The Villain Professor's Second Chance

Orvath's scrying chamber was a hollow of suspended reflections—a circular vault paneled in polished obsidian and silvered glass that turned every candleflame into a shard of winter sun. Thin braziers burned with smokeless lavender fire, the scent of damask rose and crushed wormwood coiling in sickly-sweet spirals. At the room's center floated the mercury basin, wide as a table yet held aloft by nothing visible, ripples forming and vanishing without cause. The surface answered only to the magister's will.

He stood at its rim in full ceremonial black, the silk so dark it seemed to drink the torchlight, leaving only the pallid contrast of his hands. Those fingers moved like pale spiders, weaving sigils in the air—tight loops, jagged strokes, gestures that ended in sharp flicks. With each motion, an image swam up from the depths: a stockade engulfed by green flame; slavers fleeing through reeds; chains shattered under an invisible hammer. Yet every vision blurred around a single swirling knot of darkness. The moment his will tried to fix the scene, that knot swallowed context, leaving only distortion.

Orvath's jaw flexed. Sweat prickled at his temples, but the beads shone silver, not salt, as the ritual tinctures in his blood found a path to his skin. He did not wipe them away; to break concentration would waste an hour's incantation. Instead, he whispered a harsher cipher, one reserved for disclosing enemy mages, and thrust two fingers into the mercury.

The basin convulsed. Silvery waves rose and fell, and for half a breath the darkness cleared. A figure crystallized—tall, cloak whipping in unnatural wind, eyes like shards of violet glass. Twin blades hung loose in gloved hands, each edge sheathed in flickering, starless fire. The hunter stood upon a ledge above Ironleaf's ruin, posture almost idle. Yet the pose vibrated with quiet command, the arrogance of a predator certain of the next kill.

Orvath's breath snagged. There was an age to those eyes—a weight that mocked mortal lifetimes. Power thrummed beyond them, old and hungry. His fingers recoiled from the basin; the mercury snapped shut, ripples swallowing the image the way a pond swallows a stone. Darkness rushed back, more stubborn than before, sealing itself like a lid.

A shiver ran the length of Orvath's spine, but terror soon curdled into delight. That kind of strength could shatter thrones—or prop them higher than any rival could reach. Carefully, he lifted a goose-quill from its obsidian rest. The parchment already waited, ink inkwell primed with chameleon fluid that shifted from blue to mirror-grey when exposed to moonlight.

He began the first letter to General Vostyr, hand steady now. Every stroke outlined the official version—rising unrest, a "rogue necromancer," contingencies requiring greater funding. His script was neat, ornate, the calligraphy of a scholar who prized elegance as much as menace. Sealing wax—crimson embossed with the crowned wolf—closed that scroll.

The second sheet bore no such flourish. Orvath's handwriting contracted into a terse cipher used by less reputable contacts: fencers, cut-throat mercenaries, and debt-bound scribes in the ministry archives. Hunter sighted. Asset of incalculable worth. Secure at any cost. Informant will be rewarded in flesh and silver. He pressed a newly cast sigil into molten silver wax: a closed eye circled by seven thorns. Only three men alive would recognize the mark; all three owed him lives they could ill afford to repay.

He tied the note to a nightjar bred for silence, its feathers still dusted with alchemical dulling powder, and watched it vanish through a warded chute into the starless sky. Only when the flap closed did he exhale, shuddering with the chill of possibilities.

"Find him," he repeated, voice a reverent hush that echoed among a dozen reflected selves. "Bring him to me."

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High above the world's clamor, Draven stood on a knuckle of granite jutting from the mist-heavy mountains. The cold wind pushed damp curls of fog across the shoulders of his cloak yet never seemed to touch him, as though the night itself gave him a respectful berth. Below, Ironleaf—a ruin only hours ago stuffed with rule and routine—now lay cracked open like a rotten chestnut. Fires simmered rather than raged, coaxed low by the first hard rain, but he could still make out frantic lanterns bobbing through wreckage.

Sylvanna shifted at his side. Moisture caught on her lashes, but whether rain or emotion she could not tell. "Panic travels on wet feet," she murmured. "It will slither into every barracks along the timber roads before dawn."

A faint nod. Draven lowered the brass spyglass, wiping condensation from the lens with gloved thumb. "Let it. Men too busy quelling rumors swing swords slower."

He parsed the remaining patrols—where reinforcements dampened hotspots, where gaps widened unnoticed—and compared them to a lattice of possibilities traced earlier upon parchment. Each data point clicked into place in his mind's architecture. He saw not only what was, but what could be toppled next with the least motion.

Sylvanna, emboldened by the hush, ventured further: "Hope alone may spark rebellion, but despair can as easily smother it. How hard will you squeeze before you let them breathe?"

"Until the iron sings," he answered. Then, softer, "Not a note sooner."

