The Villain Professor's Second Chance

The black wax seal of the Council's letter still lingered in my thoughts long after I had set it aside. My fingers traced the edges of the parchment, committing every detail to memory—the weight of the paper, the slight imperfections in the wax, the precise stroke of the sigil. Every piece of information was a thread, and I was used to unraveling tangled webs.

A name. A name that should not exist.

Belisarius Drakhan.

I should have killed him years ago. No, I did kill him.

I remembered it.

Not in the way one recalls an event they lived through, but as something seen from the outside—fragmented memories, scattered like broken glass across my mind. It wasn't just recollection; it was observation, detached yet visceral, a thing I could not ignore.

The younger me, the real Draven, had taken his life with unwavering precision. The weight of the blade, the finality of the cut, the moment his body had gone still—I saw it, felt it, as though peering through a shattered mirror of another's life. It was how I had always remembered this world. Not as something I had lived, but as something I had been meant to live—as though I was filling a space already carved for me.

And in that script, in the path the game had laid out, Belisarius Drakhan was supposed to be dead.

But now, he wasn't.

There were only two explanations. Either the Council was testing me, feeding me a lie to measure my response, or—far more troubling—he had survived, or worse, had been brought back.

The first was unlikely. The Council was not the Magic Tower, and though they held power in the kingdom, their reach within the Magic Tower University was limited. The Tower existed as a separate force, an institution of arcane research and education independent of the Council's direct rule. The Council dictated laws, but the Tower—it had its own ways of handling things.

This meant one of two things: Either the Magic Council had uncovered a truth that the Tower had long since buried, or there was a deeper force at work, something beyond the grasp of either of them.

That left the second possibility. That history had changed.
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Had my mere presence—my interference in what should have been an unshakable script—altered this world's course? Or had I been wrong all along? Had it never been a game to begin with?

A question for later. I needed proof first.

The Shadow Archive was my next step.

A vault of forgotten records buried beneath the Magic Tower, hidden under layers of enchanted stone. It was not under the Council's control—this was the Tower's domain. A place where erased names, forbidden knowledge, and histories rewritten by those in power were locked away. Gaining access was supposed to be impossible.

But then, I had never been particularly obedient.

The corridors twisted downward, narrowing as I descended into the Tower's depths. These were not meant to be comfortable passageways—they were designed to deter, to make anyone who entered feel like an invader. Magic hummed faintly in the walls, embedded in ancient wards meant to detect the uninvited.

A lesser man would be uneasy. He would feel the weight of unseen eyes, the whispers of old spells lingering in the air like ghosts.

I had long since stopped believing in ghosts.

The enchantments here were not Council-made—they belonged to the Tower itself, woven by archmages long dead. Unlike the Council's crude attempts at surveillance, these spells did not react to simple trespassers. They reacted to intent.

They flared against hostility. Against greed. Against fear.

They sought the weak-willed and the uncertain.

I moved forward without hesitation. The Tower's magic did not recognize me as a threat. It did not register my presence at all.

Because I was very, very good at indifference.

I passed through the first layer of detection spells without slowing my stride. The air shimmered faintly around me as the enchantments scanned for anomalies—unauthorized presences, traces of foreign magic, any hint of intent that deviated from the acceptable. They were woven into the very stone, the lifeblood of the Magic Tower University's security, attuned to react against intruders, but they were not perfect.

Magic was only as strong as its design, and the Tower had been built under the assumption that its greatest threats would come from outside its walls.

A flawed assumption.

I slipped through the second layer without difficulty, letting my magic adjust itself to the flow of the detection spell. There was an art to evasion, a precise manipulation of presence and perception. A lesser sorcerer would attempt to suppress their mana, to shrink their existence to nothingness—but that only made the wards more alert. Instead, I adjusted. Adapted. Allowed my own magic to blend seamlessly into the Tower's natural field, matching the rhythm of the enchantments as if I had always belonged.

By the time I reached the third layer, the last barrier before the archive vault, I barely had to think about it. The final ward was the oldest, layered over centuries, its design archaic but dangerously precise. This one didn't scan for intruders; it scanned for intention. For purpose. For the difference between those who belonged and those who didn't.

I let my mind go blank.

The moment stretched, and for a fraction of a second, I felt the spell press against me, probing, questioning.

And then it let me through.

The heavy iron-bound doors stood before me now, their surface engraved with sigils of protection, glowing faintly in the dim corridor. The Magic Tower had its own rules, separate from the Magic Council. They did not interfere with one another's affairs unless absolutely necessary. But even within the Tower itself, knowledge was restricted. Not all truths were meant to be read.

The Shadow Archive was one such truth.

I reached into my coat and retrieved a small insignia—an old relic taken from a former Councilor who had outlived his usefulness. The insignia wasn't meant to grant access, not formally, but it carried enough residual authority that the doors hesitated. That was all I needed.

I pressed it against the sigil.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then, the magic dimmed. The wards unraveled, allowing passage.

Inside, the air was thick with the scent of old parchment, candle wax, and preservation spells. The vast chamber stretched into the dark, filled with shelves that towered to the ceiling, each lined with records untouched by time. No dust had settled here. No decay had crept in.

A thousand lives reduced to ink and paper.

I moved between the rows, fingers brushing against the spines of forgotten tomes, my mind already categorizing possibilities. If Belisarius Drakhan was alive, then either the world had rewritten itself, or history had been altered.

I needed proof.

The records of executions were kept under the sigil of the Drakhan bloodline—a quiet irony, considering how many of our own had been erased from history. I traced my fingers along the binding of an old leather-bound volume, the emblem embossed into its spine catching the dim light.

I pulled it free and opened it.

My gaze swept over the entries, flipping through years of recorded deaths, each documented with meticulous precision. They were never vague. The Tower did not make mistakes.

Belisarius's execution was recorded. The date, the location, the method. It was all there.

But something was missing.

No cause of death.

No witness confirmation.

No final verification of the body.

Redacted.

I frowned, my fingers tightening around the page. The Magic Tower did not redact executions. Not unless there was something they wanted erased entirely.

A slow exhale escaped me.

I had always believed that Belisarius was meant to die. That I had killed him. Not because I remembered it, but because I had seen it—fragments of memories that were not mine, but Draven's.

The real Draven.

The one who had lived this life before me.

That was the foundation of my knowledge, wasn't it? The assumption that this world followed the script I knew. That I had entered a reality with preordained paths, where my foresight was absolute. Where I understood the rules.

But the memories weren't whole. They were shattered reflections, glimpses of another life seen through fractured glass.

I remembered killing him. But only in pieces.

The weight of the blade in my hands.

The blood pooling against the stone.

The stillness of his body, the certainty of his final breath.

Not my memory. Not truly.

But it had been real. Hadn't it?

And yet, here was his name, staring back at me in ink that should not exist.

Had I changed something? Had my presence warped the course of history in ways I had yet to realize? Or had I been wrong from the beginning?

Was this never a game at all?

A hollow chuckle threatened to escape me. I forced it down. The answer didn't matter right now. What mattered was what I could prove. What I could find.

My gaze drifted lower, to the bottom of the page, where a phrase in ancient script had been carefully scrawled.

A phrase I had not seen in years.

"The Gravekeeper's Pact: Some deaths are not meant to be eternal."