant, but that was all it took for the ghosts of memory to stir. It was impossible. It had to be impossible.

I set the glass down with a quiet clink, the sound slicing through the silence of the room. My reflection in the window stared back at me, unreadable even to myself. The candlelight cast shifting shadows across my face, and for the briefest of moments, I thought I saw something there—something I did not recognize. A flicker of something too human, too uncertain.

I crushed it before it could take form.

This mission was no longer about the Council's attempt to control me. No longer about necromancers lurking in forgotten ruins.

This was about unfinished business.

And I did not leave things unfinished.

The past wanted to rise from its grave.

Let it.

I would be waiting.