She absorbed that in silence. The forest below hissed with rainfall, a thousand leaves applauding his patience. With a short whistle, she signaled three perched kestrels—chimeric things with luminous tufted ears—to take flight, each bearing a bundle of leaf-wrapped salves and smolder dust. Aid for the freed elves: just enough to keep them alive, just little enough to remind them who supplied the next breath.

In the hush that followed, shadows thickened around Draven's boots—his wraiths returning. They carried the intangible scent of torn wards and spilled fear. One knelt, its formless head dipping as if submitting an oral report. Draven listened, eyes half-closed, and interpreted the swirl of shapes the way a sailor reads sky currents. When the wraith finished, he dismissed it with a flick. It melted into the cliff face like ink in water.

"More slavers ride north out of Valaroth," he told Sylvanna. "They've heard only fragments—wolves slaughtered by darkness, a fortress ruptured from within. They think chaos is contained. They are wrong."

He reached into a pouch and withdrew three black iron nails, each etched with spiral runes. "Plant these at the crossroads of Pike Hollow," he said. "When their caravans pass, the wards will invert every suppression collar for ten heartbeats. Long enough to remind the slaves what freedom tastes like—just enough to swallow hope before it blooms into complacency."

Sylvanna accepted the nails. Their metal throbbed like slow hearts. She did not flinch; the trust they had forged was of a sharper alloy. "And if the collars kill instead of stun?"

"They won't," Draven replied. A pause, then a softer edge: "I've measured the thresholds."

She hesitated only a breath, bowed once, and melted into the forest with the fluid grace of her Softstep chimera at heel.

Draven lingered. He looked to Ironleaf, then beyond—to the hazed lights of Valaroth City far to the east, a bruise on the horizon. "Igniting," he whispered, savoring the word's crackle. Wind tugged his cloak in answer, as though it too longed to burn.

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General Vostyr's strategy chamber smelled of wet leather and scraped iron. Reports littered the oak table in untidy stacks—ink still drying on some where newly shot messengers had delivered them breathless. Candle stubs trembled in their holders. Each flame cast his gaunt profile against banners of the crowned wolf, giant shadows pacing as restlessly as he did.

He read the casualty ledgers twice, then a third time. Numbers seldom lied, yet he hoped they might shrink if glared at sufficiently. They did not. Ten patrols missing. Two caravans overturned. Reave's rider contingent halved in less than an hour. Worse, rumors spreading among indentured workers about a blade-wielding shade who punished cruelty with surgical wrath.

"Slaver captains grow nervous," Serik reported, voice soft but urgent, standing just beyond the guttering candelabrum. "Some hide their ledgers. Others request escort back to the capital."

Vostyr's hand snapped across the papers, scattering them like startled birds. "Bring them out," he growled. "Line the traitors before the barracks wall." He stood swiftly; armor plates chimed as if marking the beat of his pulse. "Examples are more efficient than sermons."

Serik's jaw twitched—he had seen too many examples lately—but he bowed. Drums rolled moments later in the courtyard, a funeral cadence reversed for execution. Within minutes, screams rose—a jagged choir that clung to the stone vaults and found its way even through shuttered windows. Vostyr listened, letting each cry coat a nerve. Silence is the cure for fear. Yet as the last voice choked out, he felt no quieter inside.

He turned to his desk, quill already waiting. The letter to Auric had to sound confident yet humble, solicitous yet unwavering. Minor disturbances near the northern pass. Ironleaf temporarily compromised by saboteurs sympathetic to elven insurgents. Situation contained. He wrote the lie with crisp flourishes, sealing it with wax that bore the king's own sigil—one of the privileges granted a trusted general. His hand only trembled once, mid-sentence; he pressed harder to hide the falter.

Outside his study windows, the torches of executioners shrank into the drizzle. For a second, the courtyard seemed empty, but then the wind nudged a hanging body, and the chain creaked like a door half-opened to darkness. Vostyr rubbed his scar, feeling it itch against the memory of the owl's parchment.

In the far corner of the room, a candelabra guttered low. The flame leaned, as though pushed by an exhale not belonging to either man present. A shadow pooled at the baseboard, deeper than natural gloom. Vostyr's gaze darted; the shape dissolved the moment he focused on it. Imagination, or a warning?

"Another purge," he said, voice a knife drawn too quickly. "If I cannot kill the Hunter, I'll drown his whispers."

Serik's eyes widened a fraction—there were few left to purge without gutting their own logistics—but he nodded. Orders were orders.

Vostyr grabbed his sword belt, the leather stiff under his clenched fingers, and strode to the door. Each step felt heavier, as though unseen fingers tugged at his cloak hem. He would refuse the sensation. He was the architect of order; shadows obeyed him.

Yet as he exited, the candles dipped again, this time in unison, bowing to something just beyond sight.

He strode resolutely from his chamber, orders sharp on his tongue, steel-cold determination masking the hidden tremble deep within his chest. He had set wheels in motion, ruthless and precise—but something darker, something colder, now stalked his every move.